Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music goes deeper…back 87 years to the summer of 1927 when Ralph Peer, a producer for the Victor Talking Machine Company visited the town of Bristol, Tennessee scouting for talent. He brought with him the equipment necessary to capture those first-take performances which would come to be known as The Bristol Sessions. From late July through early August artists such as The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and the Stoneman Family made recordings in a makeshift studio inside downtown Bristol’s Taylor-Christian Hat Company. Johnny Cash once said that “These recordings…are the single most important event in the history of country music.”
Join Dave Stroud as Deeper Roots goes beyond the more notable names from these recordings and, with a certain leaning to the country sounds, he will also reveal the gospel and folk tradition that came out of these and the later Johnson City Sessions. We’ll hear from The Johnson Brothers, The Stamps Quartet, Alfred Karnes, Uncle Eck Dunford, and a host of others.
Deeper Roots digs into the early sounds of rock in another episode that explores the songwriters…this time focusing on the talents of the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, During the first decade of a rock ‘n roll, they brought the R&B music they loved to the pop mainstream, producing a catalog of enduring, influential, and spirited musical pieces. The two grew up on the East Coast, Leiber in Baltimore and Stoller in Queens, but met in Los Angeles in 1950 where they began a sixty year collaboration, Leiber serving as the sharp-witted lyricist, while the classically trained but jazz-and R&B-loving Stoller wrote the music. Join Dave Stroud in a show first broadcast on KWTF in 2014 as he’ll share the duo’s songwriting talents featuring the music of LaVern Baker, Big Mama Thornton, Bull Moose Jackson, Brian Setzer, and many, many others.
Deeper Roots explores a minor genre in this episode; coming from early 19th century minstrel shows and adapted with bawdy humor, double entendre, and biting sarcasm. A little bit blues, a little bit country, and always in your face, they call it “hokum”. The English dictionary defines the term as ‘nonsense’ or ‘trite, sentimental, and unrealistic’ but as a musical genre, it goes well beyond those simple definitions. As noted in Wikipedia, “Although the sexual content of hokum is generally playful by modern standards, early recordings were marginalized for both sexual “suggestiveness” and “trashy” appeal, but still flourished in niche markets outside the mainstream. Our show will take a journey through early to mid-century examples featuring numerous pieces by Tampa Red, Papa Charlie Jackson, Memphis Minnie, and Georgia Tom as well as some later fifties R&B examples that drew from the hokum well including The Dominoes, Julia Lee, and Bullmoose Jackson. Join Dave Stroud for a fun mix of musical nonsense that is anything but trite or sentimental.
Blues is the sound we share with you in this episode of Deeper Roots and we’ve got two solid hours of sounds from the Mississippi Delta, Chicago, and the clubs, juke joints, and barrooms found at points in between. Based on a fine blog post by the great American roots music author Peter Guralnick that you can find here, we follow what we found to the letter and note. You’ll hear the sounds of Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Otis Spann, and Robert Nighthawk in a playlist the Guralnick handed to his son as a reverent introduction to the music that’s inspired his writing and passion for American roots music.
On Deeper Roots …”The 99 Percent Blues”, featuring music reflecting on the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, and the recent financial crisis…songs and stories of the working class. We take a trip back to the twenties and share with you the sounds of Vernon Delhart, Joe Stone, Harry McClintock, and others…and we’ll share the more contemporary songs of Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, and Uncle Tupelo.
No.
Artist
Title
Album
Buy
1
Uncle Dave Macon
All In Down And Out Blues [2003 Remastered]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
2
Joe Stone
It's Hard Time
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
3
Vernon Dalhart
The Farm Relief Song
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
4
Charlie McFadden
Times Are So Tight
Bankers Blues – A Study in the Effects of Fiscal Mischeif
5
Snooks and the Memphis Ramblers,Julia Gerity and Her Boys
Sittin' on a Rubbish Can [Remastered 2003]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
6
Ry Cooder
No Banker Left Behind
Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down
7
Little Village
Do You Want My Job
Little Village
8
The Reverend J.M. Gates
President Roosevelt Is Everybody's Friend [Remastered 2003]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
9
Randy Newman
Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)
Good Old Boys [Expanded] Disc 1
10
The Weavers
Brother Can You Spare a Dime
The Weavers Almanac
11
Cisco Houston
Do Re Mi
Best Of The Vanguard Years
12
Woody Guthrie
Dusty Old Dust (So Long It's Been Good to Know Yuh) [Remastered 2003]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
13
Mac "Harry" McClintock
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum [Remastered 2003]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
14
Fiddlin' John Carson
Taxes On The Farmer Feeds Them All [Remastered 2003]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
15
Ry Cooder
Taxes On The Farmer Feeds Us All
Into The Purple Valley
16
Hank Penny
Taxes Taxes
Bob Dylan: Radio Radio – Theme Time Radio Hour, Vol. 5 [Disc 4]
17
Ralph Willis
Income Tax Blues
Bankers Blues – A Study in the Effects of Fiscal Mischeif
18
Fenton Robinson
Somebody Loan Me A Dime
Living The Blues: The 70's Blues Classics
19
Bob Miller
The Rich Man And The Poor Man [Rematered 2003]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
20
Roy Bargy;Ramona
Raising the Rent [Remastered 2003]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
21
Bing Crosby
Brother Can You Spare A Dime?
Columbia Records' 125th Anniv.
22
William (Bill) Moore
Ragtime Millionaire
1927-30-Ragtime Blues Guitar
23
Lead Belly
The Bourgeois Blues
Best Of Leadbelly
24
Ry Cooder
The Bourgeois Blues
Chicken Skin Music
25
Uncle Tupelo
No Depression
No Depression
26
Sheryl Crow
No Depression In Heaven
The Unbroken Circle: The Musical Heritage Of The Carter Family
27
The Carter Family
No Depression In Heaven
Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music, Volume Four
28
David McCarn
Poor Man, Rich Man (Cotton Mill Colic No. 2)
Gastonia Gallop – Cotton Mill Songs & Hillbilly Blues 1927-1931
29
Cedar Creek Sheik
Jimmy Shut His Store Doors [Remastered 2003]
Poor Man's Heaven – Blues And Tales Of The Great Depression – When The Sun Goes Down Series
30
Woody Guthrie
The Jolly Banker (Woody Guthrie)
Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection [Disc 2]
31
Bo Carter
Times Is Tight Like That
Bankers Blues – A Study in the Effects of Fiscal Mischeif
Take a trip with Deeper Roots as we visit a Saturday Night Fish Fry featuring Eddie Williams and His Brown Buddies, Cab Calloway’s “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House”, Duke Ellington’s tribute to the “Saturday Night Function”, and songs of house rent parties, Saturday evenings, and Fats Waller will tell us about “Functionizing”. It has always been about blowing off steam after a long week…and swinging, rocking, and having a ball.
Blues from the Mississippi Delta highlights this episode of Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music. The sounds are as deep and wide as the river and area of the south that gave it its name. The traditional music of all of the sounds that passed through, from the Civil War, to the music from the hills, the barrooms, brothels, and front porches are blended into a raw and sinuous sound that moved north with its performers, landing in the urban stages of the north. Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and Detroit…all born in the Mississippi Delta. We’ll start with Charley Patton, Garfield Akins, and Robert Johnson and work our way forward to Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood Jr., and Honeyboy Edwards.
“The Devil Ain’t Lazy” is a song by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and it is also the title of this week’s Deeper Roots show. In our weekly ramble through the last century of America’s music this Friday night at 9, we explore how that malevolent spirit known as the devil has been a foil and muse in song. We start it off with the Almanac Singers and the Irving Berlin piece from pre-war, “Get Thee Behind Me Satan”, move into a 1928 musical sermon called “Warming By the Devil’s Fire”, and find ourselves in country bible land with the Louvins, Hank Williams, and Marty Stuart. In between we’ve got lots of jazz, gospel, blues, and some modern revelations about our culture’s call and response with Lucifer himself.
This episode of Deeper Roots explores music celebrating the “Father of The Waters”, “The Big Muddy”…”The Mighty Mississippi”. Between its head, Lake Itasca in Minnesota, to the point where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi is responsible for the watershed of 31 states, although its banks only border on 10 of them. Over the centuries, it’s been an inspiration in traditional song and story. Join us as we are entertained by the likes of J. J. Cale, The Mississippi Sheiks, Bessie Smith, Dr. John, and a host of others in a show about a natural wonder that is part of our national identity.
Nearly fifty years ago one song entered three different charts: Country, R&B, and Pop at the same time, unprecedented for the time. It was a year where the airwaves were filled with Dean Martin, Perry Como, Marty Robbins, The Platters, and the first hints of what was to be the infusion of R&B into popular music. Deeper Roots will take a peek at the year 1956 with an exploration of Elvis’ release of Hound Dog.
Dale Geist, singer-songwriter and passionate student of rock history, joins Dave Stroud in a special two-hour show that explores the impact of songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, blues and rhythm rockers Rufus Thomas, Big Mama Thornton, and Roy Brown, as well as the music of The Coasters, The Robins, Big Joe Turner, and The Drifters.
