Chicago Defender Blues Advertisements: 1927 Flood

The 1927 flood inundated 27,000 square miles along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River populated by more than 900,000 people. For a period of months in the spring and summer of 1927, water covered the whole vast flood plain of the lower Mississippi River and its tributaries. It swallowed up nearly all of cotton country, making a lake of the tens of thousands of square miles of the Mississippi Delta. Some 700,000 people were driven from the land, the great majority of them black sharecroppers and tenant farmers. The 1927 flood provoked an outpouring of songs by both whites and African-Americans. Many blues songs were written directly about the flood itself while others dealt with related matters like levee work, refugee camps and other natural disasters. The four record companies-Columbia, OKeh, Paramount and Victor engaged in a sweepstakes of sorts to see which one could come up with the biggest original “race record” song hit dealing with this 1927 flood. Columbia took the lead from the start. According to David Evans: “Their most popular blues artist, and probably the most popular of any label, Bessie Smith, had already recorded ‘Back-Water Blues’ and ‘Muddy Water,’ and Columbia had these two records on the market by the time the levees broke in the South in April.” In fact “Back-Water Blues” was recorded on February 17, 1927, some two months before the levees actually broke. Through some impressive detective work Evans determined that Bessie was actually singing about flooding in Nashville in December 1926, the effects of which she witnessed first hand. This flood contributed to the rising waters of the Mississippi River that reached flood stage four months later. Nonetheless “Back-Water Blues” was the biggest hit of the flood related songs and has become a blues standard. Again from Evans: “On June 18, 1927, the Baltimore Afro-American reported that ‘Back-Water Blues’ and ‘Muddy Water (a Mississippi moan)’ are probably in the fore of best sellers of the past week. Both are by Bessie Smith. Some owners of the record shops attribute the present popularity of these records to the publicity given to the Mississippi river floods which are laying waste to many former haunts of record buyers.” It also didn’t hurt that the record was advertised extensively in the black press including the above advertisement from the Chicago Defender. It’s not hard to see why Bessie’s account resonated with the public, providing a personal feel to the disaster:

When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night (2x)
Then trouble’s takin’ place in the lowlands at night

I woke up this mornin’, can’t even get out of my door (2x)
There’s been enough trouble to make a poor girl wonder where she want to go

Then they rowed a little boat about five miles ‘cross the pond (2x)
I packed all my clothes, throwed them in and they rowed me along

When it thunders and lightnin’ and when the wind begins to blow (2x)
There’s thousands of people ain’t got no place to go

Then I went and stood upon some high old lonesome hill (2x)
Then looked down on the house were I used to live

Backwater1 blues done call me to pack my things and go (2x)
‘Cause my house fell down and I can’t live there no more

Mmm, I can’t move no more (2x)
There ain’t no place for a poor old girl to go

High Water Blues (MP3)

OKeh Records first entry in the flood sweepstakes was “South Bound Water” recorded on April 25 by their biggest blues star Lonnie Johnson only four days after the levee broke at Greenville. As Evans notes: “The bursting of the levee above Greenville, Mississippi, on April 21 was the defining event of the 1927 flood, and the great rush to record flood songs began only after this catastrophe.” On May 3 Johnson cut “Back-Water Blues” a cover of the Bessie Smith hit which was issued as the flip side of “South Bound Water”, another flood song. The record was advertised in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender. Johnson returned to the flood theme several times including “Low Land Moan”, “The New Fallin’ Rain Blues” and “Broken Levee Blues”, one of the few flood songs with a streak of protest. OKeh also recorded and advertised “High Water Blues” in by Blue Belle featuring Lonnie Johnson on guitar and advertised in the Chicago Defender on August 13, 1927. Bessie Mae Smith recorded variously as St. Louis Bessie, Blue Belle and Streamline Mae. Her 18 sides recorded between 1927-1930 showcase a strong singer who used some striking imagery in her songs.

Several other flood songs were advertised in the Chicago Defender including Barbecue Bob’s “Mississippi Heavy Water Blues”, Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Rising High Water Blues” and Charlie Patton’s two-part “High Water Everywhere” of which Paramount devoted one of it’s last advertisements to this record which became a surprise hit at the dawn of the Great Depression. I’ll be reproducing these ads in a future installment of our ongoing exploration of the Chicago Defender blues ads.