Level: 2
Tuning: Standard

Bessie Smith was inspired to write this 12-bar blues in 1927, when her concert in a little town was flooded out and they had to relocate to higher ground. The song has since then been associated with the great 1927 flood in Mississippi. Though she usually recorded with a band, Bessie sang this one with just the piano accompaniment of the great James P. Johnson, the father of the stride piano style. The song has since been covered by such greats as Lonnie Johnson, Leadbelly, Count Basie, Jimmy Witherspoon, Dinah Washington, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Big Bill Broonzy and many others, but it doesn't get any better than Bessie's vocal with James P.'s piano! This fingerpicking arrangement in the key of G is mostly Travis-style, with an alternating thumb-bass. It's just three first position chords. There's a classic, boogie woogie figure on the bass strings toward the end of the tune.