Groundwater: The Blues Beneath American Music

Rooms Where the Walls Came Down Part 1: Sun Studio and Chess Records

July 5, 1954. A storefront studio on Union Avenue in Memphis, a nineteen-year-old Elvis failing for hours — until he started fooling with a blues during a break and the m

The Moondog: Alan Freed, the Payola Scandal, and the First Rock and Roll Riot

On a Friday night in Cleveland in March 1952, a crowd twice the size of the building broke down the doors of the Cleveland Arena to hear Black rhythm-and-blues bands play

The Same Music: The Bristol Sessions, Hank Williams, and the Lie That Split Blues from Country

In the summer of 1927, a talent scout named Ralph Peer set up a temporary recording studio on the third floor of a hat company in Bristol, Tennessee, and built the two sh

We Both Speak African: Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and How Jazz Crossed the Atlantic

Dizzy Gillespie meets Chano Pozo, Django Reinhardt hears Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis records Sketches of Spain. How jazz crossed the Atlantic and came back changed.

The Country's Memory: Jimi Hendrix, Strange Fruit, and American Music at 250

Jimi Hendrix played "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock in 1969 and let the war in around the melody. This year the United States turns 250. This Groundwater special

The Blues Professor, Part 2: Muddy Waters, the Mardi Gras Indians, and Where to Start with the Blues

Muddy Waters, the Mardi Gras Indians, Blind Willie McTell, and the one record to start with: the second half of Thomas Stubbs's conversation with Rich Pettit, the man Atl

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 a

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

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

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 Arms

Below Sea Level: How New Orleans Built American Music

New Orleans should not exist — a city in a swamp, below sea level, at the mouth of a continent. It became the place that built American music: jazz, blues, R&B, funk, roc