This is American Routes, I'm Nick Spitzer. It’s no secret, here and worldwide, we’re in a time of turmoil, in government, political attacks, secrecy and war. We asked you, our listeners, to help pick music and musicians that deal with the troubles, and we added a few songs and singers that fit the mood as best we could. They include the Staple Singers, Allen Toussaint, Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Toots and the Maytals, Son Volt, Carole King and John Coltrane. ***Content warning: This episode contains the word “Goddamn” at 1:29. It is not bleeped.”

This is an encore presentation of our special program from 1999, dedicated to the late Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia's birthday falls on August 1, and he passed on August 9, 1995. Garcia was one of the transcendent, eclectic American musicians of this century and was able to creatively fuse and renew the blues, country, and jazz. On this special program, we'll dig into the roots and branches of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead's music.

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.

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.

In the late 19th century, African American beach communities began to emerge in places like Highland Beach, MD and Cape May, NJ. They provided havens for Black vacationers excluded from white resort communities. But get this: the historically Black Sea Breeze beach in North Carolina was open to whites in the heart of the Jim Crow South.

Our guest Jonathan Ward is an expert on finding music on antique records. His collection, Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music includes one hundred 78 RPM recordings and stories from around the world, almost all of which have never been heard since they were first produced. The collection features music from six continents and eighty-nine different countries and regions, recorded between 1907-1967. It was nominated for the Best Historical Album Grammy Award in 2022. I asked Jonathan what drew him to the mostly shellac era of 78 RPMs.

The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of those enslaved in the Sea Islands of Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina. Because of the remoteness of the plantations, the Gullah Geechee were able to retain some of their African traditions, including the ring shout. It’s a ritual in which participants move counterclockwise in a circle while shuffling and stomping their feet and clapping their hands, in call and response fashion. The tradition is rooted in West African culture, mixed with elements of Christianity. The Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters from Darien, Georgia have preserved this ancestral heritage through performance and education since 1980. They joined us on stage at the New Orleans Jazz Museum where they started with a song you will probably recognize, that came from the Gullah Geechee culture.

Charley Pride was the first great African American star of country music. Born in Sledge, MS in 1938, Pride left farm life behind and had a budding baseball career in the Negro and minor leagues. He worked by day in a Montana steel mill and sang country music at night. That got the attention of Nashville producers in the mid-‘60s, and he went on to a career that included 29 number one country hits and induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Charley Pride passed away in 2020, and his story remains a special one that begins back down home on the Mississippi tenant farm he came to own.

The late guitarist and singer Richie Havens was raised in the Bed–Stuy section of Brooklyn, home to many West Indians, a kind of urban village where his grandmother from Barbados presided. Havens’ Native American grandfather had ridden horses in Buffalo Bill shows and lived on the Shinnecock reservation on Long Island. Growing up, Richie Havens played in the neighborhood with friends from all over the world. He sang doo-wop on the corner and gospel in the church. But he credited his father, a factory worker, as the primary influence in art and music.

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. We began back in those early days, on stage, with her father.