[78-L] Mississippi Mud and the Mississippi Flood of 1927 - Your Location ??

[DKing]

Hello Roger,

I’m fairly new to this list, so to better put the story below in context,
where are you located in this country - somewhere in the "South”?

Dave King
Sunnyale, Calif.


> On Nov 10, 2019, at 8:34 PM, Rodger J Holtin <rjh334578 at gmail.com.invalid> wrote:
> 
> 
> Last month I spoke for a local historical society and my subject was the
> songs that were inspired by the great Mississippi flood of 1927.  My
> audience was mostly baby boomers one millennial and two or three
> octogenarians.
> 
> 
> 
> I used the usual stuff by Charlie Patton, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie,
> Lonnie Johnson and so on, all available for free on the internet these days.
> 
> 
> 
> But I also noticed that from 1927 through early 1929 there were a number of
> songs also written about rain
> 
> 
> 
> Rain (Ford and Glenn & Jacques Renard))
> 
> I Get The Blues When It Rains
> 
> Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella
> 
> Singing In The Rain
> 
> 
> 
> I don't find many others until we get to about 1934 and it seems to me that
> the rash of 1927-29 rain songs might well have been influenced by news of
> the rains and the flood just as much as those obvious flooding songs.
> 
> 
> 
> So as a little icing on the cake so to speak I played the vocal portion of
> old dance band records of those songs, and then, somewhat trepidatiously, I
> played the Rhythm Boys record of I Left My Sugar Standing In The
> Rain/Mississippi Mud, carefully noting it was not politically correct.  To
> my amazement, the folks who we might have expected to have been most
> offended by it declared it to be their favorite record of the presentation.
> During the punch and cookies portion of the evening, the same ladies made
> sure I got an extra piece of pie.
> 
> 
> 
> Still later, during the finger licking portion, one of the octogenarians
> came over to me and said that he had a story about that for me. It seems
> that his grandmother had a gramophone on her closed-in back porch and when
> he was a kid (1950s) he and his cousins used to go and play with grandma's
> Victrola. One of the favorite songs for the kids to pull out was Mississippi
> Mud. Every time they played it, grandma would come running out and tell them
> to take it off because she thought it was a terribly disrespectful song
> because it made fun of the poor people that lost everything in the flood the
> year that record came out. Apparently she remembered the timing of that
> quite vividly. The kids asked her why, if that song was so bad, she kept the
> record. I love the answer, and you will, too. "Because I like the other
> side," she said.
> 
> 
> 
> I gave the same presentation last week for the county library, and as a wrap
> up, told the Mississippi Mud record story.  This time somebody asked what
> was on the other side, and one of the other folks immediately piped up that
> Ain't She Sweet was the flipside.  I couldn't believe anybody but me in this
> county would have known that.  And, yes, that may or may not have been the
> issue that Grandma had.  Looks like it was issued on 78 about two dozen
> times, so no telling which version they had, but I'm guessing the Rhythm
> Boys record had the best distribution since it's the one that has crossed my
> path the most often.
> 
> 
> 
> I'll be giving the same dog n pony show in a neighboring town in March of
> 2020, and you can bet I'll work in both parts of that story.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rodger Holtin
> 
> 78-L Member Since MCMXCVIII
> 
> 
> 
> For Best Results Use Victor Needles
> 
> 
> 
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