american routes shortcuts

Although Neville Brothers singer Aaron Neville is famed for his updating of the old inmates song “Angola Bound,” it was his brother, the late saxophonist Charles Neville, who actually did time at Angola Prison. He was among many great musicians who were sent to the penitentiary for drug offenses. One of his great contributions as an inmate was helping to racially and musically integrate prison life. Charles begins the tale with his arrest in New Orleans.

Max Baca grew up in New Mexico, playing in his dad’s band from age eight. After mastering bass and accordion, he picked up the bajo sexto, a Mexican twelve-string instrument featured in Tejano music. Max Baca Sr. took regular trips to Texas to introduce his sons to the conjunto scene, pioneered by his favorite accordion player, Narciso Martínez. Brothers Max Jr. and Jimmy channeled the San Antonio sound in forming their own band, Los Hermanos Baca. The Bacas were playing cantinas around New Mexico when Max got the call inviting him to tour with the Texas Tornados. He joined the ranks of his musical idol, Flaco Jiménez, and reconnected with the Texas tradition his father instilled. After Doug Sahm’s death in 1999, Max turned full attention to his own group, Los Texmaniacs. The band’s record Borders y Bailes won the Grammy for best Tejano album in 2010.

Who was Harry Smith? The short answer about the 20th century polymath and hustler might be divined in his legendary Anthology of American Folk Music from 1952, an LP collection of mostly Southern US folk music on 78rpm records. The Anthology established a cult of listening and influenced popular and folk revival artists from John Sebastian and the New Lost City Ramblers to rockers like Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and Beck. In addition to music recording and wide ranging research into tribal and other cultures, Harry Smith was a painter on canvas and on film. He was a profound thinker and worker in the American vernacular.

This is American Routes live for Labor Day weekend with some favorite performances from our series of concerts created with the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. To kick it off, we asked the Pine Leaf Boys to make a big journey across the Atchafalaya swamp from Lafayette and their South Louisiana Cajun prairie homeland down the Mississippi River to New Orleans to play on a live stream as the pandemic closed the dancehalls of French Louisiana. It’s “Pine Leaf Boy Two-Step” on American Routes.

This is American Routes digging into the archive for one of my all-time favorite interviews with the late Dolly Parton in 2000. Dolly passed away on August 25, 2026.

This week on American Routes Shortcuts, we bask in the summer heat and listen to our favorite versions of the George Gershwin classic, “Summertime,” from the 1934 opera Porgy and Bess.

This is American Routes, following the roots of doo-wop music into rock and roll as part of the life of singer and songmaker Dion DiMucci. Dion was born into a Bronx, New York Italian family in 1939. His father was in vaudeville. Dion gained notoriety as a singer with an appearance on American Bandstand. Back in the neighborhood, he made street music called doo-wop. I asked Dion how an immigrants’ son from the Bronx was able to channel the Southern music of his youth into doo-wop and rock and roll.

Get out your Crayolas and sketchpads, as we fill in the spectrum of musical colors. Red-hot jazz, cool blues, what we see when we hear music. All those feelings will come to light as we dig back into the archives for our epic interview with the late New Orleans piano professor Henry Butler about his eclectic musical vision.

This summer, more than ever, the challenge is to be and stay cool. So we’re all about songs and sounds as ways to chill out. We asked musicians, critics and producers just what it means to be cool. The late Chicago pianist Ramsey Lewis had a huge hit with a song about cool people, “The ‘In’ Crowd," back in 1965. It was recorded live at the literally underground Bohemian Caverns in Washington, DC. Ramsey Lewis was also known for adapting tunes like "A Hard Day's Night,” “Hang On Sloopy” and "Dancing in the Street" into hip jazz instrumentals. Ramsey Lewis told us he made his own brand of jazz by blending the blues he heard on the Chicago streets with gospel music from home.

Country singer Kelsey Waldon grew up in the Ohio River bottoms of Ballard County, Kentucky, a place called “Monkey’s Eyebrow,” where her father runs a hunting lodge and her mother’s family has been farming for generations. Kelsey started writing songs at a young age, went to Nashville at nineteen, played in bars, studied songwriting and later released noted albums that landed her on stage at the Grand Ole Opry. It was there with the now late songman John Prine that she agreed to join his label, Oh Boy Records, in 2019, the first artist Prine had signed in fifteen years. Kelsey counts John as a mentor, but remembers the first encounter with music came from her nanny.