The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast

A few weeks before his death in November 1966, Mississippi John Hurt’s rendition of “Payday” was released as the opening track on his Today album for Vanguard Records. At the time, many fans believed the 74-year-old bluesman wrote the song, despite his introduction in which he characterized it as “ an old tune … a ‘bandit tune.’” And we now know that a quarter of a century earlier, folklorist John...

We thank everyone who braved the cold last night and came out to pack the house for our show at Huntington’s wonderful Bahnhof WVrsthaus & Biergarten. What a grand evening! Old friends, new friends and a whole bunch of fresh memories. At a ringside table, Pamela Bowen captured a bit of the joy in this video of this trio of tunes from the evening. We are especially happy that her video also recorde...

A century ago this year, the fledgling record industry’s first supergroup walked into a New York studio and waxed one of its greatest hit. The first time much of the world ever heard a rocking spiritual called “I’m a Pilgrim,” it was on the Oct. 4, 1924, Paramount Record release by the jazzy Norfolk Jubilee Quartet. Starting with its birth in 1919, the Norfolk Quartet offered a unique sound, chara...

By all rights, this Bob Dylan tune ought to be The Flood’s theme song. The fact is, though, the guys have been doing it only about a dozen years or so, which is … well, “yesterday,” in FloodSpeak, but since then, they have embraced it. And the song has particularly righteous powers when it comes to warming up a room on a cold December night, as illustrated in Pamela Bowen ’s video , shot at last w...

Singer/songwriter Bob Gibson was a defining figure in the folk music revival starting in the late 1950s, but a crushing dependence on heroin and other drugs sank his career, his marriage and many of his long-time friendships. Gibson — who wrote songs like “Abilene” and “There’s a Meeting Here Tonight” that were performed by artists such as Peter, Paul and Mary, The Limeliters and Simon and Garfunk...

Holidays were hard for Roger Samples in 1975. He was living alone, just him and Josephine the Cat rattling around on Mount Union Road where he was house-sitting for Susan and David Peyton . ( As reported earlier , the Peyton family had left town for six months in Lafayette, Louisiana, where Dave was researching Cajun culture for his Alicia Paterson Foundation fellowship project.) Nonetheless, that...

The quintessential moment of a jazz funeral is the playing of “Just a Closer Walk to Thee. ” Some say this custom goes all the back to early days of the New Orleans music scene nearly a century and half ago. It’s a lovely story… and, well, untrue. The jazzman most associated with playing this beautiful song — New Orleans’ legendary clarinetist George Lewis — revealed the tune actually has a much m...

Johnny Cash had a long-time affinity for the work of — and for his friendship with — Bob Dylan. In his book Cash: The Autobiography, Johnny wrote of being on the road in the early ‘60s. “I had a portable record player that I’d take along on the road, and I’d put on Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan backstage, then go out and do my show, then listen again as soon as I came off. “After a while at that, I wrote...

Fifteen years ago tonight, The Flood continued its mission to convince the world that jug band music could fit any occasion. This particular occasion — in the ballroom atop the Renaissance Performing Arts Center in the old Huntington High School building in the city’s South Side — was a benefit concert to help out with medical expenses for a family member of long-time Flood buddy Dale Jones . No o...

The band does a lot of time traveling at its rehearsals. In those two hours each week, the guys might start with a rock classic like “Hey Baby,” as they do in this track from last week’s get-together. Then in the next moment The Flood Time Machine Lab might transport the lads back to, say, the Roarin’ Twenties. There they can sample a song or two of the day, maybe “Dinah” or “Lady Be Good” or “My...

The word hokum originated in vaudeville to mean a risqué performance laced with wordplay, euphemisms and double entendre. When it appeared on the label of a 1928 hit for Vocalion Records by a new group called Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band, the term rapidly entered the jazzy lexicon of The Roarin’ Twenties. When the group moved on to Paramount Records as The Famous Hokum Boys, it quickly picked up imi...

For such a bunch of old guys, The Flood has always had a rather rad technology division. Back in 2008, for instance, the notion of podcasting was only a few years old when the band started its own online broadcasts . Today, nearly 750 episodes later, the podcast is still going strong, with a new installment each week . That same year, when YouTube was but three years old, The Flood’s first digital...

Sam McGee — called by some “the granddad of country guitar pickers” — got his start in April 1926 when he traveled to New York City for his first recording session, backing up the legendary Uncle Dave Macon on eight sides at the Brunswick studios. Thirty-year-old McGee met Macon two years earlier when the banjoist played a show near Sam’s Franklin, Tennessee, home. Sam was a blacksmith in those da...

The Coasters were formed 69 years ago this month, when two members of an L.A.-based R&B group called The Robins came east to join Atlantic Records. The new group was dubbed The Coasters because they crossed the continent to come together. About the same time, songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller produced “Smokey Joe's Cafe" for The Robins (their sixth for the group). Atlantic liked the tune s...

Josephine Baker was only 20 years old when she recorded the song “Dinah” at her first studio session 98 years ago this fall. That was just a year after the provocative dancer/singer arrived in Paris, immediately setting the town on fire with her risqué shows at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. And a West Virginian was right there to help her light those blazes. Ada “ Bricktop” Smith, a young Alders...

It was seven years ago this Thursday that the great Fats Domino died at age 89. The Family Flood grew up with Fats’ music, so it was a joy at last week’s rehearsal to take a moment — which band manager Pamela Bowen captured in this video — to remember him with a fun ride on one of his finest songs. About the Song As we reported in an earlier Flood Watch article, Fats wrote “I’m Walkin’” 67 years a...

Music’s most famous breakup in the late 20th century was surely the failed love affair of youngsters Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan. Or at least it was the most productive parting on record. Following their split, 20-year-old Dylan wrote some his most plaintive songs of the era. “Don't Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Boots of Spanish Leather,” “Tomorrow is a Long Time” and “One Too Many Mornings,” “B...

Before Floodster Emerita Vanessa Coffman left the band, she taught the guys her mom’s favorite tune, a 1948 jazz standard. Everyone fully expected when the talented young saxophonist drifted away last year to pursue other interested that the song — “Black Coffee” — would go with her. However, then Danny Cox took up the tune and, with his guitar, gave it a new chapter in the Floodisphere. In fact,...

Fifteen years ago this week, The Flood was back at a favorite venue — Huntington’s Harris Riverfront Park — to celebrate the visit by a beautiful riverboat, the Belle of Cincinnati, and to entertain her passengers. It was a return engagement for both the boat and the band. Hospice of Huntington was so pleased with The Flood’s performance the previous year when it entertained those who came out for...

In the mid-1960s, the young British songwriter Barry Gibb was in New York City for the first time when he was visited at the Waldorf Astoria by one of his musical heroes: soul/R&B superstar Otis Redding. Redding reportedly loved Gibb’s work and came to urge him to write a song for him to record. Legend has it that immediately after they met, Gibb went downstairs and, on a hotel piano, thrashed out...

A Flood Watch reader last week wrote, “Hey, recently y’all did a new song about the Ohio River, but I can’t remember what it was called. Can you help me?” Charlie Bowen gave her directions to last summer’s podcast that featured the song she was thinking of — it’s called “ Shawneetown ” — but her note was still on his mind when the band gathered later that evening for its weekly rehearsal. That’s w...

Earning their chops in medicine shows and with minstrel troupes in the late 1890s, brothers Frank and Bert Leighton wrote and/or arranged many ragtime pieces for use in vaudeville. Among their work was a 1912 version of “Frankie and Johnny,” penned with partner Ren Shields, that would set the tone for many future renditions of the song, including a monster hit a decade and half later for Charlie P...

A surprise visit from Floodster Emeritus Paul Martin turned this week’s rehearsal into a happy reunion. Paul became active with the band nearly a decade ago . He was fundamental in recording and engineering The Flood’s two most recent albums ( Live in Concert and Speechless ). He also played a huge part in the guys’ several years as the house band in the good ol’ Route 60 Saturday Night music vari...

A decade after what fans feared would be the last flight of The Eagles — SoCal’s ultimate 1970s soft rockers — band mates Timothy Schmit and Don Felder teamed up with friends to try to create a new band, one they wanted to call “The Malibu Men’s Choir.” Well, that effort failed — the new group never got off the ground — but their songwriting collaboration with Jim Capaldi and Paul Carrack did prod...

It all began toward the end of a rollicking rehearsal when between songs the guys started talking about what they planned to do in the week ahead. Danny mentioned that lately he had been getting out early to take his walks in the morning before the heat set in. That prompted Charlie to start singing that Fats Domino song, “I’m walkin’, yes, indeed, and I’m talkin’ ‘bout you ‘n’ me…”. Well, Danny —...