Backwater Blues and Amazing Grace

As I'd blogged below, I played two songs with the Contra Costa Performing Arts Society on September 28. It was a lot of fun, although kind of scary, and I was nervous. But it was a great group of performers, and a wonderful audience! I'd love to post the video of all the performers, but need their permission first :).

I played two songs. One is my arrangement of "Backwater Blues," by Bessie Smith. This song is (accidentally) one of the anthems of the great Mississippi River flood of 1927. That flood is associated in many people's minds with the flood in Louisiana that Randy Newman sang about, and there is a connection, but it's a weird one. In April 1927, New Orleans had a huge rainstorm, and the pump that was supposed to pump water out of the city broke, and the city flooded. At the same time, the Mississippi was flooding upriver, and the powerful men of the city decided (unnecessarily) to breach a levy in Lousiana to protect New Orleans. The whole thing was a disaster, and mostly an unnecessary one. The PBS "American Experience" documentary about New Orleans had a great explanation of all of it: one well worth watching.

Coincidentally, Bessie Smith (the highest paid black entertainer of her era) had written and recorded "Backwater Blues" just before the Mississippi River Flood, so the song became an anthem for that flood. The original version had James Johnson on the piano, playing an accompaniment that's very cool, and has a bit in it that later Ray Charles used as the baseline for his song "Low Society." There's a great video on YouTube of the original version with images from hurricane Katrina and folk art from the 1920s. Here's that video:

The other song I played, "Amazing Grace" is one I've blogged about below, and one I really love having learned to play! I like it not just because of its history, being associated with the end of the Atlantic slave trade, but also because I find the concept of grace fascinating, even for a relatively non-religious person like myself. It's a meditative and hopeful song. And this version (which is partially my own arrangement, but borrowed from a version by Charles Brown) is so very slow and soulful.

Both versions obviously need work, but here is the video of both songs (you can also watch it on YouTube, at www.youtube.com/swamus).