Joe's Last Jam with Buddy Griffin

#311 / Flood Time Capsule: 2013

The last time that Joe Dobbs and his dear friend Buddy Griffin got to do some twin fiddling at a Flood gathering was on a rainy winter Wednesday evening 11 years ago this week.

It was a night of wonderful tunes sandwiched in with Buddy’s famous humor (including his spot-on imitations of the great violin-murdering comedian Jack Benny). Click the button below for a three-minute sample from the fun:

In addition, Flood manager Pamela Bowen captured this video of Joe and Buddy’s take on “Flowers of Edinburgh”:

Rog Samples

The get-together occurred because Buddy was on the road from his home in Glenville, WV, to Mount Sterling, KY, where he intended to visit our mutual friend, Flood co-founder Roger Samples. By 2013 Roger was two years into what would be a five-year battle with cancer.

In fact, the evening also marked almost exactly two years since another memorable jam session. In January 2011, Buddy and The Flood had joined Roger and his brothers Mack and Ted, along with John Preston and others at the Samples’ Kentucky house for a good old-fashioned music party a few days before Rog started his demanding chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Roger’ struggle would have many of moments of optimism — always followed by dashed hopes — and that circle of friends and family was there for all of it.

Joe and Roger

For instance, two years after our winter’s night jam with Buddy Griffin at the Bowen house, Joe Dobbs was the last of the Family Flood to see Roger. It was January 2015 and Joe and his dear friend Margaret Ray had escaped some of the cold West Virginia winter with a little trip to the South. On their way home to St. Albans, they swung by Mount Sterling to spend a day with Rog and Tammy.

Roger had been feeling pretty bad that day, but he perked up when Joe and Margaret appeared at the door. We will always be grateful for Margaret’s recording of this final Joe-Roger duet:

It is a bittersweet entry in our scrapbook. Joe passed away eight months after the video was shot; Roger was gone four months after that.

Our Buddy Griffin Connections

Beyond our shared friendship with the Samples family, Buddy Griffin has been in The Flood’s orbit for nearly 50 years. We first met him in the 1970s when we used to trek to Glenville for the good ol’ West Virginia Folk Song Festival.

Buddy also became a regular in the early 1980s at the final editions of the Bowen Bashes. As you’ll see in the above video, he is widely featured in Episode 7 of our “Bowen Bashes” legacy film series.

Several decades after that, Buddy was back in our lives as producer and engineer of our first studio album.

Hall of Fame

And we were thrilled last year when Buddy was inducted into the 2023 class of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

It was a long-overdue recognition of an extraordinarily influential Mountain State treasure. We’re pleased that future generations will learn about the remarkable Buddy Griffin.