Living Our Riverboat Dreams

#137 / Flood Time Capsule: 2003

Nineteen years ago this week, a dream came true.

By 2003, Pamela and Charlie Bowen had been passengers on the historic riverboat Delta Queen a half dozen times as it steamed the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Often during those happy voyages, Charlie sat in the paddlewheeler's lovely Texas Lounge listening to tunes by Connie Jones or Phyllis Dale and wishing that someday The Flood could play in that classy venue.

Well, that “someday” came in late October 2003, at the invitation of The Delta Queen’s cruise director, the venerable ragtime pianist Jazzou Jones. Earlier that week, Jazz had called to say the boat would be at Huntington’s riverfront all that afternoon and asked if The Flood would like to entertain the passengers.

The YES! was resounding.

On the appointed Wednesday, The Flood contingent arrived early and clambered aboard to set up in front of Texas Lounge piano. It was a tight fit, getting the six of us -- and Doug Chaffin’s upright bass -- in that narrow space, so we moved the piano back a few inches and commandeered three of the nearby bar stools.

By 3:30, the lounge was already full, so even though we weren’t scheduled to start until 3:45, we launched into our first tune, and the steamboatin’ crowd responded immediately, laughing at the funny words and cheering the solos.

After the first couple of tunes, we handed out kazoos and got the passengers playing along. We then persuaded Jazzou to come to the piano and join us for the last 45 minutes of the set.

We called on Jazzou for a solo in every tune, and then we just held on as he rocked the room! The crowd went wild. At the end, they didn't want it to stop, but the boat was ready to leave. We had just 10 minutes to get all the equipment back down two flights of stairs and to say our goodbyes.

How Our Steamboat Courtship Began

While that was our first time in the cool Texas Lounge, it was the third time that year that we were aboard The Delta Queen.

The previous May, during the riverboat’s spring visit to Huntington, we begun our courtship of the beautiful steamboat by spending a Thursday morning sitting on the riverfront and serenading her passengers as they walked between the boat and the buses waiting to take them on shore tours of the town.

And the wooing worked!

While we were playing, Bob Stevens, the DQ’s banjo-pickin’ entertainer and assistant cruise director, strolled by. When Bob stopped to say hi, Chuck Romine handed him the banjo and Bob played a few tunes with us.

By then, Jazzou had The Flood's first album, but he hadn’t yet heard the group in person. Pleased with what they heard on the riverfront, Jazzou and Bob invited us all aboard to sing and play for our lunch in the DQ’s Orleans Room. That, of course, was exactly what we were hoping for. We played for a half hour and the crowd loved it. Banjo Bob even came back with an old washboard he used for comedy skits and sat in for special rendition of “Coney Island Washboard Roundelay.”

An Encore

After that spring fling, The Queen invited us back aboard during a late summer visit to Huntington, this time for little impromptu picking in the boat’s Forward Cabin Lounge. Jazzou, who again facilitated our appearance, was pleased that the place was packed and the passengers loved the sound.

During a pause in the show, we showed our appreciation by presenting Jazzou a kazoo and a framed certificate proclaiming him an “ornery” member of the band, entitled to play the kazoo whenever possible.

(Incidentally, that certificate – which we used over the years to honor other band buddies, from Rose Marie Riter to Ken Hechler, Nancy and Bill Meadows and Dale Jones to Jim and Sally Tweel – was patterned after the certificate that the DQ folks themselves gave passengers who “learned” to play the calliope during cruises.)

Years later, while appearing with The Flood at a Coon-Sanders reunion in Huntington, Jazzou recalled that particular afternoon. Click the button below to hear his comments.

More memorable Flooding of The Delta Queen was to come, including the best ever when the band played as one of the marquee performers on a 2005 Phyllis Dale reunion cruise, as reported here.

Sadly, we don’t have recordings from any of our DQ gigs, but if you’d like to hear Jazzou jamming with us, check out this episode in our Pajama Jams film series from a few years ago: