Roger and Joe's Last Jam

#440 / Flood Time Capsule: 2015

Ten years ago this week, two of The Flood’s firsrt members, the youngest and the oldest — Roger Samples and Joe Dobbs — played together for the last time in their lives.

Earlier in that January 2015, Joe and his dear friend Margaret Ray had escaped West Virginia’s winter ice and cold for a little while with a trip to the South.

On their way home to St. Albans, they swung by Mount Sterling, Ky., to spend a day with Rog and Tammy.

As reported here earlier, it had been a rough time for Roger; he was entering the last year in his five-year battle with cancer.

Rog had been feeling pretty bad, but he perked up when Joe and Margaret arrived and filled the morning and afternoon with stories and songs.

The 40-Year Friendship

Rog and Joe always had an especially close relationship. Right from the start, they beautifully complemented each other’s music. In fact, it was during another long winter — the winter of ’75-'76 — that Joe, Roger and Charlie became even closer.

All through that cold, dark winter, Roger was house-sitting for Susan and David Peyton, living alone at their Mount Union Road house (while Dave was working on an extended Alicia Patterson project down in Cajun country). Every week, Joe would come by to work out fiddle-guitar duets with Roger.

Joe always credited Roger with introducing him to Beatles tunes during those winter workshops, but it was another song — Bread’s “If,” the 1971 David Gates composition — that came to be the big memory from that winter. It was a highlight of the tunes they played when the two attended their first Bowen Bash together.

Margaret’s January 2015 Video

We’re thankful Margaret was at the Samples’ house that January a decade ago to record this duet by Joe and Roger:

This was last time, Joe and Rog saw each other; Joe passed away eight months later, and Roger was gone four months after that.

About the Song

The Flood archives contains several recordings of Roger and Joe playing “If” at party after party over the years, starting with their very first party together, the September 1975 Bowen Bash.

The song was only a few years old when Samples and Dobbs began playing it. Singer-songwriter David Gates wrote it in 1971 for his group, Bread.

It charted at No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 when released as a single in 1971 and No. 6 in Canada. It also spent three weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. Easy Listening chart.

Olivia Newton-John was one of the first to cover the song, recording a version for her 1971 debut solo album, performing the song during her first American TV performance that year on “The Dean Martin Show.”