The Birth of the Blues

In New York in a single year — 1925 — Tin Pan Alley composer Ray Henderson wrote three — count ‘em THREE — classics in the great American songbook: “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “Has Anybody Seen My Girl?” (“Five foot two, eyes of blues…”) and “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.” And then in the next year, maybe just to show he hadn’t shot his wad, Ray wrote this one, “The Birth of the Blues.” Now, The Flood started playing this song, gosh, probably 20 years ago — well, yeah, we put it on our second CD way back in 2002 with Joe Dobbs and Chuck Romine and Dave Peyton — but we hadn’t play it in about a decade. In fact, our newer Floodsters — Paul Martin and Randy Hamilton— had never even heard it, until Charlie started picking it one night at the recent rehearsal, and Doug jumped in with his sweet little Paul Reed Smith guitar, and then Paul Martin pick it up for a couple of solos, and suddenly Ray Henderson’s tune was up and rarin’ to go again.