Hear Nick Spitzer’s 2002 interview with Bo Diddley on WAMU-FM 88.5 this Sunday, June 8, 2008. Rock n’ Roll icon Bo Diddley (Ellas Bates McDaniel) passed away on June 2nd. Bo Diddley lived here in Washington, DC in the early 1960s, worked with local musicians, and recorded the classic Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger in his basement at 2614 Rhode Island Avenue, NE.
Bo Diddley and American Routes Producer Matt Sakakeeny, March 2002 (photo: American Routes)
Nick Spitzer, host of the American Routes radio program, also lived here, on Capitol Hill, while producing his earlier Folk Masters program of live Wolf Trap concerts and interviews.
Nick Spitzer (Photo: American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)
American Routes, now in its tenth year, is produced on New Orleans’ Basin Street and distributed nationwide by American Public Media. This award-winning weekly program about America’s many musics blends thematic musical recordings with interviews, documentary features, and informed cultural narrative. The show is usually heard in Washington on WAMU’s HD2 channel, so this is an all-too-rare chance to hear it on “real radio,” WAMU-FM’s main frequency, 88.5.
In the history of American radio, no series has come close to Nick Spitzer’s American Routes in exploring the many streams of this nation’s music.”
– Nat Hentoff, Wall Street Journal
[Full disclosure: Nick and I were at school together and worked at Austin's KUT-FM.]
Top Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
