This Week's Show: January 28, 2011

This week we continue to bring you the blues as recorded by white musicians influenced by the blues as it emerged from the African American community.  The blues, a truly American music, had its beginnings in field hollers, "arhoolies", prison songs, and work chants and was carried, shared and passed on by itinerant black musicians, railroad workers, farmworkers and others throughout the south in the late 1800's and early 1900's. 

As you'll hear, among musicians the walls of segregation were more permeable than in the general population. The music and the musicians influenced one another all along the way.  This is the way of music and its magic.  Much of what you will hear this week

This Week's Show: January 21, 2011

This week we'll move from the blues as it traveled from black church meetings and family gatherings, through "juke joints" and bars, and into the recording studios of Harlem and Chicago--to the blues as it developed in the hills of white Appalachia.

From the very beginning, the Blues reflected--and transcended--America's racial divide. Arising first in the

This Week's Show: January 14, 2011

Before the amplified guitar many juke joints and bars had a house piano because its sound could carry even the most boisterous room.  And in the 1920s and 1930s it was often women who belted out the blues standing alongside that piano--or playing it themselves.

This week we'll continue our blues journey with more from Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Mama Yancey, Nina Simone and Katie Webster, as well as songs by Georgia White, Hociel Thomas, Bernice Edwards, Hazel Scott, Una Mae Carlisle, Victoria Spivey, Hadda Brooks and Rory Block. But first, we'll hear four more selections from Columbia's Roots 'n' Blues series, songs by Whistler and His Jug Band, Barbecue Bob, The Allen Brothers,  and Gladys Bentley.

Our first story will be told by Pattie Waters of Shelburne Falls at about 4:30pm  The pathways to becoming a vegetarian are many and diverse.  Michael went over to Pattie's house in Shelburne Falls recently

This Week's Show: January 7, 2011

This week we'll start our winter journey through the blues with Frank Hutchison, Hersal Thomas, Reverand J.M. Gates and Dora Carr.  Then, woven around today's two stories, we'll hear the blues by women vocalists accompanied by the piano, songs by Bessie Smith, Louise Johnson, Alberta Hunter, Mama Yancey, Hattie Hudson, Lizzie Miles, Hazel Scott Nellie Lutcher, Nina Simone, Katie Webster, Odetta and Rory Block.

Today's first story, aired about 4:30 will be by Pattie Waters.  It seems the pathways to becoming a vegetarian are many and diverse.  I went over to Pattie's house in Shelburne Falls recently