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Let It Roll: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Pantheon Media
"Let it Roll" is a podcast about the history of popular music from the 19th Century to the 21st. Proud part of Pantheon - the podcast network for music lovers.
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- 2 days ago31 min
Vernon Dalhart: The forgotten first superstar of country music: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.5
Host Nate Wilcox tells this one alone, as a Let It Roll seance - the guest is the late Jack Palmer, author of “Vernon Dalhart: First Star of Country Music,” who died before Nate could ever interview him. The episode returns now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning to the End, in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to suppor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 4 days ago43 min
Ed Ward on Rock Pre-History the 1920s & 30s: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.4
Host Nate Wilcox and the late Ed Ward, the rock historian of NPR’s Fresh Air kicked off their discussions of Ed’s History of Rock and Roll, Volume 1 1920-1963 with a discussion of the 1920s, when the record industry, reeling from the disruption of radio, accidentally discovered that recordings by Black and “hillbilly” artists moved units. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 6 days ago50 min
The Holy Trinity of Texas Gospel and a Devilish Businessman: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.3
Host Nate Wilcox asks Michael Corcoran to share the stories of Texas gospel greats Arizona Dranes, Blind Willie Johnson and Washington Phillips as well as the notorious Don Robey, owner of the Duke and Peacock labels. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago40 min
House of the Rising Sun Before Bob Dylan And After The Animals: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.2
Host Nate Wilcox and Ted Anthony, author of “Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song”, work through what a “version” even is when a song has thousands of them: the keyboard solo, the famous opening riff, who heard what from whom, and Anthony’s conclusion that we are never going to sort it out and that this is fine. Songs like this one came out of nowhere, moved around in the shadows, surfaced when they got popular, and went back into the shadows to mutate again. We’re re-presenting this episode which originally dropped in 2019, as part of our Let It Roll: From the Beginning…to the End series which puts all the episodes in chronological order by subject. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago43 min
From Louis Armstrong to the White Stripes, 'St James Infirmary' Connects Folk Traditions to Jazz and Rock: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.1
Season 3 of Let It Roll: From the Beginning… opens with host Nate Wilcox talking to Robert W. Harwood about “I Went Down to St. James Infirmary” - a book about one song and about how confidently the history of a song can be wrong. Almost everything widely believed about “St. James Infirmary” turns out to be untrue. It is not a variant of “The Unfortunate Rake,” the British broadside that gives us “Streets of Laredo” and “The Dying Cowboy.” Listen to the episode to find out where the song came from. We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter and calling the series Let It Roll: From the Beginning…to the End. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago36 min
Pop Had An Entirely Different Meaning Before 1955: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.12
Host Nate Wilcox welcomes Bob Stanley to discuss “Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop Music, A History” - the prequel to his own earlier book, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé”. That one started in 1955 and ran forward through the rock and roll era. This one goes back and asks what the word “pop” meant before rock and roll took the name away from it. The answer is that it meant almost everything. Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley, dance bands and crooners, the Broadway song and the novelty side, the whole commercial apparatus of a business that was already enormous before anyone thought to call it a youth market. Stanley argues that this music has been orphaned twice over - too early for the rock histories, too popular for the jazz histories - and that the gap has swallowed some of the best records ever made. We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter and calling the series Let It Roll: From the Beginning…to the End. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 2 weeks ago38 min
Irving Berlin Defined American Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.11
Host Nate Wilcox welcomes James Kaplan to discuss his book “Irving Berlin: New York Genius” — a life that runs from a Lower East Side childhood to a fifty-year career at the centre of American popular song, and then to almost thirty years of silence. Jerome Kern’s line is the one everybody quotes, and it holds up: Berlin has no place in American music, he is American music. Kaplan and Nate draw the comparison to Lennon and McCartney — the same work ethic, the same instinct for how a song is built — and then note the difference, which is that Berlin’s run did not stop after ten years. He was having hits in 1911 and still writing in the 1960s. We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter, this is the second season, eleventh episode. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 2 weeks ago44 min
Pioneering Gospel Composers: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.10
Host Nate Wilcox was joined again by Garrett Cash for the second episode of the Holy Roll series which we’re recasting as part of our Let It Roll: From the Beginning… series, this time on the two people who essentially invented gospel composition as a published, professional craft — Charles Albert Tindley and Lucie E. Campbell. The book under discussion is “We’ll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers,” edited by Bernice Johnson Reagon. This episode originally dropped in 2022. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
About Let It Roll
"Let it Roll" is a podcast about the history of popular music from the 19th Century to the 21st. Proud part of Pantheon - the podcast network for music lovers.
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