In 1927, the record industry split American music in two and sold it to separate audiences. We've believed the split ever since. Groundwater is a music history podcast that follows the current underneath — the blues, running from Congo Square to the South Bronx, from Robert Johnson to Aretha Franklin to hip-hop. Each episode traces a moment the industry tried to keep apart: the soul sessions at Stax and Muscle Shoals that crossed every line; Louis Armstrong working race and commerce from New Orleans to Chicago; the Great Migration carrying Muddy Waters and the Delta sound up the Illinois Central to Memphis, Chicago, and Detroit; and the state's long campaign against the singers who got political, from Billie Holiday to the Dixie Chicks. If you want to understand why American music sounds the way it does, start here and follow the water.
Groundwater: The Blues Beneath American Music
Claim This Podcastby Thomas Stubbs
Podcast Overview
In 1927, the record industry split American music in two and sold it to separate audiences. We've believed the split ever since. Groundwater is a music history podcast that follows the current underneath — the blues, running from Congo Square to the South Bronx, from Robert Johnson to Aretha Franklin to hip-hop. Each episode traces a moment the industry tried to keep apart: the soul sessions at Stax and Muscle Shoals that crossed every line; Louis Armstrong working race and commerce from New Orleans to Chicago; the Great Migration carrying Muddy Waters and the Delta sound up the Illinois Central to Memphis, Chicago, and Detroit; and the state's long campaign against the singers who got political, from Billie Holiday to the Dixie Chicks. If you want to understand why American music sounds the way it does, start here and follow the water.
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Publishing Since
5/7/2026
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Recent Episodes
July 2, 2026
The Country's Memory: Jimi Hendrix, Strange Fruit, and American Music at 250
<p>Jimi Hendrix played "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock in 1969 and let the war in around the melody. This year the United States turns 250. This Groundwater special steps back from the map to ask what twentieth-century American music has been for: the country's memory, the part of the record that didn't get edited.</p><p>At its center is Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" — the song that held a mirror up to lynching, and the song the state went after its singer over. Around it: the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the spirituals; Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and the verses America stopped teaching; Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come"; Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam"; and Louis Armstrong refusing to carry the flag abroad after Little Rock. The dark and the joy are the same record.</p><p>Music and sound, in order of appearance:<br>- "Guitar Rag" — Sylvester Weaver — OKeh, 1923 (theme; public domain)<br>- "The Star-Spangled Banner" — Jimi Hendrix — Woodstock, 1969<br>- "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" — Fisk University Jubilee Quartet — Victor, 1909 (public domain)<br>- "This Land Is Your Land" — Woody Guthrie — Asch, 1944<br>- "Strange Fruit" — Billie Holiday — Commodore, 1939<br>- "A Change Is Gonna Come" — Sam Cooke — RCA Victor, 1964<br>- "Mississippi Goddam" — Nina Simone — Philips, 1964</p><p>Excerpts used briefly for criticism and commentary.</p>
June 25, 2026
The Blues Professor, Part 2: Muddy Waters, the Mardi Gras Indians, and Where to Start with the Blues
<p>Muddy Waters, the Mardi Gras Indians, Blind Willie McTell, and the one record to start with: the second half of Thomas Stubbs's conversation with Rich Pettit, the man Atlanta knows as the Blues Professor.</p><p>In Part 1 we traced the blues out of West Africa and up the East Coast. This half starts back home in New Orleans — where Rich grew up — and the city's living traditions: the second line, the jazz funeral that walks to the cemetery on a dirge and home on a parade, and the Mardi Gras Indians, with Big Chief Jolly of the Wild Tchoupitoulas and the Neville Brothers and the Meters threaded through it.</p><p>Then the heart of it: Blind Willie McTell's "Dying Crapshooter's Blues" — a song a dying gambler dictated to a blind street singer, who carried it back to Atlanta and made it last. Rich calls it one of the cleverest pieces of writing in the blues, and it's hard to argue.</p><p>And at the end, the question you put to anyone who really knows: if you're starting from nothing, where do you go first? Rich's answer is Muddy Waters — which takes us to The Last Waltz, one camera on Muddy alone, doing "Mannish Boy," killing it.</p><p>Groundwater is the companion podcast to Thomas Stubbs's book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. More at groundwater.fm.</p><p><strong>Music</strong></p><ul><li>Theme — "Guitar Rag," Sylvester Weaver (OKeh, 1923). Public domain.</li><li>"N.O. Bounce," Big Freedia. Excerpted as commentary under fair use.</li><li>"Dying Crapshooter's Blues," Blind Willie McTell — Library of Congress field recording, Atlanta, 1940 (John A. Lomax, Archive of American Folk Song). Excerpted as commentary under fair use.</li><li>"Mannish Boy," Muddy Waters with The Band, from The Last Waltz (Warner Bros., 1978). Excerpted as commentary under fair use.</li></ul>
June 23, 2026
The Blues Professor, Part 1: Piedmont Blues, the Allman Brothers, and Atlanta's Living Scene
<p>Piedmont blues, the Allman Brothers, Lonnie Holley, and the long road the blues took out of West Africa: Thomas Stubbs sits down with Rich Pettit, the man Atlanta knows as the Blues Professor — part one of two.</p><p>For forty years, Rich has hosted Good Morning Blues on WRFG 89.3, Atlanta's community radio station. He grew up in New Orleans and came to the blues backwards — through classic rock — until he started noticing how many of those songs were covers.</p><p>Part one is about where the blues comes from and where it went: West Africa and Congo Square, the banjo nobody remembers is African, Atlanta's living blues scene, and the Piedmont players who taught each other on back porches outside Covington — Savannah Weaver, Curly Weaver, Blind Willie McTell, Bar-B-Q Bob, Buddy Moss — before the music climbed the East Coast and rode the rail north.</p><p>Along the way: Lonnie Holley improvising the blues on a high wire, the night the Dirty Dozen Brass Band rolled in late and blew Michelle Shocked's horn section off the stage, and the $30 loophole that keeps a Grant Park living room packed.</p><p>Part two, we head to Chicago.</p><p>Groundwater is the companion podcast to Thomas Stubbs's book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath. More at groundwater.fm.</p><p><strong>Music</strong><br> Theme — "Guitar Rag," Sylvester Weaver (OKeh, 1923). Public domain.<br> "Crazy Blues," Mamie Smith (OKeh, 1920). Public domain.<br> "Come On In My Kitchen," The Allman Brothers Band, from Shades of Two Worlds (Epic Records, ℗ 1991). Excerpted as commentary under fair use.</p>
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