[Note: This was written soon after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans]
Fire, Water, and Music
Though I've never heard a song about the Chicago Fire of 1871, I Googled a few that were published soon after it. George Root, who also wrote famous patriotic songs during the Civil War such as Tramp Tramp, The Boys Are Marching, and The Battle Cry of Freedom, wrote some Chicago Fire songs which became popular, such as From the Ruins Our City Shall Rise:
Ruins! Ruins! Street and square
In a hopeless confusion are mingled there
Strangely, strangely our old haunts fade
In the cast open waste that the fire has made
Chorus:
But see! the bright rift in the cloud.....
And hear! the great voice from the shore....
Our city shall rise! yes she shall rise
Queen of the west once more.......
Substitute "water" for "fire" in the verse, and "south" for "west" in the chorus, and this could be about New Orleans and Katrina. I love this line: Strangely, strangely our old haunts fade.
Another hit (author unlisted) was a waltz about the fire published in Boston in 1871, called Pity the Homeless:
Pity the homeless, pity the poor,
By the fierce Fire fiend forced to your door;
List to their pleading, list to their cry,
Pass them not heedlessly by....
Roused from their slumbers, peaceful
and sweet,
Hastening in terror into the street,
Leaving behind them treasure most dear,
Flying in anguish and fear......
...Haste then, and help them, who from
their home
Shelterless, foodless, wearily roam,
Pity their anguish, list to their prayers,
Lighten their labors and cares.......
Again, a few small changes and this could be a Katrina song. I found these on a Chicago fire website (www.chicagohs.org/fire/intro/) called The Great Chicago Fire and The Web of Memory. Aside from these, I can recall very few songs of area-wide disasters other than water events like storms and floods. Others surely exist, like Peshtigo by Ken Lonnquist, Madison singer and songwriter, about Wisconsin's notoriously ruinous Peshtigo fire, (http://www.kenland.com/pages/lyrics_weave.html) (scroll down to "Peshtigo"), which was the deadliest fire in US history and which happened on the SAME DAY as the Chicago fire.
But there are many songs about floods, storms, and high water in general. I was surprised at how many I have actually performed or am at least familiar with without having to Google. There's River, Stay Way From My Door, by Harry Woods and Mort Dixon, which was a hit in 1931. The bridge is: Don't come up any higher; I'm so all alone. Leave my bed and my fire; that's all I own. I learned this song in the mid-sixties from a Dixieland band album, though I'm sorry to say I can't remember WHICH Dixieland band; I came to find later that it also has been recorded by the likes of Frank Sinatra.
There's Deep River Blues, ©Alton & Rabon Delmore (the "Delmore Brothers"), sung so marvelously by Doc Watson, whose guitar arrangement for it is legendary. Many years ago I drove myself crazy (short drive) trying to copy it (no luck).
If my boat sinks with me.
I'll go down, don't you see,
'Cause I got them deep river blues,
Now I'm gonna say goodbye,
And if I sink, just let me die,
'Cause I got them deep river blues.
Chorus:
Let it rain, let it pour,
Let it rain a whole lot more,
'Cause I got them deep river blues,
Let the rain drive right on,
Let the waves sweep along,
'Cause I got them deep river blues.
I have heard that one of the reasons there were a number of songs about the flood of 1927 was a record company's offer of $500 for the best song about the situation. Bessie Smith won the prize with her Back Water Blues (©Bessie Smith). I learned this song years ago from a Leadbelly recording. I don't know how close it is to Bessie's original, and since this is from memory, I don't know how close it is to Leadbelly's version either, but I don't think it's that far off:
It rained five days and the clouds turned
as dark as night (x2)
There was trouble takin' place in the lowland that night
(The rhyme of "night" with "night"
makes me think this isn't exactly how Bessie wrote it)
I got up this morning, couldn't get even get out of my door
(x2)
Make a poor man wonder where in the world he has to go
Now they rowed a little boat about five
miles across to my farm
I packed up all my things and they rowed me along
I went and I stood on some high old lonesome
hill (x2)
I looked back down on the house where I used to live
Now it thundered and it lightnin'd, and
the wind began to blow (x2)
There's a thousand poor people didn't have no place to go
A lot of people are quoting the song by Randy Newman called Louisiana 1927 (©Randy Newman), though I think he was a bit late for the $500 prize:
The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne
Then there is the great When the Levee Breaks, written and first recorded (and ©) by Memphis Minnie and her then husband Joe McCoy in 1929, more recently recorded by Led Zeppelin:
Well all last night I sat on the levee
and moan (x2)
Thinkin' 'bout my baby and my happy home
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin'
to break (x2)
And all these people have no place to stay
Oh cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't
do no good (x2)
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move
It's a mean old levee, cause me to weep
and moan (x2)
Gonna leave my baby, and my happy home
It is no surprise that so many of these songs of rising waters are in the blues format, the lower Mississippi being both the birthplace of the blues and the scene of so many heartbreaking floods.
Regional catastrophe might make good song fodder, but let's hope there's no new material for at least a few centuries to come.