Let It Roll

Jubilee Singers and Barbershop Quartets Continued the Evolution of African-American Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.4

Let It Roll

Show Notes

We're relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter.

In this episode, host Nate Wilcox is joined by Garrett Cash to continue their discussion of the evolution of American Gospel music with a look at Afro-American music in the late 19th Century.

Source materials include ⁠Robert Darden's "People Get Ready!: A New History of Black Gospel Music"⁠ and "⁠Tell Them We Are Singing for Jesus: The Original Fisk Jubilee Singers and Christian Reconstruction, 1871-1878⁠" by Toni P Anderson.

This episode originally dropped in 2022.

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Oct 21, 2026

Host Nate Wilcox talks with Jeff Kaufman, director, writer and producer of the documentary film “The Savoy King: Chick Webb and the Music That Changed America,” in a conversation first released in 2022 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. This is Harlem’s swing era at its peak, and the bandleader at its center who is now nearly forgotten.

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Host Nate Wilcox talks with Chuck Haddix, co-author with Frank Driggs of “Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop - A History,” in a conversation first released in 2020 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. This is the story of how one wide-open Midwestern town got from ragtime to bebop in twenty years, and set up swing, jump blues and rock and roll on the way.

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Host Nate Wilcox talks with Dave Thompson, author of “An Evolving Tradition: The Child Ballads in Modern Folk and Rock Music,” in a conversation first released in 2025 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by subject matter. This is the moment the old ballads stopped passing from grandparent to grandchild and started arriving by record, radio and movie soundtrack - the run-up to the first folk revival.

Oct 14, 2026

Host Nate Wilcox and the late Ed Ward, author of “The History of Rock & Roll, Volume One: 1920-1963,” close Season 3 of Let It Roll From the Beginning... with a conversation first recorded in 2018. This is the gap between the 1920s and the birth of rock and roll: how African American pop music went from the blues queens through the swing era to rhythm and blues.

Oct 13, 2026

Host Nate Wilcox is joined again by Ted Gioia, author of “The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire,” in a conversation first recorded in 2019 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic - the story of the music told forward, in the order it actually happened.

See all episodes →