Hazel Schlueter: Bluegrass in New Orleans on WWOZ

Hazel Schlueter

When two Texas brothers, Jerry and Walter Brock, thought New Orleans needed a community-based radio station, they went to work to organize one in the mid-1970s. They chose the call letters WWOZ (90.7 FM) to reference The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In the 1939 movie, the Wizard tells Dorothy to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” which to the Brocks meant that attention should be given to program content over the on-air personalities.

When they began putting together the station, the Brocks went all around the city listening to music. New Orleans has always been a melting pot of sorts, and it was important to the Brock brothers that all music in the city was represented on the grassroots community station. New Orleans had plenty of world-class music in all genres.

One of the genres represented was bluegrass, and it didn’t take long for the Brocks to discover Hazel Schlueter and her husband, Larry Schlueter, bluegrass musicians in New Orleans. The couple was at the first volunteer meeting for the station, held upstairs at Tipitina’s, the station’s first home. The Brocks were looking for local talent to help launch the station, and Hazel and Larry were game. They became some of the original “OZilians.”

The station was important to Hazel, not only because she was a musician but because she was born and raised in New Orleans – she is the sixth generation of her family to live in the Crescent City. “As a kid, I listened to WSM (broadcasted from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville) and the Louisiana Hayride (broadcasted from the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium). I heard some of the top acts of the day.” As a teenager in the 1950s, Hazel went to summer camp in Bristol, Virginia. “It was the golden age of bluegrass. All the counselors at the camp had grown up around that music.”

Hazel attended college at Cornell University in New York, where some girls in her corridor were interested in folk and bluegrass music and played autoharps and guitars. “Many of the girls had been to camps in Upstate New York where Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger taught.”

Like many girls, Hazel had taken piano lessons as a child. “I started playing the baritone ukulele when I was in junior high.” She also took advantage of the opportunities to hear live music while at Cornell. “I remember when bands like The Greenbriar Boys came to campus.”  

When Hazel graduated from college, she returned to New Orleans. “I read a book by Bill C. Malone, a musician and historian who wrote books on country music.” Malone authored Country Music U.S.A., the first definitive academic history of country music, in 1968. He did academic work at Tulane University in New Orleans, and Hazel listened to the radio show he hosted, playing post-war music, before he moved to Austin, Texas. “I also played bass, then mandolin, in Bill Malone’s band, The Hill Country Ramblers. When he moved back to Texas, I formed my own band, The Delta Ramblers.”

A fan of old-time and pre-war music, Hazel was hungry for more. When the Brock brothers “discovered” her, she became one of the first radio show hosts on WWOZ. The station signed on for the first time on December 4, 1980. Hazel has introduced WWOZ listeners to old-time, country, and bluegrass music on her show, The Old-Time Country and Bluegrass Show, for 44 years. The show airs each Sunday from 10 am to noon. She plays gospel, older bluegrass, and newer bluegrass. Sometimes, her show has a theme, such as songs about flowers one week and birds another, during spring. One week, she played songs that mentioned the Gulf of Mexico.

Hazel also interviews artists on her show. “I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe, The Osborne Brothers, Jim & Jesse, and many others. There are so many of them who are now gone.” She invites people to come on the show to be interviewed live in the studio. Many artists will also play live in the studio. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hazel did many interviews via Zoom. She has played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival for 34 years and often meets artists and asks them if she can interview them. “Years ago, I interviewed Pete Seeger. I just walked up to him and asked if I could interview him, and he graciously agreed.” She did the same with Tim O’Brien. “He was so personable. He said he and his wife listen to the show.”

Her name on the radio is Hazel the Delta Rambler, which ties back to her band’s name, Hazel and the Delta Ramblers. The band plays area festivals, with Hazel on mandolin and her husband, Larry, on bass fiddle. Scott Kropog plays guitar for the band, and Dan Wernz rounds out the lineup on banjo. “We have been playing together for 45 years,” says Hazel.

At the inaugural New Orleans Bayou Bluegrass Festival, Hazel was presented with a plaque declaring her an honorary member of the Delta Hayride Association. It is inscribed, “In appreciation for everything you do for Bluegrass Music,”

You can listen to Hazel’s show on WWOZ online—there, you will find a two-week archive—or you can listen to the show live on Sundays from 10 a.m. to noon Central Time.