Playing at the Governor's Pad
#539 / Flood Time Capsule: 2012
The Flood has played some fairly swanky digs over the years, but none quite matches the gig that the late Joe Dobbs landed for the guys 13 years ago this week: the Governor’s Mansion in Charleston.
Joining Flood Lite (Joe along with Doug Chaffin and Charlie Bowen) for the occasion was percussionist Lee Hines who had just recently started jamming with the fiddler after meeting him at Fret ’n’ Fiddle in St. Albans, where Lee was living at the time.
Youthful International Audience
The evening, hosted by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, welcomed international students who were visiting the Mountain State.
The Flood ensemble gave them a rich mix of music from swing songs to traditional fiddle tunes.
Praise from Caryn Gresham
A couple days after the performance, the guys got a charming email from Caryn Gresham, deputy commissioner for the state Division of Culture and History, thanking them for the evening.
“Our guests enjoyed the music,” she wrote. “I am absolutely certain that this was a wonderful introduction to our traditional music and that many of them heard strains of their own traditional music. You truly helped us welcome our guests in a special West Virginia way!”
“Ragtime Annie”
Joe’s favorite moment of the night was when young girls from Japan started dancing in front of the bandstand to his rendition of “Ragtime Annie.”
Alas, we don’t have audio or photos from that November 2012 evening. However, a little over a year later, band manager/videographer Pamela Bowen did capture this video of Joe playing the same fine old tune at a gig with the full band:
About That Song
“Ragtime Annie” is a widely known traditional American fiddle tune with a history rooted in southern and midwestern musical traditions of about 1880-90. An instrumental piece, its exact composer is unknown.
The first documented appearance of “Ragtime Annie” is the 1923 recording by Texas fiddler A.C. “Eck” Robertson (along with Henry C. Gilliland). This recording, released as a 78 rpm single with “Turkey in the Straw” on the B-side, helped popularize the tune.
Three years later, in mid-September 1926, Flood hero Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers recorded it with Posey Rorer on fiddle. That Columbia disc was released the following March.
Fiddler/historian Gus Meade always said the number was almost certainly a dance tune native to America and probably only about a century old, noting it appeared in many relatively modern collections, but not in early ones.
Some have speculated that the song is derived from a piano piece called “Raggedy Ann Rag.”
Back in the early 1950s, Del Wood had a piano version that she called “Ragtime Melody.” (Del, by the way, was an early influence on one rocking young Jerry Lee Lewis, who grew up to be a pretty fair piano player himself, as you might recall).
Meanwhile, closer to our West Virginia hills, itinerant fiddler John Johnson (1916-1996), said “Ragtime Annie” was the first tune he learned from fiddler Dorvel Hill who lived in a coal-mining town called Pigtown, WV, not far from Johnson’s home in Clay County. And on down the road, left-handed fiddler Walter Melton was said to have played the tune in th 1930s at square dances around Dunbar.
Joe’s Swan Song
Joe Dobbs played “Ragtime Annie” for most of his 60-plus years of fiddling. It was a frequent request at the Bowen Bash music parties where The Flood was born back in the 1970s.
And in fact, “Ragtime Annie” turned out to the be last fiddle tune that Joe recorded in the studio with his band. Today Joe’s 2013 rendition of the song is in The Flood archives as the second track on the band’s Cleanup and Recovery album. Click the button below to give it a listen: