Natural disaster songs

Subject: Natural disaster songs
From: Jayto
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 03:12 PM

I am sitting here enjoying a pretty typical spring day in west Kentucky. I have had 3 tornadoes pass about 5 miles to my south and Tennessee is getting tore up not too far from me. It has got me thinking. What are some good natural disaster songs?

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: ClaireBear
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 03:30 PM

Okay, this is wacky...

Didn't we recently (like, in the last month) have a thread about water-related disaster songs? I remember citing John Anderson's "Seminole Wind" in that thread. Now I can't find it, even using Clusty's advanced search.

But anyway, that one's a pretty good start on natural disaster songs, I think.

Claire

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: topical tom
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 05:00 PM

"The Springhill Mine Disaster" by Peggy Seeger.

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: topical tom
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 05:06 PM

Sorry, it's in the Digitrad as well.

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: bobad
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 05:07 PM

"Wasn't That A Mighty Storm" Tom Rush

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: GUEST,John Gray in Oz
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 07:02 PM

Best I've heard is called "Santa Never Made It To Darwin." Its about Australia's northernmost city, Darwin, that was almost totally destroyed by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas eve 1974.
Sung by "Bill & Boyd" the lyrics are on the web.

JG / FME

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 07:04 PM

http://www.mudcat.org/Detail.CFM?messages__Message_ID=1249720

Hurricane Hattie from the singing of Nadia Catthouse

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 07:40 PM

We've done this before not long ago:

Natural Disasters and Tragedies in Song

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 08:15 PM

I was going to post that too Jack. Problem is that most folks will read this and never link back to a past thread no matter how good it was.   So if you have something as you did then (that was a great thread), I'd go ahead and say it again here! It seems to be the Mudcat way of things.

For my part, I suggested that the wreck of the Airship Shenandoah as we related in detail in THIS THREAD qualifies and this is what I wrote there that makes me say so:

The ship itself was an interesting contradiction. Shenandoah was the most modern of the rigid airships and boasted many firsts. But although many would not or could not admit it, the day of the rigid was over and subsequent ships like the Akron and the Macon were basically exercises in futility. On the other hand, to most of the population in 1925 she was simply amazing and sight to behold as we might view the Space Shuttle were it toured around the country. She seemed quite modern and was as monstrously large as anything that has ever taken to the air.   Think about it......If you watch Football, the entire field WITH the endzones would be only HALF of her 680 foot length. I mean really.....think of what that must have looked like only one or two thousand feet overhead. Kinda' boggles my mind!

When she was unable to avoid the two storms which were converging upon her that early morning many possiblities for her loss were put forth. Everything from engines to improper valving of the helium was blamed and probably, as in any air disaster, there are a multitude of factors which all had a part. The one thing that was not well known at the time was something with which we have become all too familiar today and that is "wind sheer." Most histories of the wreck say she was "wrenched apart" or twisted by the storm. What has become apparent with years of hindsight and analysis is that Shenandoah may well have been the first victim of wind sheer. It is also probable that her extreme length, almost exactly one eighth of a mile, put her not just in one weather event but two at the same time.

She was a day shy of her second birthday when she went down on September 3, 1925.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 08:49 PM

John Warner's Fires Of 98 which talks about fires in 1898 not too distant from fires that burned recently in Victoria, Australia.

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 10:06 PM

A.P. Carter's 'Cyclone of Rye Cove.'

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: GUEST,Phil Again
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 01:43 AM

Ring A Ring A Rosy - - The Plague
Miner's Child's Dream
Quite A Lot In The Bible and Other Religious Writings
The Fire At Ross's Farm - Henry Lawson
Some think Morris Dancing is a natural disaster, I reckon it's unnatural.

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 11:44 AM

Run Come See Jerusalem

Hound Dog

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Songs about Volcanoes

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 11:45 AM

The "Santa Barbara Earthquake" by Vernon Dalhart.
"Run Come See" by Blind Blake of the Bahamas. (Storm over Andros)
"Black Waters" by Jean Ritchie, (though the question remains, was this a natural or a man-made disaster?) Same question about "The Titanic".

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: Nick E
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 07:12 PM

Great Big Sea (Hove In Long Beach) about a Tidal Wave, or to be more trendy a Tsunomi.
http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/song-midis/Great_Big_Sea_Hove_in_Long_Beach.htm

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 10:49 AM

It doesn't count as a "natural disaster," per se, but I have always liked Tom Paxton's "Panhandle Wind" for its evocative treatment of a blizzard in the southwest.

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 08:28 AM

Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads. The gales were natural; the dust storms were the result of inappropriate agriculture.

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 08:43 AM

Ellen Vannin by The Spinners, about a Manx ship lost at sea.

Cold Missouri Waters by James Keelaghan, his extraordinary song about smokejumpers in Montana.

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: reggie miles
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 11:28 AM

I was moved to write Katrina Blues after seeing the devastation of that tragic event. It's posted on a number of my sites.

Katrina Blues @ MySpace

Katrina Blues @ EZ Folk

Katrina Blues @ bandcamp

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: Splott Man
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 03:28 AM

Louisiana - Randy Newman

Who Built the Ark? - Trad?

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 05:26 PM

I believe there are at least two, and probably more, songs about the 1900 Galveston hurricane and flood. Tom Rush wrote a more contemporary song, but others pre-date it.

I note that there is a book currently being offered on Amazon.com called "Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, 1913-1938" which should contain a fair trove of material.

Subject: RE: Natural disaster songs
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 07:39 PM

Further to NickE's post of 12 Apr 09 - 07:12 PM regarding "Great Big Sea", GEST's site quotes speculation relating the incident to the great Lisbon earthquake in the eighteenth century, but I don't buy that. Neil Rosenberg's notes to "Songs of Newfoundland and Labrador Volume 1" state that the disaster was a storm surge in the fall of 1920 and include circumstantial details. I've always thought that the subtext of the song refers to the "natural disaster" of unwed pregnancy: "me 'boot' is broke, me 'frock' is tore", if you catch my drift.