KMRC, The Swamp Dog

In the 1950s in Louisiana, a lot of musicians began playing rock 'n' roll. Nothing unusual there, as this was happening all over the country. But in Louisiana, these artists created their own distinctive, emotion-laden sound in a genre that has become known as swamp pop.

Along with Cajun, zydeco, jazz and New Orleans R&B, swamp pop is one of the great contributions to popular music to come out of the fertile state of Louisiana. It is probably the least known outside the boundaries of the state, though.

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Rather than try to explain swamp pop, I will give you two links. First, there is this Wikipedia article, which is a pretty accurate summary of its style, history, key performers and some of its signature recordings. Second, here you can listen to Cookie and the Cupcakes singing "Mathilda," the quintessential swamp pop song; if you do not like this, your prospects for being a swamp pop fan are slim to none!

Although a number of swamp pop records became national hits (e.g., "I'm Leaving It Up to You" by Dale and Grace,"Just A Dream" by Jimmy Clanton, "Sea Of Love" by Phil Phillips), I never realized that this was considered its own genre until I heard a radio program about it. Then I began searching out the more obscure records and performers -- obscure outside of Louisiana, that is.

I am forever grateful to some friends who took me to a club in Lafayette, Lousiana to hear Warren Storm, one of the original swamp pop performers, play. The name of the club escapes me, but it was an interesting place -- a building divided into two big sections. You could pay to go in one side and hear Cajun music, or pay to go in the other and hear swamp pop.

I am also grateful to have discovered KMRC, "the Swamp Dog," and its Internet stream. KMRC is an actual radio station (1430 AM) in Morgan City, Louisiana, that plays swamp pop music almost exclusively. In this it might be unique. As well as the standard swamp pop classics, both in their original renditions as well as in interpretations by current artists, KMRC plays songs that pay tribute to the joys and miseries of working on the offshore oil rigs, a nice touch of local flavor.

Of the 13,000+ stations available to me on my Internet radio device, I currently have about 300 tagged as favorites. Out of these I've created a "#1 Favorites" list for quick access to the ones I enjoy listening to the most. That list has 7 stations on it at this time, and KMRC is one of them.

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Big Blue Swing

Big Blue Swing is an Internet-only stream, but, strangely, the people behind it (whoever they are) don't do very much to make people aware of it -- even on the Internet. Their web page, hosted on MySpace, is pretty bad. They do have their own domain, apparently: www.bigblueswing.com. But as of this writing, that domain simply redirects to the MySpace page. I don't think I would have ever discovered it if not for the fact that it was programmed into the vTuner database, which my particular Internet radio device uses.

This is all too bad, because Big Blue Swing's stream is high quality and consists of one of the best mixes of big band, swing and blues music that I have ever heard. The artists and records seem to span from the 1940s to the present, with an emphasis on the "swing" in everything that is played. You think you have heard this genre before, but Big Blue Swing gives a unique twist to it that is hard to pin down. Imagine music that is nostalgic and yet completely up-to-date and hip, if you can.

Since it's an Internet-only stream, there are few interruptions to the music. Every several songs, a recorded announcer comes on admonishing you to get up and dance, even if you're at work. Other than that it's song after song.

My only (minor) complaint is that the station's playlist can start to sound repetitive if you listen for hours on end. In fact, if you listen every day you will hear many songs more than once (or twice, or three times ... etc.). Thankfully, the order of songs is not repetitive, so you'll be continually surprised to hear what comes next. And assuming you like this kind of music to begin with, you'll come to love so many of the songs played on Big  Blue Swing that you'll look forward to them rolling around once more.

WPAQ, Voice of the Blue Ridge

Mount Airy, North Carolina is known as the boyhood home of Andy Griffith and also (quite naturally) the real town upon which the fictional TV town of Mayberry was modeled. For old-time music fans, it is also known as the home of WPAQ radio.

WPAQ first went on the air in 1948, the embodiment of a vision held by a young Ralph Epperson. Epperson was dedicated to promoting, encouraging and preserving the authentic music of the Blue Ridge mountain region. To that end he invited local musicians to come to the studio, where they would play live on the air -- while Epperson, often, was recording them for posterity.

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Ralph Epperson passed away a few years ago, but his heirs at WPAQ have hewed true to his original vision. This is an authentic country station, through and through. In addition to the bluegrass, old-time and gospel music, the announcers give the news, do charmingly less-than-slick commercials for local businesses, and even read out the obituaries.

The crown of the WPAQ lineup is undoubtedly "The Merry-Go-Round," a show of live music held each Saturday on the stage of a local theater. If you're ever in Mt. Airy on a Saturday, you can drop in and enjoy it in person, for free.

Although I currently live in North Carolina, I'm a little too far outside of WPAQ's broadcasting footprint to pick it up on a regular radio at its dial position of 740 AM. But thanks to Internet radio I can now listen to a WPAQ stream whenever I want.

By the way, if you have a standalone Internet radio device that uses the vTuner station database, you have me to thank for WPAQ's availability to you. Well, I can't really swear to that, but it's possible.

You see, I was disappointed to find, at the time I acquired my vTuner-based Internet radio (an Aluratek), that WPAQ was not in vTuner. Although Aluratk's version of vTuner does have a facility for adding your own streams to the radio, it's a little confusing and doesn't always work. Mainly this has to do with the variety of formats used for streaming radio -- some simply won't work in vTuner.

Long story short is that I finally gave up on adding the WPAQ stream to my radio. Instead I settled for requesting that the vTuner folks add it to their database for me, and of course for others who would enjoy this type of station. I didn't really expect that much would come of this request, but lo and behold, a couple of weeks later I was checking vTuner and there in its list of "new stations" was WPAQ!

Thank you, vTuner and Aluratek. And thank you, WPAQ, for keeping a great radio tradition alive.

Welcome to the Internet Radio Buzz

Internet radio is better than ever now, especially with the advent of standalone devices that receive streaming radio -- devices that really work! All you need, generally -- in addition to the radio itself -- is a wi-fi connection.

My Aluratek radio that I received for Christmas is capable of receiving (at current count) about 13,900 stations from all around the world. No matter what my preference in music or format on a given day, I can find a station that matches my tastes perfectly.

Of course, there's a lot of dreck out there -- "dreck" defined very subjectively by me as anything that is overdone and oversaturated in our society already. And by that I mean hip-hop, 90% of modern country, and much of current top-40. So there, I've put my prejudices out on the table.

Aside from those genres, my tastes are wide and eclectic. My purpose in this blog will be to report on some of the more unusual or interesting, or just plain excellent, streams that I have discovered in wandering the Internet radio dial. Keep in mind as you read this blog, that these are all streams that you can find and listen to right on your computer, if you do not have a standalone radio device (I'll be giving the URLs as part of my reviews).

Thanks for visiting me and I hope you will return often.

Steve Smith