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PODCAST

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast

Each week The 1937 Flood, West Virginia"s most eclectic string band, offers a free tune from a recent rehearsal, show or jam session. Music styles range from blues and jazz to folk, hokum, ballad and old-time. All the podcasts, dating back to 2008, are archived on our website; you and use the archive for free at: http://1937flood.com/pages/bb-podcastarchives.html 1937flood.substack.com

music music history

All Episodes

4:37

Partying with the Bikers and Bankers

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/10/24

Often over the years, this tune has conjured up a very specific gig memory for Floodsters.It dates back to a weekend when the band was invited to the top of West Virginia’s Snowshoe Mountain to be part of a rather swank do (“a wine and cheese affair,” as the late Joe Dobbs liked to call such jobs).We were on a stage under a huge event tent on the grounds of Snowshoe ski resort in Pocahontas County. The summer evening breeze was sweet. The glasses were tinkling. Then, toward the end of the night, a

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3:33

"Any Way (No Matter How) She Done It"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/10/17

When Thomas A. Dorsey (a.k.a. “Georgia Tom”) walked out of a New York City recording studio in the winter of 1932, he ended a highly successful music partnership with Tampa Red (a.k.a. Hudson Whittaker).Over four years, Red and Tom garnered a happy following for their infectious, highly danceable brand of blues tunes.In 1928, the two young men had teamed up and recorded for the Paramount label the hit “Tight Like That.” The success of that number — based on Blind Blake’s “Too Tight” and on Papa

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3:08

When In Doubt, Let Danny Do It!

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/10/10

Danny Cox has an abiding love for the works of guitar heroes Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins, and the song “Drive In” — which Dan brings to this week’s podcast from a recent rehearsal — beautifully displays those intersecting energies.As reported here earlier, Reed often wrote wonderfully tasty riffs and licks only to forget them the next day when he moved on to some new project. Atkins, a detail-driven professional and a successful producer, completed and recorded many of Jerry’s pieces, practicing and

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5:15

Channeling Uncle Pete's Spirit

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/10/03

The sing-along — “if you know it, sing it!” as we say around here — is fundamental to folk music. As folk music’s guiding spirit, the late Pete Seeger, once said, “I rather put songs on people’s lips than in their ears.” Pete believed songs offered powerful magic to bring unity. “Get people to sing together,” he said, “and they’ll act together too.”“Once upon a time,” he said, “wasn’t singing a part of everyday life as much as talking, physical exercise and religion? Our distant ancestors, wherever

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3:01

"Amelia's Waltz"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/09/30

In his quarter century with The Flood, the late Doug Chaffin brought dozens of great tunes to the band, and the loveliest of the bunch was one of the last.The truth is we always listened to everything Doug told us, because his musical instincts were usually right on the money. For instance, whenever we were playing a show and Doug leaned over and whispered, “Hey, maybe we oughta do this song next,” Charlie Bowen revised the set list on the fly, because Doug had a sixth sense about what people would

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3:47

Auditioning for the New Album

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/09/26

Danny Cox and Randy Hamilton brought us this tune a year or so ago and as it matures, it just keeps enriching The Flood’s bloodstream.Not only that, the song is very much on target to be included on the next Flood album when work begins on that project in the months ahead. Give it a listen in this take from a recent rehearsal.About the SongAs noted in an earlier Flood Watch article, “Deep River Blues” is usually associated with the late, great Doc Watson, who included it on his self-titled debut

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5:12

Ramblin' On About Jack Elliott

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/09/19

Brooklyn-born Elliott Charles Adnopoz had only just started calling himself “Ramblin’ Jack” in the early 1950s when he came upon a new hero in the wilds of San Francisco.This was a couple years after Elliott had met in his first and most influential mentor — the legendary singer/songwriter/poet Woody Guthrie — whose work and philosophy would shape the 20-something Jack’s long life as an itinerant folksinger.Enter Lone CatA few years after Woody, Elliott rambled all the way across the country and met

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5:01

Celebrating Maceo Pinkard

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/09/12

Some newer immigrants to Floodlandia were surprised by last week’s article celebrating two West Virginia natives — Don Redmond and Chu Berry — who became legendary jazzmen.“I’m sorry,” one of the new friends confided, “but to me the idea of West Virginia conjures up fiddles and banjos. I’ve never thought of it for jazz.”He’s forgiven. Many don’t realize the Mountain State’s musical traditions are more diverse than stereotypes suggest.Meet MaceoIn fact, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the

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4:39

Remembering Chu Berry

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/09/05

The last time legendary Wheeling-born saxophonist Chu Berry was in the recording studio, he gave some jazz love to a song written by a fellow West Virginian.The date was Aug. 28, 1941, and the tune — one of the four sides that Berry and his jazz ensemble would record that day for Milt Gabler's Commodore label in New York City’s Reeves Sound Studios on East 44th Street — was “Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You.”The song was still relatively unknown. No one else had recorded it in the dozen years since

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5:21

Lovin' Us Some Chris Stapleton

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/08/29

As Appalachians, we are mighty proud of Chris Stapleton, the 47-year-old Lexington, Ky., native who grew up not far from us in the tiny Johnson County town of Staffordsville in Eastern Kentucky. To date, Chris has won 11 Grammys, 11 Academy of Country Music Awards and 15 Country Music Association Awards.Besides that, he also has been named the ACM's Artist-Songwriter of the Decade, and not long ago Rolling Stone magazine included Stapleton among the “200 Greatest Singers of All Time.”Stapleton had

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5:05

"The Ballad of Tom Kromer"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/08/23

On a cold night in the early 1930s, a young West Virginian named Tom Kromer huddled in a railway boxcar as it rattled westward across the country.Hungry, sleepless and surrounded by other men just trying to make it through the night, Tom braced himself against the trembling boxcar wall and scribbled a few observations on a scrap of paper. Five years later, those notes — scrawled on Bull Durham papers, in the margins of religious tracts in a hundred rescue missions, upon wastepaper scavenged from the

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2:13

Friendly Spirits in the Band Room

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/08/22

A lot of ghosts stalk our rehearsal room nowadays, but to a man they are a happy bunch of haunts. We have table set aside for photos of all our band mates who have passed on. But more than mere pictures, it’s their music that keeps our old comrades alive. Here, for example, from a recent rehearsal is our current take on one of the late David Peyton’s favorite tunes, with Charlie Bowen and Randy Hamilton handling the vocals and solos by Sam St. Clair, Jack Nuckols and Danny Cox. The tune — “Georgie

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7:08

Hoagy and Ray Strike Gold in Georgia

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/08/15

The song that most defined the great Ray Charles’s life and career was written the same year in which he was born.It was 1930 on cold, stormy night in New York City when “Georgia on My Mind” was written by Hoagy Carmichael and his roommate Stuart Gorrell.“In a third-floor apartment overlooking 52nd Street,” Gorrell recalled, “with cold feet and warm hearts, we looked out the window, and, not liking what we saw, we turned our thoughts to the pleasant Southland.”Carmichael later added to the story in

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2:30

"Dooley"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/08/08

Generations have grown up watching television’s “Andy Griffith Show,” either the original broadcasts that aired from 1960 to 1968 or the infinite number of reruns that still are being broadcast around the world every day.And for many of us, the best episodes are those in which the bluegrass-picking Darling family comes down from the hills to Mayberry to visit with Andy, Barney, Opie and Aunt Bee.Most diehard fans know the boys playing and singing as the Darling brood actually were a real-life

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3:31

"I Never Cried ('Til My Baby Got on That Train)”

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/08/01

When The Flood wanted a closing track for its second studio album in 2002, the guys turned to a tune that Charlie Bowen had just learned from listening to “Below the Salt,” Keith Newman’s legendary radio show on Ohio University’s public radio station, WOUB-FM.From Athens, Ohio, for 35 years ending in 2012, Newman broadcast all manner of folk sounds, from roots music, old-time and blues to original songwriters and what he called “techno-Celtic.” And on most of those ear-opening Sunday mornings,

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3:19

"Spooky"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/07/25

“Spooky” is a rarity in 1960s pop tunes, because it charted on the Billboard Hot 100 three times in a dozen years with renditions by three different groups.The song began life as an instrumental. With Harry Middlebrooks Jr., Atlanta saxophonist Mike Sharpe (Shapiro) wrote the song and made the 1967 pop charts with it in the U.S. and Canada.Enter The Classics IVBut the song is much better known as a vocal by The Classic IV, whose James Cobb and producer Buddy Buie added lyrics about that “spooky

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3:22

Lulu Rides Again!

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/07/19

Jack Nuckols was heading off for a couple weeks of vacation and his band mates wanted to give him a proper sendoff. Pamela Bowen videoed it, the last tune of this week’s rehearsal, a saucy little number that rocked many a party back in Grandad’s day.“Lulu’s Back in Town” — first performed by The Mills Brothers in 1935, the same year it also was recorded by Fats Waller — was written by Harry Warren. You’re right, that’s not a household name (journalist William Zinsser once called Warren the

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3:14

"Eight More Miles to Louisville"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/07/18

Country music legend Grandpa Jones’ signature song — “Eight More Miles to Louisville” — started out celebrating a journey that was nearly twice as long and to an entirely different city.About a decade before Grandpa recorded his tune, Alton and Rabon Delmore of Alabama’s famed Delmore Brothers were playing their “Fifteen Miles from Birmingham” on live radio shows as the duo trekked across the South.That song was never a big hit for the Delmores — by then, they had many hits, including “Got the

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3:22

Color It Blue

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/07/12

Turning to a tune from the late 1960s at the end of this week’s rehearsal, Randy Hamilton makes a solid case for the color blue. His performance of Danny O’Keefe’s folk-rock classic “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” also inspires Artie Fish, chief of our crack graphics department — The Floodoodlers — to come up with something appropriately moody to illustrate those moments in Pamela Bowen’s video. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to

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4:19

Lady Be Better

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/07/11

George Gershwin’s “Lady Be Good” has been in The Flood repertoire for more than a quarter century. And lately the song has taken on a whole new life, ever since Danny Cox brought ‘round a better bunch of chords. Listen to Dan and the guys just rocking the socks off the thing!As reported earlier, Gershwin’s perennial 1924 party tune, “Lady Be Good” is a rarity among jazz standards in the Great American Songbook, surviving the transition from the loose Dixieland style of the “Roaring Twenties” to the

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