We’re giving away one pair of free tickets every week leading up to the 15th Anniversary concert. To enter the drawing, correctly answer this week’s question:
What famous Hollywood actress made an appearance on the Lost Bayou Ramblers’ 2012 release, Mammoth?
Send your answer to friends@amroutes.org by Sunday, March 31 for a chance to win!
This week we visit with two masters of Southern soul. Multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones, along with his group the MGs, helped to create the legendary Stax sound. We talk with Booker T. about growing up in Memphis and his current work with the up and coming Southern rock band, the Drive-By Truckers. Soul singer Jimmy Hughes got his start at another landmark of Southern music, FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Hughes shares stories about his classic hits “Steal Away” and “Why Not Tonight,” as well as his move from gospel to soul and back again.
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For this special American Routes program, we follow the lives of two giants of jazz: Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. From their humble North Carolina beginnings to their triumphs on the world stage, we’ll trace their individual and inspired paths to creativity. And we’ll visit with the musicians who played with the greats, including McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders, and the next generation, TS Monk and Ravi Coltrane.
We’re celebrating our 15th anniversary (!!) with a blockbuster concert and dance at the Rock ‘n’ Bowl in New Orleans on Friday, April 19 at 8 p.m.
The event, presented by our host Nick Spitzer, will be recorded for network broadcast the week of July 4th. The show will feature the Treme Brass Band, the Lost Bayou Ramblers Cajun band, and a cavalcade of New Orleans R&B and soul heroes, including Irma Thomas, Robert “Barefootin’” Parker and Walter “Wolfman” Washington, as well as keyboard wizard Ivan Neville. The evening will be anchored by the impeccable pianist Jon Cleary and band.
He also saw an entire people, black people in the South, which became a prototype for everything he did in the world, as people whose voices were selectively communicated to the rest of society. And he knew that most of the country only knew black song from movies, from minstrel shows, and an occasional hymn somewhere or other, but had no idea of the larger picture.
Jolie Holland talks to Dani Burlison about songwriting, magic, and the collection of ghost stories she’s working on:
I start to wonder about using magic—literally—to help with artistic endeavors. I grow curious about the possibility of selling my own soul for this purpose.
“Only one person I interviewed actually believes that selling your soul to the devil is a real thing,” she says. “He grew up with Townes Van Zandt as his uncle, and he was like, ‘Yeah, Townes sold his soul to the devil. Yup. Absolutely.’ And he meant it in a really specific way. It was super interesting. He said, ‘You can’t do it unless you have kids.’ You have to put the kids’ lives on the line somehow. You have to sacrifice your involvement with their lives for your art, and he also said you’re no good unless you do it.”
In the wake of Super Sunday, here’s Alan Lomax’s footage of Big Chief Jake Millon and the White Eagles singing “Little Liza Jane.”
The Mardi Gras Indians were out in full vibrant color at yesterday’s Super Sunday parade. For more on the Indians, you can listen to our interview with Big Chief Bo Dollis, or a discussion of Mardi Gras Indian culture with Sylvester Francis of the Backstreet Cultural Museum.
When he recorded people in the field, he played them back for them. It’s not typical, and some places, some people would think that’s absolutely the wrong thing to do, thinking people would say, oh I hate my voice or whatever. But his people all loved it, and said yeah I’m good. And they’d say I could go to Detroit and sing, and he’d say absolutely. He always thought that there was a bigger picture here, he was not just making records and putting them in a museum, that was an awful thought to him, but they would be, they would reach out somewhere.
