When The Levee Breaks/ Celt Smokindog and Smokehouse

Ladies and Gentlemen Happy Thanksgiving
Time to sit back now and enjoy the Blues of

Celt and The Smokin' Dog House Band

From the Great State of South Carolina the versatile
and talented Smokindog on Bass Banjo and Slide Guitar Solo

From across the Pond the amazing Blues Harp Stylings that most
soulful of Englishmen Smokehouse.

I'm Celt from The Home of the First Thanksgiving
Massachusetts on Slide Guitar and Vocals

It's our pleasure to present this piece for your listening enjoyment.

But first a short history lesson.

1927

(Extracts from Another Flood That Stunned America)

For days, the rain fell. The rivers swelled, the lakes rose. And when the water could no longer find a place to go, it battered the weakest parts of the levees that had protected thousands of people and blew through, sending a surge of white-capped brown water faster than the spill of Niagara Falls.

So began the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the most catastrophic deluge ever to hit the South and one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

The seminal event of pre-integration southern politics, the 1927 flood inundated an area about half the size of New England. It killed as many as 1,000 people and displaced about 700,000 more. At a time when the entire federal budget was barely $3 billion, it caused an estimated $1 billion in damage.

When the rains broke records in April 1927, the Gulf of Mexico was full and worked as a stopper to the Mississippi. The Mississippi was full, too, pushing its own waters up tributaries, breaking levees and causing flooding as far as Ohio and Texas. All that water had to go somewhere.

It couldn't go to New Orleans, panicky city fathers told the Army Corps of Engineers; it would devastate the regional economy.

To save New Orleans, the leaders proposed a radical plan. South of the city, the population was mostly rural and poor. The leaders appealed to the federal government to essentially sacrifice those parishes by blowing up an earthen levee and diverting the water to marshland. They promised restitution to people who would lose their homes. Government officials, including Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, signed off.

On April 29, the levee at Caernarvon, 13 miles south of New Orleans, succumbed to 39 tons of dynamite. The river rushed through at 250,000 cubic feet per second. New Orleans was saved, but the misery of the flooded parishes had only started. The city fathers took years to make good on their promises, and very few residents ever saw any compensation at all.

Does ask of this sound familiar?

And now on with the show with a little number by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie.

When The Levee Breaks Link

Thank You Smoke and Thank You Dog You Guys are Awesome 8)

John