Let It Roll
Pantheon Media
0
"Let it Roll" is a podcast about the history of popular music from the 19th Century to the 21st. It is part of Pantheon, a podcast network for music lovers.
Epizódok
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Thomas A. Dorsey Went From 'It's Tight Like That' to 'Precious Lord': Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.11 02.10.2026 46pThe same man wrote “It’s Tight Like That” and “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” As Georgia Tom, Thomas A. Dorsey cut it with Tampa Red in 1928 - one of the dirtiest hits of the decade, and the record that set off the hokum craze. As Thomas A. Dorsey, he wrote the song Mahalia Jackson sang at Martin Luther King’s funeral. And the order is not the one you would guess: “It’s Tight Like That” came after his religious conversion, not before it, because the church songs were not paying and he had a wife to feed. Host Nate Wilcox is joined again by Garrett Cash for the fourth installment of HolyRoll, their history of gospel music, in a conversation first recorded 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 - the story of the music told forward, in the order it actually happened. The book under discussion is Michael W. Harris’s “The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church,” with Anthony Heilbut’s “The Gospel Sound” and Robert Darden’s “People Get Ready!” alongside it. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Ralph Peer Brought Blues, Jazz, Country, and Latin Music to Record: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.10 30.09.2026 41pBefore OKeh would bet on records made by Black artists for Black buyers, somebody had to go and find out whether that market existed. The company sent Ralph Peer. He went into barbershops and pool halls and asked people whether they would buy records made by their own artists, and came back with the answer: yes, they will. That is Barry Mazor’s account of how Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” got made in 1920 - not the story Perry Bradford told for the rest of his life, and Barry has a line for that: the least-heard sentence in the history of music is “I don’t deserve that much credit for this.” Host Nate Wilcox is joined by Barry Mazor, author of “Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music,” in a conversation first recorded in 2022 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
The Beginnings of Country Music According to Ken Burns: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.9 28.09.2026 50pHost Nate Wilcox is joined by James Porter - Chicago writer, DJ and musician - to open CountryRoll, their run through Ken Burns’s “Country Music” series, in a conversation first recorded in 2021 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. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Ed Ward on The Bristol Explosion: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.8 25.09.2026 35pHost Nate Wilcox is joined by Ed Ward, his original co-host and the author of “The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963,” for a conversation first recorded in 2018 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. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
The Carter Family popularized the Child Ballads and Burl Ives built a new tradition: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.7 23.09.2026 52pHost Nate Wilcox is joined again by Dave Thompson, author of “An Evolving Tradition: The Child Ballads in Modern Folk and Rock,” for the next installment of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being recast in chronological order by topic. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Paul Whiteman Was the King of Jazz in 1925, to Music Critics: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.6 21.09.2026 1óIn this episode, host Nate Wilcox welcomes Elijah Wald to discuss his controversial but informative book "How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'N' Roll" which actually has a lot more to say about Paul Whiteman and why white America considered him the King of Jazz in the 1920s. This episode originally dropped in 2018. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Vernon Dalhart: The forgotten first superstar of country music: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.5 18.09.2026 31pHost Nate Wilcox tells this one alone, as a Let It Roll seance - the guest is the late Jack Palmer, author of “Vernon Dalhart: First Star of Country Music,” who died before Nate could ever interview him. The episode returns now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning to the End, in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Ed Ward on Rock Pre-History the 1920s & 30s: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.4 16.09.2026 43pHost Nate Wilcox and the late Ed Ward, the rock historian of NPR’s Fresh Air kicked off their discussions of Ed’s History of Rock and Roll, Volume 1 1920-1963 with a discussion of the 1920s, when the record industry, reeling from the disruption of radio, accidentally discovered that recordings by Black and “hillbilly” artists moved units. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
The Holy Trinity of Texas Gospel and a Devilish Businessman: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.3 14.09.2026 51pHost Nate Wilcox asks Michael Corcoran to share the stories of Texas gospel greats Arizona Dranes, Blind Willie Johnson and Washington Phillips as well as the notorious Don Robey, owner of the Duke and Peacock labels. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
House of the Rising Sun Before Bob Dylan And After The Animals: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.2 11.09.2026 40pHost Nate Wilcox and Ted Anthony, author of “Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song”, work through what a “version” even is when a song has thousands of them: the keyboard solo, the famous opening riff, who heard what from whom, and Anthony’s conclusion that we are never going to sort it out and that this is fine. Songs like this one came out of nowhere, moved around in the shadows, surfaced when they got popular, and went back into the shadows to mutate again. We’re re-presenting this episode which originally dropped in 2019, as part of our Let It Roll: From the Beginning…to the End series which puts all the episodes in chronological order by subject. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
From Louis Armstrong to the White Stripes, 'St James Infirmary' Connects Folk Traditions to Jazz and Rock: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 3.1 09.09.2026 43pSeason 3 of Let It Roll: From the Beginning… opens with host Nate Wilcox talking to Robert W. Harwood about “I Went Down to St. James Infirmary” - a book about one song and about how confidently the history of a song can be wrong. Almost everything widely believed about “St. James Infirmary” turns out to be untrue. It is not a variant of “The Unfortunate Rake,” the British broadside that gives us “Streets of Laredo” and “The Dying Cowboy.” Listen to the episode to find out where the song came from. We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter and calling the series Let It Roll: From the Beginning…to the End. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Pop Had An Entirely Different Meaning Before 1955: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.12 07.09.2026 36pHost Nate Wilcox welcomes Bob Stanley to discuss “Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop Music, A History” - the prequel to his own earlier book, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé”. That one started in 1955 and ran forward through the rock and roll era. This one goes back and asks what the word “pop” meant before rock and roll took the name away from it. The answer is that it meant almost everything. Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley, dance bands and crooners, the Broadway song and the novelty side, the whole commercial apparatus of a business that was already enormous before anyone thought to call it a youth market. Stanley argues that this music has been orphaned twice over - too early for the rock histories, too popular for the jazz histories - and that the gap has swallowed some of the best records ever made. We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter and calling the series Let It Roll: From the Beginning…to the End. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Irving Berlin Defined American Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.11 04.09.2026 38pHost Nate Wilcox welcomes James Kaplan to discuss his book “Irving Berlin: New York Genius” — a life that runs from a Lower East Side childhood to a fifty-year career at the centre of American popular song, and then to almost thirty years of silence. Jerome Kern’s line is the one everybody quotes, and it holds up: Berlin has no place in American music, he is American music. Kaplan and Nate draw the comparison to Lennon and McCartney — the same work ethic, the same instinct for how a song is built — and then note the difference, which is that Berlin’s run did not stop after ten years. He was having hits in 1911 and still writing in the 1960s. We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter, this is the second season, eleventh episode. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Pioneering Gospel Composers: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.10 02.09.2026 44pHost Nate Wilcox was joined again by Garrett Cash for the second episode of the Holy Roll series which we’re recasting as part of our Let It Roll: From the Beginning… series, this time on the two people who essentially invented gospel composition as a published, professional craft — Charles Albert Tindley and Lucie E. Campbell. The book under discussion is “We’ll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers,” edited by Bernice Johnson Reagon. This episode originally dropped in 2022. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Ted Gioia on The Birth of Jazz in New Orleans: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.9 31.08.2026 39pWe're continuing our recast of all the Let It Roll episodes in chronological order by topic with Ted Gioia on “The History of Jazz,” and host Nate Wilcox takes him all the way back to the start of the book, to the prehistory of the music. There is general agreement that jazz came out of New Orleans; there was a period when people disputed it, and a time when the Soviet Union claimed it started in Siberia. Ted explains why that city, why that moment - and what we can and cannot know about who played it first. This episode originally dropped in 2021. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
The First Recording Stars: Enrico Caruso, Bert Williams and Al Jolson: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.8 28.08.2026 59pTRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses minstrelsy and blackface and includes a recording of a 1902 ‘coon song,’ presented as historical evidence. Racial slurs occur in the song’s title and in the discussion around it. In this episode, author Peter Doggett and host Nate Wilcox discuss "Electric Shock: From the Gramophone to the iPhone – 125 Years of Pop Music." This one is about the first people the recording business ever made famous, and the wildly different deals it offered them. George Washington Johnson had no way to copy a wax cylinder, so every single one sold had to be recorded again — he sang the same laugh an estimated forty thousand times. Ten years later Enrico Caruso sang once into a gramophone and the factory made the copies. Same business, different decades, completely different deals, and that is the story of the evolution of the American music business. Also: radio’s sudden arrival in the 1920s and what it did to record sales, Bert Williams, Irving Berlin, and Al Jolson — the biggest entertainer in America in his day, and why almost nobody has heard him since. With music: Caruso’s “The Lost Chord,” Bert Williams’ “Nobody” and “He’s a Cousin of Mine,” George Washington Johnson’s “Laughing Song” from the 1890s, and Jolson’s “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along,” cut for Brunswick in 1926. This episode originally dropped in 2018. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Also subscribe to the LET IT ROLL EXTRA feed on Apple, Spotify or your preferred podcast service to access the full episodes via your preferred podcast outlet. We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Edison's Phonograph vs. the Gramophone: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.7 26.08.2026 48pTRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses minstrelsy and blackface and includes a recording of a 1902 ‘coon song,’ presented as historical evidence. Racial slurs occur in the song’s title and in the discussion around it. In this episode, author Peter Doggett and host Nate Wilcox discuss "Electric Shock: From the Gramophone to the iPhone – 125 Years of Pop Music." Peter explains how he came to take on such an ambitious project, why he started with the advent of recorded music rather than the advent of sheet music, the first format wars between Thomas Edison’s phonograph and Emile Berliner’s gramophone, the first recorded music superstars, and one unfortunate early hitmaker who found himself having to do a new recording every time a copy of his hit record was made. This episode originally dropped in 2018. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Also subscribe to the LET IT ROLL EXTRA feed on Apple, Spotify or your preferred podcast service to access the full episodes via your preferred podcast outlet. We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Beginning the Jazz Age: Vaudeville, Minstrelsy, WC Handy's blues and Louis Armstrong's Signifying on the Old Songs: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.6 24.08.2026 42pWe're relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, host Nate Wilcox interviews Gary Giddins to discuss the opening section of his classic book "Visions of Jazz" including discussions of vaudeville greats Al Jolson and Bert Williams, W.C Handy, the man who "discovered" the blues and Louis Armstrong's signifying takes on old time songs of slavery and some of the forgotten Black songwriters of 1920s Tin Pan Alley. This episode originally dropped in 2023. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Also subscribe to the LET IT ROLL EXTRA feed on Apple, Spotify or your preferred podcast service to access the full episodes via your preferred podcast outlet. We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
The Vaudeville Roots of Country Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.5 21.08.2026 48pWe're relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, host Nate Wilcox interviews Henry Sapoznik, one of the compilers of "Protobilly: The Minstrel & Tin Pan Alley DNA of Country Music." Nate asks Henry about the genesis of the Protobilly CD compilation and the roots of country music in 19th-century American music. This episode originally dropped in 2022. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Also subscribe to the LET IT ROLL EXTRA feed on Apple, Spotify or your preferred podcast service to access the full episodes via your preferred podcast outlet. We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Jubilee Singers and Barbershop Quartets Continued the Evolution of African-American Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.4 19.08.2026 42pWe'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. GO TO THE LET IT ROLL SUBSTACK TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE -- The final 15 minutes of this episode are exclusively for paying subscribers to the Let It Roll Substack. Also subscribe to the LET IT ROLL EXTRA feed on Apple, Spotify or your preferred podcast service to access the full episodes via your preferred podcast outlet. We've got all 350+ episodes listed, organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host, guest and more. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the show. Thanks! Email [email protected] Follow us on Twitter. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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