Chris Smither: The Acoustic Bluesman and "Surprise, Surprise"

A fingerpicking bluesman raised in New Orleans wrote a dryly funny song about a stock market crash.

WURN-DB · U-Rock® Network — HQ · 2026-10-13

Chris Smither: The Acoustic Bluesman and "Surprise, Surprise"

Photo: Anthony Pepitone / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chris_Smither_-_Joe%27s_Pub_9-29-06_Photo_by_Anthony_Pepitone.jpg

Chris Smither is an American folk and blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. U-Rock® has logged 570 plays of "Surprise, Surprise." (The station's library lists him as "chris smithers.")

New Orleans roots

According to Wikipedia, Smither was born in Miami in 1944 and grew up in New Orleans, where his father taught at Tulane University. He got his first guitar in Paris, a gift from his father, and in 1960 he and two friends won a folk "Battle of the Bands" at the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans. Wikipedia says his music draws deeply from the blues, American folk music, and modern poets and philosophers.

"Surprise, Surprise"

"Surprise, Surprise" is from Time Stands Still (2009), which NPR called his 11th studio album. When he opened his tenth appearance on Mountain Stage with it, NPR described it as "a topical song about the anniversary of the great Stock Market crash of 1929," delivered with Smither's "deft finger-picking and foot-tapping" and "understated, matter-of-fact vocals." The photo here is from Joe's Pub in New York, 2006.

Why it matters on U-Rock®

Chris Smither plays fingerpicked acoustic blues, and "Surprise, Surprise" is about a market crash.

U-Rock® play data: 570 plays logged across the BROADCAST and CORE histories (2026-07-02 to 2026-10-12), using the higher of the two logs.

Sources 1. Wikipedia, "Chris Smither" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Smither 2. NPR, "Chris Smither On Mountain Stage" (17 Aug 2010) — https://www.npr.org/2010/08/17/120064114/chris-smither-on-mountain-stage 3. Wikimedia Commons, "Chris Smither – Joe's Pub 9-29-06 (Anthony Pepitone)" — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chris_Smither_-_Joe%27s_Pub_9-29-06_Photo_by_Anthony_Pepitone.jpg 4. U-Rock® BROADCAST (AzuraCast) and CORE (airplay_spins) play logs

← Back to U-Rock.today