Editorial by Jim Reed
Aug. 5, 2024 – When Eric Curl approached me over a week ago with an invitation to pen a piece for this wonderful and increasingly indispensable website, he generously afforded me the largesse to choose any Savannah-related topic I desired. Grateful for such a kind offer, I immediately set about conducting interviews with a variety of both Savannah natives and longtime residents for a piece which I hoped would provide a number of unique and heartfelt viewpoints regarding the current state of affairs of our lovely city.
He quickly approved of that angle, and I’m happy to say that I then began to receive just the sorts of responses I was seeking from a few handfuls of thoughtful locals.
Enthused about what was coming in over the transom, I was well on my way to completing said article, when a bolt of inspiration (or should I say perspiration) unexpectedly struck. One which I felt demanded a complete change in tack.
You see, the quickly encroaching Hurricane Debby (has there ever been a less threatening name for a destructive storm of such proportions?) has been preying on my mind, as I am certain it has been on many of yours as well. And with it, my understandable frustrations and fears regarding the perpetually sorry state of stormwater drainage — or lack thereof ― here in my adopted hometown of 38 years.
(Side note: In the face of this potentially deadly weather event bearing down upon us, would it be too sardonic of me to note the deliciousness of a storm named Debby/Debbie bearing down upon the Hostess City? As “The” Jeff Calder says, “If you don’t get it, just forget it.”)
And so, I contacted Eric to ask if we could set aside that almost completed survey of area residents for another day, so that I could instead offer what I feel is a slightly unique perspective on this whole imminent flooding thing. He approved of this shift, and here I sit, with power for now, feverishly trying to complete this completely new column, as the outer bands of this hellacious tempest begin to lash the Historic District with wind and rain.
Yesterday afternoon in his deeply unsettling public address (deeply unsettling for what he didn’t say, as opposed to what he did) I heard Mayor Van Johnson call this storm ― and the shocking, punishing amount of water it is expected to rain down upon us from on high ― a once-in-a-millennium event. Heh. Methinks, he has a ridiculously rosy idea of what the next thirty to forty years have in store for Chatham County as far as cloud water and ocean water go.
It was also viscerally insulting that rather than presenting anything even remotely approaching a comprehensive, detailed, well-reasoned course of action planned in advance by our city government, county government or CEMA, he instead suggested that all of us in harm’s way “pray” that everything works out for the best.
Because, you know, that works.
Note to self: I guess for several hundred years now, if only more people around the world had been actively praying for peace in the Middle East, clean and healthy drinking water, a cure for cancers, dementia, auto-immune disorders and all manner of degenerative diseases, an end to the senseless violence, misogyny, homophobia and racism which poison the minds of young and old alike the world over ― and, I guess, the immediate cessation of hurricanes which threaten our own lives and property ― that all of those goals would have come to pass.
My bad, Van.
Thanks for figuring out and solving this whole drainage thing.
Who knew all along that it was our collective fault as taxpaying citizens of Savannah and Chatham County, for simply not bending the knee and wishing hard enough that sky daddy would continue to nudge most (but certainly not all) epic, deadly storms of this size and scope towards those silly Foghorn Leghorn gits over in Charleston!
On a slightly unrelated note, while I’m praying, can we also get a big-budget reboot of “Firefly” featuring all the surviving cast members in their original roles? I’m thinking five more seasons guaranteed, on a free streaming service, but with no commercial interruptions. And, for shits and giggles, let’s end it with one more big-screen feature film to tie the whole thing up in a bow.
Preesh, bro.
But, I digress. The truth is that, as my friend Jim Morekis has recently pointed out in his writings for The Savannahian, and on his own personal social media posts, Savannah’s location, elevation and layout has made it prone to such drastic drainage issues since perhaps the beginning of recorded history. And, as plenty of other folks have pointed out in recent days and weeks, much of this also has to do with our historic, outdated infrastructure (think the nexus of narrow, centuries-old underground pipes now contending with the wastewater requirements of countless massive hotels, apartment complexes and college dormitories).
The truth is flooding in the city has been even worse at various times in past decades.
That’s right, worse.
But if that’s the case, how come it doesn’t seem like that to folks who’ve lived here for, I dunno, five or six years?
Well, because most of them don’t know shit about most any aspect of how Savannah runs (or has historically run) in the first place. Real Talk.
But wait a minute, you may suddenly say to yourself ― if not, alarmingly, to those who happen to be near you ― I’ve lived here for 20 years (!) and I don’t recall it being this bad before. We have people’s cars filled up to their sunroofs with water and shirtless Dave Matthews Band fans kayaking in the streets! What gives? Is Crooked Joe somehow responsible?
Well, as someone who can truthfully say that he foolishly drove into what appeared to be a puddle about four to five inches deep in Ardsley Park a few years ago during a mild rainstorm, and wound up trapped in a Chevy Blazer with water up to the windows (I basically had to swim away), take it from me that folks have known about our city’s drainage problems since at least the 1950s.
How do I know this for sure?
Well, I could have asked folks who were living here during that time, but I didn’t have to. That’s because I grew up with a father who instilled in me the tremendous value of caring for and collecting records. I grew up loving and fixating on every scrap of blues, rock, country and soul music I could find.
That obsession (which continues to this day) led me to discover the fabled German specialty label known as Bear Family Records. Formed in 1975, this fiercely independent record label has long specialized in tracking down, documenting and reissuing for posterity critically acclaimed or at least historically significant examples of American roots music. What many folks now call “Americana.”
They are not widely known outside of collector circles, but their well-researched boxed sets covering such seminal artists as Bob Wills, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, The Everly Brothers, Waylon Jennings, David Allan Coe, Merle Travis, Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins, the Carter Family, Fats Domino, Ricky Nelson, Porter Wagoner, Dolly Parton and Jerry Lee Lewis (among others) are considered the gold standard as far as retrospective American roots music anthologies are concerned.
In addition to music by those famous and influential stars, they also have curated amazingly detailed compilations of ultra-obscure artists who never made it to the big time, and perhaps only released a handful of 78rpm records or 45rpm singles before vanishing into the mists of time. They doggedly track down rare copies of these forgotten slices of musical history (much of it from here in the Southeast), digitally restore the master tapes or sometimes even the vinyl records themselves and present them for future generations to study and enjoy.
I was lucky enough to purchase a few of these now long out-of-print and extremely valuable Bear Family boxed sets while I was in high school and college, and although I had never even visited the city to tour SCAD before I arrived here to begin my studies, even I at barely 17 years old knew that Savannah was prone to horrible flooding.
How? Because I had heard country artists sing about it one of my Bear Family compilations!
It turns out that back in the mid-1950s, a small-time country and western singer from not too awfully far away from where I was born had written and released a tune called “The Muddy Streets of Savannah,” about a bad flood that he seemingly had witnessed firsthand in our fair city. And in those days before the internet, when you could not simply look up whatever you wanted to learn about and have it at your fingertips, that song was almost the entirety of my knowledge of anything pertaining to the place I was soon to call my home.
I listened to that recording by Charley Lester many times before my dad drove me down here and helped me move into a SCAD dorm at the corner of Barnard and Broughton Streets above what is now the Banana Republic store (it’s now a fancy condo building called something like the Telfair Arms). And I also listened to a later cover of that same song by a slightly better known, but still rather overlooked country singer named Stoney Baird, which was also included on that same set.
In fact, once I arrived in town, I was a little surprised (pleasantly so, I might add) that it did not flood nearly as much or as often as those old country records had led me to fear! Because the lyrics of Charley Lester’s song made it sound like some seriously dangerous situations were occurring down here whenever it rained.
The boxed set I’m talking about was called “Smalltown Dreamers: Forgotten C&W Artists of the Deep South, 1948 – 1964.” Bear Family probably only pressed 1,000-2,000 of them (with a deluxe booklet filled with historical info on the artists and the recording sessions) back around 1983, and if you can find one somewhere today, you’ll likely pay a shocking amount for it. Hardly any of the vintage recordings on that set have ever showed up on modern-day streaming services, probably because of legal or copyright restrictions.
With that in mind, I have privately uploaded both of the only known versions of “The Muddy Streets of Savannah” to YouTube, so that folks who read this column can listen to them if they care to do so. I have also included the information from the boxed set’s booklet in the description of the videos, so this is the closest you can get to owning a copy yourself.
In all candor, I did not and do not have permission to upload this music, and so I have made these files private. They cannot be found with a Google search and are only accessible by clicking the following links.
I don’t know how long these files will remain up and available before they are pulled down for being uploaded without authorization from the label or the heirs of the artists (both of whom are long gone). As I am not making any money off of these recordings which are almost 70 years old, I feel this would fall under the “Fair Use” exemption of the music being utilized for educational purposes.
Feel free to share this article and these links around to anyone you feel might be interested in learning more about just how long Savannah has been “famous” in the Deep South for being a place where “the moss hangs low” and “the cobbled streets start to overflow with just a drizzle.”
I hope some of you find this forgotten slice of country music history as fascinating as I do, and that you get a kick out of both versions of this song, neither of which I think is half-bad! If you do enjoy this, you can thank my late father, Hubert Donald Reed, Jr., for instilling in me my love of roots music and my desire to seek out overlooked or underappreciated examples of all kinds of popular culture.
Stay safe and dry out there, folks. This one’s gonna be a doozy.
“The Muddy Streets of Savannah” by Charley Lester (1955)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p2HL8cTfC0
“The Muddy Streets of Savannah” by Stoney Baird (1958)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgqjy375ejs
Jim Reed moved to Savannah in 1986 and immediately became an active participant on the area music and cinema scenes. He has performed and recorded with bands such as City of Lindas, Superhorse, The Magic Rocks and the Knocked Out Loaded Ensemble. He also founded and ran the Psychotronic Film Society of Savannah from 2003 through 2022, making it the longest-running and most award-winning community cinema organization in the history of the city. He currently runs Fake Fangs Records (fakefangsrecords.bandcamp.com), and writes on all matter of topics (as well as creates private streaming radio shows)
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What a wonderful article and thanks for the ballad.