Wasn’t That a Mighty Storm / Galveston Flood
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I based that assumption on my other immediate reaction – this song was not a primary source. “It was the year of 1900, that was eighty years ago.” I thought Tony had taken some slightly older sad song and souped it up. I was wrong! If I had checked the liner notes and been able to access the Internet back then, I could have disabused myself of such assumptions pretty quickly. But I was in my 20’s and more interested in the next track and my next beer than I was in picking apart a folk song’s provenance. Those of you that know my online writing these days know that one thing has changed. Now I dig provenance, especially when it leads to some other great tracks! (Hang on while I hit the fridge.)
It is easy now for me to find that the “Rush” identified as the song’s author in Rice’s liner notes is none other than Tom Rush. So did that great folk singer pen this one in 1980 as his career slowed down after the Folk Revival? No. The story is much more interesting.
Rush waxed this track first for his 1966 album Take a Little Walk with Me. Though it is not bluegrass, it is hardly a somber performance. The horsepower is still there. And though his lyrics claim the event was “sixty years ago,” and reference a seawall we know didn’t exist in 1900, Rush didn’t write the song. We can get a little closer to the truth when we realize that Rush is singing and playing in an African-American style. This is black folks’ music, as we’ll see below.
Lyrics for “Galveston Flood” by Tom Rush
My vinyl copy of Rush’s album provides only the briefest liner notes, and they are only specific to the songs on the first side. “Galveston Flood,” on the second side, is not credited to any author or even as a traditional track. However, one of the Folk Revival founding fathers, Eric Von Schmidt, wrote two of the songs on that second side. At least one author online declares that Tom Rush picked up the song directly from his friend Ric Schmidt. Though no citation bolsters the assertion, it seems at least likely. Indeed, that track is an easy find online as well, appearing in 1961 on Rolf Cahn’s & Eric Von Schmidt’s eponymous album for Folkways.
Lyrics and Liner Notes for “Wasn’t that a Mighty Storm” by Eric Von Schmidt
Now we’re getting somewhere! The lyrics in this one tell us that the tragedy occurred only “fifteen years ago.” Other lines are present that are missing from the Rush/Rice version, most notably one that rings somewhat true with the reality of September, 1900.
You know the trumpets, they give warning, sayin’ “You’d better leave this place,”
Now, no one thought of leaving ’til death stared them in the face.
As in the popular folk/bluegrass versions, Death is personified – a “cruel master” riding in on a team of horses. Death throws stones and calls for his victims, who must heed. We saw this in black versions of “Conversation with Death.” That’s the good old stuff! Even though this version also makes mention of that non-existent seawall, this sounds like a song written relatively soon after the event and in the days before recorded music. Indeed, the liner notes for the Cahn/Von Schmidt album make clear that their source was a man named ‘Sin-Killer’ Griffin. Therein lies another tale, and one that takes us as close to this song’s source as we can easily get.
“I cried, Death won’t you let me go…”
In the Spring of 1934, John and Alan Lomax drove their auto-turned-portable-recorder south of Houston and about 40 miles west of Galveston to find more traditional African-American music at Darrington Prison. They’d made one successful trip there already, a year earlier. It was on this second trip that they met Sin-Killer, a force of nature properly known as the Reverend John L. Griffin. He was not an inmate, but rather a clergyman of impressive regional fame and notoriety. John Lomax wrote about their first meeting.
Disc-cutting equipment installed inside an automobile used in Archive of Folk Song recording trips in the 1930s and 1940s – Library of Congress / American Folklife Center
The Reverend Sin-Killer Griffin, employed by the State as Chaplain to the Negro convicts of the Texas Penitentiary System, looked his part. His grizzly grey hair and mutton chop whiskers, his Prince Albert coat which almost touched his shoe tops, his dignified and courtly bearing, his deep and sonorous voice were most impressive. His ministerial manner was further heightened by a very slow walk, slow speech, and a long, long pause between questions as if he were consulting higher powers. “Reverend,” I said, “I hope you will preach your favorite sermon to the boys tonight. The Captain has agreed for me to record it, and I plan to deposit the records in the Folk Song Archive of the Library of Congress. A thousand years from now people can listen to the words you will preach.”
Reverend Griffin was preparing to lead an Easter service for about 300 inmates and planned on delivering his “Man of Calvary” sermon. The Library of Congress dates the recordings that survive from that day as “Apr., 1934.” Easter was April 1 that year, so that is most likely the precise date for the meeting and what transpired next.
According to Lomax, the service began when Griffin gave the nod to an inmate who was helping him…
At a sign from [Griffin] the penitentiary song-leader led them in a swinging spiritual… When the song was finished the leader invited the “sinner friends” to come forward to the front seats. No one moved. “Those that mourn shall be comforted,” he said. “Let us mourn, brethren.” Something swept through that crowd, something powerful and poignant. No words were uttered, only waves of sound, impelling and pregnant, moans of unutterable woe. Then came silence which grew deeper and deeper. “Thousands and thousands and multiplied thousands are cast off from the golden opportunities because they don’t believe,” the leader said. “Let us sing.”
