We travel to Jamaica and Cuba, with connections in NY and New Orleans. Singer Jimmy Cliff is the global reggae star whose career was launched a half-century ago by the iconic film and soundtrack, The Harder They Come. We talk with him about his start in the early days of Jamaican recorded music and his work to make the world a better place for everyone. Then, bandleader and pianist Arturo O’Farrill shares his family heritage in Afro-Latin jazz and a recent project playing music of all kinds on the US side of the Mexican border at the Fandango at the Wall. Plus music from around the Caribbean and Gulf South with Toots and the Maytals, Machito and Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. 

This week on American Routes, we dip into crossover currents of country music sung by Black American performers, including Ray Charles, Ike and Tina Turner, and Fats Domino. We’ll also hear white musicians influenced by Black music: Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Dylan. Then, it’s the Baton Rouge Blues legacy, with recordings from Buddy Guy, Slim Harpo, Silas Hogan, Tabby Thomas and the late harmonica man Raful Neal. Plus a live performance from Raful Neal’s son, Kenny Neal, a mouth harp and guitar player, now the senior statesman and artist from the Baton Rouge Blues scene. 

It’s summertime, and the living is easy on American Routes. We’ve got cool tunes from Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Martha and the Vandellas, and the Beach Boys to help you beat that summer heat. We’ll hear memories of Sea Breeze, NC, a historically Black resort community that was an early site of integration in the Jim Crow South… And visit with some surfers at Mission Beach, San Diego.

We’re spinning jazz, country, blues, pop and roots music heard locally and globally for over a century on records and later on jukeboxes, in cafes, barrooms and juke joints. We’ll hear June Carter and Johnny Cash, New Orleans’ jazzmen Kermit Ruffins and Danny Barker, Robert Johnson, and the Rolling Stones…then and now. Plus we’ll travel the world from earlier in the 20th century in search of rare music on 78s as dug up by sonic researcher, Jonathan Ward, for his collection, “Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music.”

This 4th of July, we explore the varied meanings of American independence in words and music. We celebrate the diversity built into our country by digging into the musical traditions that inform our democracy at its best. We talk with Mr. Sipp, a hip blues and gospel man from McComb, Mississippi and Sheryl Cormier, the octogenarian Cajun accordion queen from Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Plus music from Bo Diddley, Big Maybelle, Bob Dylan, La Santa Cecilia, and Santana. In these tough times, May the Fourth be with us on American Routes.