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If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
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Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)
Artist: Bessie Smith
Author: Bessie Smith
Label: Columbia
Year: 1927
With James P. Johnson on piano. Won a contest for best song about the 1927 flood disaster in the Mississippi Delta. Although the winning song already existed, recorded two months before the levee at Mounds Landing gave way. She probably wrote it after the flooding of Nashville on Christmas day 1926. Nashville's on the Cumberland river, still her $500 reward was partly spent on the 1927 Mississippi victims.
Covers:
Monarch Jazz Quartet [as What's The Matter Now]
Big Bill Broonzy [during an interview session one year before his death]
Alex Harvey [& his Soul Band (US)]
Irma Thomas [op Our New Orleans - A Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast post Katrina]
B.B. King [crediting Lonnie Johnson]
Joachim Cooder's Backwater Blues (2020) originally belongs to Uncle Dave Macon & Sam McGee, also from 1927. Good year for floodsongs!
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)