Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Well, this eventful 2019 is coming to an end and we look forward to being back in your ears in the new year, but before we go, friends, Michelle speaks for us all here on this Christmas Eve in wishing you the merriest of Christmases.

Please Come Home for Christmas

Until the great Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Famer Charles Brown opened our eyes and ears to the concept, most of us never thought of Christmas as a time for the blues. But then in 1961, King Records released “Charles Brown Sings Christmas Songs” and suddenly Christmas was cool. The standout track on that album was Brown’s composition called, “Please Come Home for Christmas,” a song that has hit the chart dozens of times since that original release. The Eagles, for example, had a beloved version in the 1970s, Bon Jovi would revisit the tune in the 1990s. Meanwhile, in this century it’s been given fine treatments everyone from Willie Nelson and Martina McBride to Kelly Clarkson. And now we in The Flood will be incorporating the number into our house band tunes at this weekend’s Route 60 Saturday Night holiday show. Here we are working on our arrangement at last night’s rehearsal. That’s Paul Martin singing lead and Michelle Lewis with her call-and-response harmony.

Ella Speed

No matter how far we roam in search of new material, The Flood never gets too far away from its folky roots. A Woody Guthrie or a Pete Seeger tune can bring us back home in an instance. And fundamental to the band’s DNA is the music of the great Huddle Ledbetter, better know as Lead Belly. In fact, one of the first songs The Flood ever did back when it was aborning in the early 1970s was a Lead Belly classic called “Ella Speed,” about a turn-of-the-century murder of a lady of the evening in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Folklorist John Lomax recorded Lead Belly singing that very song in Louisiana’s Angola Penitentiary in 1933. And while Lead Belly is the recognized source of that song, we learned it from another recording. It’s on Ian & Sylvia’s wonderful 1964 “Four Strong Winds” album, with John Harold doing the guitar solos. Well, here’s The Flood’s 2019 latest rendition, with the solos in the able hands of Paul Martin, Doug Chaffin and Paul Callicoat. It’s “Ella Speed.”

Autumn Leaves

Sometimes the magic of the evening comes just when you think the evening is over! At a recent rehearsal, we’d had a good, productive session and the boys were heading for the door. Sam had already had to go, the two Paul’s — Paul Martin and Paul Callicoat were packing up their instruments — and Doug was wringing out the last notes of the night on his fiddle. But before the guys could get their coats on, Michelle and Charlie started playing a favorite tune, and in a flash they were back in their seats to play one more. Here it is, old winter’s song: “Autumn Leaves.”