Below Sea Level: How New Orleans Built American Music

The Blues Professor, Part 2: Muddy Waters, the Mardi Gras Indians, and Where to Start with the Blues

Muddy Waters, the Mardi Gras Indians, Blind Willie McTell, and the one record to start with: the second half of Thomas Stubbs's conversation with Rich Pettit, the man Atlanta knows as the Blues Professor. In Part 1 we traced the blues out of West Africa and up the East Coast. This half starts back home in New Orleans — where Rich grew up — and the city's living traditions: the second line, the jazz funeral that walks to the cemetery on a dirge and home on a parade, and the Mardi Gras Indians, with Big Chief Jolly of the Wild Tchoupitoulas and the Neville Brothers and the Meters threaded through it. Then the heart of it: Blind Willie McTell's "Dying Crapshooter's Blues" — a song a dying gambler dictated to a blind street singer, who carried it back to Atlanta and made it last. Rich calls it one of the cleverest pieces of writing in the blues, and it's hard to argue. And at the end, the question you put to anyone who really knows: if you're starting from nothing, where do you go first? Rich's answer is Muddy Waters — which takes us to The Last Waltz, one camera on Muddy alone, doing "Mannish Boy," killing it. Groundwater is the companion podcast to Thomas Stubbs's book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. More at groundwater.fm. Music * Theme — "Guitar Rag," Sylvester Weaver (OKeh, 1923). Public domain. * "N.O. Bounce," Big Freedia. Excerpted as commentary under fair use. * "Dying Crapshooter's Blues," Blind Willie McTell — Library of Congress field recording, Atlanta, 1940 (John A. Lomax, Archive of American Folk Song). Excerpted as commentary under fair use. * "Mannish Boy," Muddy Waters with The Band, from The Last Waltz (Warner Bros., 1978). Excerpted as commentary under fair use.

The Blues Professor, Part 1: Piedmont Blues, the Allman Brothers, and Atlanta's Living Scene

Piedmont blues, the Allman Brothers, Lonnie Holley, and the long road the blues took out of West Africa: Thomas Stubbs sits down with Rich Pettit, the man Atlanta knows as the Blues Professor — part one of two. For forty years, Rich has hosted Good Morning Blues on WRFG 89.3, Atlanta's community radio station. He grew up in New Orleans and came to the blues backwards — through classic rock — until he started noticing how many of those songs were covers. Part one is about where the blues comes from and where it went: West Africa and Congo Square, the banjo nobody remembers is African, Atlanta's living blues scene, and the Piedmont players who taught each other on back porches outside Covington — Savannah Weaver, Curly Weaver, Blind Willie McTell, Bar-B-Q Bob, Buddy Moss — before the music climbed the East Coast and rode the rail north. Along the way: Lonnie Holley improvising the blues on a high wire, the night the Dirty Dozen Brass Band rolled in late and blew Michelle Shocked's horn section off the stage, and the $30 loophole that keeps a Grant Park living room packed. Part two, we head to Chicago. Groundwater is the companion podcast to Thomas Stubbs's book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. More at groundwater.fm. Music Theme — "Guitar Rag," Sylvester Weaver (OKeh, 1923). Public domain. "Crazy Blues," Mamie Smith (OKeh, 1920). Public domain. "Come On In My Kitchen," The Allman Brothers Band, from Shades of Two Worlds (Epic Records, ℗ 1991). Excerpted as commentary under fair use.

Groundwater Trailer: Why American Music's Genre Labels Are a Lie - A Music History Podcast

A two-minute introduction to Groundwater — what the show is, why American music's genre labels are a lie, and where we're going. Start here, then follow the water.

Twelfth Street Station: The Great Migration and How New Orleans Music Reached Chicago

The music didn’t ride north on riverboats. It rode the Illinois Central Railroad — out of New Orleans, up through Memphis and the Mississippi Delta into Chicago — in the luggage cars and Jim Crow coaches of the Great Migration. Episode 4 of Groundwater traces what the music became when it left the South: Louis Armstrong stepping off the train at Twelfth Street Station in 1922 with a cornet and a fish sandwich; King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and Armstrong’s first recorded solo; the Hot Five’s “West End Blues” and the thirteen-second cadenza that changed what a trumpet could do; Muddy Waters electrifying his Delta guitar on the South Side for Chess Records; Count Basie’s Kansas City swing; and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie inventing bebop as an act of self-defense. The pipeline begins at Congo Square. The northern terminus is Chess Records. Music and sound, in order of appearance:  • “Guitar Rag” — Sylvester Weaver — OKeh, 1923 (theme; public domain)  • “2-8-2 No. 1534, Illinois Central” — Vinton Wight, Sounds of Steam Locomotives No. 1 — Folkways FX 6152, 1956  • “Chimes Blues” — King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band — Gennett, 1923  • “West End Blues” — Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five — OKeh, 1928  • “Hoochie Coochie Man” — Muddy Waters — Chess, 1954 (written by Willie Dixon)  • “One O’Clock Jump” — Count Basie and His Orchestra — Decca, 1937  • “Ko-Ko” — Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie — Savoy, 1945 Excerpts used briefly for criticism and commentary; pre-1928 recordings are public domain.

The Drain: New Orleans Music From Professor Longhair to Katrina

Professor Longhair kicked the bass of his piano to keep time. The Meters stripped the second line down to funk. Then the levees broke. New Orleans music from Longhair to Katrina Armstrong left. Bechet left. Oliver left. Morton left. For thirty years, the romantic version of the story held that New Orleans jazz had migrated north and the city was living on memory. It was wrong. The city never stopped cooking. This episode traces the music that stayed: Professor Longhair’s rumba-boogie on a piano with several keys missing; Fats Domino selling sixty-five million records without leaving the Ninth Ward; the Meters inventing funk on Valence Street; the second-line beat and the jazz funeral as direct descendants of Congo Square; bounce as the rhythmic line running from a Magnolia housing project in 1991 back to an enslaved man on a drum in 1819. On August 29, 2005, the levees broke, and the people displaced were precisely the people who carried the tradition. Some came back. Many came back. The second lines resumed. The episode closes on Keith Richards on his knees at Chess Records — the drain running in reverse. Adapted from *Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath* (forthcoming). ----- **Music featured in this episode:** “Go to the Mardi Gras” — Professor Longhair (Ron Records, 1959) “Tipitina” — Professor Longhair (Atlantic, 1953) “Blueberry Hill” — Fats Domino (Imperial, 1956) “Cissy Strut” — The Meters (Josie Records, 1969) “Brass Band Beat No. 1,” from *New Orleans Brass Band Beats: Second Line Season, Vol. 1* “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” and “New Second Line” — Olympia Brass Band, from *New Orleans Funeral and Parade* (Folkways Records, 1962) “Brother John” — The Wild Tchoupitoulas (Island/Antilles, 1976) “Get It Ready Ready” — DJ Jubilee (Take Fo’ Records, 1993) “Let Me Get That Outcha” — Big Freedia “Walter’s Blues” (live) — Little Walter, with Hound Dog Taylor (guitar), Dillard Crume (bass), and Odie Payne (drums) “I Can’t Be Satisfied” — Muddy Waters (Aristocrat, 1948) Theme music: “Guitar Rag” — Sylvester Weaver (OKeh, 1923; public domain). All excerpts used under fair-use claim for purposes of criticism and commentary.