Comments on: WSJ piece on the 1927 flood and blues music

By: Ben Cole

Ben Cole — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:13:14 +0000

When the daily news brings reports of devastation and disaster hither and yon, I recall author John Barry’s comments about the ’27 flood, when it was possible to travel by boat from Yazoo City, Miss., to Monroe, La.

Damn ….

By: DeltaLawMama

DeltaLawMama — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:09:17 +0000

Square Books has it in the bargain bin right now.

By: DeltaLawMama

DeltaLawMama — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:08:13 +0000

Love Rising Tide. Have read it three times. Too depressing to read it right now.

By: NMC

NMC — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:53:00 +0000

No idea, ccvz

By: ccvz

ccvz — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:21:42 +0000

Unrelated to music but related to the ’27 flood, Rising Tide is one of my favorite books.

I read an article earlier this year about a movie being filmed in New Orleans about Bolden’s life…any idea when that might be finished?

By: NMC

NMC — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:15:09 +0000

Pseudo-scholarly nitpicking: The article dates W.C. Handy’s encounter with a blues guitarist to 1903. It almost certainly was later. The mistaken date goes back decades to an earlier writer’s uncareful reading of Handy’s memoir, in which he says he moved to Clarksdale in 1903; the book then describes the now-relatively-famous encounter as having occurred some time later, without giving it a specific date. Handy was in Clarksdale I think three years.

This matters because the 1903 date (or 1903-1906) is the earliest reference to blues. It’s a little less widely known that almost exactly at the same time (I think in 1906) a bit of sheet music was published in St. Louis that was ragtime but that has at its third theme the melody of “Buddy Bolden Blues” (aka “Funky But”), with the melody tangled up in the 10th-12th bars to allow it to be extended to ragtime’s full 16 bars.