Deeper Roots Radio

Ever notice how one conversation can take you somewhere you never expected? Music works the same way. This week on Deeper Roots, we're following a trail of musical connections where every song has something in common with the one before it. A shared lyric, a songwriter, a place, a name, or just an unexpected twist that takes us down another road. We'll wander from the soulful sounds of The Undisputed Truth and Laura Nyro to the country storytelling of Merle Haggard, the sharp wit of Randy Newman, and the haunting Americana of The Handsome Family. Along the way, expect a few surprises, forgotten gems, and musical detours spanning generations. It's a two-hour game of musical connect-the-dots, with no telling where the next tune might take us. Join us Friday at 9 AM Pacific for Deeper Roots on KOWS 92.5 FM or streaming at kowsfm.com/listen.

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.

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.

Saddle up, but don’t expect the usual Hollywood version of the American West. We’re heading beyond the familiar standards to explore songs, stories and voices that grew out of bunkhouses, chuck wagons and wide-open country, reaching back nearly a century for early cowboy recordings, among them Carl T. Sprague, Billie Maxwell, Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock and Jess Morris. Tales where ornery horses, stampeding cattle, lousy wages, worse cooking and lonely nights on the trail were simply part of the job. Along the way we’ll discover a West far more diverse than the one portrayed on the silver screen, with music touching on Black cowboys, Mexican and California traditions, ranch hands, buffalo hunters, outlaws and gunfighters. We’ll then follow those old trails forward and into the hands of later storytellers including Ian Tyson, Dom Flemons, and Colter Wall. Somewhere between history and mythology lies the West that survives in these songs — sometimes romantic, sometimes brutal. 

No particular destination this week, although we’ll begin on an Island of Dreams. Deeper Roots is going free form once again, rummaging around in the dusty digital archives and following the music wherever it happens to lead us. We’ll start things off with a decidedly British flavor, with Nick Lowe, Martin Belmont & Geraint Watkins, Mickey Jupp and Dave Edmunds before crossing a few oceans, decades and musical boundaries. Along the way we’ll hear vintage country from Johnnie & Jack, Ernest Tubb and Faron Young and some newer music from Charley Crockett and Brandon Flowers. And because the blues are never very far from the heart of Deeper Roots, we’ll spend some time a roster of some of the greats as well as vocal sounds from the likes of the Donays and Cookie & The Cupcakes. It’s another musical road trip with no map and no particular reason to hurry. Join Dave Stroud for Island of Dreams, Friday morning at 9 Pacific on KOWS 92.5 FM in West Sonoma County—and streaming everywhere else on the planet.