Tapestry of the Times

Bedouin singing from the deserts of Sinai; Bottle-neck slide-guitar from Memphis blues man Furry Lewis; 1940’s vintage jazz from Mary Lou Williams; vocal harmonies from The Democratic Republic of Congo; a devotional song from Indo-Caribbean immigrants in Queens, New York.

Mandolin picking at its finest from “The Father of Bluegrass,”Bill Monroe; lyrical gymnastics from Bahamian traditional singer Stanley Thompson; children’s music from alt-folk performer Elizabeth Mitchell; left-handed guitar legend Elizabeth Cotten.

In this episode of Tapestry of the Times, The sounds of banjo innovator and connoisseur Tony Trischka, blues from Mississippi’s Big Joe Williams, a horse ballad from the Arizona Sonora Borderlands, marimba music from Guatemala, and barrel-house piano blues from Speckled Red.

The mimetic sounds of mountain herders in the Siberian hinterland of Tuva, tropical music from Jamaica, the Bahamas, Trinidad, and The Dominican Republic, and a slide guitar opus from the West Coast’s “Joe Louis Walker and The Boss Talkers.”

We celebrate the Big Easy with the late great New Orleans street singer Snooks Eaglin, we hear New Orleans jazz from The Crescent City Serenaders, and we listen back to some vintage Cajun social music.

The late great Piedmont blues singer and guitar master John Cephas, New Orleans’ ebullient chanteuse Lizzie Miles, slave shouts from Georgia’s McIntosh County Shouters, rock music from Indonesia and Vodou music from Port au Prince.

Sea-faring songs from North Carolina’s Outer Banks; an Irish pirate ballad; cowboy songs from Woody Guthrie, Harry Jackson, and Cisco Houston and a spiritual from Moving Star Hall on Johns Island, South Carolina.

We hear the soul-soaked boogie woogie piano of Champion Jack Dupree, we check out some 80-year-old original recordings of Blind Willie Johnson, and we explore music forged deep in the coal mines of Appalachia.

Cowboy songs from the revivalist group The Tex-I-An Boys, the sounds of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, cowpuncher brag talk, work-songs from a Texas prison camp, and contemporary conjunto music from Los Texmaniacs.

This episode presents a series of one-of-a-kind original recordings made recently on a chilly Saturday afternoon on-site in Elkton, Maryland with the family and friends of the late great American legend, Ola Belle Reed.

Big Bill Broonzy, Brownie McGhee, and Sonny Terry sing the praises of larger-than-life mythic characters like John Henry and Joe Turner. And we enjoy some distant sounds from Paraguay, Indonesia, and Gambia.

North Carolina’s Elizabeth Cotton shows off how to play a guitar upside down and backwards, New Orleans chanteuse Lizzy Miles asks “Who's sorry now?” and Lucinda Williams mourns a one-night stand.

Bluesman Reverend Gary Davis sings of a golden city with pearly gates, Paul Robeson compares earthy freedom to divine deliverance, and Doc Watson asks the fundamentally profound question, “Was I born to die?”

In this musical pub-crawl, we explore the joys and perils of the drinking life; songs about beer, wine, whiskey and moonshine; sad drunks, mad drunks, mean drunks, and just plain stupid drunks; booze-soaked classics from Memphis Slim, Roscoe Holcomb, Lead Belly, Dock Boggs and more.

Where is “home” for you? In this episode, we explore our yearnings for home, with songs of longing from Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Doc Watson, and far-flung wanderers in Chile, Canada, Kenya, and The Bahamas. Radio for the homesick listener on Tapestry of the Times.