Wow! Yesterday was WWOZ at it's best.

As I traveled the last leg of a grueling 1,200 mile trip to Baltimore yesterday, I was accompanied by a beautiful hitchhiker - the WWOZ Iphone application.  A hitchhiker who told amazing stories and played great music in the form of Michael Dominici with Bunny Mathews and Billy Delle with Chubby Checker.  350 miles melted away.  

Last night I parked the car, watered and fertilized the dogs and tuned in to WWOZ once more.  Road weary or not, they'll be no sleep for awhile - David Kunian is lighting the studio board on fire with "Still Singing the Blues."   A high quality documentary about three blues musicians living along Interstate 10 between New Orleans and Lafayette.

Carol Fran, Harvey Knox and Little Freddie King - these are our musicians. Our cultural treasures. They're locals who've missed the national spotlight and are cursed by the local media because they don't have a national following.  

Outside of the Europeans and WWOZ, these treasures are today's "the invisible men."  Some unfortunate day, a hip obituary writer will tells us what we missed and the culture vultures turned necrophiliacs will hear the cue for a round of self-serving ex post facto tributes.   Tributes that begs the question, "Where was the appreciation when these musicians were amongst us?"

Ziglar and Yeoman's documentary is that appreciation.  A rare in-depth production by these two Ken Burns of audio documentarians.  Thank you David Kunian for putting this on air and Barry Yeoman and Richard Zigler for allowing us to stop and enjoy the roses amongst us.

Jamie Dell'Apa

Saturday midnight until Sunday 3am