The Wonderful World of Joe Dobbs

#521 / Flood Time Capsule: 2015

A decade has passed since the music world lost a true original, fiddler Joe Dobbs. On Sept. 21, 2015, just weeks after his 81st birthday, Joe passed away. As we mark today’s sad anniversary, his memory resonates deeply.

Joe was a cornerstone for us, one of the founders of The Flood. And ironically, his death came almost 40 years to the day after his first public performance with The Flood back in 1975.

Privacy

Over the years, Joe usually kept his health matters private. He generally didn’t like anyone — including his band mates — knowing when he was unwell.

Sometimes this led to his abrupt disappearance from the weekly Flood gatherings, only for him to reappear weeks — or maybe even a month or two — later as if nothing had happened.

If pressed, Joe had a same refrain: "Sorry to be out of touch, but I was really sick!" When the others in the room groaned — “You could’ve let us know, Joe!” — he would only chuckle. “And what were you gonna do about it?”

The Final Year

But 2015 was different. Sure, at first when the old friend stopped showing up for rehearsals, the Family Flood all thought it was just a repeat of that familiar pattern. That’s why everyone was so stunned when this time Joe slipped away before lengthy goodbyes could be said.

We suspect he preferred it that way. Joe was rather uninterested in death. He didn’t go to the funerals, for instance. (“I saw him when he was alive,” he’d say with a stubborn grin regarding some new dearly departed.) Still, he also seemed unafraid of that final chorus. “Being beamed up," he liked to call it.

For Joe, life always had too little time and too much to do, like new tunes to learn and an old motorcycle to ride. His band mates tried to capture some of that spirit in the days after his death in this 2015 video they published on YouTube:

Joe’s Last Tune With The Flood

Five months before his passing, Joe had his last jam session with his old Flood mates. By then, the guys hadn’t seen him much since the previous fall and their last big gig together at Marshall University. Only later did they learn that the intervening winter months had witnessed a steady decline in his health.

However, on this particular late April 2015 evening, Joe was feeling good, in a great mood and ready to play when he arrived at the Bowen house with his old friend Margaret Ray

Here from The Flood archives is the last tune of that evening. As you’ll hear, the track opens with a little bit of smart-alecky chatter common at most Flood affairs, then it gets down to business with a rousing rendition of “Bye Bye Blues,” the last thing Joe would play in that room:

Joe’s Favorite Tune: “Wonderful World”

Interestingly enough, though, it was an entirely different tune from that evening that made The Flood’s most lasting memory. That’s because when Joe and Margaret walked in an hour earlier, they came upon the band working on a new arrangement of the Louis Armstrong classic, “What a Wonderful World.”

“That’s my favorite song!” Joe exclaimed as he stood in in the doorway and listen to Michelle Hoge singing. “I’ve always loved it.”

Those words were still echoing in everyone’s memory five months later when Michelle, along with Charlie Bowen and Paul Martin, decided to share it at Joe’s memorial service in St. Albans. Here’s a video of that bittersweet moment on Sept. 25, 2015:

The song surprised some people. They said they were amazed that, rather than a rollicking old fiddle tune or some sassy swing number, it was this soft ‘60s ballad that was closest to Joe’s heart. But they wouldn’t have been taken off guard if they remembered that “Wonderful World” also was the closing track of Joe’s favorite solo album, his 2001 Fiddle and The Flood. Here is that simple, loving last cut:

About the Song

“What a Wonderful World” was written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss and recorded by Louis Armstrong on Aug. 17, 1967.

“In the mid-1960s,” Thiele later said of the composition, “during the deepening national traumas of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, racial strife and turmoil everywhere, (we) had an idea to write a ‘different’ song specifically for Louis Armstrong,” adding that he was inspired by Armstrong's ability to bring together people of different races.

The recording had a rocky start, though. While it topped the pop charts in Britain, it sold poorly in the US, mainly because ABC Records disliked it and refused to promote it.

However, years later, after the song was heard in the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam, it was reissued as a single and climbed the Billboard charts. Twelve years later, Armstrong’s recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

A Post-Mortem Joe Dobbs Sighting

Joe would be amused to know that even now his song continues to resonate with his fans long after his was gone.

For instance, guitarist Danny Cox, who joined the band in early 2022, never met Joe Dobbs, but Dan still managed to have an encounter with the late fiddler because of "What a Wonderful World."

At a rehearsal not long ago, Danny told the story of meeting his wife’s 70-year-old aunt, a tale in which that recording is the centerpiece. Click the button below to hear it:

Wonderful Redux

Finally, three months or so after the memorial service in St. Albans, Michele and the guys revisited Joe’s tune during a show at that would result in The Flood’s Live, In Concert album in 2016.

In fact, that was the very arrangement that Joe and Margaret heard coming together on that April evening a year earlier. Click the button below to hear the performance at Woodlands Retirement Community: