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00000176-4e34-d3bc-a977-4f7c3a150000On Shasta Serenade, host Barry Hazle mixes up an eclectic brew of Americana, blues, rockabilly, folk, bluegrass and timeless standards from his perch in Oak Run. Shasta Serenade airs Saturdays at 12 p.m.

The Shasta Serenade

This week the Shasta Serenade opens with Marcia Ball’s cover of Randy Newman’s classic “Louisiana 1927.” It seems every few years residents of the Mississippi Delta get their teeth kicked in by flooding, and this year they’ve experienced at least a 500-year event. Just thinking about the loss of life, not to mention the loss of one’s home and treasures  affects us deeply. Newman’s song captures that feeling of loss and defeat in the face of Mother Nature’s relentless force. We continue with our exploration of Americana with an eclectic selection of blue, rock, folk and popular music.

08.20.2016_shasta_serenade_hour_2.mp3
Listen to Shasta Serenade Part 2

    

Barry was a foundling in an old adobe in Southern California, adopted by nomadic Polish Gypsies, and lived with them until the age of 50. He has had no formal schooling, but learned to play the fiddle by the age of five. Throughout his early years, one could find him fiddling away in the foothills of Northern California tending his Lithuanian goats, making cheese and goat meat Kielbasa. He was renowned for his sheepherder’s bread making. He accidentally baked a rock into a particularly delicious loaf of bread, on which the chief of the gypsy clan broke a bicuspid. The clan seized his shepherd's cane and the Chief broke it in half tossing the parts to the ground. Barry was thus humiliated, and banished for life from the only family he had ever known. (Later, Barry sold the recipe for the Kielbasa to the NHL for a small fortune – they use it in the manufacturing of hockey pucks).