Host Nate Wilcox welcomes back Tony Fletcher, author of “All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York, 1927-77,” to discuss the mambo explosion that kept New York City dancing from the 1930s to the 1950s and influenced both jazz and rock & roll.
This episode originally dropped in 2023.
CHECK OUT THE LET IT ROLL WEB SITE -- We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please sign up for the email list on the site and get music essays from Nate as well as (eventually) transcriptions of every episode. Also if you can afford it please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks!
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Nov 6
48 min
Pantheon Media CEO Christian Swain invites you to check out the Before The Moment podcast. Legendary Producer Nile Rodgers sits down with artists to explore the decisions, setbacks, and unexpected encounters that came before the breakthrough. Follow the show, you will love it!
Nov 6
2 min
Milton Brown never had a national hit and never wrote a famous song, and he was dead at 32. But Cary Ginell argues that he did something almost nobody in popular music has done: he invented a genre single-handed. He took the Texas fiddle band, put a singer out front, added a slapped string bass, a piano and an electric steel guitar, fed it hot jazz and pop, and moved it out of the house dance and into the ballroom. We call it western swing.
Host Nate Wilcox talks with Cary Ginell, author of “Milton Brown and the Founding of Western Swing,” in a conversation from the Let It Roll archive
CHECK OUT THE LET IT ROLL WEB SITE -- We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please sign up for the email list on the site and get music essays from Nate as well as (eventually) transcriptions of every episode. Also if you can afford it please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks!
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Nov 4
42 min
Host Nate Wilcox welcomes back Peter Doggett, author of “Electric Shock: From the Gramophone to the iPhone - 125 Years of Pop Music,” in a conversation first released in 2019 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. It picks up where Peter’s Bing Crosby episode left off, moving from the radio era of the 1920s into the 1930s.
CHECK OUT THE LET IT ROLL WEB SITE -- We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please sign up for the email list on the site and get music essays from Nate as well as (eventually) transcriptions of every episode. Also if you can afford it please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks!
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Nov 2
28 min
Host Nate Wilcox brings back Dr. Yuri Campbell, scholar and musician, to weigh what the previous episode’s conversation with Elijah Wald about “Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues” actually taught us.
CHECK OUT THE LET IT ROLL WEB SITE -- We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please sign up for the email list on the site and get music essays from Nate as well as (eventually) transcriptions of every episode. Also if you can afford it please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks!
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Oct 30
42 min
Host Nate Wilcox talks with Elijah Wald, author of “Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues,” in a conversation first released in 2018 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning.
Elijah explains why Johnson was a minor figure in his own day: the stars in his world were Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr and Peetie Wheatstraw, and what was exotic about Johnson to his neighbors was that he had traveled and sounded like the people on the records.
CHECK OUT THE LET IT ROLL WEB SITE -- We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please sign up for the email list on the site and get music essays from Nate as well as (eventually) transcriptions of every episode. Also if you can afford it please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks!
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Oct 28
41 min
Host Nate Wilcox talks with Kevin Belford, artist, illustrator and author of “Devil at the Confluence: The Pre-War Blues Music of St. Louis, Missouri,” in a brand-new conversation recorded in October 2026. Belford makes the case for St. Louis as a blues capital the history books skipped - from Tom Turpin's ragtime to Lonnie Johnson, Peetie Wheatstraw and the original Sonny Boy Williamson.
CHECK OUT THE LET IT ROLL WEB SITE -- We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please sign up for the email list on the site and get music essays from Nate as well as (eventually) transcriptions of every episode. Also if you can afford it please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks!
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Oct 26
51 min
Host Nate Wilcox talks with Stephanie Stein Crease, author of “Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat That Changed America,” in a conversation first released in 2023 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. It follows straight on from Jeff Kaufman’s Savoy King episode, going deeper into Baltimore, the Harlem years and the band Chick built.
CHECK OUT THE LET IT ROLL WEB SITE -- We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please sign up for the email list on the site and get music essays from Nate as well as (eventually) transcriptions of every episode. Also if you can afford it please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks!
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Oct 23
43 min
Host Nate Wilcox talks with Jeff Kaufman, director, writer and producer of the documentary film “The Savoy King: Chick Webb and the Music That Changed America,” in a conversation first released in 2022 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. This is Harlem’s swing era at its peak, and the bandleader at its center who is now nearly forgotten.
Order the movie.
For more information about THE SAVOY KING, including DVDs with a free eBook.
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.
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Oct 21
52 min
Host Nate Wilcox talks with Chuck Haddix, co-author with Frank Driggs of “Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop - A History,” in a conversation first released in 2020 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. This is the story of how one wide-open Midwestern town got from ragtime to bebop in twenty years, and set up swing, jump blues and rock and roll on the way.
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 [email protected]
Follow us on Twitter.
Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts
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Oct 19
46 min
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