Bölümler
-
A relic of the Cold War, this tune was composed in 1955 by Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy under the title “Leningrad Nights,” but later at the request of the Soviet Ministry of Culture was renamed "Moscow Nights" with corresponding changes to poet Mikhail Matusovsky’s lyrics.
For the first half dozen years of its life, the song was known primarily in the Soviet Union, where a young actor named Vladimire Troshin recorded it in 1956 for a scene in a documentary about Soviet athletic competition. Honestly, the film did nothing to promote the song, but thanks to radio broadcasts it gained popularity.
The melody hit the big time in the U.S. in November 1961 when trumpeter Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen recorded it under the title "Midnight in Moscow.” For the recording, Ball was inspired by an arrangement he heard by a Dutch jazz group called “The New Orleans Syncopators” who recorded the melody earlier that year.
Ball’s version peaked at No. 2 on both the U.S. and U.K. pop singles charts and spent three weeks at No. 1 on the American easy listening chart.
Chad Mitchell Trio Controversy
In 1962, at the height of the folk revival in the United States, “Moscow Nights” was recorded by The Chad Mitchell Trio on their popular live performance album At the Bitter End on Kapp Records.
And thereby hangs a tale, as reported by author Mike Murphy in his 2021 book We Never Knew Just What It Was: The Story of the Chad Mitchell Trio. When the album was released, the guys were on a three-month tour of Central and South America sponsored, not by the U.S. State Department, but rather by the American National Theater Academy.
That sponsorship became relevant when in mid-tour state department officials showed up and tried to supervise the shows. When the trio reached Rio de Janeiro, the singers were met by some surly officials from the U.S.’s Brazilian embassy. Following the performance, one of the newcomers hustled the guys into an empty room.
“What do you think you’re doing,” he said, “singing that Russian song?”
The group actually did several foreign language tunes. The parents of the trio’s Mike Kobluk, who had emigrated to Canada from Russia, had long loved Russian music and often helped their son phonetically learn native songs.
“Russian song?” said Chad. “You mean ‘Moscow Nights’? What’s wrong with it?”
“Don’t you understand what’s happening in the world?” the angry official said. “We’re here fighting the spreading influence of communism. And you think you’re going out to all the villages and sing an anti-American song?”
“It’s not an anti-American song,” Kobluk interjected. “It’s a song about friends having dinner in Moscow.”
“It’s Russian!” the official shouted.
As Murphy notes in his book, “Chad, whose fuse was shorter than either Mike or Joe (Frazier), responded accordingly. ‘Wait a minute. You can’t dictate what we sing or don’t sing. We’re not here representing the State Department.”
The official stomped out with ominous last words: “We’ll see about that.”
At all the subsequent stops, The Michell Trio continued to defiantly do “Moscow Nights.” Finally, in São Paulo, the State Department’s Jim Salyers — who himself spoke a little Russian — caught up with them and accompanied them for the next two weeks of the tour so he could closely listen each night.
After that, his verdict? “Love the song,” Salyers said, adding with a chuckle, “Keep doing it with your State Department’s blessing.” (He was not, incidentally, as happy with the group’s performing its controversial “The John Birch Society,” but that’s a story for another time.)
Pamela the Folksinger
As a young folksinger in college, Flood manager Pamela Bowen had her own special relationship with “Moscow Nights.”
A consummate Chad Mitchell Trio fan, Pamela devoted many hours to a close listening to the group’s albums. In particular, she painstakingly studied their performance of “Moscow Nights.” Her goal was to duplicate the trio’s precise pronunciation of Matusovsky’s lyrics so she could perform the same song at folk music shows at Marshall University, where she was a journalism student.
Pamela even brought the song to television when she performed it on a local talent show that aired in 1966. There her diligent research was recognized when a Russian-speaking member of the audience sought her out to complement not only her performance, but the accuracy of her hard-earned pronunciation. Alas, neither audio nor video of her performance survives.
Our Take on the Tune
Pamela had long retired her folksinging by time her Flood fellows took up “Moscow Nights,” so she could offer no guidance on those tricky Russian nouns, verbs and adjectives. Consequently, the tune today is an instrumental in The Flood oeuvre, drawing inspiration from Kenny Ball and all the jazz innovations that followed.
It all started last fall when Charlie, practicing his five-string, stumbled upon the old melody. When he shared it with the group, Danny Cox immediately found it offered lots of a stretching-out room. The tune — performed here at a recent rehearsal — is a welcome change of a pace on a busy night.
Another Date with Danny
Finally, if your Friday could use more of Dan Cox’s musical explorations, we’ve got you covered. Visit the Danny Channel on the free Radio Floodango music streaming service.
Click here to give it a listen!
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Roving thunderstorms did not deter a roomful of diehard Flood fans from coming out to party at Huntington’s good ol’ Bahnhof WVrsthau & Biergarten on Thursday night. And as usual, band manager Pamela Bowen was faithfully at a ringside table to capture some video.
These three tunes illustrate the diversity of the evening’s fare, opening with a century-old number that your sassy Grandpa probably sang, followed by a swinging instrumental on a 1940s jazz standard and wrapping up with a 1920s Charlie Poole tune that he had to have picked up in New Orleans.
Backstories on each of the songs have been covered in previous Flood Watch articles. Here are those links if you want to bone up in case there’s a pop quiz at the next Flood affair:
* “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone”
* “Opus One”
* “Didn’t He Ramble?”
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Eksik bölüm mü var?
-
If you grew up in the 1960s or ‘70s, it seemed like many of the songs on the radio were answering other songs on the radio.
Roger Miller sang, “King of the Road,” and Jody Miller answered it with “Queen of the House.”
Barry McGuire sang “Eve of Destruction,” only to be called out by a group named The Spokesmen with their "Dawn of Correction.”
Merle Haggard sang of the “Okie from Muskogee” and drew a prompt reply from The Youngbloods’ “Hippie from Olema.”
Big Names
Some famous songsmiths also penned answer songs. In 1966, for instance, Bob Dylan’s “4th Time Around” was a rather famous response to The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” of the previous year.
And Bob’s first hero, Woody Guthrie, is said to have written his greatest song, “This Land Is Your Land,” in 1940 as an answer to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” (In fact, Woody originally called his composition "God Blessed America for Me.”)
In 1959, one of Carole King’s first songs was one she wrote as a reply to Annette Funicello’s “Tall Paul.” It contained a classic line, “You can keep Tall Paul / I'll take Short Mort."
Meat Loaf wrote “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” in 1977 as an answer to Elvis Presley’s 1956 hit “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.”
And some artists even recorded answers to their own songs. In 1963, for instance, Lesley Gore released “It’s My Party,” followed by “Judy's Turn to Cry.” Both of the tunes appeared on Gore’s debut album I'll Cry If I Want To.
Country artists can get a bit edgy with their call and response. Loretta Lynn’s 1967 release of “Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” prompted a quick retort from Jay Lee Webb, called, "I Come Home A-Drinkin' (To a Worn-Out Wife Like You).”
And some answer songs turned into multi-player comic discourses. For instance, in 1972, The Last Poets’ "When the Revolution Comes” inspired Gil Scott-Heron to wax “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which in turn led to Roy Clark’s recording “The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka.”
The Flood’s Fav
Meanwhile, in the Floodisphere, the best-loved answer song comes from a pair of tunes written more than a hundred years ago.
As we reported here earlier, W.C. Handy’s 1915 classic “Yellow Dog Blues” — a melodic mainstay that reaches from the glory days of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong all the way to today’s trad jazz standard bearers — was actually composed as an answer to Shelton Brooks’ wonderful 1913 composition called, “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone.”
In recent back-to-back weekly rehearsals, The Flood has revisited both tunes. First came the Brooks original two weeks ago, then, last week, the guys turned to Handy’s dandy reply. In The Flood’s estimation, “Yellow Dog Blues” is the best of the pair. There are a lot of train songs out there, but none of them takes its riders quite as far as this one. Come along to where “the Southern cross the Yellow Dog!”
More, You Say?
Finally, if blues is your bag and you want to extend your Friday foray into Floodery, tune in the Blues Channel on the band’s free Radio Floodango music streaming service.
Click here to give it a spin.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Whenever we have fresh ears in The Flood’s band room, as we did last week, the newcomer’s first question often is, “What kind of music do you fellas play?”
No single easy answer is available, of course, but it is an opportunity for a show-and-tell — well, more show than tell, probably — demonstrating the storied diversity of band’s repertoire.
At last week’s gathering, for instance, in the first dozen minutes of the evening, the guys played across a spectrum, starting with an Irving Berlin tune, followed by a Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee blues, then a Hoagy Carmichael jazz standard, a Bob Dylan composition and a centuries-old fiddle tune.
When the boys wanted to bring out the jug band course for this eclectic repast, they turned to this tune from the head honcho of hokum, Mister Tampa Red.
About This Song
As reported here earlier, Shelton Brooks’ composition, “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone,” was recorded by Red on July 9, 1929, with Georgia Tom on piano and jazz singer Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon doing the vocal honors.
And, as also noted, Brooks’ piece inspired a famous “answer” song, W.C. Handy’s “Yellow Dog Blues,” which continued Shelton’s story by tracking down his elusive easy rider.
Our Take On the Tune
Around here, the best night of the week is whatever night we’re all getting together to pick. Everyone always comes in the room ready to rock. But some nights? Well, those night swing even more than usual.
At that session last week, for instance, Danny seemed to have a whole barrel of new riffs to try out on his guitar, and Jack was absolutely cooking on his snare and high-hat.
And, man, it seemed like Randy was rocking before he even got his bass out of the case. Just listen to how Randy’s walking bass line puts a strut and a glide in this great old tune from the Roarin’ Twenties.
Shoot, you can probably hear Charlie grinning while he’s singing.
Meanwhile…
Well, we’re now about a third of the way into the new year. If you’d like a Flood-centric progress report on how the year is suiting the band — and to further sample the group’s diverse musical tastes — check out the growing 2025 playlist in the free Radio Floodango music streaming service.
Click here to give it a spin.
And, of course, while you’ve got the time machine fired up, if you might as well tool on back to earlier periods of Floodery by visiting the “Hear by Year” section of the service, where annual playlist butons go back to 2009.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Napoleon never heard “Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine,” because, well, it’s not French. The tune might be Scottish. But probably not. Some say it’s an American march. Maybe Irish instead. Or not.
One thing is certain: Definitive derivation of old fiddle tunes is not the hill you’ll want to die on. Most of the best-loved melodies have at least a half dozen different names, each usually with its own equally murky history.
Whither
This particular tune is considered traditional, and the first part shows up in several melodies from Ireland such as “Centenary March" and "An Comhra Donn.”
A group called The Black Irish Band (who are from Sonora in California, so there’s that…) recorded the song in the late 1990s as the Scottish “New Caledonian March.” And, in fact, back in 1837 George Willig of Philadelphia published it as “Caledonian March.” (Guess it wasn’t “New” then….)
But the tune also is melodically similar to English hornpipes called "Durham Rangers" and "Sherwood Rangers."
Meanwhile in America, folklorist Samuel Bayard found the same melody was a common march tune in his primary collecting area of western Pennsylvania, circulating in the 1940s under various names, such as "Bruce's March" and "The Star of Bethlehem." A Keystone State musician told Bayard it was called "Ranahan's March," which he said commemorated a local bandmaster.
North Carolina Fiddler Mack Snoderly has played a slow, dirge-like version of it, and he calls it "Dying on the Field of Battle.”
But Bonaparte?
So, how the heck does Napoleon get into this tangled tale?
That was exactly the question pondered recently in an interesting bit of gab on an online discussion board called Banjo Hangout.
It all started when a visitor posted a message with the title, “Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine” and noted, “I was wondering which event the title of this tune implies.”
After a number of fits and starts in the replies from various readers, banjoist Don Borchelt got down to cases. Noting that Napoleon’s army did cross the Rhine in 1805 (in order to invade Austria and fight the battle of Austerlitz), Borchelt went on to say he didn’t think the song actually referred to any specific spot of history, pointing out that a number of fiddle tunes refer to Napoleon.
“As for the tune’s title,” he said, “the various Bonaparte titles — ‘Bonaparte's Retreat,’ ‘Napoleon Crossing the Rhine,’ ‘Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine,’ ‘Bonaparte Crossing the Alps,’ ‘Bonaparte's March,’ etc. — are often used interchangeably by fiddlers.
“The one I generally hear called ‘Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine’ is a tune pretty much of American origin,” Don concluded, “and the fiddlers back in the day probably had an imperfect knowledge of Napoleon's military history, in those dark centuries before Wikipedia.”
Our Take on the Tune
Maybe in the Floodisphere we’ll just give our version of the tune the title bestowed on it by our Danny Cox, who with a wink recently said, “Hey, let’s play that “Bonaparte Chewin’ a Rind.”
Actually, Flood old-timers first heard the melody 50 years ago this autumn when fiddlin’ Jim Strother played it with The Kentucky Foothill Ramblers at the September 1975 Bowen Bash.
It’s not known from where Jim got it, but for sure a few years earlier, in 1972, North Carolina’s Fuzzy Mountain String Band recorded a rendition that was popular among the hippy pickers of the day.
So, if you’d like to run the time machine back a half century and hear Strother’s playing that started this whole conversation, click the Play button on the bash legacy film below and move the slider up to 35:30.
More Song History?
Finally, if sorting out music history appeals to you, be sure to visit the Song Stories section of this newsletter, where we tackle the tales of dozens of tunes in The Flood’s very eclectic repertoire.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Randy Hamilton has brought so much to The Flood’s table in the past dozen years. As the late Joe Dobbs used to say, Randy’s bass is “the heartbeat of the band.”
In addition, Randy’s vocals — whether harmonizing or taking the lead — have become a definitive ingredient in The Flood’s sound. And nothing demonstrates that better than a tune from this week’s rehearsal, captured in this video by band manager Pamela Bowen.
About the Song
As reported earlier, “When You Say Nothing at All,” the 1988 composition by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz, has been a hit for no fewer than four times.
— Keith Whitley was first to take it to the top of the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in late 1988.
— Then seven years later, Allison Krauss’s version was her first solo Top-10 country hit.
— A year after that, Irish singer Francis Black made the song her third Irish Top 10 single.
— And that brought the song to the attention of Irish pop singer Ronan Keating, whose 1999 version was his first solo single and a No. 1 hit in the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand.
But to this day, “When You Say Nothing at All” is always associated first with Keith Whitley. The Ashland, Ky., native’s recording entered the Hot Country Singles chart on Sep. 17, 1988, at a modest No. 61. Then it gradually rose to the top, where it stayed for two weeks at the end of the year. “Keith did a great job singin' that song," co-composer Schlitz told author Tom Roland. "He truly sang it from the heart.”
When Krauss covered the song with her group Union Station in 1995, it was for a tribute album to Whitley, and suddenly the Overstreet-Schlitz composition was topping the charts again.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
A half century after the United States won its independence from Britain, Canada was rocked by two armed uprising known as the Rebellions of 1837-38.
The revolts failed, resulting in many rebels being deported to Australia and Tasmania as political prisoners facing hard labor or hanging. Others escaped such reprisals by going into exile in the US.
Sympathy for these disenfranchised French Canadian patriots was the subject of a song written four years later by a young college student named Antoine Gérin-Lajoie.
How the Song Came to Be
Years later in his memoir Souvenirs de collège, Gérin-Lajoie told how he adapted his lyrics to the deeply expressive French-Canadian folk tune "J'ai fait une maîtresse" (of which "Si tu te mets anguille" is also a variation). “I wrote that song in 1842 when I was in Rhetoric Class in Nicolet, Quebec. I wrote it one night in bed at the request of my friend Cyp Pinard.”
Gérin-Lajoie’s verses to “Un Canadien Errant” were published in 1844 in the Charivari canadien, and soon the song was being sung by French Canadians across the country — from Acadia on the east coast to the distant reaches of the northwest territories — stirred by how the lyrics captured the deep sadness of exile.
Un Canadien errant, A wandering Canadian, Banni de ses foyers, Banished from his homeland, Parcourait en pleurant Traveled, weeping, Des pays étrangers. Through foreign lands.
"Si tu vois mon pays, "If you should see my home, Mon pays malheureux, My sad unhappy land, Va dis à mes amis Go say to all my friends Que je me souviens d'eux.” That I remember them.”
The Acadian Connection
Later Acadians also adopted the song as their own — changing its first line to “Un Acadien Errant” — in the context of the Acadian deportation. Between 1749 and 1755, many Acadians who had refused to swear allegiance to the British Crown emigrated to Lower Acadia or Cape Breton.
Then, fearing that they might join the French during the coming Seven Years’ War, Nova Scotia Governor Charles Lawrence deported the Acadians to New England and the Atlantic Coast. Cajuns of the Louisiana bayou country also trace their own ancestry to these same exiles.
Twentieth Century Performances
Back to song, Paul Robeson recorded a bilingual version in 1950 under the title "Le Canadien Errant.” However, most Americans learned the tune a decade after that with a French-language performance by Ian & Sylvia, who included it on their debut 1962 album for Vanguard Records. The duo gave the song further prominence at the Newport Folk Festival as recorded on the 1996 album Ian & Sylvia Live at Newport.
In the 1969 film My Side of the Mountain, folk singer/musicologist Theodore Bikel sang the first part of "Un Canadien Errant" and then played a bit of it on a "homemade" reed flute. The melody refrained throughout the film.
Leonard Cohen recorded "Un Canadien Errant" as "The Lost Canadian" on his 1979 Recent Songs album, and his own song "The Faith," on his 2004 album Dear Heather, is based on the same melody.
Our Take on the Tune
Thirty years ago, when The Flood first started doing this song, the band was back to being a trio of the original guys — Dave Peyton, Joe Dobbs and Charlie Bowen — and often on rehearsal night, the only listener in the room would be Dave’s beautiful wife, Susan.
At the end of the evening, when the guys asked Susie what last song of the evening she’d like to hear, it was almost always this sweet, sad tune that she remembered hearing 20 years earlier down in Louisiana when she and David and young Davy spent an autumn and winter in Cajun country.
We lost Susan three years ago this summer. This one’s for you, dear heart.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
One of the best songs written about West Virginia in the past half century was created by a man who was nicknamed for a state two time zones away.
Bruce “U. Utah” Phillips wrote “The Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia” in 1971 while reflecting on a visit to the Mountain State years earlier.
"We were driving in an old car that had a bad leak in the radiator,” Phillips recalled in a story on his website. “We stopped every now and then in these hollers to get water and to talk to the people.
“In one place, there was a woman about 50 years old who let us use her pump. I commented to her that down in the town, it seemed that everybody I ran into wanted to get out, wanted to go north or go west and find some decent work….
"But, back in the hollers,” Phillips added, “it seemed like the people were rooted to the land, didn't want to go anywhere, even though there wasn't any work.”
She gave him many reasons, some of which he didn’t fathom, “but she gave me one I could understand, because I have a great affection for the mountains in my state, and I miss them when I spend a lot of time in the east.
“She said to me, 'It's these hills. They keep you. And when they've got you, they won't let you go.' "
Her comment inspired the key line in the chorus of the song that Phillips would later compose:
The green rolling hills of West Virginia Are the nearest thing to heaven that I know. Though the times are sad and drear And I cannot linger here, They'll keep me and never let me go.
The Hazel and Alice Contribution
In 1973, when Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard recorded their first album together, they wanted to include Utah Phillips’ lovely ode to their home.
However, they felt the song needed a better ending, one that offered not only a bit of hope, but also a call to join the fight to preserve those green rolling hills. They added a new last verse:
Someday I'll go back to West Virginia, To the green rolling hills I love so well. Yes, someday I'll go home And I know I'll right the wrong. These troubled times will follow me no more.
EmmyLou Steps Up
Emmylou Harris, who recorded the song on her classic 1978 album Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town, said she loved how the song was about homesickness and displacement.
But she added that it took on new meaning when she learned about the menace of mountaintop removal, decapitating hundreds of peaks and poisoning thousands of miles of streams in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and in her home state of Tennessee.
“It seems like artists today, particularly country artists, tend to play it safe,” Harris said, “and I count myself in there. I’ve never been that comfortable with overtly political songs. But mountaintop removal is based on pure greed and it’s doing such incredible damage.”
That’s why, she said, Phillips’ stark tune so resonated with her.
Our Take on the Tune
Fifty years ago, The Flood’s dear friends H. David Holbrook, Bill Hoke and Susan Lewis formed the core of the best local string band, The Kentucky Foothill Ramblers, and, gee, but they taught everyone a slew of wonderful tunes.
The group used to sing “Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia” at nearly every show. The Ramblers are long-gone now, but home recordings preserve a lot of the band's repertoire as performed at those parties where The Flood was born back in the ‘70s.
Nowadays "Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia" is always on the playlist whenever Floodster Emerita Michelle Hoge is in the room, as she was one night last month.
More West Virginia Tunes?
Finally, if you’d like more of The Flood’s Mountain State melodies, check out the playlist the guys put together a few years ago to celebrate West Virginia Day. Click the link below:
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Whenever Floodster Emerita Michelle Hoge makes one of her rare treks back to West Virginia, it’s a good excuse to try to land a gig somewhere at which the band’s beloved “chick singer” can be the guest star.
This time the good folks at Charleston’s Edgewood Summit retirement community accommodated that mission, and yesterday the entire Family Flood rolled into that gorgeous facility for an afternoon of tunes, laughs and stories.
Sitting in front row, Flood manager Pamela Bowen shots video. Here are four numbers from the show. Incidentally, if you’d like the history of these four tunes, here are links to earlier articles in the newsletter’s Song Stories section:
* “Peggy Day”
* “My Blue Heaven”
* “All of Me”
* “Up a Lazy River”
Yesterday’s gig was a return visit to Edgewood for The Flood. Michelle and the band had a similar music party there in October 2023. Click here if you’d like to see a video from that earlier do.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Hokum bands of the 1920s and ’30s created a brand of urban folk tunes called “jug band music” that famously blended the sounds of the plantation and the church with those of the swing, swerve and sway of nascent jazz.
And no one did it better than those Flood heroes The Memphis Jug Band, formed in 1927 by Beale Street guitar/harmonica player Will Shade.
Shade was also known as Son Brimmer, a nickname given to him by his grandmother Annie Brimmer (“son” being short for grandson). The name stuck when other members of the band noticed how the sun bothered him and he used the brim of a hat to shade his eyes.
The Ohio Valley Influence
Incidentally, Will Shade first heard jug band music in our part of the country, on the 1925 recordings by Louisville’s Dixieland Jug Blowers, and he wanted to take that sound south.
“He was excited by what he heard,” Wikipedia notes, “and felt that bringing this style of music to his hometown of Memphis could be promising. He persuaded a few local musicians, though still reluctant, to join him in creating one of the first jug bands in Memphis.”
While Shade was the constant, the rest of his band’s personnel varied from day to day, as he booked gigs and arranging recording sessions.
Some players remained a long time. For instance, Charlie Burse (nicknamed "Laughing Charlie," "Uke Kid Burse" and "The Ukulele Kid”) recorded some 60 sides with the MJB. Others — like Memphis Minnie and Hattie Hart — used the band as a training ground before going on to make careers of their own.
Street Music
The Memphis Jug Band’s venues, as The Corner Jug Store web site noted, included “street corners, juke joints, city nightclubs, political rallies, private parties, hotel ballrooms, medicine shows and riverboats,” and it cut many styles and repertoires to suit its varied audiences.
Most of all, the MJB’s sound was the music of the street, as demonstrated in the open lines of their wonderful “4th Street Mess Around,” recorded in May 1930 for Victor by Ralph Peer:
Go down Fourth until you get to Vance, Ask anybody about that brand new dance. The girls all say, “You’re going my way, It’s right here for you, here’s your only chance.”
And what was that “brand new dance?” Shoot, take your pick! The Eagle Rock, the turkey trot and fox trot, camel walk and Castle Walk, the Charleston and the Lindy Hop were all stirring the feet and wiggling the hips of listeners and players in the ‘20 and ‘30s.
But Mess Around?
But what’s a “mess around?” Well, as we reported here earlier, New Orleans jazzman Wingy Manone in his wonderful autobiography called Trumpet on the Wing, talked about watching people dance the mess-around at the fish fries of his youth in the Crescent City at the beginning of the 20th century.
“The mess-around,” said Wingy, “was a kind of dance where you just messed around with your feet in one place, letting your body do most of the work, while keeping time by snapping fingers with one hand and holding a slab of fish in the other!” Now, that’s an image.
Our Take on the Tune
The Flood first started messing around jug band tunes nearly 50 Springs ago, when the band was still a youngster. Before their juncture with juggery, the guys played mainly old folk songs and some Bob Dylan and John Prine and a smattering of radio tunes from folks like James Taylor and The Eagles.
But then they discovered some fine old recordings by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, by groups like The Mississippi Sheiks and Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers, and most especially the great Memphis Jug Band.
Ever since then, The Flood’s musical buffet table has been a lot bigger, with tunes like this one from the warmup at last week’s rehearsal.
More Jugginess?
Of course, The Flood’s jug band music mission has continued.
If today’s song and story have you ready to join the campaign, check out The Hokum channel on the free Radio Floodango music streaming service which has dozens of jug band tunes ready to rock you. Click here to tune it in and you’ll be ready to sing along at the next Flood fest.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Texan Cindy Walker already was a well-established songwriter in the fall of 1955 when she attended Nashville’s annual disc jockey convention.
By then, she had worked with Bing Crosby, not to mention Gene Autry and Bob Wills. She had even scored her own hit in 1944 with her recording of Wiley Walker and Gene Sullivan’s "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again."
But Cindy Walker’s greatest contribution to American pop music was only now about to happen.
How the Song Came to Be
Years later, Walker would recall that day. She was leaving the Nashville conference when she was approached by country singing star Eddy Arnold.
“He said, 'I've been wanting to see you. I've got a song title,’” she remembered. “He said, ‘I've showed it around a little bit and I haven't had any luck, but I know it's a good title.’”
Walker liked the title Arnold suggested — “You Don’t Know Me” — but at first she couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Back home, though, “I was just sitting there and all of a sudden, here comes, 'You give your hand to me and then you say hello’.”
"But I couldn't find any way to finish it,” she told a writer decades later during her Grammy Foundation Living History interview. “Maybe two or three weeks went by and nothing happened. Then one day, I thought, 'You give your hand to me and then you say goodbye' and when I said that, I knew exactly where it was going. I couldn't wait to get to the phone to call Eddy."
Crossover Gold
Walker’s resulting song was a definitive crossover hit. The first rendition of “You Don’t Know Me” was released by pop singer Jerry Vale, who in early 1956 carried it to #14 on Billboard’s pop chart. Two months later, it entered the country music world when Eddy Arnold’s version made it to #10.
Then along came Brother Ray. In 1962, Ray Charles included the tune on his #1 pop album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. His single of “You Don’t Know Me” (the song’s overall biggest-selling version ever) went all the way to #2 on Billboard’s “Hot 100.” That same year it also topped the Easy Listening chart for three weeks.
Later the song was used in the 1993 comedy film Groundhog Day, and it was the 12th No. 1 country hit for Mickey Gilley in 1981.
Walker’s fellow Texan Willie Nelson honored her with his album You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker in 2006, the year she died at age 88. In her obituary, The New York Times noted that Walker had Top 10 hits in every decade from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Our Take on the Tune
Michelle Hoge brought her band mates this song about a decade ago. It immediately found a place on the next album they were working on and it became a standard feature in most of The Flood’s shows.
These days, the guys don’t see Michelle so often — she and her husband Rich live more than two hours away — but whenever she rambles back this way, as she did last week, this enduring classic is sure to make an appearance.
More from Michelle
Finally, if you would like to fill your Friday with little more from the one whom the late Joe Dobbs lovingly dubbed “The Chick Singer,” tune in the Michelle Channel in the free Radio Floodango music streaming service.
Click here to give it a spin.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Spring in Appalachia is notoriously fickle. One minute the sun is promising an early wakeup call for the dogwoods and the redbuds; the next minute, snow is mocking our optimism.
Last week started, for example, with a lovely, bright preview of April. However, in midweek, The Flood’s weekly rehearsal was greeted by clouds, biting winds and cold rain. By the time the guys packed up to head home, ice would be forming on the back roads in the hills.
But inside the band room, the guys have mad skills for climate control. Want some autumn leaves? They got a tune for that. Want a little taste of June? There’s one for that too. And summertime? Shoot! Gotcha covered.
Decades’ Worth of Summer Heat
As reported here earlier, The Flood started playing “Summertime” a quarter of a century ago with various arrangements. Sometimes, for instance, it has been an instrumental, featuring solos over the by years by Joe Dobbs and Doug Chaffin, by Jacob Scarr, Paul Martin and Vanessa Coffman.
The first time the song came to a Flood album — the 2002 The 1937 Flood Plays Up a Storm — Charlie Bowen handled the vocals. Eleven years later, by the time the band released its fifth album, Cleanup & Recovery, the guys had turned over the singing to Michelle Hoge.
Nowadays, Randy Hamilton is front and center on the vocals. At last week’s rehearsal, the first take on this tune was slow and bit lifeless, but then Randy said, “Let’s try it again,” and kicked it up into a new gear.
At the start of this track, you’ll hear Randy ask his band mates what they think. “Yeah!” they all say, then Danny Cox lets his guitar register his vote with some of the most inspired playing the whole night.
By the way, if you like to learn more about how George Gershwin came to write this American classic, click here for a backgrounder in The Flood’s Song Stories section.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
For many decades, whenever anyone at a Flood gathering was celebrating a birthday, the guys turned to David Peyton to lead them in a rousing rendition of … no, oh, hell no, not THAT song… (Does this bunch really look like “Happy Birthday to You” people?)
No, Br’er Peyton suggested a much more appropriate nativity-observing song for the Flood flock. Not only that, Dave enhanced the tune with his own special touch, the addition of a juicy reference to a sex scandal that was rocking West Virginia politics. More on that little tidbit in a moment.
For now, you can hear Dave’s birthday tune — a sassy 1930s hokum number — by scrolling back to the top of this article and click the Play button on the video that Flood Manager Pamela Bowen shot 14 years ago this week.
The occasion for Pamela’s footage was a housewarming at the clubhouse at the Wyngate retirement village where devoted Flood fans Norman and Shirley Davis had just moved. For the fun evening, about 30 of the Davises' new neighbors were in the audience.
Among them were guitarist Jacob Scarr’s grandparents who were also new residents. The senior Scarrs had been regulars at Flood gigs ever since their grandson’s joined the band several years earlier.
The Song
A highlight of the evening was Peyton’s performance of the birthday song; The Flood’s version of “You Can’t Get That Stuff No More” with Charlie Bowen and Michelle Hoge’s harmonies and solos by Dave, Jacob, Joe Dobbs and Doug Chaffin.
Back in 2003, when a take on the tune was included on the I’d Rather Be Flooded album, the band described it as a 1932 Tampa Red/Georgia Tom song. That was correct as far as it went, but a little deeper research would have taught the guys that the song actually was written and recorded a year or two earlier by a remarkable young singer/actor/comedian named Sam Theard.
Performing well into the 1970s under assorted stage names — including Lovin’ Sam and Spo-Dee-O-Dee — Theard was born in New Orleans in 1904. Before he was 20, he was performing with a circus, then working in theaters and nightclubs.
Meeting up with Flood heroes Tampa Red and Cow Cow Davenport, Theard recorded one of his best known songs — "(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You” — for Brunswick in 1929. Over the years that song was covered by everyone from Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and The Mills Brothers to Fats Domino, Dr. John and Taj Mahal.
In the 1930s and ’40s, using the name Spo-Dee-O-Dee, Theard was a regular as a comedian at New York’s Apollo Theater.
It was during this period that he co-wrote his next famous song, “Let the Good Times Roll,” with Louis Jordan, who recorded it with his Tympany Five in 1946. In 1961 at the 3rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony, Ray Charles won a Grammy for his version of that tune.
In the 1950s, Theard wrote for a number of jazz greats, including Hot Lips Page, Count Basie, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Roy Eldridge.
Then in the last decade of his life, Theard was discovered by television, appearing in episodes of a variety of shows, including “Sanford and Son” and “Little House of Prairie.”
The Ickie Frye Infusion
But you’re still thinking about that political sex scandal, aren’t you? The one that Peyton worked into The Flood’s version of “You Can’t Get That Stuff No More”? Okay, here’s that story:
The original song, as recorded in 1932 by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, included this verse:
There goes Joe with a great big knife Somebody been messin' round with his wife.
However, when The Flood recorded it in a marathon studio session in Charleston in November 2003, Dave sang the verse as:
There’s Ickie Frye with a great long knife. Somebody been a-messin' round with his wife…
Uh, Ickie who?
Sure, that’s not a well-known name today, but if you were a news-reading West Virginian in 2003, you certainly would have known about Phillip “Ickie” Frye, a bass-playing TV/computer repairman who had just blown up Gov. Bob Wise’s political career.
Newspapers across the state trumpeted the news of how Frye revealed that his wife — state employee Angela Mascia, in charge of European projects for the state development office — was having an extramarital affair with the governor.
Red-faced, Wise admitted his infidelity. “I apologize deeply,” Wise said, “to the people of our state for my actions. In my private life, I have let many people down." The following year, Frye even filed to run for governor to "dog Wise," he said, over the affair, but he dropped out when Wise himself announced he would not seek re-election.
Soon after The Flood’s album was released, Ickie Frye emailed Peyton to thank him for the shout-out on the tune. The ex-governor had no comment.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
For a half dozen years beginning in the late 1990s, The Flood always greeted March’s arrival with an annual road trip into the mountains.
Providing an evening of music, jokes and stories, the band would entertain a roomful of visiting volunteers, kindly students who had come more than 600 miles from Milwaukee’s Marquette University to use their spring break helping with assorted post-winter chores around the little mining town of Rhodell on Tams Mountain about 20 miles south of Beckley.
As reported here earlier, from 1997 to 2002 The Flood’s original three amigos — Joe Dobbs, David Peyton and Charlie Bowen — shared this weird, wonderful way to celebrate the coming of spring.
To read more about these Tams Mountain adventures, click here.
But, Hey, This is About a Song…
Each year, party hostess Martha Thaxton never failed to ask the guys to play one particular tune before they left for their two-hour journey back to Huntington. It was a song that seemed to speak to Martha’s own rambling soul as a die-hard folkie, a beloved Tom Paxton composition from his 1964 debut album for Elektra Records.
“I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound” was a song Dave and Charlie knew well — they had played it with Roger Samples back in the old Bowen Bash days — so they were happy to dust it off for Martha and her visiting good samaritans.
In the past 60 years Paxton’s song has been recorded by everyone from The Mitchell Trio and The Kingston Trio to Tiny Tim and Dion (no, really!), from The Country Gentlemen and Country Joe to Doc Watson and Nanci Griffith.
But surely the most touching rendition was Johnny Cash’s recording of the song in his final session in February 2010.
In a recent interview, Paxton noted that Cash used to come in The Gaslight back in the early 60s “in what we now know was his worst period.
“He was skinny as a rail because of all the pills he was doing. He had not had his renaissance yet. But he was a gentle man. He was a direct man and he took you as you were. I just liked this man.”
Paxton said he was “absolutely thrilled … to hear him sing the song. That’s just a once in a lifetime kind of thrill.”
Elijah Wald Blazed the Trail
Speaking of being thrilled, members of The Flood’s crack research department are always overjoyed whenever they discover the blazed trails and rambling footprints of the incomparable Elijah Wald on some musical terrain they’ve come to explore.
For nine years now, Wald’s online “Songbiography” has been his musical memoir, giving history and personal reflection on some of his favorite songs, which often turn out to be Flood favorites too. Elijah’s site was barely a month old when he took up “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound.”It is a tune he loved as a young man, but, he writes, he couldn’t “help noticing that Paxton himself got married back when he was writing these songs, and the marriage lasted, and he moved out to the country and raised a family, and all in all has had one of the most settled and stable lives of anyone on the folk scene.
“It’s as if he actually meant the last verse, where he sings that anyone who sees the ramblin’ boy goin’ by and wants to be like him should just ‘nail your shoes to the kitchen floor, lace ’em up and bar the door/Thank your stars for the roof that’s over you.’”
In retrospect, Wald said, “I think it’s a nice touch that the singer keeps bemoaning his sad ‘n’ ramblin’ ways, but it’s the girl, rather than him, who leaves on the morning train.”
Our Take on the Tune
So this is an evergreen song, and that word has special meaning in The Flood band room. It is reserved for tunes that are timeless.
This Tom Paxton classic might be 60 years old, but it feels it could have been written last week — or, well, a century ago.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Coming in from the wind and cold of a rainy winter’s night, it was cozy and bright in the band room last Thursday evening. Here are two tunes from the late 1960s that Pamela Bowen captured with her phone during the weekly rehearsal.
The video opens with Randy Hamilton leading the crew on Danny O’Keefe’s soulful “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” followed by a gentle rendition of a long-time Flood favorite, Bob Dylan’s “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You.”
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
We remember the night Joe Dobbs wandered into The Flood band room a couple of decades ago and said, “Hey, do you know the song ‘Satin Doll’?”
Boy, was he asking the right guy. Charlie Bowen grew up in a home full of his dad’s jazz records by Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington and Count Basie and his mom’s Harry James and The Mills Brothers.
In BowenWorld, “Satin Doll” was as much a part of the household soundtrack as anything on the radio right then.
Joe didn’t really know any of the tune’s honored status in the jazz world. However, he was tickled by a folksy jazz rendition of it that was recorded live by fiddler Stephane Grappelli and David Grisman in 1981 and he was ready to tackle it himself.
With that, the tune trotted into The Flood repertoire. Click the button below to transport back to 2011 and hear Joe with Flood Lite (Doug Chaffin on bass, Charlie on guitar) sampling the song at the start of a jam session at the Bowen House.
About the Song
In 1953, Duke Ellington interrupted his long-time association with Columbia Records to sign with Capitol, thinking the upstart recording company might more effectively promote his music.
Among the tunes waxed in the first Capitol session that spring was “Satin Doll,” a song Ellington had just written with his favorite collaborator, Billy Strayhorn.
Duke wrote the riff sketch and Strayhorn fleshed it out with harmony and lyrics.
Billy’s lyrics, though, were not were not considered commercially viable, so Duke’s 1953 recording was an instrumental. It was five years later when lyricist Johnny Mercer — a Capitol Records cofounder — wrote sassy new words that resulted in the song we know today.
But Who WAS the Satin Doll?
Strayhorn biographer David Hajdu famously advanced the notion that Billy named the song after his mother, Lillian, saying that the composer’s pet name for his mom was “Satin Doll.”
That’s a charming story, but the Ellington family has a different take on the tale. Duke’s son Mercer wrote in his 1978 memoir that he suspected the mystery woman was his dad’s long-time companion, Beatrice “Evie” Ellis.
Writing in Duke Ellington In Person: An Intimate Memoir, Mercer said Evie continued to believe the song was written for her. “Pop would always be leaving notes in the house addressing her affectionately as ‘Dearest Doll,’ ‘Darling Doll’ and so on.”
Today’s Flood Take on the Tune
“Satin Doll” lately has started visiting the Flood band room again. It was the first tune of the evening at last week’s rehearsal. Listen as Randy, Jack and Charlie start outlining the tune, laying down the rhythm and those cool chords while Danny is still setting up.
You’ll hear Charlie sing the first verse. By the second verse in comes Dan’s beautiful guitar. In a minute, he’s in full gear, and then he’s soloing on two idea-filled choruses that define the entire outing.
Got That Swing
Finally, if you’d like to put a little more swing in your Friday thing, remember that the free Radio Floodango music streaming feature’s gotcha cover.
Click here to tune in the Swingin’ Channel for a randomized playlist of some of The Flood’s jazzier moments over the years.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Around campfires North and South, many of the tunes played and sung during the Civil War were the work of a 35-year-old Pennsylvanian who was America’s first full-time professional songwriter.
By the time the war started, Stephen Collins Foster — who as a youth taught himself to play the clarinet, guitar, flute and the piano — had published more than 200 songs.
His best ones — “Oh Susannah,” “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River),” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” “Hard Times Comes Again No More” — already were widely known throughout the country to amateur and professional musicians alike.
About “Angelina Baker”
This song, though, was not one of the famous ones. Foster wrote “Angelina Baker,” sometimes performed as “Angeline the Baker,” in 1850 for use by the theater world’s Christy Minstrels troupe.
Today folks know it primarily as an instrumental dance tunes performed by old-time and bluegrass bands, almost always with a lively fiddle leading the way. An early version was recorded for Victor in 1928 by Uncle Eck Dunford of Galax, Va. Meanwhile, West Virginia fiddler Franklin George called it "Angeline" and played it with Scottish overtones.
Foster’s original, though, was a bit slower and had lyrics that lamented the loss of a woman slave, sent away by her owner.
Huntington-born music historian Ken Emerson — who in 1997 wrote a definitive biography called Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture — said that “Angelina Baker” entered the American consciousness during a period of great controversy between free and slave states.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was among the hotly debated topics at the time of the song's composition, and, Emerson noted, Foster's lyrics obliquely acknowledge these controversies. (Angelina likes th’ boys as far as she can see ‘em / She used to run old Massa round to ask him for to free ‘em…. Angelina Baker, Angelina Baker's gone / She left me here to weep a tear and beat on de old jawbone… )
Our Take on the Tune
The Flood has always celebrated diversity. The guys often follow a folk blues with a swing tune or chase a 1950s jazz standard with some 1920s jug band stuff.
And deep in The Flood’s DNA are the fiddle tunes learned from Joe Dobbs and Doug Chaffin. This Civil War-era tune the band learned from fiddlin’ Jack Nuckols, their newest band mate.
From the Archives: How We Met Angelina
As reported earlier, Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen started 50 years ago trying to draw Nuckols into the band.
On an April evening back in 1974, Peyton and Bowen trekked over to Jack and Susie’s place in South Point, Ohio, for a jam session.
It was during that session that they first heard “Angelina Baker.” Here from the fathomless Flood files is that specific archival moment. Click the button below to travel back 51 years and hear Jack on fiddle, Dave on Autoharp and Charlie on guitar:
More Instrumentals?
Finally, if all this has you wanting some more wordlessness in your Friday Floodery, tune in the Instrumentals channel in the free Radio Floodango music streaming service.
There you’ll have a randomized playlist of everything from folksy fiddle tunes to sultry jazz numbers without a lyric or vocal in sight! Click here to give a try.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Shortly after he recorded “Peggy Day” — exactly 56 years ago today, in fact, an appropriate choice for Valentine’s Day! — Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine, “I kind of had The Mills Brothers in mind when I did that one.”
A laugh was shared by Dylan and RS Editor Jann Wenner over that thought. However, the remark later really would resonate in the world of The Flood, which has taken much musical inspiration from The Mills Brothers, on everything from “Up a Lazy River” and “Lulu’s Back in Town” to “Am I Blue?” and “Opus One.”
In other words, Floodsters heard in Bob’s little-loved love song a kind of pastiche of the 1930s and ‘40s, its rhythms recalling that era’s classic swing thing.
Stepchild
Still, "Peggy Day" remains one of the stepchildren in the Dylan oeuvre. In fact, the tune's only claim to fame is that it was the B-side when Bob released "Lay, Lady, Lay" as a hit single in the summer of '69.
Unlike a lot of Dylan songs, "Peggy Day" has no intriguing backstory or associated legend, no deep, nuanced lyrics to invite exegesis by college graduate seminars.
As a result, some Dylanologists seem to actually hate the tune. “Frankly, embarrassing,” Clinton Heylin once said of it, while Billboard magazine was even cheekier about the entire Nashville Skyline album from which it came: “The satisfied man speaks in clichés,” the magazine purred with a pucker.
Shout-Out to The Flood
No wonder “Peggy Day” is so seldom performed by other artists.
A few years ago, Tony Attwood started covering Dylan covers in a series of articles for his fascinating Untold Dylan web site.
When Tony turned to “Peggy Day,” he located only one non-Dylan recording of the song: The Flood’s version on its 2013 Cleanup & Recovery album.
Attwood was complementary of The Flood’s performance on the album, which featured the call-and-response vocals by Charlie Bowen and Michelle Hoge. (Click here to hear it, complete with solos by Sam St. Clair, Dave Peyton and Doug Chaffin.)
“It’s a jolly bit of fun,” Attwood wrote, “which shows this is certainly a song that has cover possibilities — in terms of a second vocalist — the harmonies in the middle 8 are gorgeous as is the instrumental break.”
A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ from The Vault
Actually, a decade before that the song almost made it onto an earlier Flood album. “Peggy Day” was among the dozens of numbers the band recorded during a 10-hour marathon studio session with the late, great George Walker, an evening that yielded 2003’s I’d Rather Be Flooded.
The tune didn’t make the cut for the album, but since things don’t get thrown away much around here, the rendition has been patiently passing its time in The Flood Files, just waiting for this moment to arise.
Click the button below to hear this archival “Peggy Day” treatment with Sam’s harmonica and Charlie’s vocals along with a bevy of late Flood tribal elders, including Joe Dobbs on fiddle, Chuck Romine on tenor banjo, Dave Peyton on Autoharp and Doug Chaffin on bass:
Our 2025 Take on the Tune
So, this bit of fluff from Bob’s fat and happy country squire days of the late 1960s is one of his least-recorded song, but The Flood obviously has always enjoyed playing it over the decades.
Here’s a joyous take on the tune from a recent rehearsal, featuring solos from everyone in the room, Danny and Randy, Sam and Jack. Happy Valentine’s Day, dear ones!
And Speaking of Love…
Finally, if you’d like a little more Flood in your day of love, remember The Valentine Blend playlist in the free Radio Floodango music streaming service. Click below to read all about it!
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
Even a rainy winter’s night can be fun at one of Huntington’s hottest venues, the remarkable Bahnhof WVrsthaus & Biergarten on 7th Avenue.
The band hit the Bahnhof stage early Thursday evening, a dozen hours after a night of torrential storms that soaked and raked the entire tri-state from midnight onward.
“Listening to The Flood after a flood?” mused by hardy fan at a ringside table. “Well, I can’t decide if that’s appropriate behavior … or whether we’re just poking the eye of the storm gods!”
Hard to tell. However, the fact is that it did start raining again before the band’s set was finished.
Weather Tunes
The weather had an impact on the guys’ song selection. For instance, Pamela’s video from the evening opens with a highly hum-able hymn for any deluge — “Wade in the Water” — and the guys even invited the assembled flood victims to sing along.
Then the musical weather forecast turned a bit more optimistic. In the hey-just-six-more-weeks-of-winter mindset, the band offered “Windy and Warm” — the John D. Loudermilk classic made famous by Doc Watson — which in Floodom is a Danny Cox specialty.
The song wasn’t originally on the set list, but when the band mates saw Flood friends Andrea and Scott Austin in the audience, they edited in the addition. Scott, a big Watson fan, often asks for the tune whenever he drops by The Flood rehearsal.
The Dancing Doctors
Speaking of docs, a perfect Floodish evening also includes a visit with the band’s favorite prancing professors, Bonita Lawrence and Clayton “Doc” Brooks.
Faculty stars of Marshall University’s mathematics department, Doc and Bonnie started dancing to Flood tunes more than a dozen years ago. Initially they favored the late Joe Dobbs’ Irish gigs and Doug Chaffin’s waltz tunes, but lately, the dancing doctors have revealed a much broader repertoire.
Pamela’s video closes out featuring the pair hoofing it to the 1920s rocker, “If I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate.”
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com -
What an amazing year 1966 was in music. Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde hit the racks. So did The Beatles’ Revolver, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, The Stones’ Aftermath and so many more.
Into this stellar crowd quietly strolled Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful, the third studio album by Greenwich Village’s own folk-rock mavens. Today the disc just barely makes it onto a list of the top 50 albums of that lush, flush year, but in its own way, it made wonderful waves.
Hums — which would ultimately be the last full project by the Spoonful’s original lineup — was the band’s concerted effort to record in a wide variety of styles on a single disc. For it, they composed and played pop-, country-, jugband-, folk- and blues-fused tunes.
The album spawned four charting singles, including “Summer in the City,” “Rain on the Roof,” “Nashville Cats” and "Full Measure.”
Of “Nashville Cats,” principal songwriter John Sebastian said, "We thought our version would cross over to the country market. It never did. So we're always kinda, gee, well, I guess that tells us what we are — and what we aren't."
Incidentally, Flatt & Scruggs did take "Nashville Cats" to the country charts, hitting No. 54 with it as a single.
And elsewhere in the country crowd, Johnny Cash and June Carter covered Hums’ “Darlin’ Companion” on 1969’s Johnny Cash at San Quentin album.
About This Song
“Loving You,” Hums’ opening track, was never a hit single for the Spoonful, but a month after the disc’s release in November 1966, Bobby Darin made the Top 40 with a cover version of the tune.
Subsequently, the song also became a good vehicle for four different female vocalists, including Anne Murray (1969), Helen Reddy (1973) and Dolly Parton (1977) and Mary Black (1983).
Meanwhile, the song came into the Floodisphere before The Flood was even The Flood.
In 1975, after a year of regularly jamming together, Charlie and David started looking for new material to work on beyond their main interests in folk music, and for a brief time they landed on The Lovin' Spoonful's catalog.
Here — like the audio version of a crinkled old baby picture — is a sound clip fished from The Flood archives. Click the button below to hear Charlie and Dave sampling the song exactly 50 years ago this week at a jam session at the Peyton House:
The Spoonful’s Jug Band Roots
Only later did Bowen and Peyton realize that The Lovin’ Spoonful had been heavily influenced by some of the same 1920s-’30s jug band tunes that The Flood loves.
Before he founded the Spoonful, John Sebastian with his partner Zal Yanovsky, long active in Greenwich Village's folk scene, set out to create an "electric jug band.”
"Yanovsky and I were both aware of the fact that this commercial folk music model was about to change again,” Sebastian recalled, “that the four-man band that actually played their own instruments and wrote their own songs was the thing.”
In early 1965, as they prepared for their first public performances, Sebastian and Yanovsky along with their new band mates Joe Butler and Steve Boone, searched for a name.
It was Fritz Richmond, the washtub bass player for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, who suggested “The Lovin’ Spoonful,” referring to the lyrics of the song "Coffee Blues" by the country blues musician Mississippi John Hurt. It worked and it stuck.
Our 2025 Take on the Tune
At last week’s rehearsal, The Flood channeled those rich jug band roots of the Spoonful.
For this tune, Jack switched from his usual drum kit to those funky wooden spoons and Charlie reached for the five-string. Then Danny, Sam and Randy just did what they always do to make it all work.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com - Daha fazla göster
