This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 When the whole band can’t get together — like last week, when it was just Danny, Randy and Charlie — it’s an opportunity to explore tunes not usually on the practice list. 

 
Now, in Flood years, this old Ma Rainey song dates back nearly a half century, to when the fellows were just starting to fool with the hokum tunes of the 1920s and ‘30s.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Since its composition nearly a hundred years ago now, many folks have performed this song as a slow, romantic ballad, drawing out the words and the melody. 

Good for them. However, when Hoagy Carmichael wrote “Stardust” back in 1927, he performed it with a bit of the sass and sway that characterized the jazz of his day, and we in The Flood like to carry on that tradition. 

 
The song has some of the best chords of anything in our repertoire and in this take from last week’s rehearsal you’ll hear two solos in which Danny Cox is finding all kinds of interesting ideas. Here’s Hoagy Carmichael’s greatest song, “Stardust.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Purists tell us this doesn’t sound much like Mississippi John Hurt’s original, but that’s pretty much by design. 

Once we learn a song, we usually stop listening to the original so it’s free to find its own form in the Floodisphere. At least, that’s our take on what Pete Seeger’s folklorist father called “the folk process.”

And in this instance, "Payday" has been processing in Floodlandia for more than 20 years now, ever since its inclusion on the band’s first studio album back in 2001. Here's the current state of its evolution, take from a recent rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 This great old song is generally performed with mellow reverence by country and folk artists as well as by many gospel groups. 

However, ever since we started doing the tune a couple of years ago, The Flood has taken its cue to the song’s original recording a hundred years ago. Like the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet which recorded it in 1924, we like to put a little cut its strut and a glide in its stride. Here's a track from last week's rehearsal.

 For folks who know The Flood only from its studio albums, this is the first tune they may have ever heard from the band. 

This rollicking Bob Gibson composition was what the guys played on the opening track of their very first commercial album nearly a quarter of a century ago now. A lot changes in a band over the decades, but good old tunes are like cherished letters from home. 

Here’s a track from a  recent rehearsal, with solos by everyone in the room.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Recently Danny Cox read in our newsletter, “Flood Watch,” how the band played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” at a friend’s memorial service 20 years ago, and he said, “Hey, why don’t we do that song anymore?” 

 
Well, why indeed? So lately we’ve been we’ve dusting it off and just listen to the soulful, sassy spin that the guys are putting on this great old jazz standard! 

Here’s a take from last week’s rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Charlie started doing this song back in college to have something to sing and play to the jam sessions in the dorms. 

So it was one of the songs he brought along in that summer and fall 50 years ago when Dave, Roger and he started The Flood. 

And this lonely, lovely Dylan tune is still welcome at Flood gatherings, as it was last week.