Preface To Push: Self-Promotion Is Hard

I once mentioned to a fellow programmer at KOOP in Austin that I hated to have to "promote" my show.  She said, deadpan, "Is it because you believe you have an inferior product?"

Well, yeah, that too.

This is how I pitched my new show, "Woke Up One Early Morning Blues," to the Programming Director at WRFL:

"The show will explore the many facets of pre-war blues, from proto-blues like work songs, call & response, & shouts, to popular female blues vocalists of the 1920s, to country blues from Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, St. Louis, Kansas City, & Chicago (all over, really).  Included will be lots of crossover material, since proto-country music, ragtime, & early jazz intersected with early blues."

It's happening from six to seven am, right before Self Help Radio, this coming Friday.

I come by my love of this music mostly accidentally.  I wanted, many years ago, to "educate" myself in early jazz, & liked schmaltzy jazzy pop from the 1920s as well as Dixieland, & was totally schooled by the brilliance that is Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives & Sevens.  As I was digging around, though, I saw those early jazz performers not only called many of their numbers "blues," but they played with blues artists - most notably the female performers who were the face of the blues for most of the 1920s.  It didn't take much of a leap to find out that the fellow who's playing guitar on that Bessie Smith track also makes his own blues music, & suddenly I'm tumbling into the Delta by way of New Orleans & New York City.

I love an art form - a musical genre - finding itself.  It seemed like, in those days, anything was possible.  & that's what I hope to explore on the show.

But man, I'd hate to have to try to promote it.  I'll keep it quiet on Friday mornings for the time being.