1.25.13: Folk Pilgrim Stephen Wade Unearths the Real-Life Roots of Iconic American Recordings

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Stephen Wade always loved listening to old Library of Congress field recordings.  Then one day he decided to hit the road to search out the real-life roots of these iconic time capsules of American music.  For 18 years, this folk pilgrim traveled the country, meeting the friends, families, and sometimes the musicians themselves who were immortalized back in the 1930s and 40s by John A Lomax and his portable disc-cutting machine.

In this hour on The Signal, Stephen Wade takes us across America and back in time to the story of a fiddler who grew up in a cave in Kentucky, a singing quartet from an Arkansas prison work camp, a playground song from a Mississippi schoolgirl, the mournful ballad of a Virginia girl named Texas, and the washboard rhythms of a street band from Nashville, Tennessee.

Join us, as Stephen Wade shares the songs and stories of his book, The Beautiful Music All Around Us:  Field Recordings and the American Experience, and his Grammy-nominated CD, Banjo Diary:  Lessons from Tradition.