The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #72422   Message #3844744
Posted By: Jim Dixon
13-Mar-17 - 07:01 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Hurricane songs
Subject: Lyr Add: HURRICANE HISTORY (from Tom Dalton)
My transcription from the audio, found today on Spotify:

HURRICANE HISTORY
As recorded by Tom Dalton on "When the Hurricane Comes: Songs about Living Through Hurricanes" (2006)

[CHORUS] Hurricane hist'ry—do you know
Just how many storms come and go?
It's a fact o' life here in the southern states.
Hurricane hist'ry—listen close,
'Spec'lly if you live on the coast,
'Cause hurricane season soon is on the way.

[1] Now in nineteen-hundred there was a killer hurricane,
Category four, that had no name,
Blew in off the coast and made landfall in Galveston.
September eighth, fifteen-foot waves
Claimed the lives of eight thousand, they say;
Was the deadliest hurricane that's ever come.

[2] Then there was the great Miami hurricane of twenty-six,
And Lake Okeechobee in twenty-eight.
Over three-thousand people died among the two.
You got the Labor Day hurricane of thirty-five,
And up in New England in thirty-eight,
Cost a thousand lives and nine million in damage to boot.

[3] Now in fifty-four, Carol and Edna dropped by,
And a few months later, Hazel said hi,
Took one seventy-five lives in the United States.
Connie and Diane came in fifty-five,
And Audrey paid a visit in fifty-seven,
But in sixty came Donna, one of the all-time worst hurricanes. [CHORUS]

[4] Well, then came Camille, a category five,
Hit the Mississippi coast in sixty-nine,
Was the second most intense hurricane of all time;
Then in nineteen-seventy-two, Agnes blew through,
With US deaths at one-twenty-two,
Then we got a little break in nineteen-eighty-nine.

[5] When hurricane Hugo first arrived
In Charleston, south Carolina,
There was twenty-foot waves and twenty-one people died;
Five more in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands,
Twenty-four in the Caribbean lost their lives,
Eight billion dollars in damage till Hugo said goodbye.

[6] Now three years later in ninety-two,
Came the most destructive hurricane we ever knew.
Andrew hit Dade County as a category five.
Twenty-six billion in damage cost,
Over twenty-five thousand homes were lost,
A quarter million homeless and sixty-five lost their lives. [CHORUS]

[7] Then Opal, Mitch, and Florence stopped by
To end the nineties; more loss of lives.
In two-thousand, Keith did damage from Belize to Mexico.
In two-thousand-one, there was Allison and Iris.
Two years later Isabel reminds us
How far north hurricanes go.

[8] Now two-thousand-four was a nightmare of storms,
Major hurricanes, there was four:
Charley, Frances, Ivan, don't forget Jeanne.
Forty five billion in damage alone,
Florida got hit bad, you know,
The floods and mudslides in Haiti took three thousand lives.

[9] Which brings us up to two-thousand-five.
You wonder how we ever survive,
With Katrina, Rita and Wilma, all category five.
Twelve hundred lives Katrina claimed,
Worst hurricane since twenty-eight,
Seventy-five billion in damage in New Orleans. [CHORUS]


[Only the chorus is sung; the verses are recited in a manner similar to "talking blues."

[I have verified the spelling of all the hurricane names, from here.]