Friday, Oct 9 @9am on KOWS
Deeper Soul Roots I
Soul music didn’t suddenly appear in the 1960s. Its roots were a product of decades in church pews, blues clubs, juke joints and beyond. This week, Deeper Roots begins a special two-part journey excavating the familiar classics to explore the fertile ground from which soul music grew. In this first of two episodes, we’ll hear the gospel quartets, blues shouters, rhythm & blues singers and vocal groups who provided the language: call and response, soaring falsettos, sanctified piano, hard backbeats and a delivery that could turn a song into testimony. From The Soul Stirrers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and the Five Blind Boys to the 5 Royales, Clyde McPhatter, and Little Willie John we’ll help connect the dots. These are the sounds where Saturday night meets Sunday morning—and of gospel fervor, blues feeling and rhythm & blues, all coming together to lay the foundation for something new. Next week, we’ll follow those roots into the first flowering of soul itself.
Saturday, Oct 10 @3am on KOWS
Blue Moon Americana Episode 581
We’ll open the show today with a song about a ‘gal who invented kissin” and wind around from the Golden Age of Country to a newly resurrected John Prine release, some Norton Buffalo and Bruce Springsteen and more vintage tracks from the vaults, including an early single from Willie Nelson. New Americana tracks are in very good supply and in very good order so you won’t want to miss the bright new sounds to be had. They include Ian Noe, Orville Peck, Neil Young, Joy Oladokun, Brandy Clark and Rhiannon Giddens. The North Bay’s own Doug Jayne will be in the mix as well with a track from his 2010 album Folk City and we’ll complement the Deeper Roots episode from last week with Colter Wall’s Cowpoke from his 2020 album Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs, a particularly spare, yet delightful song of the western myth. Join us as we deliver two hours of the very best that Americana has to offer each and every Thursday morning at 9 Pacific on KOWS Community Radio. We’d love to have you.
Saturday, Oct 10 @9am on KOWS
Summer’s Last Stand
Soul music didn’t suddenly appear in the 1960s. Its roots were a product of decades in church pews, blues clubs, juke joints and beyond. This week, Deeper Roots begins a special two-part journey excavating the familiar classics to explore the fertile ground from which soul music grew. In this first of two episodes, we’ll hear the gospel quartets, blues shouters, rhythm & blues singers and vocal groups who provided the language: call and response, soaring falsettos, sanctified piano, hard backbeats and a delivery that could turn a song into testimony. From The Soul Stirrers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and the Five Blind Boys to the 5 Royales, Clyde McPhatter, and Little Willie John we’ll help connect the dots. These are the sounds where Saturday night meets Sunday morning—and of gospel fervor, blues feeling and rhythm & blues, all coming together to lay the foundation for something new. Next week, we’ll follow those roots into the first flowering of soul itself.
Thursday, Oct 15 @Midnite on KOWS
Country Crossovers
We’ll go back to June of 2022 for this week’s overnight encore episode with the premise that country music started genre-life out as something different. Searching for a term more palatable than simply ‘folk’ or, more so, ‘hillbilly’, or ‘western’ music, music industry marketing found the term ‘country’ or ‘country and western’ a much smoother alternative. It softened the fiddle and accordion sounds and, at the same time, tempered the fears of human de-evolution through cultural disappropriation. Although what passes for country music today is more a caricature of itself, the Golden Age of country, running through the decades of the fifties, sixties and the early seventies built a solid foundation with some of the great songwriters and performers that weren’t from the big east and west coast hubs. And their music would often be heard ‘peeking through’ the pop charts in a big way, reinforcing the notion that it was, and always had been, a common cultural denominator. Our show this week features some of the very greatest of the latter. Join us!
Thursday, Oct 15 @9am on KOWS
Saturday, Oct 17 @3am on KOWS
Blue Moon Americana Episode 582
A genuine blend of best of the past and present is what we’ve cooked up for this week’s episode. Autumn’s evening chill is upon us and the mid-terms are only a few weeks away. If you think your vote won’t matter, then I’m here to tell you that it must; so get out there. We’ll always have an Americana soundtrack to share. This week’s got some great new sounds from John Prine, American Blonde, Ian Noe and over a dozen others. Keep in mind that this two hours also fills the gaps with moments of shear pleasure from the past. We’ve got Dale Watson & The Jordanaires, Warren Zevon, Bobby Bare and Los Lobos tracks to take care of just that. Our opening salvo is one from a singer-songwriter who always delivers; Chuck Prophet’s 2024 reminder to everyone out there: IIt’s a Good Day To Be Alive. Check in to Blue Moon on Thursday mornings at 9 Pacific on KOWS Community Radio.
Friday, Oct 16 @9am on KOWS
Deeper Soul Roots II
Last week on Deeper Roots, we went searching for the ancestry of soul music, following its trail through gospel quartets, blues shouters, rhythm & blues and the vocal traditions that supplied its language and emotional fire. This week, we continue, crossing into the late 1950s and early ’60s, when those ingredients began coming together as a music increasingly recognized as soul. These are the performers who grew from that fertile ground—and the records where you can hear the transformation taking place. We’ll dig beneath many of the obvious hits for early sides from Sam Cooke, Bobby Bland, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Jerry Butler, and others while, at the same time, exploring the emerging sounds of Chicago, Detroit, Memphis and beyond. Gospel’s testimony is still there, as are the blues and rhythm & blues, but something new is taking shape. By the time we reach the early ’60s, we’re no longer listening for the roots of soul. We’ll be hearing from the soul itself.
Saturday, Oct 17 @9am on KOWS
Stories and ‘Stretchers’
Everybody loves a good story…and this week on Deeper Roots we’ll be spinning a few of them. Tall tales, fables, murder ballads, historical yarns, talking blues and outright stretchers are all part of the American musical tradition, and we’ll be digging into that tradition this Friday morning. Our stories come mostly from the years between 1925 and 1960, when an old tale might travel from a front porch to a 78, from a newspaper headline to a country ballad, or get passed from singer to singer until fact and folklore became pretty hard to separate. We’ll hear tales of outlaws and drifters, sinners and saints, disasters and deeds of questionable truth from the likes of Mississippi John Hurt, Woody Guthrie, the Golden Gate Quartet, Tex Ritter, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins and more. There’ll even be a few whoppers along the way.