Blues and the Mississippi Flood of 1927 Part 4 Lonnie Johnson

As the federal levees along the Mississippi are barely holding some are forced to labor and put their lives on the line to try and hold the rising waters back. A subject which legendary bluesman Lonnie Johnson covers in one of the 2 songs he penned about this disaster. 


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Please Rate and Review the podcast
To contact me:
Email: [e-mail]
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If you would like to support the podcast: ko-fi.com/distortedhistory

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Eric Gaskell, and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast, and probly I can give you many
names and joy a Blunder. Hey, look, I'm Raisling. I've

(00:23):
got the vide rah A long struggle for freedom. It
really is a revolution. Welcome back to Distorted History. In
our ongoing tale, the nineteen twenty seven Mississippi Flood and
its effect on the Blues. When we last left off,

(00:46):
it was April nineteen twenty seven, and precipitation in the
form of rain and stone unprecedented amounts had been pouring
into the Mississippi Valley since August of the previous year.
This had led to flooding along many of the tributaries
that fed into the Mississippi. As the levees meant to
hold back their wooters were overwhelmed. As a result, round
about a million acres of land in Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas,

(01:09):
and Mississippi were already under water flooding which had driven
some fifty thousand people out of their homes. Now. A
significant amount of this flooding was caused by the phenomenon
known as backwitter, which happens when the water in the
main river that the tributaries typically flow into is so
high that the water in the tributaries has no place
to go and thus starts heading back up stream, which

(01:31):
is to say that the Mississippi River itself was already
quite high. Yet, while a number of the levees along
these smaller rivers had been overwhelmed, those along the Mississippi itself,
which had been built according to these specifications of the
Mississippi River Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers, still
stood strong. That being said, soon even more pressure would
be put on these levees. But before we continue our

(01:53):
story any further, first, like always, I want to acknowledge
my sources for this series, which include Richard m Oe
Junior's Backwitter Blues, the Mississippi Flood of nineteen twenty seven
in the African American imagination, John M. Berry's Rising Tide,
the Great Mississippi Flood of nineteen twenty seven and How
it changed America, Susan Scott Perishes the Flood Year nineteen

(02:14):
twenty seven, a Cultural History, and for this episode in particular,
Dean Algers, the original Guitar Hero and the Power of Music.
The legendary Lonnie Johnson, music and civil rights and like always,
a full list of these and any other sources like
websites that I used will be available on this podcast
Bluesky and Covey pages plaus For anyone who doesn't want
to be bothered skipping through commercials, there is always an

(02:36):
ad free feed available to subscribers at patreon dot com.
Slash dis started History. And with all that being said,
let's begin. As mentioned previously, the Mississippi River itself was
already inundated and film bursting from the unprecedented amount of
precipitation and the fact that, in all their brilliance, the
experts at the River Commission had cut off the river's
natural means of draining excess water. Then into this already

(02:59):
good system came yet another storm on the fifteenth of
April that came to be known as a Good Friday
Storm because well, it was Good Friday. During the course
of the storm, anywhere from six to fifteen inches of
rainfall over several hundred thousand square miles, drenching the area
from Missouri and Illinois down to the Gulf of Mexico,
basically all the territory around the Mississippi River itself. For example,

(03:21):
ten inches of rain fell on Cairo, Illinois, will just
shy of fifteen inches fell in New Orleans in less
than a day's time, an amount that represented a quarter
of the city's average rainfall for an entire year. As
a result, there were some places in the city where
four feet of water lay in the streets. Plus if
the rain wasn't enough, This storm also brought with it
powerful destructive winds. In Greenville, Mississippi, for example, the winds

(03:44):
were so terrible they tore roofs off of structures and
even took down half of the one hundred and ten
foot high smoke stack. And the Chicago Mellon Lumber Company
will also reckon the one hundred and thirty foot high
smokestack at the Age Wineman and Sun's Lumber mill. It
was with this storm, then, that seemingly for the first time,
people not already directly affected by the flooding became alarmed.

(04:06):
As the New York Times would proclaim, quote great flood
peril along the Mississippi Huge massive water is rushing southward,
threatening to inundate a vast territory. While the Memphis Commercial
ap peele would write quote, the warring Mississippi River bank
and levee full from Saint Louis to New Orleans is
believed to be on its mightiest rampage. That being said,

(04:26):
both papers would still assure their readers and everything was
likely going to be fine, as see Toms for example,
added quote The Guardians reported the Great Dikes in fine condition,
but they placed men and machines at strategic points to
reinforce any weakness which may develop under the immeasurable weight.
While the Memphis Commercial Appeal would temper in their reporting
by writing quote, government engineers are covenant that the government

(04:49):
levees will withstand the floodwaters. Indeed, is more and more
water was being poured into the Mississippi, either directly through
stuff like the Good Friday Storm or from its myriad
of flooded tributaries. More and more pressure was being exerted
on the levees that were holding the water back. Yet,
while a number of private and state levees had already
started the film, the levees that have been built of

(05:09):
the Mississippi River Commission specification still held, which was honestly
a testament to how well they had been engineered. As
they laid out last time. The thing was, though nothing
is fool proof. Indeed, some random object like a branch
that happened to be in the dirt news to construct
the levees could be a ticking time bomb. As you see.
When that branch, for example, eventually rotted away, it would

(05:31):
leave behind a cavity in the levee that would provide
exactly the kind of weakness the immense pressure of the
water could exploit. The same was true of small animals
that might burrow into the levee to make their homes,
as any cavity, any weakness in the levee would be
found by the water, which would then enlarge those weaknesses
and eventually cause the levee to collapse. Meanwhile, you also

(05:52):
had the fact that some of these levees were constructed
using sandy soil, because that's what they had at hand.
The problem here was such soil was and thus was
more vulnerable to being washed away. Pluster was also the
simple fact that no one had ever anticipated a flood
of this magnitude, which was a combination of highly unusual
weather dropping record amounts of precipitation into the Mississippi River

(06:14):
Valley and as I've hammered home time and again their
own choices, most notable which being the Mississippi River Commission's
decision to not only not build new outlets who drained
the water off, but to also close off the river's
natural outlets. These factors then combined to create a flood
that was not only extremely high, but also extremely long

(06:34):
lasting because it had no place to go, which was
not good because these levees, even if there were no flaws,
no sandy soil, no branches left or rot, and no
animals burrowing into them, the levees, as strong and as
well engineered as they were, could still only hold up
to the river for so long as again, they were
just made out of soil. So the longer the water

(06:57):
was pressed up against the levees, the soil got, and
consequently the weaker the overall structure became, and sooner or
later chances were significant chunks of the saturated soil would
just wash away. In some cases, though the water didn't
even have to take down the levees themselves. Instead, sometimes
the pressure the water was so great it was able

(07:18):
to push underneath a levee, creating what is known as
a sand boil, where the winder could come shooting out
of the ground like a volcano behind the levee. So
despite assurances that everything was fine, men were still sent
to the levees to fill, carry and stack sandbags, while
others were tasked with building a wall planks to protect
the sandbags, or with constructing mud boxes to both replace

(07:39):
the tops of levees that were being washed away and
to also raise the height of the levee to stay
ahead of the rising motors. Labor which all had to
be done by hand, as there were a few mules,
much less machines available to help haul the load. Indeed,
for the nine hundred miles of levees lining the Mississippi,
there were only a scant ten earth movers. This work
then was constant as the river never rested, so since

(08:03):
s the water never stopped rising, neither could the men.
And to properly understand the full scope of what was
being asked to the men laboring on these levees, you
have to understand the simple act of walking the levee
to inspect It was exhausting, as you had to fight
through thick, clinging mud that thried to suck your shoes
off with every step. So if the simple act of
walking was exhausting, just imagine combining that with the kind

(08:26):
of labor necessary to not only maintain but build up
these levees. As for who was supplying this labor. While
in the wet imagination, emergencies like this represented a time
when the entire community would come together to help and
protect one another, the thing was, it wasn't the whites
were putting their bodies, in their lives on the line
to do this work. Indeed, the flood, instead of being

(08:46):
a moment of society coming together to help one another, was,
if anything, a time when the true nature of American
society was laid bare, as it was by and large
African Americans who were not only expected to provide this exhausting,
backbreaking labor, but who were forced to do it. Black
plantation workers up and down the Mississippi were then forced
to live in camps alongside the river where they worked

(09:09):
and went freezing conditions, filling sandbags and carrying them up
to the top of the levees to increase their height. Sandbags, which,
since they were wet, typically weighed over one hundred pounds.
And keep in mind they were carrying these burdens while
trying to walk through mud and monk that sucked at
their feet with every step. This was exhausting work, made
worse by the fact that they were constantly being drenched,

(09:29):
whether from rain falling from the sky or from waves
crashing against and washing over the levees. Among those forced
to undertake this task bolstering the levees were convicts from
Mississippi's infamous Parchment Prison. Now, the loaning out of prisoners
to conduct manual labor wasn't an uncommon practice, as the
Southern prison system following the Civil War was essentially designed

(09:49):
to use their prisoners as a source of cheap labor.
In doing so, they were taking advantage of a loophole
that had been carved out of the Thirteenth Amendment, which
had abolished slavery and involuntary servitude with the exception of
those who were incarcerated. Powerful white Southerners had recognized this loophole, and,
in an effort to restore their lands to some semblance
of how things used to be, they started passing new

(10:11):
laws known as Black Codes or Jim Crow laws, laws
which were explicitly designed to target and imprison large segments
of the southern black population. Those imprisoned by these laws
would then be used to replace the labor force that
they had lost when slavery was ended. Now, by this
point in time, the practice of convict leasing had faded somewhat. However,
Parchment in Prison had helped to pioneer a new system where,

(10:34):
rather than leasing out convicts to work on plantations, they
instead turned the prisons themselves into plantations. In fact, the
Parchment Prison's name came from the fact that it occupied
land that had once been a plantation owned by the
Parchment family. In Parchment Prison then and others like it,
the old days of savory were recreated as convicts were
forced to labour fifteen hours a day in one hundred

(10:56):
degree heat planting and picking cotton, convicts who also so
face the potential whipping should they step out of mine.
As if this whole thing wasn't only nose enough, exhaustion, frostbite, sunstroke, dysentery, pneumonia,
malaria consumption, even gunshot wounds in quote unquote shackle poisoning,
which came from chains and manacles constantly rubbing against exposed flesh,

(11:17):
would regularly claim the lives of these convicts as they
were effectively worked to death, and now they were again
being used as a slave labor force to protect the
lives and property of the white society that had placed
them there. While many may not know his name today,

(11:56):
Lonnie Johnson was one of, if not the primary, artist
who first made the guitar the definitive instrument in popular
music from that point on. A statement which may sound
outrageous and a click bait style exaggeration, however, none other
than blues legend BB King would say quote, Lonnie Johnson
was one of these centuries most important musicians. His story

(12:17):
is of major musical and cultural significance. Indeed, jazz critic
Martin Williams would declare that quote as the inventor of
the guitar solo. Lonnie created an approach to that instrument
which revolutionized the history of jazz, blues and popular music
in general. To that end, Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman,
a huge fan of the blues in his own right,
would call Lonnie quote a guitar legend before we knew

(12:40):
what they were. You can trace his playing style in
a direct line through T. Bone Walker and BB King
to Eric Clapton during his career in addition to a
solo output, Lonnie Johnson also worked with other blues artists,
including country blues singer Texas Alexander in classic blues singer
Bessie Smith, who we will talk about more in a
later episode, as again, it is her song Backward or

(13:01):
Blues that was actually the first blues song released about
the nineteen twenty seven flooding. Meanwhile, Monny would also heavily
influence one of the most famous bluesmen of all time,
Robert Johnson. Lonnie's impact, though, wasn't just limited to the blues,
as he would also prove to be quite influential in
the world of jazz, as Lonnie would notably play on
four of jazz legend Duke Ellington's early songs, a fact

(13:24):
which led to Ellington's stating quote, I have always felt
indebted to him because his guitar added any newon loster
to my orchestral attempts on the records we made in
nineteen twenty eight. Then, on top of that, Lonnie would
also play on three of jazz legend Louis Armstrong's landmark
HoTT five recordings. Before any of that happened, though, Alonzo
Lonnie Johnson was born in New Orleans, likely in eighteen

(13:45):
ninety four. I say likely because Lonnie on an application
for a Chicago Federation of Musicians membership card, would give
his birth year as eighteen eighty nine. However, on three
other documented occasions he gave eighteen ninety four as his
birth year. And we like the records who say definitively
one way or the other, regardless, the date is less
important than the city where he was born, as that

(14:07):
location would have an immense impact on Moni and his life.
As you see, not only his New Orleans life blood music,
but it is a wholly unique musical tradition that was
a result of a blending of cultures and people that
called that city home. Lonni then would be surrounded by
this deep and unique music tradition as he grew up,
because as the beating heart of New Orleans, music was everywhere,

(14:28):
from dance alls to the streets that brass bands regularly
paraded through. Most notably, though New Orleans was the birthplace
of jazz, while also likely being one of the places
where the blues was first cultivated and developed. This smelting
of styles that characterized the New Orleans music scene would
then have an immense impact on Moni's playing style. Yet
as important as the city might have been, his family

(14:50):
was just as influential in his development, because, as Lonnie
himself would state the quote, whole entire family was musicians.
His father, George played the violin along with the a
variety of other instruments, while his mother, Angeline specialized in
the piano. Under their tutelage, all five Elani's brothers and
at least two of his six sisters would all play
music as well. Indeed, according to Loani, throughout his childhood quote,

(15:13):
there was music all around us, and in my family,
you'd better play something, even if you just banged on
a tin can. Lani in particular, was quite skilled, having
learned to play the guitar, of the banjo, the violin,
and the kazoo. The violin, though, was his first instrument,
which makes sense as it had been the dominant instrument
in European classical music, and that dominance had extended to

(15:34):
the music of New Orleans. The reason for this popularity
was the result of the violin being an immensely expressive
instrument through the use of vibrato and sliding notes. Now
the guitar would prove to have many of these same qualities.
It just hadn't really been used in such a way previously.
As you see, at this point, the guitar was primarily
used as a rhythm instrument, especially in New Orleans bands.

(15:55):
Lonni Tho would take what he had learned on the
violin and ultimately applied to his guitar playing. In the meantime, though,
the Johnson family would form a string band under the
guidance of their father, George, that would play at weddings
and other special occasions. Additionally, George seems to have also
frequently taken Lonnie in one of his brothers to various
locations around town, including street corners, where Lonnie would play
guitar while his father and brother would play violin for tips. Then,

(16:19):
as they grew older, Lonnie and his older brother James
took to playing ragtime waltzes and the like in cafes
around the city. Now at this point, Lonnie was apparently
displaying some level of talent, as in nineteen seventeen he
seems to have traveled to London as a part of
a group that was dispatched to entertain the American troops
who were stationed overseas during the First World War. The
good news then, as Lonnie did not have to take

(16:41):
part in that bloody, destructive, and intensely stupid war, sparing
himself the trauma that would have come along with such service. However,
Lonnie would not be spared from tragedy, as upon returning
home to New Orleans, he would be devastated to learn
that the flu pandemic of nineteen eighteen and wiped out
nearly his entire family, as out of his five brothers
and six sisters, it seems that only his brother James,

(17:02):
and perhaps his mother and father survived and were not
entirely sure one where another concerning his parents, as Lonnie
would give somewhat contradictory or at the very least confusing
statements over the years, but it does seem if his
parents survived, they left New Orleans behind. So, with no
one else left in the city, Lonnie and James left
behind what had become a place of sadness and tragedy.

(17:22):
As Lonnie himself would don't quote, when a thing like
that happens, you don't want to stay around. It keeps
on your mind. So they headed north to Saint Louis
along with Louis Armstrong looking to make a living as musicians. Now,
while Saint Louis might not be the first place you
think of as a place to make a living as
a musician today, you have to keep in mind that
at that point in time, Saint Louis was the fourth

(17:44):
largest city in the nation. Indeed, in some ways it
was not all that dissimilar from New Orleans, and that
as New Orleans mixed a bunch of different cultures together,
Saint Louis, due to its location, became a place where
different aspects of the United States also mixed. Saint Louis,
you see, was the date way city to the West,
and so it drew people from all across the nation.
As a result, it developed a mix of northern and

(18:06):
southern sensibilities, while as a bit of a frontier city,
it was a mix of both urban and rural characteristics.
Most importantly for our story, though, the Blues had been
a part of the fabric of Saint Louis, or at
least a part of the fabric of the lies of
the African Americans resigning there since at least the eighteen nineties.
That being said, the Blues at Lonnie and his brother
found in Saint Louis was a different sort than what

(18:27):
they had grown up knowing in New Orleans, as the
Saint Louis flavor of blues was more pretty, more soulful,
and more emotional than what they had known. Regardless, soon
after arriving in town, Money would find work performing as
a member of fellow musician Charlie Creese's band, which provided
music for the river boats traveling up and down the Mississippi. Now,
to be clear, these boat trips were essentially pleasure cruises

(18:49):
that were designed to conjure memories of a bygone era
as passengers listened and danced to music in the elegant
main halls of these river boats. These audiences then weren't
there to hear the blues. Instead, jazz, dance music and
the various popular songs of the day were featured instead. Additionally,
since the musicians were there to add to the overall
style and abbiance of the scene, they were expected to

(19:10):
not only be talented, but to also read music and
dress well, all of which Lonnie could do. Indeed, it
seems likely that Lonni tended to dress well most of
the time, as he was very careful to maintain the
image of a refined, cultured urban blues musician in contrast
to the more down home stylings of a country blues musician. Now,
when Lonnie wasn't busy performing on the riverboats, he could

(19:33):
often be found playing in one of the city's numerous clubs,
as he frequently provided support for vaudeville shows by filling
the gaps in between the various acts. These performances, however,
were apparently not enough on their own to pay the bills,
as for about a year or so, starting in nineteen
twenty four, Lonnie took a job in a steel mill
as his primary means of making a living. Music, however,

(19:54):
was never far from his heart. Indeed, the following year,
nineteen twenty five, Lonnie would apparently marry blues singer Mary Smith. However,
it seems that their marriage might have fallen apart when
his music career began to take off. Indeed, nineteen twenty
five also saw Lonnie increasingly playing in the best clubs
in Saint Louis and East Saint Louis, most notably Katie Red's,

(20:14):
a club which had the reputation for featuring the best
blues men in the region. Typically joining Lonnie for these
gigs was his brother James, who had earned the nickname
Steady Roll. Now. According to Lonnie, his brother was an
even better musician than he was, as he too could
play the piano, violin, and the guitar, and so the
two would often switch instruments during their performances. The thing was, though,

(20:36):
James apparently had found a well off lady in town
to settle down with, and so he was content to
stay where he was. Lonnie, though, had his sight set higher,
and so he played the theater circuit as he did.
He also got his first chance to appear on a
recorded song when he played violin for Charlie Creese's band
when they recorded Won't Don't Blues in November of nineteen
twenty five for Okay Records, although since the recording isn't

(20:59):
very good, Jew Panley can't really hear Lonnie playing. His
real breakthrough opportunity then came when Lonnie won a blues
singing contest in the Booker t Washington Theater in the
fall of nineteen twenty five, something which in and of
itself was quite impressive considering that prior to moving to
Saint Louis, Lonnie had never really sung, instead preferring to
rely upon pure instrumentation and his performances. Over the years

(21:22):
in Saint Louis, though, Lonnie had started singing more and more,
and it was due to this developing skull that he
was able to win the contest that landed him a
recording contract with Okay Records. The first song that Lonnie recorded,
Mister Johnson's Blues, would then be released in January nineteen
twenty six. It has to be noted, though, that the
title all this song was actually fairly provocative by these

(21:42):
standards of the time. As you see, in those days,
one did not typically call a black man mister, as
it was seen as a son of respect that they
weren't worthy of. Indeed, Alan Lomax, who worked with the
Library of Congress to create a record of Southern folk music,
especially blues recordings, would relate an incident illustrating the fact.
You see, after encountering Sunhouse for the first time, Alan

(22:03):
would be confronted by the manager of the plantation where
Sunhouse lived and worked. Lee plantation manager apparently did not
appreciate the presence of this stranger, and so he brought
Alan to the local sheriff who asked him to explain
why he was there. As Alan tried to explain what
a skilled musician Sunhouse was, though he made the mistake
of calling him mister House, at which point Lomax was

(22:25):
cut off by the enraged sheriff, his face turning red,
all because Alan had called a quote unquote en word
mister Lonnie Johnson. Then, by titling a song mister Johnson's Blues,
was effectively challenging such attitudes and essentially asserting that black
man did deserve to be called mister, a stance which
is not surprising when you realize that Lonnie made a
point to cultivate an air sophistication and respectability about himself.

(22:49):
Recall how I mentioned that he always made sure to
present himself as an urban blues artist and not a
country blues musician, and how he always dressed in nice
clothes so as to present himself as urbane answer sophisticated. Additionally,
while Lonnie had never received any formal schooling, he had
been taught by his father. It was then thanks to
this education that Lonni could quote read anything that's on paper.

(23:11):
I can talk to anybody on any subject they like
talking about, and anytime I get spare time, I sit
down and read and read clearly, then Lonni was an
intelligent and even sophisticated individual, and he wanted people to
know that and treat him appropriately, regardless on the color
of his skin. This kind of quiet defiance would also
characterize one of the parasongs he penned in response to

(23:34):
the nineteen twenty seven flood, speaking of the first of
the federal levees to fail did so on the sixteenth
of April and Dorena, Missouri, with the water bursting through
the levee with so much power that it toppled trees
and swept away buildings as it ultimately flooded one hundred
and seventy five acres of land. This breakthrough orcre of
vas and the devastation it caused was enough for American

(23:55):
Red Cross representatives in the field to report back to
their headquarters that they were dealing with the quote greatest
flood in history. Finally, at long last, then someone on
a national level was taking this situation seriously. But as
bad things already were, sadly, the troubles were just getting started. Meanwhile, locally,
this crevass was rightly seen as a warning sign for

(24:16):
every other community sitting alongside the Mississippi because for all
the engineering and work that had gone into the federal
government's levees, and for all the faith that the Mississippi
River Commission had in them, the fact of the matter
was they were starting to fail. The flood was simply
too great and lasting too long for the levees to
hold up. Yet still these communities were determined to hold

(24:37):
back the wooters, doing whatever it was in their power
to reinforce and build up these levees, although, as I've
already stated, the individuals who would be tesked with putting
their bodies on the line to do this job were
more often than not black. Indeed, a sy situation with
the levees grew increasingly dire. Police patrols were sent into
black neighborhoods where they just started snatching black men off

(24:58):
the street so as to send in the work on
the lefe And to be clear, this was not a choice,
because if the black man attempted to refuse, they were
often beaten or jailed, and multiple men were even shot.
It also wasn't just the local black residents who in
the cops were looking to sweep up and forced to
work on the levees, as any black man in the area,
even if they were just passing through, was liable to

(25:19):
be treated in this way, which brings us back to
Lonnie Johnson and the second of the two songs he
would write and record about this flood, the aptly titled
Broken Levee Blues, which he would record in March of
nineteen twenty eight, a song in which he notably makes
the decision to talk about this aspect of the African
American experience during the flood, as he sings, quote, the
police run me all from Cairo, all through Arkansas and

(25:42):
put me in jail behind those cold iron bars. The
police say, work, fight or go to jail. I see,
I ain't totin no sack, and I ain't building no levee.
The planks is on the ground, and I ate driving
no nails, a lyric which is subversive as it is
very much about rebelling against the white power storetructure, and
also very much in tune with what the blues is

(26:02):
all about. As you see, blues musicians and their music were,
especially in those days, an expression of liberty. Keep in mind,
one of the primary goals of the Jim Crow laws
and the whole sharecropping system was to keep African Americans
tied to the land. They were to stay in one
place and keep supplying their labor and as close to
an extension of slavery as possible under the law. The

(26:24):
blues musicians, though often by definition, thought of those laws
as they traveled about not being tied to the land
and looking to make their living by something other than
working in the fields. In that same spirit, their songs
were often about the everyday lives of African Americans, but
within those lyrics, they on occasion took veiled jabs at
the white power structure, both large and small, as they

(26:45):
addressed everything from the unjust Jim Crow laws to a
hated boss who was drunk on a small amount of power.
It is possibly this subversive messaging this defines in this
laying bare the true nature of how the white communities
along the Mississippi were either preserved rebuilt. That helps to
explain why Lonnie Johnson's Broken Levy Blues is not as
well known as Bessie Smith's back Water Blues, which we

(27:08):
will be talking about in an upcoming episode in more detail.
Back to Lonni, though it makes sense that he would
choose to write about this flood because, according to Lenny Carlson,
who has studied Lonnie Johnson's music to transcribe it for
other guitars to learn from, Lonnie had quote an ability
to observe and capture these struggles and triumphs in the
daily lives of black people in the lyrics of his songs.

(27:30):
So of course he would focus upon this flood, as
we are already seeing how greatly it affected the black community,
in particular. The devastating effects of this nineteen twenty seven flood, though,
were still just beginning, as the failure of the federal
levy in Dorena, Missouri, was not the end but a
sign of things to come. So far, though, it seems
outside of those directly facing this threat, few on the

(27:52):
national stage had a true grasp of what was happening. That, however,
would soon change thanks to the events. It would take
place at a location known as Landing, a location that
was mostly notable due to the fact that a federal
levee had been built there. However, the failure of that levee,
the devastation had brought, and at lasting nationwide response that
resulted will have to for now remain the story for

(28:15):
another time. Thank you for listening to Distorted History. If
you would like to help out, please rate and review
the podcasts and tell your friends if you think they'll
be interested. If you would like ad free in early episodes,
I set up such a feed over at patreon dot
com slash Distorted History. By paying ten bucks a month,

(28:36):
you will gain access to the special ad free feed
available on Spotify or likely through your podcast app as
long as it uses an RSS feed. I will continue
to post sources on koffee and Twitter, though, as it's
just a convenient place to go to access that information regardless.
Once again, thank you for listening and until next time.

(29:14):
Isla