Wild and sassy sounds from the archives of 40s and 50s rhythm & blues featuring some of the female dynamos of the genre coming your way on a Friday morning here on Deeper Roots. We’ll be featuring some great performances from the catalog of Jubilee Records (those Jubilee Jezebels) and a host of peers including some early scorchers from Little Sylvia (Robinson), Big Maybelle, Viola Watkins, Fay Simmons, and Ruth Brown. For the first three or four decades of the recorded blues and jazz, women played a major part in black music’s popularity and there was a resurgent ‘boom’ post-war that played a bigger part than we imagined in that tidal wave of wild rhythm beat that would become rock and soul. These are some classic tracks that don’t always get the attention they deserve…but they will here on Deeper Roots on a Friday morning on KOWS.
Category Archives: Featured Music
Covers Time
Another morning of covers, from country to soul and a little bit of rhythm and roll in store. This week’s show celebrates the songwriters and performers who found themselves honored with tributes and covers that honor the sense of a piece. We’ll hear covers of Tom T. Hall, Arthur Alexander, Robert Hunter, Derek Martin, Hank Snow and JJ Cale in the show today. The idea is to find a cover worth noting and put it up alongside the original. Just over a dozen songs to pick from in our two hours this morning featuring covers by Shannon McNally, Charley Crockett, Amy Black and Teddy Thompson. Join Dave Stroud for another episode from those dusty digital bins and turn up the volume for straight interpretations and a few wild takes in another covers show on a Friday morning from the KOWS studio in downtown Santa Rosa, California.
Payday Saturday Night
The pickins are thin until payday rolls around. Money is short and there’s none to spare. Although we’ve been wanting to save for a rainy day, the cupboards still need fillin’ and we also need enough to have some fun. If that eagle flies on Friday then Saturday night is when the time is right. This week we’ll be banking on that combined theme of payday, money and taxes. Belly up to the barroom country sounds of Faron Young, Lefty Frizzell and The Sons of the Pioneers and then find some rhythm and blues with The Fiestas, The Harlem Hamfats, Bobby Charles and Dom Flemons. It’s all about cashing out every couple of weeks and spreading thin with savings being thinner. We’ve got greenbacks, dollar down payments, songs about payday, the taxman and that almighty dollar to remind us that, as Peter Case points out, that “there’s two kinds of justice everybody knows, one for folks up on the hill and one for the others down below”.
Lonesome Train
Free form! That’s right. No theme, no genre exploration, no tribute or topical show today. Only topical playlists embellishing the show today including New Orleans memories from Bobby Mitchell, Fats Domino and Dr. John, country nuggets from Merle, Buck and Elvis as well as some fancy shmancy crooning from a Perry, Blue Eyes and Dino. We’ll also be digging into some classic rockabilly tunes and some canciones de Flaco and Los Lobos. Here in Sonoma County we’re going from three years of drought, wildfires and the Santa Ana winds to preparing for levee breaches and floods with the snow melts. We also get to behave like adults in the face of biased and inhumane Supreme Court decisions and moronic Texas politicians. Because we know who they are and what they represent: book burners and religious zealots with white hoods. While nobody is without sin, we’ll go with Newsom’s ability to employ the right critical thinking at the right time. I told you it would be a free form morning.
Country Rhythm & Blues
We’ll be covering the covers once more this week but this time we’ll be burrowing into a cross section of genres to get to the heart of the matter. It’s country songs with rhythm & blues interpretations, all from the decades of the fifties and sixties. We’ll hear from a few familiars rhythm rockers including The Coasters, Fats Domino, King Curtis and Ruth Brown as they take on the very best of country and tradition with a style all their own. But there’s also the surprises and unknowns like Thin Man Watts, Piney Brown, and The Ray-o-Vacs to fill out the show this morning. From Jambalaya to Tumbling Tumbleweeds, we’ve got some fine soul and R&B interpretations for you. Tune in and find out.
Cool Daddy
Welcome to the club. We’ve got some cool sounds from the jazz lounges and clubs blended with some beat generation salutations for you this morning. Beatniks, boppers, lounge chanteuse performances, saxophones, and some cool fifties sounds. Tune in for Patsy Raye and The Beatniks, Earl Bostic, Mose Allison, Charlie Parker’s Quintet, and a BeBop blend of out-of-this-world swing and percussion. From the Gaslight Café to Slim Gallaird’s Yep Roc sounds…we’ll have your foot tappin’ and your fingers snappin’ on a magical blend of cool ultra-lounge and café sounds from mid-century. Tune in on the web or grab our free app out on the Apple Store or Google Play. You can find them by searching for KOWS.
Georgia Peaches
This week’s show takes us across the landscape of the state of Georgia and then reminisces about ladies that share her name. No genre is off limits and no era too far in the past is excluded in this latest Deeper Roots show that takes on a theme. We’re also hoping that the will of the people is not interfered with in a state that’s struggling to awaken; a lumbering giant of democracy still haunted (and celebrated at the highest levels) by plantation politics. Our music this week will feature some tradition from Georgia’s own Jake Xerxes Fussell, country tunes from Lefty Frizzell and Charley Crockett, jazz from Nina Simone and Joe Venuti, and we’ll visit a Georgia Camp Meeting and One More Sunday in Savannah. Tune in for a collection of tunes about a state of mind and some fine women who share the name of a southern state where peaches and a darker past prosper. Tune in on Friday morning here on Sonoma County Community Radio.
Drive In Music
Memories of summer nights where the aroma of popcorn, car exhaust and nature fused as the car windows steamed up and the tin can speaker sounds synchronized with the silver screen…at the drive in movie. For the decades of the fifties, sixties, and seventies you could bring a car load of friends and find your spot across the little hills that pointed you skyward towards the glow of a billboard of dreams. This week on Deeper Roots we’ll visit some performances that include on-screen legends as well as legends that tried to make music outside of their lane. Some that we’ll hear from succeeded and some…well…went back to their day job. Tune in for music from Robert Mitchum, Bette Davis, Jack Webb, Marilyn Monroe, and a couple dozen others on a fun little romp on another Friday episode of Deeper Roots on KOWS 92.5 FM.
Streets of Bakersfield
It was Nashville West but with a decidedly more amount of midwestern flavoring. Bakersfield was the terminus of most of the migrant traffic from the dust bowl where the hope for a better life was not always fulfilled. So many landed square on the Central Valley and for those who grew up it became a whirlwind post-war prosperity that was familiar: oil drilling, agriculture, almond orchards, cattle raising, and a transportation industry to support it. Those who were raised on country swing and the classic country sounds coming out of Nashville were lucky given Bakersfield’s proximity to the studios of Hollywood and Los Angeles. We’ll hear from many of them, digging into the early years of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart and a host of other performers who made that blend of rough country, trucking songs, and honky-tonk swing what it would become.
Finger Pickin’ Good
Tune in Friday morning for a finger pickin’ helping of Americana and beyond as our show revisits some guitar masters from blues, country blues, folk and tradition. We’ll take a spin across the landscape of steel and gut string tradition with a collection that features tracks from Stefan Grossman, Mississippi John Hurt, Leo Kottke, Merle Travis and over a dozen others. As February wraps up, we’ll be completing our February journey out of winter’s doldrums and into the sweet breezes of Spring. Let this show be a warmup for your good life and times. So put your feet up and drop in. We’d love to have you.