Thirty years ago, when the band first started doing this song, The Flood was back to being a trio of the original guys, Dave Peyton, Joe Dobbs and Charlie Bowen.

 
Often on rehearsal night, the only listener in the room would be Dave’s sweet wife, Susan. At the end of the evening, they’d ask Susie what last song she’d like to hear.

It was almost always this wonderfully sad French Canadian tune, one that she remembered hearing 20 years earlier down in Louisiana when she and David and young Davy lived in Cajun country. We lost Susan three years ago this summer. This one’s for you, dear heart.

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.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 This bit of fluff from Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album more than a half century ago is one of his least-recorded song, but The Flood has always enjoyed playing it over the decades. 

 
Here’s a happy take on the tune from a  recent rehearsal, featuring solos from everyone in the room.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We’re channelling 1966 with this tune. It’s our take on the first track of the third album by the late great Lovin’ Spoonful!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 If your mother (or grandma or maybe your great-grandmother) was a Bobby-soxer in the 1940s, she probably danced to this song. 

 
It was a hit on the radio for Tommy Dorsey in late 1944, and an even bigger smash the following year for singer Anita O’Day, recording it with a band fronted by drummer Gene Krupa with the legendary Roy Eldridge on trumpet. 

In the Floodisphere,we’ve found that “Opus One” is wonderful way to warm up for an evening of tunes.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 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 in from the North Country into New York City in the 1960s and changing music forever. 

 
For our tribute to this wonderful Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” here’s a tune from that period. It’s our version of Bob’s version of “Corrina, Corrina.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 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.

When Dave Peyton and Charlie were just starting out as a duo in the early 1970s, they discovered that on this tune, a repeated scale descending from an opening minor chord resonated nicely on the guitar-Autoharp accompaniment to their voices. 

 
Over the decades, each configuration of The Flood has found something new to contribute to this basic arrangement. And it is still happening. Just listen to what Dan Cox and Jack Nuckols brought to the song at a rehearsal earlier this month.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Often the first notes of the evening set the pace, the mood and the tone for the entire rehearsal. 

 
Well, as you’ll hear on this track, Danny Cox came into last week’s session ready to set the Floodometer on sizzle — and, man, it worked! 

Now, we’ve been doing this great old 1920s jazz standard for only a couple of years, but it’s already become one of our go-to tunes for a good time, especially whenever Dan’s got new musical ideas to explore.

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.