We go where the music leads us, first live at home with trumpeter Wendell Brunious and his New Orleans All Stars. Wendell is from a famed New Orleans Creole jazz family and is now the music director of Preservation Hall. Then we visit with the eccentric and witty songmaker and multi-instrumentalist Susan Werner with roots in rural Iowa. Susan’s stories in song are comedic and serious takes on religion, queerness, climate change and social responsibility. Plus words and music from Big Mama Thornton, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Cash and the Five Satins.

This week on American Routes we spin some shellac and wax nostalgic with the iconic cartoonist, musician and record collector Robert Crumb, who’ll share with us his love of musical times gone by. Then we talk to educator and vinyl aficionado Jerry Zolten about the story of Paramount Records, started by a furniture manufacturer, whose recorded legacy is now contained in two swank suitcases.

This week on American Routes, we dip into crossover currents of country music sung by Black American performers, including Ray Charles, Ike and Tina Turner, and Fats Domino. We’ll also hear white musicians influenced by Black music: Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Dylan. Then, it’s the Baton Rouge Blues legacy, with recordings from Buddy Guy, Slim Harpo, Silas Hogan, Tabby Thomas and the late harmonica man Raful Neal. Plus a live performance from Raful Neal’s son, Kenny Neal, a mouth harp and guitar player, now the senior statesman and artist from the Baton Rouge Blues scene.

It’s New Orleans jazz clarinet in street parades and clubs. We’ll hear clarinet in the hands of past and present legends: George Lewis, Sidney Bechet, Dr. Michael White and Aurora Nealand, plus a conversation with a sometime New Orleans clarinet virtuoso, Evan Christopher. Then, a live cultural exchange between French Louisiana and West Africa with singer, percussionist and dancer Sidiki Conde from Guinea and zydeco accordionist, cultural historian and sometime alligator wrangler, Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes.