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Making a home in Southeastern Louisiana has always meant risk of flooding. While some families in low lying coastal parishes elevated their homes in the…

Noted writer, historian and former This American Life contributor Sarah Vowell will be in town to speak at Tulane’s Freeman Auditorium on Wednesday, April…

For Black residents from the South, during the Great Migration North in the 1940's and 50's, gospel music defined the sacred side of life. In Chicago, churches served as places of community, musical joy, and healing. A tradition of quartet singing grew with groups like the Clefs of Cavalry, Holy Wonders, and the Highway Q.C.’s. These groups toured on gospel circuits nationwide, had record deals and radio shows. Group members often changed; Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls, and Johnnie Taylor had all been in the Highway Q.C.’s before each turned to secular music. Spencer Taylor Jr. was a member of the Holy Wonders when the Q.C.’s came calling in the 1950s. I sat down with Mr. Taylor and his son, Spencer Taylor III, of the Highway Q.C.’s, to talk about his long life leading the ensemble.

This is American Routes, and you can’t do a show about the blues without stopping by a juke joint, and I know a great one. It’s Teddy’s Juke Joint, right along Blues Highway 61 in Zachary, LA. It’s a small double shotgun house, at the end of a gravel road, lit up by Christmas lights all year round. Inside you’ll find good times and good blues music served up by Lloyd Johnson Jr., a well-dressed bear of a man in a red suit, sporting a large cowboy hat, and better known to the regulars as Teddy.

Baton Rouge guitarist, harp player and singer Kenny Neal is a second-generation leader in the city’s blues scene, born into a family of ten children. Kenny’s father Raful Neal was a noted harmonica player, influenced by Little Walter and played in a local band with Buddy Guy. Raful Neal’s friend Slim Harpo gave son Kenny Neal his first harmonica at age three. Kenny started playing bass for his father at thirteen and went on to Buddy Guy’s band. Later, he recruited his siblings to form the Neal Brothers Blues Band. In 1989, Kenny recorded a breakout swamp blues LP Big News from Baton Rouge for Alligator Records. His fine guitar work and harmonica, as well as authoritative voice, carried him forward making sixteen more records. Kenny carries on the Baton Rouge blues tradition. Let’s go to to the Juke Joint stage at West Baton Rouge Parish Museum with Kenny Neal.

For your consideration, the life of the late George Frayne, an aspiring track star and artist turned rock and roller back during the tumult of the 1960s. You know him as Commander Cody, the pianist and titular leader of the Lost Planet Airmen, an original roots rock band from Ann Arbor to San Francisco and beyond. The band had a large swashbuckling personae, “Lost in the Ozone” on their high road through atmospheric times. The Old Commander says he began life en route to somewhere.

This is American Routes Live from Marigny Studios with jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison and Quintet. I talked with Donald between songs about his life in music, from growing up in New Orleans to playing with Art Blakey in New York, and putting his own stamp on modern jazz.

Baton Rouge guitarist, harp player and singer Kenny Neal is a second-generation leader in the city’s blues scene, born into a family of ten children. Kenny’s father Raful Neal was a noted harmonica player, influenced by Little Walter and played in a local band with Buddy Guy. Raful Neal’s friend Slim Harpo gave son Kenny Neal his first harmonica at age three. Kenny started playing bass for his father at thirteen and went on to Buddy Guy’s band. Later, he recruited his siblings to form the Neal Brothers Blues Band. In 1989, Kenny recorded a breakout swamp blues LP Big News from Baton Rouge for Alligator Records. His fine guitar work and harmonica, as well as authoritative voice, carried him forward making sixteen more records. Kenny carries on the Baton Rouge blues tradition. Let’s go to to the Juke Joint stage at West Baton Rouge Parish Museum with Kenny Neal.

Baton Rouge guitarist, harp player and singer Kenny Neal is a second-generation leader in the city’s blues scene, born into a family of ten children. Kenny’s father Raful Neal was a noted harmonica player, influenced by Little Walter and played in a local band with Buddy Guy. Raful Neal’s friend Slim Harpo gave son Kenny Neal his first harmonica at age three. Kenny started playing bass for his father at thirteen and went on to Buddy Guy’s band. Later, he recruited his siblings to form the Neal Brothers Blues Band. In 1989, Kenny recorded a breakout swamp blues LP Big News from Baton Rouge for Alligator Records. His fine guitar work and harmonica, as well as authoritative voice, carried him forward making sixteen more records. Kenny carries on the Baton Rouge blues tradition. Let’s go to to the Juke Joint stage at West Baton Rouge Parish Museum with Kenny Neal.

Our guest this hour was an American band leader, a piano player and arranger, but she would have liked you to know her as someone who wrote music. The late Carla Bley was one of the jazz world’s most prolific writers. She grew up in a religious family in California, but set her sites on the New York City jazz scene of the 1950s. In her music, Carla Bley often explored the American landscape, with a sharp sense of humor. Somehow this journey began by going in circles, on roller skates.