641 episodes
The First Recording Stars: Enrico Caruso, Bert Williams and Al Jolson: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 2.8
2026-08-28 | 59 mins.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 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 letitrollpodcast@gmail.com
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Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices- 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 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 letitrollpodcast@gmail.com
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
2026-08-24 | 42 mins.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 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 letitrollpodcast@gmail.com
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- 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.
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 letitrollpodcast@gmail.com
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
2026-08-19 | 42 mins.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.
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 letitrollpodcast@gmail.com
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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About Let It Roll
"Let it Roll" is a podcast about the history of popular music from the 19th Century to the 21st. Proud part of Pantheon - the podcast network for music lovers.
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