Topic: Wasn't that a mighty storm

[Delta Dan]

It seems unclear when and where this amazing song came from. Although it tells the story of the 1900 Galvestin hurricane and flood, it appears to have been written fairly recently. Tom Rush, Nanci Griffith, Roger McGuinn and the Chad Mitchell Trio (they called it Mighty Day) have done versions of it.
Anyway,last year in the US Max Ochs played an amazing mournful version of it with a slide guitar and he sounded like Blind Willie Johnson. He said he had heard a preacher doing it unaccompanied and emanating from a sermon. He learned it from Tom Rush's slide version.
SO, has anyone got TAB for this version, PLEASE?
Delta Dan

[Bunker Hill]

In the 60s I use to own several LPs of Alan Lomax recordings issued by the Library of Congress, one of which was entitled Negro Religious Songs and Services. On there was song of this title/subject matter performed in the mid-1930s by a Texas State Penitentiary inmate and fellow prisoners. The song was transcribed by Lomax in the accompanying booklet. Rush recorded a Galveston Flood for Elektra in the mid-60s but is probably something different, though he would have been just the sort of person to own that LoC compilation. But, hey, your only interest is the TAB, so all this is purely academic to your requirement.

[Delta Dan]

Hey Bunker Hill
Thanks for the help. Although I am interested in getting the tab or any help in actually playing the slide version of this tune, I am obsessively interested in the origins of songs. The information you provided is really helpful and I will try to track down this recording. Max Ochs told me he heard a performance by a preacher who began the story as a sermon, which gradually evolved into the song with the audience providing vocal backing - no guitar.
So if you or anyone else can add to all this I look forward to hearing.
Cheeers
Dan

[Stefan Wirz]

see this (and a bunch of other) threads over at the Mudcat forum (sorry - no tabs there, as much as I remember)
Stefan

[Bunker Hill]

see this (and a bunch of other) threads over at the Mudcat forum (sorry - no tabs there, as much as I remember)

Brilliant Stefan, thanks. That was the guy on that Loc LP compilation, "Sin Killer" Griffin and, no surprise, the source of Rush's version. How I wish I'd kept those LPs, though I guess it must be on a Document somewhere...