This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week we feature another tunes from the great outdoors.

These days the audience for our little minimalist, socially distanced jam sessions out on the Bowen breezeway are mostly the robins and squirrels, the mockingbirds and butterflies, but occasionally a jogger or a baby stroller will pass by on the street and wave and grin, and we do grin back, though it’s a little hard to tell from behind our darned face masks.

We do hope the tunes can make up for the absence of facial expressions.

Here’s a moment from earlier this week that we offered to some particularly perky young dog walkers passing by. Bye Bye Blues. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week we feature another long-time Flood standard. When The Flood first started doing this song some 40 years ago and Charlie’s sweet mother asked where such an odd little tune came from, we didn’t want to tell her the truth, so he said, “Mom, it was a popular party song in the late 1920s.” Well, it wasn’t a complete lie; it’s just the “parties” where this song was born started very late at night and were in a part of town where nice girls generally didn’t go.

The song we’ve always called “Yas Yas Duck” is an old hokum jazz tune that’s been recorded under a lot different names over the years. As near as we can figure, the first recording was by the great St. Louis piano pounder James “Stump” Johnson who released it in January 1929 as “The Duck Yas-Yas-Yas.” Later that some year, new versions started cropping up, one recorded by Oliver Cobb and his Rhythm Kings and another by all-time Flood heroes Tampa Red and Georgia Tom.

For us, the tune has become a kind of connective tissue between today and our old jug band roots of the 1970s and ’80s. That’s why we put it on our first commercial CD back in 2001, and why it still gets trotted out regularly at rehearsals, just so newer members of the band can learn it.

This track, from a rehearsal back in early March, was bassist Paul Callicoat’s introduction to The Duck. At the beginning of the track, you’ll hear us telling him where to find the chords in his new Flood Fakebook. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week we feature another tune from outback on the Bowen breezeway…

In these days of rage, overwhelmed with a constant stream of angry and sad images from all across the country, peaceful moments are especially valuable.

Lately the Bowens’ neighbors have been thanking us for moving our rehearsals outdoors, because they can hear the music through their opened windows.

The reason for our relocation is, of course, another sadness: our ongoing worries about possibly spreading the Coronavirus have made us reluctant to call the whole band back together for now, so lately Flood rehearsals — such as they are — are minimalist affairs, two or three of us at a time … and socially distanced … and outside.

This week started with a particular peacefulness when Michelle Lewis and Vanessa Coffman came by to share a few songs out back on the Bowen breezeway. This was the final song of the morning, “Over the Rainbow.” Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week we feature a tune Michelle and Charlie are trying out. See what you think.

You don’t know how much you miss something until it’s gone. Think about how much we communicate with each other with just a wink and a smile. That’s certainly true in the band; when we’re bopping along on a tune, the facial expressions we exchange often say more than the words themselves. But of course, in these times of COVID-19, we’re suddenly handicapped. Oh, we’re still grinning. It’s just that the masks we’re now wearing for each other’s protection are hiding our smiles.

But leave to Michelle Lewis to come up with a solution. If you can’t show a smile, you can at least sing about one, as she does in this tune.

Oh, and here’s an interesting thing about this song. The great comic genius Charlie Chaplin wrote the music for this piece to be part of the soundtrack for his 1936 film classic, “Modern Times.” The lyrics and title were added nearly 20 years later by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, based on lines and themes from the movie.

And, finally, a word about this particular performance. In an abundance of caution, we’re still not getting the entire band together for rehearsals right now, but earlier this week, Michelle dropped by so she and Charlie could sit on the porch try this song out, just the two of them.

We’re still deciding whether to keep it in The Flood repertoire when the whole band finally gets back together. Let us know what you think! Your thoughts will make us … well, smile. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week we feature a tune that we learned almost 50 years ago.

It seems odd that a tune we’ve been playing for nearly a half century now had never made it onto one of The Flood’s commercial CDs. But we’ll finally rectify that situation when our latest album — called “Speechless: The Instrumentals” — is released in the next few weeks.

The song in question is “Star of the County Down,” a lovely Irish melody that the late Joe Dobbs introduced us to at those weekend-long music parties in the 1970s, the wild, wonderful hippy bashes at which The Flood was busy being born. Back then, Joe taught the tune to Roger Samples, and Rog taught it to Dave Peyton and Charlie.

Joe’s song has been learned and re-learned by new generations of Floodsters over the decades since then. In this track from a rehearsal back in late January, you can hear that tradition continuing. As we start the song, our newest bandmate, Paul Callicoat, is listening; then as we come toward the end, Paul’s got it and in comes his beautiful bass to join us for the final chorus. Here’s 2020 version of “Star of the County Down.” Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week we feature an instrumental by the newest arrival in our circle, 19-year-old saxophonist Vanessa Coffman..

Hearing her first dozen notes, you know that Vanessa is playing her favorite song. Listen to the next couple dozen notes and you know she has all the other players in the room falling in love with it too.

The time is a deep, dark February night — a few days before Valentine’s Day, actually. The place: The Flood’s rehearsal room at the Bowen house. The tune: “Georgia on My Mind.”

Now, sit back, give us five minutes and listen to this little musical love story unfold. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week we give more respect to a tune we’ve been using and abusing for many years.

“Moonglow” is a very forgiving song. In the many years we’ve been doing this great old 1930s jazz standard that Benny Goodman and Joe Venuti made famous, we’ve not always handled it gently — we’ve played it too fast, we’ve played it too slow, like a heavy-handed blues — and yet, class act that it is, the song has always given us something back.

But it was only when Michelle Lewis took over the vocals that we truly began to appreciate the beautiful of this classic Eddie DeLange-Will Hudson composition. It’s in Michelle’s able hands that the tune unfolds like a favorite scene from a good novel.

And because the song is so richly shaded, every time a new player comes into our room, “Moonglow” reveals something else about itself. For instance, on this particular take, listen to how the tune takes a light, almost spring-like turn as soon as Veezy Coffman and her tenor sax drop in with a couple of sweet choruses in last couple of minutes of recording.

Here then, from a rehearsal back in February, is our 2020 rendition of “Moonglow.” Click to hear the tune.