The Lost Child joined WBHM’s weekend program lineup on October 19, 2024. The show is now being distributed through PRX by WBHM.

The Lost Child is a downhome roots music radio hour broadcast weekly from the Southern Music Research Center in Birmingham, Alabama. Join host Burgin Mathews for a wide-ranging mix of rhythm and blues, honky-tonk country, old-time fiddle and banjo, boogie-woogie piano, rockabilly, gospel, swing, soul, and more.

About the name: In a nod to the show’s regional roots, The Lost Child takes its name from an old west Alabama fiddle tune, first recorded in 1928 by brothers Charlie and Ira Stripling in a makeshift studio in Birmingham’s Bankhead Hotel.

About the host: Burgin Mathews is a writer, radio host, and founding director of the Southern Music Research Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to the documentation and preservation of the many musical expressions and experiences of the American South (www.southernmusicresearch.org). He is the author of Magic City: How the Birmingham Jazz Tradition Shaped the Sound of America (2023) and co-author, with Frank “Doc” Adams, of Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man (2012).

Get in touch at [email protected].