Jam Logs, the Podcast of The 1937 Flood

As the Coronavirus has us all hunkering down in our homes, we figured it’s high time we rolled out the latest tune that we’ve been working on, one that’s all about the love of a good home. Here from a recent rehearsal are Paul Callicoat and Michelle Lewis leading us on a sail through a great old 1960s Sam Cooke composition. And flowing in and out all along the way are sweet solos from everyone, from Paul Martin and Doug Chaffin,  from Veezy Coffman and Sam St. Clair. So, sit back and let our gang — Mister C and Michelle and the rest of the Flood family — bring it on home to you and yours. Be safe our there, friends, and stay happy in your hunkering down. Wash your hands and, please, take care of each other!

It always seemed kind of magical how at the weekly rehearsals it's often the oldest and the youngest players at the table who develop a special kind of simpatico. Now, chronologically, there’s sixty years difference in the ages of Doug Chaffin and Vanessa Coffman, but when the music starts, these two are obviously quite soulful siblings. Listen to the musical conversations they’re having throughout the great old Fats Waller standard that we started last night’s session with. P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }

Last week’s images of Mardi Gras were obviously still in our minds as we settled down for last night’s rehearsal. We’ve always loved how New Orleans has taught the world an important lesson, that music — sort of like gumbo — can be a rich stew of many different cultures and ideas. You can jazz up just about any kind of music, from the low-down to the lofty. A case in point is this classic tune that we first heard drifting through open church doors. Here are Michelle and the guys putting some good juju “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

“Beale Street Blues” has been in our musical blood stream for a very long time. In fact, by the time we finally got this wonderful jazz number onto a Flood CD — it’s on our 2003 “I’d Rather Be Flooded” album — we’d been doing the song in shows for quite some time. That was in part because we were hooked on the version that one of our string band heroes, the great Charlie Poole, worked up. Poole called his 1928 version “Ramblin’ Blues.” But even then the tune was an old-timer. Composer W.C. Handy had published it 11 years later — in 1917 — and immediately all the hot new jazz bands started playing it. And, boy, has the song had a long life, recorded in the past 70 years by everybody from Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey to Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. In 1974, writer James Baldwin used the song’s key line — “If Beale Street could talk” — as the title for one of his classic novels, which a couple of years ago director Barry Jenkins brought to the screen in an Academy Award-winning movie. Here then, from a recent rehearsal, is our revisiting of the song, with with great solos by Doug Chaffin, Paul Martin, Sam St. Clair and Vanessa Coffman. It’s “Beale Street Blues.”

Last night was a busy rehearsal with a lot of new tunes on the table to try out. But the highlight of the night came when we revisited a song that’s been in The Flood’s swirl for a long time now. It was a couple of decades ago when the late Joe Dobbs got us playing “Over the Rainbow” as an instrumental. In fact, it was a favorite track on the “Fiddle and The Flood” CD that Joe brought out in 2001. Then it kind of went dormant for a while, until a few years ago when Michelle Lewis brought it back to us as a vocal. Well, last night the tune took another good turn when Vanessa Coffman gave us a couple of rich, lush choruses that showed us her tenor sax could open up even more dimensions to the song. Here are Michelle and Vanessa and “Over the Rainbow.”

Often when Huntington’s hits a rainy patch, as it has it has lately, we’re reminded of the opening line of a classic Bessie Smith blues from the 1920s, “It rained five days and the sky turned dark as night.” Well, since the soak and the sog were much on our minds last night, we just set it all down in a blues, so everybody could testify, starting with Michelle Lewis’s original (patent pending) call and response to my vocals, then a double round of solos from the whole congregation, Doug Chaffin and Sam St. Clair, Vanessa Coffman and the two Pauls, Paul Martin and Paul Callicoat. Here’s The Flood talking about a flood, just riffing on “Backwater Blues.”

This episode of the podcast is about the podcast itself. It was 12 years ago when our harmonicat Sam St. Clair first suggested we try our hand at what at the time was still a relatively new idea: to have a weekly podcast, featuring a tune from a recent Flood rehearsal with maybe a little bit of commentary as an introduction. We thought it would just be a little hoot, perhaps a fun diversion to while away a couple of cold winter months. Honestly, we never imagined we’d still be doing this thing all this time later, but, well, the podcast caught on. These days we have listeners throughout the country and even around the world, from England to Brazil to Japan and elsewhere. And today marks the 500th episode. Now, 499 episodes ago, when we started this long, strange trip, the first song we ever featured was our funky rendition of a tune we had only then started playing around with, W.C. Handy’s 1914 jazz classic, “St. Louis Blues.” So, to celebrate today’s episode number 500, let’s revisit that song. Here’s the year 2020 edition, with Michelle’s lead vocal and solos by Doug, Paul and Vanessa. It’s “St. Louis Blues.”

Sixty-five years ago, songwriter Bart Howard wanted to write a sassy little tune about how people seldom say what they mean, and that’s why he called it “In Other Words.” But then Bart learned his own lesson about other words. When Kaye Ballard brought the song to the radio that year, fans didn’t call in by its name. Instead, when they phoned up their favorite disc jockey and ask to hear this cool little melody, they used the song’s evocative, highly poetic opening line. When the same thing kept happening all across the country, the record company had to re-release the song under the title that the public had chosen for it. The Flood’s been doing the song for more than a decade now. Here, from last night’s rehearsal, Michelle takes us on a favorite journey. In other words, here’s “Fly Me to the Moon.”

One of the fun things about being such an eclectic bunch of people is that we are quite comfortable with reaching way back for great tunes that many bands have never even heard of. A case in point is this song that’s now nearly a hundred years ago. It came out when the 1920s were really beginning to roar. It was a favorite of Charlie’s mom and dad, not because they knew it from 1926 when it was released, but because it was also the title tune of a classic Bing Crosby musical from 1941. And this musical centenarian still has mojo. Listen to our take on the tune from a recent rehearsal, as Paul Callicoat lays down a solid bass line for tasty solos by Doug Chaffin, Paul Martin, Sam St. Clair and Vanessa Coffman. Here’s the great Ray Henderson composition, “Birth of the Blues.”

There are all kinds of ways to define the word “magic.” Among musicians there’s magic in the way an old tune can seal the bonds of new friendships. These days we are delighted to have jazz saxophonist Vanessa Coffman sitting in with us at the weekly rehearsals. Last night there were smiles all around the table when she brought some new magic to “Misty.”