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.”