Jam Logs, the Podcast of The 1937 Flood

 There are lots of stories about the great jazz songwriter Fats Waller. Our favorite is about the time he was kidnapped off the streets of Chicago. Now, it was 1926 and Fats was just leaving a gig in the early morning when four men grabbed him, bundled him into a car and sped off to a hotel. Ordered inside and, with a gun to his back, he was pushed toward a piano and told to play. It was only then that Fats realized that HE was the “surprise gift” at Al Capone’s birthday party! Now that is a command performance. It was three years later that Fats — who copyrighted more than 400 songs in his oh-so-brief lifetime (he died at just 39!) — wrote our favorite Waller composition. Here’s our 2020 rendition of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” from a recent Flood rehearsal.

 Our dear friend Vanessa Coffman turns 20 years old today and we’re happy to announced that going into this new decade, she is also the newest Floodster. At the end of The Flood’s rehearsal last night, we were thrilled that Vanessa accepted our invitation to join the band.  Now, regular listeners know that Vanessa — we call her Veezy around here, incidentally — started sitting in with the band last winter. It was former Floodster Stew Schneider who first called our attention to this wonderful young player. During the holiday season last year, Stew called to say, “Man, you’ve got to drop everything and come hear this young woman play tenor sax!”  It was in January — exactly nine months ago today, in fact — that she took in her first Flood session. Everyone in the room was immediately wowed, and she’s been coming back ever since. Of course, the horrid COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to the weekly rehearsal in March, but we stayed in touch with her during the six-month shutdown and when rehearsals resumed last month, she was right there in the mix. In fact, during the awful year of loneliness and loss, Veezy Coffman has been a bright light, enhancing everything we play with her beautiful tone and her imaginative musical ideas. Take a listen to this. From a last night’s rehearsal, it’s a bit of Veezy’s work on “Summertime.” Happy birthday, Veezy Coffman — welcome to the Family Flood!

 Of all the tunes we do, none is more evocative than “Autumn Leaves,” Joseph Kosma’s post World War II composition that quickly became a jazz standard in America from the 1950s right up to today. Memorable renditions have been recorded by everyone from Miles Davis and Chet Baker to Erroll Garner and Mel Tormé. And while certainly the lyrics are beautiful and touching, as this instrumental track from a recent Flood rehearsal demonstrates, it’s the melody itself that so stunningly captures the magic and the melancholy of autumn. Listen as Doug Chaffin, Paul Martin and Veezy Coffman find new things to say with this gorgeous classic tune.

 Here’s a tune that we started doing back in the foggy ruins of time, inspired by the original that was recorded 90 years ago this year by some of our heroes, in this case, the great country blues band, The Mississippi Sheiks. Of course, we did have to fool with it to make it our own. We don’t know how Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon would feel about that A-flat that we added to the fifth bar of their lovely E blues, but, hey, that’s just how songs get Floodified. Here from last night’s rehearsal is the latest rendition, with double servings of solos by Doug, Sam, Vanessa and the two Pauls.

 In this sad, dark year, The Flood has been graced with a bright light in the person of Vanessa Coffman. The 19-year-old saxophonist we call Veezy started sitting in with us back in January, hardly missing a weekly jam session right up until mid-March, when, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. It’s only now that we’re starting to get back to something like our regular rehearsals, and Veezy’s right there in the mix making it happen. You know, The Flood has always an affinity for songs that are older than we are — which in our case is saying something! — but to make that work, you really got to pay attention, to listen closely to each other so you can find new ideas in all those great old classic lines. Well, Vanessa is teaching us that sometimes the wisest ears in the room are the youngest. Here from last night is last tune of the session — “Georgia on My Mind” — and just listen to everybody listening.

Doug Chaffin is the guy you want by your side if you’re setting out to the have a good time. He’s the perfect example of a good musician. For instance, if there’s a whole bunch of pickers in the room, Doug knows how to play well with others. He’ll step up to play a memorable solo when it’s his turn, then step back again to share the moment, playing sweet riffs and fills to support and amplify other players’ ideas. On the other hand, when just a few come together to play — like last night with Danny Gillum and Charlie Bowen — Doug will be your solo-playing machine! Now, The Flood has been doing this old Sonny Terry-Brownie McGhee song for, well, a hundred years or so, but Doug always takes it on like it’s brand new. In fact, on this track, we come to Doug five times for solos and each time he’s got something different say. Shoot, Doug had more ideas, but we just ran out of song!

Eighty years ago, the great Duke Ellington had no idea he was writing the perfect anthem of frustration for our 21st century pandemic world of COVID-19 and loneliness of quarantine. “Don’t Get Around Much Any More”? Hey, brothers and sisters, we can all feel that! For instance, until this week, we in The Flood hadn’t been all together in one room at one time for nearly six months. But we just couldn’t take the separation any more, and last night our new bass player, the good Paul Callicoat, invited us to come to the big room at his store, Route 60 Music Co. in Barboursville, for a little safe socially distance jam session. So, with washed hands and masked faces, we came together for a sweet 90 minutes of music. And of course, once there, we had to start with that Duke Ellington classic that has taken on such a new meaning in this strange days.

Any musician will tell you that the “meaning” of a song is much more than merely the words. While the lyrics can tell a story, maybe explain the title and conjure up a few images in your head, the real mood, the richness of the tune is in the melody and the harmonies. It’s the notes with which the players fill the spaces around and between all those words.  Now, we in The Flood are frankly in awe of the infinity that Doug Chaffin and Paul Martin have and how each plays in ways that often beautifully complement the other, echoing and building on each other’s musical ideas throughout a tune. You can hear that on this track from a mini-rehearsal last month. The vehicle is our rendition of an old folk song we’ve been playing for years, “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens.” If you listen closely to Doug’s fiddle and then Paul — first on mandolin, then on guitar — you’ll hear conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with nouns, verbs and adjectives.

The tribal elder of the Flood clan these days, Doug Chaffin, has been playing music for about 70 years, almost a third of them with us. Since the year 2000, Doug has played a slew of instruments with the band, from upright bass and mandolin to fiddle, but he’s probably most at home with the guitar, the instrument he started playing back in the 1950s with the pickers in his own family. Nowadays, whether on stage with the whole Flood in front of an audience or just kicking back on his front porch at his homestead in the hills overlooking Ashland, Ky., Doug always rocks us. For instance, this track opens with Doug tearing it up on “East Tennessee Blues.” Oh, and by the way, Doug celebrated another birthday recently — he turned 79 last week — but he doesn’t seem to be slowing down much. Witness the way the track ends, with Doug roaring through a little bit of “Black Mountain Rag,” with Danny Gillum and Charlie Bowen huffing and puffing beside him just trying to keep up!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a half century since Roger Samples and Charlie Bowen started playing music together. This track starts with a snippet of a tune recorded at a party in late 1974. It was right when Rog and Charlie had just started messing around with Josh White’s great tune, “Number 12 Train.” Oh, it’s even harder believe that Roger has been gone almost five years now. But he’s still very much with us. Evident of that is the rest of this track, recorded back in the March, the last time we were all together in one room before this COVID-19 madness started. Interesting, isn’t it, how the first tune of the evening was a shoutout to that same old blues? This time it features great solos by Doug and Sam and the two Paul’s? The blues run through so much of what The Flood plays, and so does the spirit of Roger Samples.