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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

5:13

"All Out of Season"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2023/01/27

A trope in our part of the world is, “If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour!”The fickleness of what comes from our skies around here — or sometimes doesn’t — was on Charlie Bowen’s mind years ago when he wrote a song called “All Out of Season.” His lyric opened with meteorological musings about a chilly afternoon when “suddenly from nowhere came an April kind of day / and sat herself right down in winter’s way….”Origin StoryThe song originally was performed by a short-lived group called Front

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7:24

"Misty"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2023/01/20

“Timeless” is a much overused word, but were it not, we ourselves would happily overuse in talking about “Misty.” It’s hard to imagine a time when this scintillating melody did not exist. Actually, though, it is a relative newcomer to the Great American Songbook.“Misty” began its life as instrumental. It was 1954 — decades after many of the great jazz standards were born — when pianist Erroll Garner composed the song in the traditional 32-bar format and recorded it with his trio for their Contrasts

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4:37

"San Francisco Bay Blues"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2023/01/13

Almost 70 years ago this year, a street musician named Jesse “Lone Cat” Fuller recorded his new song, “San Francisco Bay Blues,” for the World Song label.Nowadays that particular 1954 recording is a collector’s item, but the world really didn’t start knowing this rocking number until 1962 when Fuller recorded a one-man band rendition, which appeared on a Smithsonian Folkways compilation called “Friends of Old Time Music.” After that… well, everybody seemed to know it.Folk singer Ramblin’ Jack

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4:28

"Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2023/01/06

The great jazz innovator Jelly Roll Morton once told folklorist Alan Lomax that “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor” was one of the earlier country blues to come rambling into the big city of New Orleans. Morton said it was being played in the Crescent City many years before he was born there in 1890. As Jelly Roll further noted, "A pallet is something that — you get some quilts — in other words, it's a bed that's made on a floor without any four posters on 'em.”The song was even known to be favorite

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5:37

"Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You?"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/12/30

Don Redman — a young man from Piedmont, West Virginia, who did much to create the sound that the world came to know as big band swing — composed “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good To You?” just as The Roaring Twenties came to a close. In fact, the song’s first studio recording, featuring Don performing with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, came out just one week after the 1929 stock market crash that started the Great Depression.The crash even inspired a revision of the song. Andy Razaf’s original words reflected

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3:22

Greensleeves

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/12/23

In our country, we often know it as “What Child Is This?” based on a Christmas verse written more than a century and a half ago. But, of course, the tune “Greensleeves” is even more deeply enshrined in our common human experience.One of the oldest melodies we know, the song originally it wasn’t religious in nature at all. On the contrary, its earlier lyrics told the story of a painful romantic conundrum (with some, uh, subtly salacious references).Popular legend even attributes the song to King

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5:43

Today (While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine)

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/12/16

For decades now, Kathy Castner and her cousin, Charlie Bowen, sing duets whenever they have one of those rare chances to be together. Their musical connection goes back a long way.As a child, Kathy regularly was brought to visit relatives in Ashland. Whenever she was, their grandmother usually assigned her cousin to sing her to sleep at bedtime. (Yes, Grandma Robertson was prescient about Bowen’s mad skills for putting audiences to sleep.) One of the tune the young troubadour brought to bear on the

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4:33

If You Lose Your Money

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/12/09

Christmas songs abound right now, but how about a tune for the downtrodden holiday shopper, the weary wielder of the maxed-out debit card?Well, your friends in The Flood can’t pick up the tab, but we can at least give you a blues to suit your mood, brought to you from a recent gig. After a day of rushing around spending money you don’t have to buy things people don’t want, just take our advice: If you lose your money, please don’t lose your mind!Sonny and BrownieNobody ever did the blues better than

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6:03

Jug Band Music

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/12/02

When a friend recently asked us what song has the longest association with The Flood, we had to stop and think. Several old-timers are still in the band’s repertoire. The Carter Family-inspired “Solid Gone,” for instance, has been in our collective consciousness all along, going way back to when David Peyton and Charlie Bowen were just a modest little duo in 1973. Uncle Dave Macon’s “Way Downtown” has legs too; we have tapes from 1975 on which Charlie and Dave are doing that one with Roger Samples

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4:46

Honeysuckle Rose

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/11/25

“Honeysuckle Rose,” an absolute anthem of the Roaring Twenties, was born in a New York speakeasy almost a hundred years ago.The story of the song’s roots is related by Barry Singer in his biography of lyricist Andy Razaf. The tune — or at least its title — was born at the Club Alabam in Harlem as far back as the winter of 1924, when a young Razaf won a chance to perform a song for which he would write both the words and music.The whole business was staged at the club with full chorus of what Singer

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5:26

When You Say Nothing at All

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/11/18

It had been an unproductive day for songwriters Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz, and this pair was unaccustomed to dry spells. After all, together and individually, Overstreet and Schlitz had written dozens of Top 10 hits, had won multiple Grammys and each frequently had been named country music’s Songwriter of the Year.Still, this day in 1988 was frustrating. Hours of guitar strumming had produced zero new ideas."Then, as we tried to find another way to say nothing, we came up with this song,"

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10:10

Birthing New Music

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/11/11

For the first time in years, The Flood has started working on original compositions. Currently, for instance, we’re studying with bandmate Vanessa Coffman to craft accompaniments for her original folk songs in a project to remaster the “Brave Brigade Pirate” album that she previewed earlier this year.Meanwhile, to see if he has any tunes that might have a new life in a new millennium, Charlie is digging into his hippy diaries to bring out things he wrote — or sometimes just started writing and never

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4:59

4th Street Mess Around

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/11/04

One of Ray Charles’s first hits was “Mess Around,” released on Atlantic Records back in 1953, but actually in this case, Brother Ray was a little late to the party.Many of the ideas for that song can been heard in a whole mess of New Orleans boogie piano riffs, starting as early as, say, Cow Cow Davenport’s playing in the late 1920s. But if you want to go back even further — and, well, we generally do — there are references to dances called a “mess around” as far back the earliest days of jazz. For

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4:41

The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/10/28

About a year after she wrote this moving Appalachian song in 1965, folk legend Jean Ritchie came back to Kentucky from her New York home to perform it in a solo concert at Ashland Community College in Ashland, Ky. Some of the earliest members of the Family Flood were lucky enough to be sitting in the front row that night. Memories of Jean’s cool-as-crystal-water voice singing a cappella on those mountain ballads still send shivers down our spines. On that particular autumn evening in 1966, we also

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5:32

Dink's Song / Loch Lomond

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/10/21

More than a hundred years ago, musicologist John Lomax recorded an African American woman named "Dink" singing a song as she washed her man's clothes in a Texas work camp on the banks of the Brazos River near Houston.Lomax and his son, Alan, were the first to publish it, including it in American Ballads and Folk Songs, which Macmillan brought out in 1934.A decade later, the great Josh White put the song on his first album. Since then, it has been recorded by scores of performers — Pete Seeger and

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5:30

The Nearness of You

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/10/14

Nowadays “The Nearness of You” often conjures a mental image of 21st century song stylist Norah Jones. And, indeed, Jones did release a gorgeous rendition of the song in 2001, leading some to think that she wrote it. Actually, though, the tune is twice Norah’s age.Hoagy Carmichael wrote the song in 1938, originally intending it for an odd little movie project. In his Carmichael biography Stardust Melody, Richard H. Sudhalter reports that Hoagy dashed off the yet-unnamed melody for “a screen

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3:29

Dusty Boxcar Wall

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/10/07

One of the wonderful things about the folk tradition in music is that you learn so much from people you know, sometimes from relatives, but more often from good friends. Terry Goller, a remarkable singer and guitar player who taught our whole community about folk music, was — long before we even formed The Flood — one of those inspiring friends.Terry was on hand for some of the seminal moments in the earliest days of The Flood’s history. And in our antediluvian history as well. For instance, as

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6:20

Moondance

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/09/30

What a happy coincidence it was that our saxophonist Veezy Coffman brought her shiny, silver soprano to the rehearsal as we were just starting to work out our arrangement of “Moondance.”It was unbeknownst to her (shoot, unbeknownst to all of us) that a sax — specifically a member of that high-flying end of the saxophone family — was fundamental to Van Morrison’s composition of this classic tune.Morrison, while famously closed-mouthed about the origins of most of his songs, has said about this one,

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4:30

Don't Know Why

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/09/23

Regular readers/listeners love all those scintillating sax solos by Vanessa Coffman, and with good reason! This talented 20-year-old started in January 2020 rocking our repertoire on her tenor, Blue, as well as on her bari, Viper, and her soprano, Savoy.And member of the her Flood family know Veezy also is a fine singer, as demonstrated in this song, which she has brought us earlier this year. Listen as Danny Cox leads us on beautifully framing Vanessa’s lovely vocal.About the Song"Don't Know Why"

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3:23

On the Sunny Side of the Street

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2022/09/16

Controversy surrounds the question of who actually wrote the 1930 standard “On the Sunny Side of Street.”If you rely only on what is printed on the sheet music, you see Jimmy McHugh listed as the composer. So, why is there an enduring legend in jazz circles that the melody actually was written by The Flood’s great hero Fats Waller? To this day, Waller’s contribution to the melody line remains unconfirmed, but there is some compelling evidence that the tune might have been his work.For starters,

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