Bluegrass is our theme. The sound and tradition can be traced back to Jamestown settlers who migrated into the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky and the Virginias. Bringing the memories and traditional sounds of music they recalled from home, they would compose new songs about their day-to-day life experiences in the new land. Their rural life would bring their music to reflect their life on the farm or in the hills and it would come to be known as mountain music. The phonograph and radio brought this sound out of the South, expanding its audience and ensuring its entrenchment in the American traditional psyche. Join Dave Stroud this week for music from old and new; from Wade Mainer and The Stoneman Family to the Monroes, Jimmy Martin, and Bela Fleck. A sound that’s sure to entertain.
This episode will look at the roots of Honky Tonk: a place where, on one side of the track you, as Roosevelt Sykes points out in “The Honeydripper”, you had the blues performer as Doctor who prescribed Blues as a cure for the Blues and on the other, you had the country sound of Moon Mullican who demanded that the beer bottles danced on the table when the band got rockin’. We’ll spend our time exploring the early sounds of Big Maceo, Albert Ammons, and Jimmy Yancey and move down yonder to the country bars where boogie woogie was also understood. The country honky tonk sounds of Merrill Moore, Bobbie Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a handful of others will get their chance to entertain. Boogie woogie came to the country and it was retooled and renamed as honky tonk.
Bob Wills’ name will forever be associated with Western swing. Although he may not have invented the genre he was certainly responsible for popularizing it and would single-handedly change its rules and, in the process, reinvented the rules of popular music. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were a dance band with a country string section that played pop songs as if they were jazz numbers. Their music expanded and erased boundaries between genres. It was also some of the most popular music of its era. Throughout the ’40s, the band was one of the most popular groups in the country and the musicians in the Playboys were among the finest of their era. As the popularity of Western swing declined, so did Wills’ popularity, but his influence is immeasurable and he would find a resurgence in the recognition as a foundation of country and rock in later years..
Our show explores traditional pieces and versions that have been covered by contemporary artists. “Mama Don’t Allow”, “Soldier’s Joy”, “That Nasty Swing”, “Worried Mind”, and “Mary of the Wild Moor” are just a handful of the selections we’ll share in our show tonight. Some of the performers included in our set include Ivory Joe Hunter, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, The Dixon Brothers, and Byrd Moore. Join Dave Stroud tonight at 9 on KWTF as he shares the stories of the music, song stories, and performers from the last American century…it’s roots music that does matter.
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.
Bluegrass music owes more than a debt to Bill Monroe. It owes a name, a legacy, and a following to a man whose songwriting and musical prowess went well beyond the genre that bears his brand. Inspired by the early mountain music that his uncle, Pendleton Vandiver, would introduce him to, Bill developed a keen eye for talent and expected only the best from his band (although his lack of business acumen would trip him up time and again). That keen eye paired with an ear for stellar musicianship would show in the performers he ‘discovered’ and who rank among the greatest of the genre: Mac Wiseman, Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Peter Rowan, Kenny Baker, Del McCoury, and many others. Please join us for sets that explore Bill Monroe’s legacy. The sets include
The traditional music of Uncle Pen
The talent of Monroe’s sidemen
The early classic sound of “The Monroe Brothers”
Classic covers of Bill Monroe’s music done by late century artists
Two sets of some of the greatest of Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys
The Golden Age of Country. That’s our theme. Join Dave Stroud, host of Deeper Roots, as he takes you through the sound of popular Country music of the 1950s and early 1960s, a time often referred to as “Classic Country”. It was one of the bridges to popular country today, hardly recognizable now from the sounds that were to one day compete with a new form of popular music known as rock ‘n roll. But this classic country sound was itself a sound that was hard to connect to the 1920s hillbilly and Appalachian sounds from which it had evolved. Its sound was an amalgam of 1940s country swing, middle-of-the road pop music, and elements of almost every form of American music. It was a more familiar , safe, and palatable place on the radio dial for those middle American values of the time. We’ll hear the classic sounds of Lefty Frizzell, “Little” Jimmy Dickens, Hank Snow, Kitty Wells, and many others in this episode of Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music
Deeper Roots looks at one of the many precursors to rockabilly and rock ‘n roll. Hillbilly boogie is a term used to describe an early pop music fad that blended early 20th century boogie woogie piano style, popular black music of the time, and western swing. Now many will say that it started with Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith but we’ll hear the swing and boogie woogie sounds that predated Smith. And the word was “boogie”. Boogie Woogie Baby, New Broom Boogie, Birthday Cake Boogie, Cherokee Boogie…well, you get the idea. We’ve got all of those and more with performances from Tex Williams, Hank Penny, Johnny Bond, Rose Maddox, and many more. Join Dave Stroud for another journey through a century of America’s music here on listener-supported community radio for Bodega Bay!
“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.
