This Week's Show: Feb 25-28, 2011

 "Poor Boy, Long Way From Home"

---------from Poor Boy Blues by Willard "Ramblin' Thomas                                                            
                                                                                  

This week Spinning Tales will focus on the itinerant blues musicians who spent much of their lives wandering; playing on the streets and in the juke joints of the rural south, traveling to play for the emerging African American communities of the urban north, and then at one point walking into a recording "studio"--sometimes not much more than a makeshift set-up in a rented hotel room--where the magic of technology allowed their music to continue the journey to be enjoyed by us today.

Traveling as solo songsters, or as members of the ever shifting personnel of minstrel shows or string bands, often mastering the popular songs of the day to appeal to white audiences, these musicians weren't the only people on the road in the early part of the 20th century.

From about 1910 into the years of the Depression, the Great Migration saw an estimated 2 million African Americans leave the south to escape racism and seek employment in the growing industrial cities of the mid west, northeast and west.  The blues followed along.

Like Robert Johnson, we know of some of these itinerant musicians.  They made it into recording sessions in the late 20's and early 30's as the recording industry peaked in the years before the Depression and the Blues became popular.  Many of them then drifted into obscurity for decades only to be rediscovered years later during the folk revival of the 1960's--either in person or through recordings brought back to life and re-issued.

This week we'll feature the music of one of these wanderers, Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas, and we'll listen to a number of his contemporaries, hearing songs from Tommy Johnson, Ramblin' Thomas, Kid Bailey, Ishman Bracey, Hambone Willie Newbern, King Solomon Hill (aka Joe Holmes), Blind Willie McTell, Nehemiah "Skip" James, Buck Turner, Coley Jones, Big Joe Williams, Bukka White and others.

In some cases, the lives of these artists are fairly well chronicled. Some of these players returned to perform to appreciative audiences in the US and Europe in the 1960's before they died. Yet, all to often, as in the case of Henry Thomas, one of these wanderers appears to have recorded a number of songs, picked up his instrument, then left the studio and disappeared down the road--leaving only the haunting melodies and rhythms of his recorded works echoing  to us through the years. 


This Week's Stories:
Today at 4:30pm we have a story from another place in the world where the culture is very different. Daniela Borghesi, born, bred and living in Italy tells of a painful episode in her life and the life of her family.  It is an eye-opener or should I say ear-opener, don't miss it.

At 5:30 we'll hear the next in the series of Native American stories spoken by Nancy Andry.  This one,  a Lakota tale, will be "The Seven Sisters".