Wherever the Route Takes You
Champion of American music Nick Spitzer is a master of storytelling, preservation, and transmission
Every week via 380 public radio stations, Nick Spitzer transports his three-quarters of a million listeners to the roots and branches of American music. Over the past twenty-five years, the radio host, folklorist, and academic has produced nearly seven-hundred episodes of his two-hour radio program American Routes. Based in New Orleans, the show has featured more than 1,200 of Spitzer’s interviews with music stars the likes of Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, and Dolly Parton, and lesser-known-but-always-significant makers of American music and culture.
Currently a professor of anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans, Spitzer lives in the city with his wife, Tanja, and their twenty-month-old son, Will. The recipient of many prestigious awards across the span of his career, Spitzer’s latest accolade is this nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts: in February, the National Endowment for the Arts named him one of its nine 2023 National Heritage Fellows.
“The 2023 National Heritage Fellows exemplify what it means to live an artful life,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson in the announcement. “Their rich and diverse art forms connect us to the past, strengthen our communities today, and give hope to future generations in ways that only the arts can. Our nation is strengthened through their meaningful practices, expressions, and preservation of traditional artistry.”
Spitzer, 72, will accept the NEA’s Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship, which includes a $25,000 award, at a ceremony at the Library of Congress on September 29. The Hawes award recognizes an individual “who has made a significant contribution to the preservation and awareness of cultural heritage.”
Spitzer learned of the fellowship during a phone call from U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy. “I tend to be talkative, but I couldn’t speak for hours after that,” he recalled. “My wife said, ‘I’ve never seen you so quiet.’ I was stunned into silence. I couldn’t believe it happened to me.”
Spitzer’s congratulators included family members of traditional musicians he’d worked with in southwest Louisiana. “Descendants congratulated me,” he said. “I’d always told them, ‘Without your grandma or grandpa, I would not have done anything valuable.’ Dewey Balfa and Alphonse ‘Bois Sec’ Ardoin helped make me a folklorist. More than any of my graduate-school instructors, they were my teachers.”
Born in New York City and raised in rural Connecticut, Spitzer grew up with AM radio, the medium that introduced him to Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and other early rock and roll stars, many of whom he’d later interview for American Routes. Prophetically, he also loved listening to French-language hockey games from Montreal. “Radio has been a magic medium for me,” he said. Later, his experience producing cultural programming for television—working with outlets that included CBS Sunday Morning, Nightline, ABC News with Peter Jennings, PBS’s Great Performances, CNN, and the BBC—confirmed his preference for audio mediums.
“I didn’t want to be in people’s houses with a crew of twelve people, turning bright lights on elderly, or shy, people, doing television,” he said. “I’d rather sit with one microphone, have a good conversation, in low light, and turn that into radio. When the microphone fades away, we tap into the oral tradition, and the aural tradition. Public radio listeners feel the intimacy.”
During his teen years in the 1960s, Spitzer’s taste veered to the Beatles, Bob Dylan, country music, and jazz. In 1969, during his junior year at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, he joined the staff at the school’s radio station, WXPN-FM. “Going to the WXPN record library, I read album notes about zydeco and reggae music, John Coltrane, Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt. Radio became the medium where I learned how to create programs that hold people.”
After graduation from Penn with a B.A. in anthropology in 1972, Spitzer joined the on-air talent at Philadelphia’s WMMR-FM. His two years at the station ended badly. “They pushed me out for playing too much Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters,” he said. “They wanted me to play Foghat and Ten Years After versions of the blues.”
“I’d rather sit with one microphone, have a good conversation, in low light, and turn that into radio. When the microphone fades away, we tap into the oral tradition, and the aural tradition. Public radio listeners feel the intimacy.” —Nick Spitzer
Leaving Philadelphia and WMMR in 1974, Spitzer went looking for America. He calls that six-month sojourn his “Woody Guthrie-meets-Jack Kerouac” quest. Stopping for a month in southwest Louisiana during the trip, he stayed with Cajun fiddler and French-Louisiana culture bearer Dewey Balfa—earning his keep by feeding Balfa’s sheep and cattle; moving merchandise at his host’s discount furniture store; cutting grass on the family farm; and dispensing checks to Balfa’s insurance clients. Most importantly, Balfa encouraged the blooming folklorist to visit the area’s Afro-French residents. Spitzer met Black Creole accordionist 'Bois Sec' Ardoin at a white music club and, at Ardoin’s invitation, he attended a dance at a Black club the following day.
“I went to that club and never looked back,” Spitzer said. “And that informs American Routes. They taught me how to understand Creolization as a term, and a process that can be applied to everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis to Ray Charles, Santana, and others who combine cultural forms and create something new.”
Though Spitzer’s work with roots music became thoroughly eclectic, Spitzer’s time in Acadiana tied him to Louisiana indefinitely and forever came to define his work as a folklorist. His lifetime of illuminating the subject includes ongoing field and studio interviews with musicians and Creole community members; publishing articles in scholarly journals and mainstream publications; producing recordings and writing liner notes; directing the 1984 documentary ZYDECO: Creole Music and Culture in Rural Louisiana; his Ph.D dissertation, "Zydeco and Mardi Gras: Creole Identity and Performance Genres in Rural French Louisiana"; and presenting Creole musicians at the Library of Congress, National Folk Festival, and Carnegie Hall. Spitzer is currently assembling a “Creole Compendium” box set of his documentation of Creole communities in New Orleans, French Louisiana, and beyond.
While pursuing his M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, Spitzer participated in that city’s music scene as a host and producer at NPR affiliate KUT-FM and progressive country station KOKE-FM. “I made a little bit of a living, and I met Waylon (Jennings) and Willie (Nelson), Commander Cody, and all of the old cowboy singers,” he said. “I’ve always been lucky.”
In 1976, Spitzer graduated from the University of Texas with an M.A. in anthropology, specializing in folklore. Moving to Baton Rouge in 1978, he became Louisiana’s state folklorist. During his seven-year tenure, he founded the Louisiana Folklife Program; produced the five-LP Louisiana Folklife Recording Series; created the Louisiana Folklife Pavilion at the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans; and helped launch the Baton Rouge Blues Festival. His final year as state folklorist saw the publication of Louisiana Folklife: A Guide to the State.
In 1979, during his second year as state folklorist, the athletic twenty-nine-year-old noticed he’d become physically unable to finish a game of soccer. In addition to his breathing difficulties, he experienced a pain that pierced his chest and shoulders.
Exploratory surgery revealed a tumor, invasive in one lung, wrapped around the other, pressing against his heart. Spitzer endured radiation and many brutal rounds of chemotherapy. His oncologist, Dr. Frederic T. Billings, and a procession of visiting friends, faith healers, clergy from various denominations, and blues musicians helped him survive months of periodic stays in Baton Rouge General Hospital.
Spitzer’s hospital visitors included Tabby Thomas and Moses “Whispering” Smith. Although the blues musicians came to perform for their seriously ill fan, they refused to play the request he wanted to hear most of all: “I’ve Had My Fun If I Don’t Get Well No More.” Both of them feared the song’s lyrics would foretell Spitzer’s fate. He persisted, though, explaining that the Lightnin’ Hopkins classic would console him.
“They played it, and they cried,” Spitzer recalled. “I cried, too. And after I got well, Tabby bragged about it. I miss Tabby, Whispering Smith, and that whole blues scene in Baton Rouge.”
Barbara Sims—the LSU English instructor who worked with Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins at Sun Records in Memphis in the 1950s—was another visitor.
“So many people came to my room crying,” Spitzer remembered. “But Barbara did something nobody else did. When I was supposedly dying of cancer, she brought flowers from her yard, and sat quietly in the darkened room for two hours. I felt so much companionship.”
Spitzer’s second exploratory cancer surgery yielded good news. “When I came out of surgery, they were all smiling. They sent me home on Thanksgiving 1980, and I started to gain weight, and go back to life.”
“I always tell the artists: ‘We’re not 60 Minutes. We’re not here to deconstruct you. We’re here to celebrate you.’ In turn, the artists give more of themselves in any conversation.” —Nick Spitzer
Spitzer went on to become a senior folklife specialist at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D.C.; curate festival programs and create documentaries; direct and host NPR’s American Roots Independence Day Concert live broadcast from the National Mall/Washington Monument, as well as seven seasons of Folk Masters at Carnegie Hall. He returned to Louisiana in 1997, accepting a teaching position at the University of New Orleans. The following year, he launched his most famous project, American Routes.
“A lot of what I do is remind the public how creative and intelligent these artists are,” Spitzer said of the 25-year-old radio show that has introduced thousands of roots-music artists to millions of listeners. “I always tell the artists: ‘We’re not 60 Minutes. We’re not here to deconstruct you. We’re here to celebrate you.’ In turn, the artists give more of themselves in any conversation.”
Never a planner, Spitzer’s always followed his muse. “I didn’t do these things to get awards or credit,” he said. “I did things I thought were good to do, and things I wanted to do. Rather than be a doctor, a lawyer, or a businessman, I said: ‘I’ll be a folklorist and radio person, do it as well as I can, and hope for best.’ All these things were opportunities and a privilege to do. I took it seriously, and had a good time at the same time.”
Find upcoming episodes, and the entire American Routes archive at americanroutes.wwno.org.