This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We learned this great West Virginia tribute song in the 1970s, just a few years after Bruce Phillips wrote it. That’s because some of our local heroes — H. David Holbrook’s late great Kentucky Foothill Ramblers — started singing it at those parties where The Flood was born.

 
Nowadays, "Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia" is always on the playlist whenever Floodster Emerita Michelle Hoge is in the room, as she was one night last month.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The Flood first started fooling around jug band tunes nearly 50 Springs ago, when the band was still a youngster. Before that, the guys played mainly old folk songs and some Bob Dylan and John Prine and a smattering of radio tunes from folks like James Taylor and The Eagles. 

But then they discovered some fine old recordings by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, by groups like the Mississippi Sheiks and Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers, and most especially the great Memphis Jug Band. 

 
Ever since then, The Flood’s music buffet table has been a lot bigger, with tunes like this one from the warmup at last week’s rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Michelle Hoge brought us this song about a decade ago. It immediately found a place on the next album we were working on and it became a standard feature in most of our shows. 

 
Sadly, these days, we don’t see Michelle so often — she and her husband Rich live more than two hours away — but whenever she rambles back this way, as she did last week, this mid-1950s classic is sure to make an appearance.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 At last week’s rehearsal, the first take on this tune was slow and bit lifeless, but then Randy Hamilton said, “Let’s try it again,” and kicked it up into a new gear. 

At the start of the track, you’ll hear him ask his band mates what they think. “Yeah!” they all say, then Danny Cox lets his guitar register his vote with some of the most inspired playing the whole night.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The word “evergreen” has a special meaning in our band room. It means a tune that’s timeless. Like this Tom Paxton classic. It is 60 years old, but it feels it could have been written last week — or a century ago.

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We still 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 jazz records by Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Harry James. In BowenWorld, “Satin Doll” was as much a part of the household soundtrack and anything on the radio. 

Now, we don’t think Joe really cared about the song’s honored status in the jazz world. But he was tickled by a folksy rendition of it he had just heard by fiddler Stephane Grappelli and David Grisman and was eager to bring the tune into the Flood repertoire. 

 
And it still is. Here’s a take on the great old Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn number from last week’s Flood rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The Flood has always celebrated diversity. We often follow at folk blues with a swing tune or chase a 1950s jazz standard with some 1920s jug band stuff. 

And deep in our DNA are the fiddle tunes we learned from Joe Dobbs and Doug Chaffin. Here’s a tune from around the time of the Civil War that we learned from fiddlin’ Jack Nuckols.