Trouble in Mind

 New Orleans jazz pioneer Richard M. Jones wrote “Trouble in Mind” about a century ago, and singer Bertha “Chippie” Hill made it a hit with a 1926 recording that had Jones himself on piano and a youngster by the name of Louis Armstrong on cornet. Since then, of course, the song’s been recorded by everyone from Big Bill Broonzy to Dinah Washington and Nina Simone. Music historians even call this tune the anthem of the classic blues genre, but actually its roots go even deeper. At least two different African American spirituals dating all the way back to the 1880s have similar themes in their lyrics. Now, The Flood has been doing “Trouble in Mind” for decades now; recently, Veezy Coffman gave it a whole new feel by bringing her big beautiful bari sax to bear on it. Hey, take a listen.

Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

 We’ve always loved this great old song -- now just about a century old — but we’ll be the first to tell you that there are some very hinky thing about our beloved tune. For one thing, hands down, the best known rendition of it is one of the earliest, the Columbia Records release by the great blues singer Bessie Smith. However, technically, the song’s not a blues. Structurally, it’s much like a vaudeville number or even an old music hall piece than one of the classic 12-bar blues that came out of the Mississippi Delta. Not only that, while “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” became one of the signature tunes of the Great Depression, we’ve learned that it was written actually almost a decade before those trouble times. Here’s how The Flood’s team of crack music detectives has sorted it out. The song was written in 1923 by a piano player named Jimmy Cox, who was indeed pretty well established on the black vaudeville circuit that worked the American roads in the Roaring Twenties. And Bessie Smith, who was just getting her career going in those days, was known to travel that same circuit and might have even performed in Jimmy Cox’s shows. It’s possible, in fact, she learned the song from Jimmy himself. What we know for sure that that by time Bessie Smith went back into the recording studio in the spring of 1929, Columbia was beginning to notice the blues records weren’t selling as well as they had had been and the suits wanted different material. Bessie responded with the Jimmy Cox composition from her vaudeville days. And here’s the final piece of the puzzle. In those days, it took a quite a long time for a record to make its way around the country. By the time it had traveled from New York City to the West Coast, the stock markets had collapsed and the Depression was beginning to wreak havoc. Imagine the listeners being amazed at how prophetic Bessie Smith’s new record was in describing their misery that first Depression winter. Here’s our take on the tune from a recent Flood rehearsal.

Remembering Joe Dobbs' "South Wind," a 2013 Flashback

 From almost a decade ago — in the early spring of 2013 — here’s the late Joe Dobbs fiddling the last of the many tunes he taught us over his 40 years of playing with us. Now, Joe’s tune here is an old one — it goes back at least 300 years — called “South Wind,” an Irish aire that Joe learned from a nice lady in Beckley, WV. And like many a good Irish tune, it prominently features a few ghosts along the way. The story of “South Wind” goes like this. It’s seems that there was a ghost ship bringing back home the souls of Irish exiles, men the Irish called The Wild Geese who had been killed in battle in foreign wars. As this haunted ship continued around southwestern County Cork, it was driven up the west coast by a southern breeze. And legend has it that the ghosts of these brave expatriates could be heard intoning this particular enchanted tune, which was picked up on the shore by the pipers and the fiddlers who handed down to us today.

Greensleeves (What Child Is This?)

 On this Christmas Eve, our gift to you is a beautiful old carol. Now, in our country, we often know it as “What Child Is This?” based on a Christmas verse that was written more than a century and a half ago. But its melody is even more deeply enshrined in our common human experience. In fact, think about it! This tune — “Greensleeves” — is one of the oldest melodies that we in the western world even know. Dating back to at least the Elizabethan period of English history, “Greensleeves” was, in fact, so well known by the time of William Shakespeare that he could refer to it by name three times in his play, “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” Meanwhile, this ancient, beautiful melody started being associated with Christmas and New Year’s as early as the 1680s. And yet, this tune never really seems to get very old, does it?

(When She Wants Good Lovin') My Baby Comes To Me

 Because of travel and all the usual holiday hullabaloo, we couldn’t work out a rehearsal this week, but that’s okay. The lull lets us pick up a tune that got left on the shelf earlier. Here from a gig last month at Heritage Station in downtown Huntington is an old 1950s Coasters number that we learned from folksinger Tom Rush’s treatment of it in the ‘70s. Penned by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the song can be a real head-turner in a public show.

Sister Kate / Heebie Jeebies

 The mood of last night’s jam session was set before we even walked through the door, because our host, Doug Chaffin, had already gotten a good head start on an amble down memory lane when he dug out his mother’s old guitar. You’ll need some background here. In the 1940s, Doug grew up listening to — and then playing — string band music with his mom and her banjo-picking sister. Years later when he was all grown, Doug bought his mom the best guitar she’d ever play, a big, beautiful Gibson Dove, a study of love in maple, mahogany and rosewood. Well, we’ve not seen that guitar — it’s been in its case for decades — but at its coming out party last night it jumped right into the mix. Just listen to it shimmy on this jive tune from about a hundred years ago.

Dink's Tune / Loch Lomond

 Have you ever notice that there’s magic in folk melodies, that they are both ancient and stunningly contemporary at the same time? But the magic’s more than that. Besides this wonderful timelessness, these well-worn melodies also seem to be almost universal in their emotional appeal. About a year ago when Vanessa Coffman first heard us noodling around with an old song called “Dink’s Tune,” which is quite deeply rooted in the American folk tradition, she heard a compatible twin from the other side of ocean, Scotland’s venerable ballad, “Loch Lomond.” Ever since then, we’ve been inviting these stately cousins to dance with each other. Here, from a recent rehearsal, listen as everyone in the band provides the setting for Randy Hamilton’s lovely, haunting vocals.