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by Thomas Stubbs
The blues isn’t a genre. It’s the groundwater — the current running under country, rock, jazz, and hip-hop, from Congo Square to the South Bronx. Groundwater is a podcast about American popular music and the boundaries the recording industry invented in 1927 to keep the same music sold to two audiences. Three arguments run through it: that the blues-country split was manufactured by record labels at the 1927 Bristol Sessions; that the blues runs beneath all American popular music; and that when the music got political, the state went after the singers, not the songs — from Billie Holiday through the Dixie Chicks. Hosted by Thomas Stubbs, adapted from his forthcoming book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. For readers of Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues, Kelefa Sanneh’s Major Labels, and Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.
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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 KatrinaArmstrong left. Bechet left. Oliver left. Morton left. For thirty years, the romantic version of the story held that New Orleans jazz had migrated north and the city was living on memory. It was wrong. The city never stopped cooking.This episode traces the music that stayed: Professor Longhair’s rumba-boogie on a piano with several keys missing; Fats Domino selling sixty-five million records without leaving the Ninth Ward; the Meters inventing funk on Valence Street; the second-line beat and the jazz funeral as direct descendants of Congo Square; bounce as the rhythmic line running from a Magnolia housing project in 1991 back to an enslaved man on a drum in 1819. On August 29, 2005, the levees broke, and the people displaced were precisely the people who carried the tradition. Some came back. Many came back. The second lines resumed.The episode closes on Keith Richards on his knees at Chess Records — the drain running in reverse.Adapted from *Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath* (forthcoming).-----**Music featured in this episode:**“Go to the Mardi Gras” — Professor Longhair (Ron Records, 1959)“Tipitina” — Professor Longhair (Atlantic, 1953)“Blueberry Hill” — Fats Domino (Imperial, 1956)“Cissy Strut” — The Meters (Josie Records, 1969)“Brass Band Beat No. 1,” from *New Orleans Brass Band Beats: Second Line Season, Vol. 1*“Just a Closer Walk With Thee” and “New Second Line” — Olympia Brass Band, from *New Orleans Funeral and Parade* (Folkways Records, 1962)“Brother John” — The Wild Tchoupitoulas (Island/Antilles, 1976)“Get It Ready Ready” — DJ Jubilee (Take Fo’ Records, 1993)“Let Me Get That Outcha” — Big Freedia“Walter’s Blues” (live) — Little Walter, with Hound Dog Taylor (guitar), Dillard Crume (bass), and Odie Payne (drums)“I Can’t Be Satisfied” — Muddy Waters (Aristocrat, 1948)Theme music: “Guitar Rag” — Sylvester Weaver (OKeh, 1923; public domain).All excerpts used under fair-use claim for purposes of criticism and commentary.
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 Armstrong. What we know about him comes from the testimony of people who heard him play, filtered through decades of memory and myth. This episode traces the music from Bolden through the legalized vice district of Storyville to a kid from the Battlefield neighborhood who walked into a pawn shop with two dollars from a Lithuanian Jewish junk dealer and walked out with a five-dollar cornet. His name was Louis Armstrong. He would change what music was.Groundwater is a music history podcast about American popular music — the blues, country, jazz, rock, hip-hop, and the artificial boundaries the recording industry built between them in 1927.The show argues three things. First, that the blues-country split we inherited was manufactured by record labels at the Bristol Sessions — Ralph Peer building two shelves out of the same music. Second, that the blues is not a genre at all but the groundwater beneath all of American popular music, surfacing in country, rock, jazz, and hip-hop. Third, that when the music got political, the state did not ban the songs. It went after the singers — through drug charges, tax investigations, and loyalty tests, from Billie Holiday through the Dixie Chicks.The show is hosted by Thomas Stubbs and adapted from his forthcoming book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. The first three episodes work through Chapter 1, The Mouth of the River, tracing the music from Congo Square through Storyville and Louis Armstrong to the second-line beat that runs through New Orleans today.If you've read Robert Palmer's Deep Blues, Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, or Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop — or if you'd like a podcast that takes pop music as seriously as those books did — this show is for you.New episodes posted regularly. Listen anywhere you get podcasts.
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, rock and roll. New Orleans was founded in 1718 in a swamp, below sea level, by people who needed someone standing at the mouth of the continent. Within a year, the first ship carrying enslaved people arrived. A century later, a French slave code with a Sunday loophole would create the only space in slave-holding North America where West African drumming survived openly. This episode traces how geography, French colonial law, the Haitian Revolution, and an accident of empire produced the foundation of every musical tradition the United States would invent — jazz, blues, country, rock and roll, R&B, funk, hip-hop. The city is still sinking. The music is still rising.Groundwater is a music history podcast about American popular music — the blues, country, jazz, rock, hip-hop, and the artificial boundaries the recording industry built between them in 1927.The show argues three things. First, that the blues-country split we inherited was manufactured by record labels at the Bristol Sessions — Ralph Peer building two shelves out of the same music. Second, that the blues is not a genre at all but the groundwater beneath all of American popular music, surfacing in country, rock, jazz, and hip-hop. Third, that when the music got political, the state did not ban the songs. It went after the singers — through drug charges, tax investigations, and loyalty tests, from Billie Holiday through the Dixie Chicks.The show is hosted by Thomas Stubbs and adapted from his forthcoming book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. The first three episodes work through Chapter 1, The Mouth of the River, tracing the music from Congo Square through Storyville and Louis Armstrong to the second-line beat that runs through New Orleans today.If you've read Robert Palmer's Deep Blues, Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, or Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop — or if you'd like a podcast that takes pop music as seriously as those books did — this show is for you.New episodes posted regularly. Listen anywhere you get podcasts.
The blues isn’t a genre. It’s the groundwater — the current running under country, rock, jazz, and hip-hop, from Congo Square to the South Bronx. Groundwater is a podcast about American popular music and the boundaries the recording industry invented in 1927 to keep the same music sold to two audiences. Three arguments run through it: that the blues-country split was manufactured by record labels at the 1927 Bristol Sessions; that the blues runs beneath all American popular music; and that when the music got political, the state went after the singers, not the songs — from Billie Holiday through the Dixie Chicks. Hosted by Thomas Stubbs, adapted from his forthcoming book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. For readers of Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues, Kelefa Sanneh’s Major Labels, and Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.
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