Birth of the Jug Band Breakfast

#68 / Flood Time Capsule: 2000

The Flood played its first “Jug Band Breakfast” 22 years ago this week for Huntington’s wonderful Coon-Sanders Nighthawks Fan Reunion Bash, a gathering of traditional jazz fans from all over the country.

The group had been formed decades earlier, named in honor of the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra, the first Kansas City jazz band to gain national recognition after its 1918 founding by drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders.

Huntington chapter chief Dale Jones, leader of the city’s beloved Backyard Dixie Jazz Stompers, had a hunch that his reunion regulars would get a kick out of the hokum portion of The Flood’s eclectic repertoire, and he was right!

Now, on that morning in May 2000, Doug Chaffin, our then-newly minted upright bass player, couldn't make the gig, so we showed up as the original trio: Joe, David and Charlie. Right away, Dale took up the tuba to perform with us at the start of our set. Click here to hear Dale’s introduction of The Flood. (We also had a few opening remarks of our own, explaining why The Flood’s jug band material was relevant to trad jazz fans. Click here to hear us trying to explain ourselves.)

After the first few tunes, when Dale dropped out to take his turn at the breakfast line, we suddenly found a willing volunteer eager to sit in with us. A great veteran string-bass player — 82-year-old Johnny Haynes of Camden, SC — took over for the rest of the set.

We still chuckle remembering the big smile that spread across John’s face when he learned that most of the tunes on our set list were in the key of either G or C. “Ah, God’s keys!” he said. (Having played bass with many big bands and jazz combos over the years, John was used to accommodating all those horn players in brass-friendly / bass-hostile keys like Bb, Eb and F. John, who died in 2015, was a charter member of the Carolina Jazz Society House Band.)

Here are two tunes from The Flood’s show that morning. Click here to hear “What’s That Taste Like Gravy?” and “Black Eye Blues” from the May 7, 2000, show.

Chuck Romine Connection

A Floodster-to-be, tenor banjo master Chuck Romine, also was in the audience that morning. Later that day, he and his wife Phyllis followed the band to Heritage Farm and Village Museum, where we played our annual sets at the spring festival. During a break, Chuck chatted with Charlie, saying he’d like to sit in with the band sometimes.

“I gave him a card,” Charlie later told his mom in an email, “and told him we usually jam on Wednesday nights at my house. It'd be great if he started coming around. It'd add an interesting new element to the music, that's for sure. We'll see.” Of course, it was a fateful chat, because less than a year later, Chuck would join up and was almost always on stage with us for the Coon Sanders shows, like this one, shown in the video below that starts with a story about Chuck’s long Coon Sanders connection:

Over the next dozen years, The Flood grew and changed, but one constant in the Floodisphere was our annual Jug Band Breakfast with the Coon Sanders folks. The band played at each May gathering until the final Coon Sanders Huntington reunion in 2012.

The size and composition of The Flood that took the stage changed from year to year, sometimes just a minimalist trio of Joe, Dave and Charlie, other times a big eight-member ensemble, complete with guest artists and almost always with kazoos to share with the audience for hum-alongs, like this:

The Jazzou Jam

One of our favorite Coon Sanders memories was our May 2008 appearance, when we persuaded the great ragtime pianist Jazzou Jones of Delta Queen steamboat fame to join us for the entire hour-long set.

Jazzou was in Charleston, WV, that Saturday, brought down from his Maine home by a friend who owns a coal company and was going to be married on his towboat, the historic J.S. Lewis, on the Charleston riverfront. (Jazzou was to play a steam calliope during the wedding.) When we discovered that he was free Saturday morning, Charlie invited him to perform with The Flood at the Coon Sanders Bash. In the spring in 2020, we celebrated this wonderful morning in an hour-long  "Pajama Jam" video, which you can see below.