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James Chambers took the name Jimmy Cliff to reference the heights he would climb as a musician, singer, and actor. Since Cliff’s birth during a hurricane in rural Jamaica, people believed he was special. Cliff’s dissatisfaction with country life led him to Kingston where he met Chinese-Jamaican record producer Leslie Kong, who helped launch his career with a 1962 hit, “Hurricane Hattie.” Cliff helped Jamaican music go global performing in the film The Harder They Come. Jimmy Cliff told me how his voice carried him out into the world.

Lonnie Holley from Birmingham, Alabama is a self-taught artist and musician who uses everyday objects as sculpture that tells stories. Lonnie had a rough childhood, living with an abusive foster family who ran honky-tonk, where he was nicknamed “Tonky” McElroy. Lonnie tried to escape, hopping a train to New Orleans at nine. He was arrested at eleven and taken to the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, where Lonnie was made to pick one hundred pounds of cotton. His grandmother rescued him from the school and told him his name wasn’t Tonky McElroy but Lonnie Bradley Holley. For the last forty years, Holley has constructed artworks that have been seen at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, New York’s American Folk Art Museum, the High Museum in Atlanta, and the White House. After making home recordings for more than two decades on a keyboard Lonnie bought at a pawnshop, he released his first album at age sixty-two. His sound is experimental with lyrics improvised on the spot. Lonnie Holley explained how his artistic appreciation and ability stemmed from life at home with a large family.

Singer Allison Russell is a native of Montreal with what she calls “Grenadian Canadian” roots of Afro-Caribbean and Scottish ancestry. You may know her recent recordings with Our Native Daughters and the Birds of Chicago. Or back when with Po’ Girl. Now, in a first solo recording, Outside Child, Russell addresses family abuse in her youth, her ways of coping, followed by escape to the road: Vancouver, San Francisco, Chicago. Those early life experiences led Allison years later to make new, compelling songs, expressing freedom from trauma, to love and hope for better times. She lives now with fellow musician JT Nero and their young daughter in Nashville, but Allison Russell began the journey’s narrative in her beloved Montreal.

Belen Escobedo grew up in a family of Spanish and Indigenous descent. She began playing violin in fourth grade. Though Belen was trained classically, she was hired by a mariachi who heard her play at Sunday mass as a teenager. Mariachi music got her through college and graduate school. Belen taught music in San Antonio schools for thirty years and now works to preserve the music of the Texas-Mexican borderlands with her trio: Panfilo's Güera, named for her grandfather's inspiration.

John Mayall and his band the Bluesbreakers pioneered British blues-rock, introducing it to a large audience. They included musicians who went on to join legendary bands like Cream, Fleetwood Mac, and the Rolling Stones. Mayall moved to the States in 1968, and today has a discography of 70 studio and live albums. Now 88 and retired from touring, John calls Los Angeles home and his favorite climate for living, but it was in Macclesfield, Cheshire where he first heard the blues.

Shemekia Copeland's dad, Texas guitarist Johnny Copeland, moved his family to Harlem, where Shemekia was born and grew up surrounded by hip-hop, but dedicated to the blues. She's been in the blues scene since she was a little girl singing at her dad's shows. All grown up she's recorded nine albums and won numerous awards for her music. We began back in those early days, on stage, with her father.

New Orleans restaurant culture is abuzz with different flavors, new fashions and even a new lexicon these days. Some places set the pace and others…

Aurelio Martinez grew up in the Garifuna village of Plaplaya on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. He’s a percussionist, singer and guitarist who’s played in noted musical groups of Honduras, and now maintains connections to his Garifuna roots while living in the Bronx, NY, where his parents also reside. Aurelio is a native speaker of Garifuna and Spanish and a member of the Honduran Congress. We began our conversation talking about his first instrument.

Reginald "Reggio the Hoofer" McLaughlin grew up on Chicago’s south side, where he began his career dancing in the streets and subways. He learned to tap dance using homemade shoes and went on to receive training from prominent dancers Jimmy Payne, Sr. and Ernest "Brownie" Brown. Reggio has taught at the old town school of folk music, where he produces a tap version of The Nutcracker, called The Nut Tapper. He also worked with ragtime pianist Reginald Robinson and the Carolina Chocolate Drops for Keep a Song in Your Soul: the Black Roots of Vaudeville. Here's Reggio.

This is American Routes, celebrating the music and musicians of Arhoolie Records. The Berkeley-based record company is devoted to roots music, blues and jazz, Mexican and Cajun, gospel and country. Arhoolie Records was founded in 1960 by producer Chris Strachwitz. He recently celebrated his 91st birthday. “Arhoolie” is a word for an African American field holler in the South. Young Chris Strachwitz arrived in America from Germany after the war. The first thing he loved was jump jazz on the radio and on jukeboxes. In school Chris discovered hillbilly and mariachi music on border radio. He skipped class to hear Kid Ory, George Lewis, Big Jay McNeely and Muddy Waters. That's a good education for his future life as a record producer. I visited Chris in back of his record store in El Cerrito, California and asked how Arhoolie Records began.