The devastation of New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina has had many drawing parallels to the the great Mississippi flood of 1927. Like Katrina, the Mississippi flood of 1927 exposed the class divide in America as well as laid bare class and racial oppression in the South. It also demonstrated the need for the federal government to take charge of managing the Mississippi, which had been previously left to state and local authorities. The 1927 flood inundated 27,000 square miles along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River populated by more than 900,000 people. It was, until Katrina, the greatest natural disaster in US history. The damage was mainly to farmlands, and the land itself was reclaimable. The combined value of the shacks and sheds swept away that year probably came to less, counting inflation, than it will now cost to gut and rebuild a few blocks of downtown New Orleans. But the toll in lives uprooted was remarkably similar.

 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, perhaps fewer than now displaced by Katrina, whose numbers are said to be around 1 million. The levees were a major issue in both disasters. In 1927 it was widely believed that the levees had been sufficiently reinforced to be able to withstand the forces of nature. That assumption proved false as it did during the current disaster. Studies by Louisiana State University and the US Army Corps of Engineers confirm that steel reinforcements on failed levees only went half as deep as they were supposed to go. Not only were the levees not built to withstand a category 4 hurricane, despite repeated warnings that such a storm was inevitable, due to shoddy construction they could not withstand a hurricane of lesser force. The construction flaws virtually guaranteed that they would give way in the face of a storm with the power of Katrina—a slow-moving category 3 storm when it hit land. In both events there was no viable plan in place for the evacuation of Gulf Coast residents or their shelter after the storm.

  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. Nowhere is this better discussed than in David Evan's essay "High Water Everywhere: Blues and Gospel Commentary on the 1927 Mississippi River Flood." The essay is the first chapter in the book "Nobody Knows Where The Blues Come From." Much of the below information and quotes comes from Evans' essay. Evans goes into great detail to give the historical context of these songs, often relating them directly to events of the 1927 flood. Due to space constraints the below is more a survey of notable flood songs and those who want more background are urged to read Evans' well researched essay. For a historical account of the the flood, John M. Barry's "Rising Tide" is highly recommended.

 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. "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. Nonetheless "Back-Water Blues" was the biggest hit of the flood related songs and has become a blues standard. "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.

 Columbia also enlisted it's most popular country blues artist, Barbecue Bob, to record the flood blues Mississippi Heavy Water Blues in June. The record was advertised in the Chicago Defender on August 13 and Like Bessie's record was a hit. Other flood songs performed by Columbia artists include Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie's When The Levee Breaks cut at their first session in 1929, Mary Dixon recorded "Fire and Thunder Blues" in 1929 and Clara Smith, Columbia's second biggest blues star, recorded a revised version of "Low Land Moan" a flood blues that Lonnie Johnson originally waxed for OKeh in 1927.

  OKeh Records first entry in the flood sweepstakes was South Bound Water recorded by their biggest blues star Lonnie Johnson only four days after the levee broke at Greenville. "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. 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 flood records in May by Blue Belle, "High Water Blues", featuring Lonnie Johnson on guitar and Flood Blues by Sippie Wallace. Other flood songs recorded for OKeh included Raymond Boyd's "Hard Water Blues", Bertha "Chippie" Hill's "Mississippi Waters Blues", Keghouse's "Scott Levee Blues", all of which went unissued.

 Paramount Records got it's big star Blind Lemon Jefferson to record
Rising High Water Blues in May and the record was given a large advertisement in the June 11 Chicago Defender. The caption read: "The great and terrible Mississippi River Flood was Blind Lemon Jefferson's inspiration for 'Rising High Water Blues.' This awful catastrophe is described in the sensational new Paramount record, making a selection you will always want to keep, and you'll never grow tired of playing." Two years after the flood, in 1929, Charley Patton recorded a two-part flood blues, High Water Everywhere Part 1 and High Water Everywhere Part 2. Paramount devoted one of it's last advertisements to this record which became a surprise hit at the dawn of the Great Depression. "The illustration depicts a family sitting dejectedly on the porch of a shack, looking at the rising waters. The caption reads: 'Everyone who has heard this record says that HIGH WATER EVERYWHERE is Charley Patton's best and you know that means it has to be mighty good because he has made some knockouts.'" This was the last original blues to be recorded about the 1927 flood. Other Paramount songs about the flood included Alice Pearson's Greenville Levee Blues and "Water Bound Blues" both cut in July and a sermon by Rev. Moses Mason, "Red Cross The Disciple Of Christ Today" cut in January 1928.

 Victor didn't fare as well recording "Lonesome Refugee" and "The Mississippi Blues" by fading vaudeville veteran Laura Smith in June but didn't bother to promote the records. Flood songs by other companies included Cameo who recorded Viola McCoy doing a cover of "Back-Water Blues", another cover of the song by was cut by Kitty Waters for Pathe/Perfect, the label also recorded Uncle Charlie Richards' (Blind Richard Yates) "Levee Blues."

 It's unknown how many original blues songs will emerge in the aftermath of Katrina but it's unlikely to rival the songs about the 1927 flood. Blues is no longer a viable commercial music, no longer the music African-American listen to and hence is little advertised and marketed. There have been a number of benefit albums in the wake of Katrina but little in the way of original material. It's interesting to note that on one such album New Orleans' own Irma Thomas chose to revive Bessie Smith's "Back-Water Blues."

 Many of the themes of the blues and gospel songs of the 1927 flood are also the major themes in blues such as fear, tragedy, wrath of God, comedy and even love and sex. As Evans concludes: "These songs serve as an important supplement to the news reports and official documents of the flood. They come form the flood's victims, their friends, and members of their communities. Often they were people farthest down the social ladder, but they managed, in the words of Charley Patton, to "tell the world" their experiences, thoughts and opinions about the flood and it's aftermath."

-Springer, Robert, Nobody Knows Where The Blues Come From, University Press Of Mississippi, (2005).

-Barry, John M, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, Simon & Schuster, (1997).

-Daniel, Pete, Deep'n As It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood, Oxford University Press, (1977).