sweartotellthetruth

May 29, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 82 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, June 4, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

We are in the unusual position of having our playlist ready for next week and so we can provide you with more advance notice of next Tuesday’s program. Next week will be our Alan Lomax Southern Journey special presentation. The Southern Journey is the way that Alan Lomax’ hurried and underfunded field trips of 1959 and 1960 in search of unadulterated traditional music from the American South have come to be described. It was a project born of a passion to document old time musics and of the ego of the individual who sought to prove he was the man who could find this music. Prove it he did and he paved the way for other field researchers who followed but he had the advantage of embarking on this quest when America was on the cusp of a tidal shift in its social evolution. Of course, Alan Lomax is not the real subject of our program. The real subject is the music and the musicians he located and recorded.

On the show: 

Lead Belly – McKinley Morganfield – Hobart Smith –  Vera Hall – Miles & Bob Pratcher – Fred McDowell – Rose Hemphill – Bessie Jones – Rev. I.D. Beck – Bright Light Quartet – and many others

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until July 2nd.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week (June 11th)

The following week, we’ll take a step back and try to present you with a mosaic of the different styles we try to bring you week to week, fill some gaps, follow some leads from recent programs. At this point, in all honesty, we don’t have a plan.

For those interested in the progress of the CFMU app, we’re told that the delay has to do with developing an app that works on three platforms–but it is coming.

cmc

 

May 27, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 81 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

We depart from our usual concentration on older music this week. The greater part of our program this week will be devoted to artists scheduled to play at the Hamilton Blues & Roots Festival, to be held in Westdale Village on Saturday, June 1st. A portion of King Street between Sterling and North Oval will be closed to accommodate the festival. Attendance is free. You can go to the festival website for an up-to-date program. We’ll be featuring some of the artists on the blues side of the festival on our May 28th show.

On the show: 

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee – Georgia Sea Island Singers – Robert Pete Williams –  Harrison Kennedy – Steve Strongman – Trickbag – Alfie Smith – Paul Deslauriers – Ginger St. James – Ray Charles – and others

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until June 25th.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week (June 4th)

We put together two programs this week. We’ve also planned the music for our 90 minute special on Alan Lomax’ Southern Journey recordings.  These recordings from 1959 and 1960 include some iconic performances – some made famous by the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack from the Coen Brothers’ film. It’s humanity’s great fortune that Lomax was ready and able to make these field trips when he did. The recordings and the fascinating story behind their creation on next week’s program.

cmc

May 19, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 80 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, May 21, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

Haven’t played any zydeco on the air for a while. Count on hearing some this week and a couple of sides from Louisiana blues artists. Also on the program, some scarce R&B recorded between 1946 and 1954.

On the show: 

Boozoo Chavis – Carrière Brothers – Raful Neal –  Bobby Radcliff – Jimmy Dawkins – Red Mack – Charles Gray – Geechie Smith – Amos Garrett – Nina Simone – and others

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until June 18th.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week (May 28th)

We’ve altered our schedule for May 28th. We were tentatively committed to a 90 minute special on Alan Lomax’ Southern Journey recordings but we want to highlight some of the artists appearing at the Westdale Blues & Roots Festival, in Hamilton scheduled for June 1st. It’s planned to be an all day affair. Acts include Harrison Kennedy, Steve Strongman, Alvin Smith, Trickbag and Paul Deslauriers.

We’ll postpone the Lomax special to either June 4th or June 11th.

cmc

 

May 13, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 79 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, May 14, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

We’ve been playing a few records from Nashville lately. We’re going to play a few more on Tuesday. Also on the program, some very appealing gospel quartet records made between 1947 and 1956 by groups who were pretty well known in their time but not mentioned today among he leading groups from the golden era.

On the show: 

Gatemouth Brown – Roscoe Shelton – Charles Walker –  Jackson Delta – Donna Rhodes – Holy Ghost Spirituals – Highway QC’s – Radio Four – Johnnie Taylor – and many others, of course.

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until June 11th.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week (May 21st)

Nothing definite, as yet, for May 21st. We have tentatively planned our Alan Lomax special for May 28th. But we’ll update you. That’s going to be a lot of work.

No word yet about the  CFMU app, which will allow people to listen to CFMU programs on mobile devices. Station management confident it is on the way.  Might even consider a Blackberry Q10 ourself.

We’re late getting this out and accidentally published it before it was ready. Don’t know if Twitter will send out a new notice. We shall see.

cmc

 

May 4, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 78 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, May 7, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

The concept of our Louis Jordan feature evolved as we put together the program. This week’s show will be a bit unusual for the Blues and Rhythm Hour because we will be playing some jazz and African-American pop recordings to give context to Louis’ own career trajectory.

Louis Jordan was the most important figure in classic rhythm & blues and dominated the race or sepia charts for a significant period of time. If you read the histories of the blues, or watch documentaries, r&b is often treated like an interesting detour from the real blues. We see it differently. Rhythm & Blues looks to us like the next stage in blues’ evolution and the phase in which blues reached the largest audience and had the greatest influence within African-American society. We regard Louis Jordan as a very important figure in the history of the blues.

In preparation for this program, we’ve reread portions of John Chilton’s biography of Louis Jordan Let the Good Times Roll. It’s worth the time of anyone interested in Louis Jordan and the music of his era.

On the show: 

A lot of Louis Jordan – Henry “Red” Allen – Ebony Three – Hot Lips Page

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until June 3rd.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Last week (April 30th)

We hope some of you heard and enjoyed our program last week, with the feature on blues recorded between 1926 and 1931. The lives of many of the great blues figures of the era are largely undocumented, including two of the greatest figures, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake. There’s simply an absence of detail about their lives. If the lives that made the blues are of interest to you, two of the figures we played in our feature have been the subjects of well-researched and well-written biographies. Paul and Amy Garon wrote a biography of Memphis Minnie, called Woman with a Guitar. The book is fascinating on several levels. We were quite sceptical of a book called Hand Me My Traveling Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray. He had written about Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa. His book on McTell turned out to be much more insightful and revelatory than we guessed and it’s a compelling read.

The  CFMU app, will be available for iTunes, Android and Blackberry, we understand. Still no date.

cmc

 

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