[Punkrockmonday #4] Charlie Patton- High Water Everywhere, Part 2

It's really hard to be a good Hegelian (or Christian, or Muslim, or really anything besides Buddhist maybe) during weeks like this, between the typhoon in Japan and the vicious counter-revolutions being waged by United States' allies in the Middle East. It's hard to see how anything could possibly make things like this worthwhile. As a good Hegelian you really want to believe that the universe is evolving the way it should, but to that we can go ahead and cue Voltaire.

Art doesn't justify anything or "provide closure" or make any of the real horrors and indignities of existence even the least bit better, but it's still probably the best we can do. So here is Charlie Patton singing about the Mississippi river flood of 1927. I wonder what great art will be produced by this generation of traumatized Japanese, Bahranian, and Yemeni kids that will be listened to eighty years from now? It is really quite amazing the extent to which all popular Western music now owes some debt to Charlie Patton and the musicians of his generation that were scarred so badly by the 1927 flood. . .

These lyrics are kind of inscrutible to the uninitated. Here's a transcription, completed below the fold. Please read them while listening. They make me cry.

Backwater at Blytheville, backed up all around
Backwater at Blytheville, done took Joiner town
It was fifty families and children come to sink and drown

The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The man said to his women folk, "Lord, we'd better go"
The water was risin', got up in my bed
Lord, the water was rollin', got up to my bed
I thought I would take a trip, Lord,
out on the big ice sled
Oh, I can hear, Lord, Lord, water upon my door,
you know what I mean, look-a here
I hear the ice, Lord, Lord, was sinkin' down,
I couldn't get no boats there, Marion City gone down
So high the water was risin' our men sinkin' down
Man, the water was risin' at places all around,
boy, they's all around
It was fifty men and children come to sink and drown
Oh, Lordy, women and grown men drown
Oh, women and children sinkin' down Lord, have mercy
I couldn't see nobody's home and wasn't no one to be found

1. [Punkrockmonday #1] The White Stripes - Jack the Ripper (orig. Screaming Lord Sutch), Black Math, and the Big Three Killed My Baby]
2. [Punkrockmonday #2] Roy Cook - Saint Paul Cathedral, Minneapolis Capitol Building, Aayla Secura Mosaic, and Firefly Class Spaceship
3. [Punkrockmonday #3] El Général- Rais Le Bled (President, Your Country)