Let It Roll

This episode revisits Harlem’s swing era through a conversation with filmmaker Jeff Kaufman about Chick Webb, the Savoy Ballroom bandleader who helped bring Ella Fitzgerald to the world. It centers on Webb’s influence at the peak of swing and why his legacy has faded from view.

Kansas City jazz is the focus here, as Nate Wilcox talks with historian Chuck Haddix about how one Midwestern city moved from ragtime to bebop in just two decades. The episode connects that local story to the rise of swing, jump blues, and rock and roll.

This episode explores the run-up to the first folk revival through Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, Josh White, Jean Ritchie, and the changing path of the Child Ballads. Nate Wilcox talks with author Dave Thompson about the moment songs stopped traveling mainly through families and started spreading by records, radio, and film.

African American pop music’s evolution between the 1920s and the birth of rock and roll is the focus here. Nate Wilcox and Ed Ward map the path from the blues queens through the swing era to rhythm and blues in a season-closing conversation first recorded in 2018.

Jazz standards are the focus here as Nate Wilcox talks with Ted Gioia, author of The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire. The episode also fits into Let It Roll From the Beginning..., which is reorganizing the archive in chronological order to tell the music’s story forward.