This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 As we start thinking about what The Flood should play for its set at this year’s Diamond Teeth Mary blues festival here in Huntington, one song seems like a natural. It’s a near-century-old tune that touched the lives of two great West Virginia jazzmen. 

Big band composer Don Redmond, who hailed from the eastern part of the Mountain State, wrote the song in 1929. 

Then a dozen years later, the phenomenal saxophonist Chu Berry from Wheeling recorded it in his very last studio session. Here’s The Flood’s latest take on Redmond’s great “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You?”

 
Remember, we’ll be at the Diamond Teeth Mary festival Saturday, Aug. 22 at Heritage Station, 210 11th Street in beautiful downtown Huntington. The Flood is honored to open the festivities with its set at 6 p.m.
 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Surely, no innovation in modern human history has gotten so deeply into our psyche, into our hearts and minds. Railroad imagery fills our art and music, symbolizing so many beginnings … and endings. 

 
Here’s a train tune from our folk-infused youth.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The late Dave Peyton inspired Charlie Bowen to write this song. 

 
Railing against the relentless ravaging of our state, he’d say, “Sometimes I think the worst thing that ever happened to West Virginia was when somebody discovered coal.” 

And what bothered him almost as much was the paralyzing grief felt by generations of Mountain State natives, a communal sorrow for not being able to stop the rape of our home.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 An old friend, Jim Strother, once said, “Remember back when you’d see a fella ramblin’ along carrying a guitar case, and he’d have his coat collar turned up against the wind and a cap pulled down over his eyes. With just one look you knew everything you needed to know about that guy.”

 
And the soundtrack in your head when you saw that was always an early Bob Dylan tune, like this one.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 There’s nothing like a good old train song to capture the crossroads in a man or a woman’s life. Here’s one of the best in our repertoire.

"Yellow Dog Blues" was the last tune of our night with John Ace, the wonderful fiddler introduced to us by Floodster Emeritus Dave "Bub" Ball.

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We’re celebrating America’s 250th birthday with Woody Guthrie’s best-loved tune, a song that many of us think ought to be the national anthem. 

 

And we’re happy to be joined on this week’s podcast by Cap’n John Ace, who rambled into the band room from Alexandria, Va., by way of Florida with Floodster Emeritus Dave “Bub” Ball.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 When the room needs a respite from the band’s frequent fare of loud and raucous tunes, Randy Hamilton and Danny Cox always have just what the doctor ordered.