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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

4:23

Conjuring Up Summertime

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/03/14

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

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5:07

Dave Peyton's 'Happy Birthday' Song

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/03/11

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

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4:23

"I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/03/07

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

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6:35

Two Tunes from a Rainy Winter's Night

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/03/02

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

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3:29

"Satin Doll"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/02/28

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

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3:05

"Angelina Baker"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/02/21

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

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4:18

A Flood Valentine: "Peggy Day"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/02/14

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

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9:41

It's Always a Ball at Bahnhof!

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/02/08

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

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3:27

"(Sitting Back) Loving You"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/02/07

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

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3:06

Spreading the Good Works of John Prine to an Ashland,...

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/02/04

At a coffeehouse in Ashland, Ky., 50 years ago this week, Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen continued their new mission to spread the good news about the work of young singer-songwriter John Prime.As reported in an earlier article here, Charlie and Dave had been listening this this Chicago-based folk wunderkind ever since his 1971 first album. The two, later joined by Flood co-founder Roger Samples, quickly started learning Prine tunes to share and sing along with at the Bowen Bashes and at

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4:42

Swing and Sway, The Flood Way

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/01/31

If your mom (or your grandma or maybe great-grandmother) was a Bobby-soxer in the 1940s, she probably danced to this tune. Sociologists call the bunch born in the 1930s “The Silent Generation” — a term first used in a 1951 Time magazine story to describe their alleged cautious and passive nature — but, well, seriously? Anyone who ever saw them dance didn’t think they were all that darn docile. After all, these “Silents” are the same folks who gave us the jitterbug, not to mention setting the stage

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4:40

Our Nod to That Movie

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/01/24

For the past month, the world has been fascinated by a new movie about a 20-year-old with a head full of ideas rolling from the North Country into New York City in 1961 and changing music forever. The Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown just yesterday scored eight Oscar nominations, including nods for best picture, best director, best lead and supporting actors, best sound and more.It already had garnered awards and nominations, from the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild, from BAFTA and Critics

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5:34

Storytelling in Plain B Minor

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/01/17

All kinds of stories are told at the weekly rehearsals. Some are shared for laughs. Others are merely melodies and improvisations. Some come with pictures. And some — like this one — are the tales that are many times older than all of us.As reported here earlier, traditional versions of “Pretty Polly” were on some of the first discs made by Appalachian musicians at the dawn of the recording industry. These included Eastern Kentuckian John Hammond's "Purty Polly" of 1925 and the "Pretty Polly"

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4:13

First Visit to 'The Bunker'

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/01/14

In the early 2000s, Joe Dobbs expanded his operations at his Fret ‘n Fiddle’s music store in downtown St. Albans to include a recording studio that he and his young staff dubbed “The Bunker.”The idea was that at the very least Joe could use the facilities to record some or all of the episodes for his ongoing “Music from the Mountains” radio show. What he really hoped, though, was that the new studio would be used by area musicians to create their next albums.As usual, The Flood was to be the guinea

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4:28

When Danny Brings the Sizzle

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/01/10

Often the first notes of the evening set the pace, the mood and the tone for the entire rehearsal. As you’ll hear on this track, Danny Cox walked into last week’s session ready to set the Floodometer on sizzle. And it certainly worked. The Flood has been doing this great old 1920s jazz standard for only a couple of years now, but it’s already become one of the band’s go-to tunes for a good time, especially whenever Danny has new musical ideas to explore.About the SongThis week’s featured tune — “Am

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4:57

"Black Eye Blues"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2025/01/03

One of the most curious and complicated characters on the great American musical landscape is Thomas A. Dorsey.A deeply religious man, Dorsey often is called “the father of gospel music,” because he inspired a movement that popularized bluesy gospel songs in churches across America starting in the mid-20th century.Some 3,000 songs — a third of them gospel — were written by Dorsey in his 90 years, including “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley.” Now, then, about those other 2,000

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5:29

"Stardust"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2024/12/27

Hoagy Carmichael was not quite 28 years old when he wrote what music historians consider THE song of the 20th century.Just how big is “Stardust” in the Great American Songbook?* Well, for starters, this is a song that has been recorded as an instrumental or a vocal more than 1,500 times. * Forty years after its publication in 1928, it was still earning more than $50,000 annually in royalties. * The lyrics that Mitchell Parish later brought to Hoagy’s song have been translated into 30

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12:58

A Christmas Card for You

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2024/12/24

If there’s only one day a year when you are nostalgic, it’s probably Christmas Eve. After all, the older you get, the more you likely realize that the best part of Christmas Present often is enjoying memories of Christmases Past. The Flood’s memories usually come with a soundtrack as well. Merry Christmas, dear friends!Another Holiday Helping?And if you’d like a little more fa-la-la-la-Flood in your festivities, remember the Radio Floodango free music streaming service has this yuletide playlist

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3:29

"Payday"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2024/12/20

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 Lomax recorded a version of “Payday” by lesser-known blues artists Willie Ford and Lucious Curtis in

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12:53

Bahnhof was a Blast!

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast ·

2024/12/13

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 recorded some pretty fancy footwork. Our favorite “dancin’ doctors” — Marshall professors Bonnie Lawrence and

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