A Flood First: Live from Fairmont

#503 / Flood Time Capsule: 2007

2007 was the last year when regular people weren’t routinely walking around with a video camera in their pockets.

Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs had just introduced the first iPhone, the device that would change all our lives, but at $600 (or $1,000 in today’s money), it was pretty much out of a reach for most folks, Floodsters certainly included.

However, the band was beginning to enjoy at least some of the effects of the ever-dropping prices for cool technology.

That summer, for instance, Susie and Dave Peyton bought their first low-cost vidcam and were eager to try it out at a Flood gig.

A Test Run

The opportunity came in August 2007 when the band trekked back to Fairmont, WV. It was The Flood’s fourth gig at Prickett’s Fort, as the guys explained in the video below. This is one of the first that Susie captured with that new camera. The video — the first-ever footage of a live Flood show — features the late Joe Dobbs rocking along on “Clarinet Polka”:

About the Song

Spending his early years in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, fiddling Joe was exposed to a wide variety of musical styles, ranging from Cajun to country, blues to bluegrass, pop to polka.

Joe fiddling with his band in the 1950s.

Fifty years ago when he came north and east and helped form The Flood in the mid-1970s, Joe brought with him a huge song bag. He said “Clarinet Polka” was always popular with the sizable German population in his old stomping grounds down South.

And incidentally, this also is a substantial answer to anyone who thinks traditional fiddlers just want to plop down in plain D and stay there. "Clarinet Polka" makes three key changes each time through the melody.

Tracing It Back

That melody goes back the end of the 19th century, though its origin story is a bit murky. Some say it was created in Austria by a composer named A. Humpfat, while others contend was written under the name "Dziadunio Polka" by the Polish composer Karol Namysłowski.

A vinyl recording of “A Hupfata” was released in 1907 and featured the musical stylings of The Band of the 14th Bavarian Infantry Regiment. This recording preceded by several years Namysłowski’s 1913 copyright of “Dziadunio Polka” (as well as its subsequent 1915 recording in Chicago).

It’s equally challenging to figure how this Austrian/Polish tune found its way into the old-time fiddling world. One source suggests that it might be more of a show number than a traditional tune. In other words, it seems to have been incorporated into the Southern fiddle canon more recently as part of a broader contest repertoire, rather than arising from deeply rooted traditions.

Some notable figures were early key performers of the tune. Jehile Kirkhuff, for instance, was a Pennsylvania fiddler who won multiple fiddle championships, including the World Champion Old-Time Fiddler title in 1954. A recording of his playing of "Clarinet Polka" exists from 1964. 

Meanwhile, Back to Fairmont, More Firsts

The Flood’s 2007 Fairmont gig also was the first time that Michelle Hoge (nee Walker) joined the gang on stage at Prickett’s Fort, as shown in this Susie Peyton video of her stellar performance of “Summertime”:

And the late Mike Ellis, affectionately known in the Floodisphere and elsewhere as “Mickey D,” had a short stint playing with the band starting in 2007.

The Flood guys met Mickey when Sam St. Clair and Dave Ball brought him along to work the sound system for that Fairmont gig. At one point, Mickey D, who also was an accomplished harmonica play, hopped on stage with the guys for this twin-harp rendition of “Sittin’ on Top of the World”:

The band was pleased with Ellis’s sound work and about a month later invited him back to handle sound for another job, this one in Charleston.

When Mickey D joined the band later that year, he played, not harmonica, but assorted percussion instruments, ranging from a Brazilian drum to a simple snare with brushes.

One More Video

Before we roll the time machine back into the garage, let’s see one more of Susan Peyton’s videos from that August evening in Fairmont. Here’s Dave Peyton leading the guys on one of his signature songs, Roy Harvey’s 1929 love song to his native state, “Moonshine in Those West Virginia Hills.”

For more on Dave’s tune, see this story from the Flood Watch archives.