About the Show
Hosted by Steve Cushing for over 40 years now, the focus of this award winning program is on the first fifty years of recorded Blues, starting with the very first Blues record, Crazy Blues by Mamie Smith recorded in 1920.
When historians and musicologists refer to Blues as Americas Root music, its the Blues recorded during this period to which they refer. These recordings serve as the basis for most of American popular music including Jazz, Gospel, Rhythm & Blues, Soul, and Rock & Roll. Imagine walking through the rooms that house the record collection at the Smithsonian Institution, the walls lined from floor to ceiling with shelves of Blues records – Blues from every era and stylistic school ever known. Blues Before Sunrise is the program that pulls the records off the shelf and plays them for you, profiling the figures, seminal and obscure, that shaped this music; helping to breathe life into these neglected pioneers of popular culture, tracing their development and highlighting their relevance down through the decades.
