Let It Roll Podcast

Irving Berlin Defined American Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.11

Nate Wilcox — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:00:42 GMT

Host 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.

The episode starts before “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and that is deliberate. Berlin came up writing “ethnic songs,” the era’s fad for numbers voiced as German, Italian, Jewish or African American characters, mocking and celebrating in the same breath. His own “Oh! How That German Could Love” is one of them, and what Kaplan hears in it is a young writer already having his way with a form rather than serving it.

From there: the ragtime controversy and what “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” actually did; the 1933 revue “As Thousands Cheer,” where a comic sketch ended and the curtain came down carrying a newspaper headline about a lynching, straight into Ethel Waters singing “Supper Time”; the real blowback against “God Bless America” when it was introduced; the war years, the South Pacific tours at genuine risk, and the depression and hospitalisation that followed; and the long reclusive coda, including the hundredth birthday celebration he did not attend.

The losses run underneath all of it. Berlin wrote “When I Lost You” for his first wife, who died shortly after their honeymoon. His second marriage, to Ellin Mackay, was newspaper catnip; he lost a fortune in the crash and signed the royalties of “Always” over to her.

James Kaplan came back to Let It Roll twice more, for his two volumes on Frank Sinatra — so this is the first of three.

“Irving Berlin: New York Genius” is published by Yale University Press.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Irving Berlin, “Oh! How That German Could Love” - Berlin himself, singing his own 1910 song
Bing Crosby and Al Jolson, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”
Fred Astaire, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” - the 1946 version, from the film “Blue Skies”
Frank Sinatra, “When I Lost You” - from All Alone (1962)

There’s one more thing worth noticing about that record. When Berlin wrote “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in 1929 it was about Black Harlem — the well-to-do strolling “up on Lenox Avenue,” the “high browns from down the levee,” Lulu Belle spending her last two bits. For the 1946 film he rewrote it. Lenox Avenue became Park Avenue and the rest of that world went with it. Same tune, and the song’s subject quietly turns white. Astaire is singing the second version.

The free cut ends at 35:18, just after the Astaire. Free listeners get three of the four records; the Sinatra and the whole last third are behind the paywall.

This episode originally dropped in 2020.

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

Let It Roll is dedicated to the memory of Ed Ward, Russell Thomas and Danny Park.

HOW TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE IN YOUR OWN PODCAST APP

Paid subscribers get the complete episode. It doesn’t come through Apple Podcasts or Spotify - those carry the free preview. To get the full-length episodes in whatever app you already use, set up your private feed:

1. Go to letitrollpodcast.substack.com and open your subscription page

2. Scroll down to Private podcast feed

3. Click Set up podcast and copy the link

4. Paste it into your podcast app - in Apple Podcasts that’s

Library -> ... -> Add a Show by URL

That link is yours alone, and every new full-length episode lands in it automatically. Or skip all that and use the Substack app - sign in and everything’s already there.

Pioneering Gospel Composers: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.10

Nate Wilcox — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 17:01:22 GMT

Host 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.

Tindley was writing and publishing in Philadelphia before there was a gospel industry to publish into. He was the first African American to bring out an original song collection of his own, and the songs travelled far past the church: Elvis Presley recorded his “Stand By Me” — not the Ben E. King song, which came later and was influenced by it — and Washington Phillips cut “Take Your Burden to the Lord and Leave It There.”

Lucie Campbell wrote for the National Baptist Convention and shaped what a generation of singers sang. Garrett and Nate get into her suspicion of blues and popular music as corrupting, and the young singers she found and pushed forward anyway.

Along the way: the holiness and Pentecostal movements and the Azusa Street revival, the Jubilee style that came out of Fisk and what it was trying to smooth away, lining out and why it survives in worship music now, and how these songs reached Ernest Tubb, the Carter Family, Wilson Pickett and Mahalia Jackson.

The book under discussion is “We’ll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers,” edited by Bernice Johnson Reagon.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Washington Phillips, “Take Your Burden to the Lord and Leave Them There” - written by Charles Tindley
Elvis Presley, “Stand By Me” - written by Charles Tindley
Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers, “End of My Journey (He’ll Understand, He’ll Say Well Done)” - written by Lucie Campbell
Marion Williams and the Stars of Faith, “In the Upper Room” - written by Lucie Campbell

This episode originally dropped in 2022.

We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter and calling it Let It Roll: From the Beginning….to the End.

Let It Roll is dedicated to the memory of Ed Ward, Russell Thomas and Danny Park.

HOW TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE IN YOUR OWN PODCAST APP

1. Go to letitrollpodcast.substack.com and open your subscription page

2. Scroll down to Private podcast feed

3. Click Set up podcast and copy the link

4. Paste it into your podcast app - in Apple Podcasts that’s

Library -> ... -> Add a Show by URL

That link is yours alone, and every new full-length episode lands in it automatically. Or skip all that and use the Substack app - sign in and everything’s already there.

Ted Gioia on The Birth of Jazz in New Orleans: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.9

Nate Wilcox — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:01:09 GMT

Ted Gioia returns to discuss “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.

Also: Jelly Roll Morton, reclaimed as a serious figure in American music rather than a bragging pimp with a revolver and a flashy wardrobe. And James Reese Europe — a major figure who probably should not be reduced to the jazz tradition at all, because so much of what he did sits outside and beyond it.

And Ted’s argument about what the music actually is: that jazz is the art of living in the moment, that spontaneity is its whole essence, and that this is inseparable from what it has cost the people who played it.

Which brings the episode to Louis Armstrong — the greatest living improviser of his era, the culmination of New Orleans jazz and the end point of it, because he laid the framework for everything that came after.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Basile Barès, “Los Campanillas” — a 19th century New Orleans composer, born enslaved. This particular piece went unpublished, so almost nobody heard it in his lifetime. The Habanera rhythm of Cuba is already there in it, in the city’s music, before jazz.
Charley Patton, “Pony Blues”
James Reese Europe playing W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues”
Jelly Roll Morton playing Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress This episode originally dropped in 2021. We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter.

The Let It Roll From the Beginning… series is a relaunch of Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter for the first time.

The First Recording Stars: Enrico Caruso, Bert Williams and Al Jolson: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.8

Nate Wilcox — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 17:00:54 GMT

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses minstrelsy and blackface and includes an 1890s recording by George Washington Johnson, presented as historical evidence. Racial slurs occur in the billing given to the performer and in the discussion around it.

In this episode, author Peter Doggett and host Nate Wilcox continue their discussion of “Electric Shock: From the Gramophone to the iPhone – 125 Years of Pop Music,” the second of two episodes on the book.

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.

Listen to the full Let It Roll archive — 500+ episodes and 500+ hours — at letitrollpodcast.substack.com

Dolly Parton Had A Vision Of Superstardom Beyond Nashville: Interview with Alanna Nash, Let It Roll Season 9, Episode 9

Nate Wilcox — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 22:49:17 GMT

In this episode, author Alanna Nash and host Nate Wilcox discuss “Dolly: The Biography,” one of the first critical biographies ever written about a country superstar — and what Nashville made of it.

Nate and Alanna discuss Dolly Parton’s humble origins and her almost supernatural drive; the evening at her first house outside Nashville that produced both “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” in a single writing session; what it actually took to get out from under Porter Wagoner, who had her tied to his publishing company every way a person can be tied; the phone call Chet Atkins made to Nash, out of the blue, to correct one line in her book; why Nashville spent years convinced her husband Carl Dean did not exist; how she got to every joke about herself before anybody else could; and the time capsule at her Tennessee resort holding a song nobody will hear until she turns 100.

Alanna Nash has interviewed Dolly Parton across four decades. She is also the author of “The Colonel,” the definitive book on Tom Parker, and a longtime friend of this show.

If you want more country, there is a lot of it here. CountryRoll is an eight-part run with music writer James Porter following Ken Burns’ “Country Music” series, and the archive also holds Joe Nick Patoski on Willie Nelson across three episodes (1st one, 2nd one, 3rd one) Peter Guralnick on Sun Records across two (1st one, 2nd one) Barry Mazor on Jimmie Rodgers and Ralph Peer, Cary Ginnell on Bob Wills and his mentor Milton Brown, the late Travis D. Stimeling on the Nashville Sound, and Alanna Nash again on Colonel Tom Parker.

Let It Roll is a history of commercial music from the Renaissance forward, with a focus on the long American century (1917-2026). Listen to the incredible original series of 350+ hour-long interviews with the authors who wrote the books — organized by mini-series, genre, era, co-host and guest - plus hundreds of others where it’s just fans talking about the music they love.

Edison's Phonograph vs. the Gramophone: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.7

Nate Wilcox — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:03:30 GMT

In this episode, author Peter Doggett and host Nate Wilcox discuss “⁠Electric Shock: From the Gramophone to the iPhone – 125 Years of Pop Music⁠.”

TRIGGER 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 discussio…

Beginning the Jazz Age: Vaudeville, WC Handy's Blues and Louis Armstrong's Signifying: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.6

Nate Wilcox — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:02:05 GMT

We’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…

The Vaudeville Roots of Country Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.5

Nate Wilcox — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:01:16 GMT

We’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.

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

Nate Wilcox — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:01:46 GMT

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.

How 19th Century American Music Got Hot: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.3

Nate Wilcox — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:01:45 GMT

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

In this episode, Nate is joined by Author, David Wondrich, to discuss his overlooked classic: “Stomp and Swerve: American Music Gets Hot, 1843–1924.” In this episode, David takes Nate way way back into the history of American music, long before the invent…

American Music Developed in the 19th Century NYC Underworld: Let It Roll From the Beginning...2.2

Nate Wilcox — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 19:41:55 GMT

We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, host Nate Wilcox interviews author Dale Cockrell about the musical ferment bubbling under the New York demimonde in the 1800s as described in his book ⁠”Everybody’s Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917”.⁠

This episode orig…

My Old Kentucky Home's Century of Myth: Let It Roll From the Beginning...Season 2.1

Nate Wilcox — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:01:08 GMT

We’re starting the second seasons of our Let It Roll relaunch in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, host Nate Wilcox interviews Emily Bingham, the author of ⁠”My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song⁠.”

Host Nate Wilcox asks Emily to detail the 150 years of myth-making around Stephen Foster’…

Francis Child Collected Ballads and Kicked Off a Craze: Let It Roll From the Beginning 1.12

Nate Wilcox — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:02:00 GMT

We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, host Nate Wilcox welcomes back Dave Thompson to continue discussing Dave’s book ⁠An Evolving Tradition: The Child Ballads in Modern Folk and Rock Music⁠.

This episode covers Francis James Child himself, how he came to collect British balla…

The most popular American Musician of the 1800s Connected Cuba & New Orleans: Let It Roll From the Beginning...to the End 1.11

Nate Wilcox — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:01:31 GMT

We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, host Nate Wilcox welcomes back Ned Sublette to continue the discussion about his book “⁠Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo.” ⁠

Ned and Nate discuss Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the most popular and important 19th Century Amer…

Scott, Pepys, Dickens - The Literary Roots of The Ballads: Let It Roll From the Beginning...to the End 1.10

Nate Wilcox — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:02:32 GMT

This episode covers the very oldest examples of The Child Ballads, with lyrical themes…

Beethoven Freed Music From the Tyranny of Patronage: Let It Roll From the Beginning...to the End 1.9

Nate Wilcox — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:01:08 GMT

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

In this episode, host Nate Wilcox welcomes Norman Lebrecht author of "⁠Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in One Hundred Pieces.⁠" Nate asks Norman about Beethoven's innovative business practices, his conflicts with royalty, his opposition to the sexual mores of …

In America African Culture Survived as The Spiritual: Let It Roll From the Beginning...to the End 1.8

Nate Wilcox — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:13:44 GMT

We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode hosts Nate Wilcox and Garrett Cash dive into the roots of African-American spirituals and Gospel’s deep roots in African musical practice.

The discussion is based on Robert Darden’s “⁠People Get Ready!: A New History of Black Gospel Music.⁠“

…

The Subversive Side of Classical Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning...to the End 1.7

Nate Wilcox — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 17:01:10 GMT

We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, host Nate Wilcox welcomes back Ted Gioia to continue their discussion of his book “⁠Music: A Subversive History⁠.”

Nate and Ted talk about the less than perfect realities of the lives of the great composers. From the murderous makers of mad…

Clave and the Contradance in the Colonial Caribbean: Let It Roll From the Beginning...to the End 1.6

Nate Wilcox — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:00:57 GMT

We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, Nate Wilcox and author Ned Sublette have the second of several conversations about Ned’s book “⁠⁠Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo⁠⁠.”

This episode looks at the musical developments in the colonial Caribbean as the Spani…

The Musics of Europe and Africa Collided in Cuba: From the Beginning….to the End 1.5

Nate Wilcox — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:02:44 GMT

We’re relaunching Let It Roll by reposting every episode in chronological order by subject matter. In this episode, Nate Wilcox and author Ned Sublette have the first of several conversations about Ned’s book “⁠⁠Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo⁠⁠.”

This episode focuses on the cultural collisions and cross-pollination triggered when E…