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

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.

Little Louis: Louis Armstrong and the Birth of Jazz

The first jazz musician is a ghost — no recording of Buddy Bolden survives. This is the story of the music from Bolden through Storyville to the kid who became Louis Armstrong.  What we know about him comes from the testimony of people who heard him play, filtered through decades of memory and myth. This episode traces the music from Bolden through the legalized vice district of Storyville to a kid from the Battlefield neighborhood who walked into a pawn shop with two dollars from a Lithuanian Jewish junk dealer and walked out with a five-dollar cornet. His name was Louis Armstrong. He would change what music was. Groundwater is a music history podcast about American popular music — the blues, country, jazz, rock, hip-hop, and the artificial boundaries the recording industry built between them in 1927. The show argues three things. First, that the blues-country split we inherited was manufactured by record labels at the Bristol Sessions — Ralph Peer building two shelves out of the same music. Second, that the blues is not a genre at all but the groundwater beneath all of American popular music, surfacing in country, rock, jazz, and hip-hop. Third, that when the music got political, the state did not ban the songs. It went after the singers — through drug charges, tax investigations, and loyalty tests, from Billie Holiday through the Dixie Chicks. The show is hosted by Thomas Stubbs and adapted from his forthcoming book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. The first three episodes work through Chapter 1, The Mouth of the River, tracing the music from Congo Square through Storyville and Louis Armstrong to the second-line beat that runs through New Orleans today. If you've read Robert Palmer's Deep Blues, Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, or Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop — or if you'd like a podcast that takes pop music as seriously as those books did — this show is for you. New episodes posted regularly. Listen anywhere you get podcasts.