Top Ten Real Event Songs: Louisiana 1927 (#1)

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As I start a new countdown it's time to close another one. I've been looking at songs that are based on events in history. Most of these events, if you've noticed, are about tragedies. That's interesting: while people did a song about a girl who died after falling in a well nobody did a song about Baby Jessica getting successfully rescued! I close out this countdown with my favorite song based on history. #1: Louisiana 1927 - Randy Newman The president said, "Little fat man, isn't it a shame What the river has done to this poor cracker's land? That's so heartless and so...well, Donald Trump. In reality, President Coolidge didn't even bother visiting the the flood-ravaged Delta region. He was opposed to federal aid for the region, too. Oh, in that era, people who lived along the river were responsible for their own safety. You didn't want the river to flood, you built a levee. Well, can you guess how well that worked? If you can't, here are some statistics: approximately 500 deaths, over 600,000 people lost their property, and over 27,000 square miles flooded. And the reference to the "poor cracker" is meant to show off an additional tragedy about the 1927 Flood: about a third of the displaced individuals were black. They were put into camps with the job of shoring up the levees, at amazingly substandard wages and food rations. It also shows what it's meant to show with the use of the derogatory term: the government didn't have time or interest because it wasn't an election year, and these were just poor southern whites. (To prove this point, Herbert Hoover was "the government face" of the relief efforts, and it got him elected president the next year.) And a couple of pieces of trivia: the 1927 Flood was, and remains, the worst flood in U.S. history. And that Led Zeppelin (cover) song, "When the Levee Breaks"? It's about the '27 Flood, too. What an astonishing song about an astonishing tragedy. Thanks for reading. Louisiana 1927 Written by Randy Newman Recorded by Randy Newman From Good Old Boys, 1974 Based on the Great Mississippi River flood January-May, 1927 Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline: