That Time When They Thought Bowen Was a Preacher
#475 / Flood Time Capusule: 1979 (Video Extra)
It all began at a party at the Bowen House in the spring of 1979 at which Joe Dobbs told a story of how Charlie Bowen recently had been mistaken for a screaming, fire-and-brimstone preacher.
Laughter greeted that image, but Joe pressed on. He told how the band performed a few weeks earlier at Hannan High School in Mason County, WV. Band mate Roger Samples, who was the school’s relatively new social studies teacher, had wrangled an invitation for The Flood to play at an assembly there.
During the show, the group’s raucous rendering of Rev. Gary Davis song’s "Samson and “Delilah” apparently had convinced some of the young and impressionable listeners that Bowen had mad Bible-thumping prowess.
Still, Joe’s listeners at the party that night remained skeptical and demanded proof in the form of a re-enactment. The result was the Bowen Bash demonstration in the video below, a performance complete with Roger's show-stopping guitar solo and Dave Peyton’s caustic commentary on everything from urban renewal to "old-fashioned head honey.” Click the “Play” button to check out the recording from exactly 46 years ago this week:
About the Song
Many baby boomers first saw the name “Rev. Gary Davis” in 1962 when they read the songwriting credits on the label of Peter, Paul and Mary’s debut album for Warner Bros.
PP&M’s lively treatment of the song that they called “If I Had My Way” opened the B side of that best-selling album. Curiosity led the more studious fans to research further, learning that Davis had recorded the same song himself two years earlier as “Samson and Delilah” on his Harlem Street Singer album for the Bluesville label.
Credits
But did Davis actually write the song? Well, deeply ingrained in Davis lore is the story of a publishing ceremony amidst a group of entertainment lawyers at which someone asked that very question of the good reverend.
Davis’s emphatic “no” was greeted by collective gasp. But then he explained that the song, like a number of his religious titles, was “revealed” to him. (Collective sighs of relief followed.)
“There’s no doubt that Davis’ arrangement was his own,” the late-great SingOut magazine noted a few years ago, “and those royalties were well-deserved. It’s equally clear, though, that Davis drew his source material from a deep well of tradition wherein profit mattered not at all.”
In other words, several earlier versions were recorded under various titles, including in 1927 Blind Willie Johnson’s “If I Had My Way I'd Tear the Building Down"/"Oh Lord If I Had My Way.”
After Peter, Paul and Mary, others also paid tribute to the song, from Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan to The Staple Singers and Ike and Tina Turner. An especially beloved version was Bob Weir’s performance recorded with the Grateful Dead in 1977.
Flood Redux
Sadly, “Samson and Delilah” didn’t last long in The Flood repertoire. The song seemed to lose its mojo after Roger and family moved away a few years following the 1979 Bash. However, it did have a poignant encore a dozen years ago.
As reported earlier, in 2013 Bowen and Peyton had their last jam session with Roger on a wonderful summer afternoon at the Samples’ Mount Sterling, Ky., home. The number was the last song of the day. To see and hear it move the slider up to 07:05 in Pamela Bowen’s video above.