This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Before Floodster Emerita Vanessa Coffman left the band, she taught the guys her mom’s favorite tune, a 1948 jazz standard. 

Well, everyone fully expected that when Veezy left The Flood last year to pursue other interested that the song would go with her. 

 
But then Danny Cox took up the tune and gave it a new life in our world. Listen to Dan’s guitar brewing up some robust “Black Coffee.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 It was a quarter of a century ago when Joe’s son, Dale Dobbs, first used the word “eclectic” to describe The Flood’s musical tastes. 

 
True, that. We do tap a wide variety of sources for our tunes, from blues and old-time to jazz, jug band and classic rock. 

Well, even we didn’t see this one coming, but you diehard Bee Gees knew we’d get to you sooner or later. Here’s Randy Hamilton leading us on Barry Gibb’s greatest composition.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 When Jack Nuckols switches from drums to fiddle, it often brings back lots of old memories of music parties 50 years ago. 

Here’s another tune that Dave Peyton, Joe Dobbs and Charlie Bowen first heard at those parties when the good old Kentucky Foothill Ramblers, led by H. David Holbrook, could play a whole evening full of Charlie Poole songs.

This from last week’s Flood affair, when the group’s old band mate Paul Martin and his mandolin sat in with current Floodsters Charlie and Jack, Danny Cox, Randy Hamilton and Sam St. Clair.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 After we Floodified a version of “Peaceful Easy Feeling” earlier this year, we started looking around for another Eagles tune we might bring into the repertoire. 

 
That’s when Randy Hamilton stepped up and said, “I might have one.” The old Eagles song “Love Will Keep Us Alive” is his sister’s favorite tune — in fact, Randy sang it at her wedding a while back — and when he started singing for us, it just naturally slipped into a Flood groove. 

Here from last week’s rehearsal is Randy leading the way!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 It was towards the end of a rollicking rehearsal, when between songs the guys start talking about what they plan to do in the week ahead. 

Danny mentions that he’d been getting out to take his walk in the mornings before the heat sets in. That prompts Charlie to start singing that old Fats Domino song, “I’m walkin’, yes, indeed, and I’m talking’….” 

 
Well, Danny — who by anybody’s definition is a walking jukebox — starts playing the old tune. Sam and Jack immediately pick up the vibe. Charlie reaches for the banjo to add a little pepper to the plot as Randy starts searching his memory bank for the words and melody — and suddenly the song seems to be arranging itself.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Dave Peyton and Charlie first heard this great old Charlie Poole song back in the mid-1970s when they were lucky enough to regularly sit in with the good folks of The Kentucky Foothill Ramblers. 

That band’s founder — H. David Holbrook — was already a walking/talking encyclopedia of old-time music and taught us so many of those good old tunes. 

So it was only natural when The Flood got re-energized 30 years ago, this old tune was on the playlist. And it still is!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Some nights are just magical, when everything we do — even a hundred-year-old song — seems suddenly fresh and new. Click out this tune from The Great Depression.