Groundwater: The Blues Beneath American Music

In 1967 Aretha Franklin flew to a cinder block studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama to cut the record that would make her name. She'd been told the house band was the tightest in the South. She walked in and found four white kids from the country. That session is one of the reasons we talk about Aretha the way we do. It's also one of the reasons the genre labels on American Music are a lie.

I'm Thomas Stubbs. This is Groundwater. The Blues aren't a genre, It's the Groundwater. The current running under country, rock, jazz, and hip hop. From Congo Square to the South Bronx.

The record industry split that music in two in 1927 and sold it to two separate audiences. We believe the split ever since. Every episode follows the water. New Orleans and Louis Armstrong, the great migration of the Illinois Central, the studios where the walls came down, and what happened when the music got political and the state went after the singers. Pop music taken as seriously as the books that taught me to love it.

New episodes regularly, follow Groundwater wherever you listen, and start at the mouth of the river.