Galveston Hurricane 1900 - Film: Thomas A. Edison - Music: Tom Rush
Check out my Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/bob_toomey. On September 8, 1900, the deadliest hurricane in US history made landfall at Galveston, Texas. Winds reached a speed of 145 miles per hour, killing between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals out of Galveston's population of 37,000. On September 24, Thomas A. Edison sent a film crew to Galveston to record the aftermath of the storm, and part of that film is what you're seeing here. The song, "Wasn't that a Mighty Storm," was written sometime later. The lyrics mention a seawall, but Galveston didn't build a seawall until after the 1900 hurricane, and whoever wrote the song didn't know that. It was first recorded by John Lomax in 1934 at Darrington State Farm, a prison near Sandy point, Texas, sung by "Sin-Killer" Griffin who claimed authorship. A new, more powerful arrangement was created in the 1960s by Eric Von Schmidt, who gave the song to Tom Rush.
About Eric Von Schmidt
Eric von Schmidt was an American folk musician and painter. He was associated with the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s and was a key part of the Cambridge folk music scene. As a singer and guitarist, he was considered to be the leading specialist in country blues in Cambridge at the time, the counterpart of Greenwich Village's Dave Van Ronk. Von Schmidt co-authored with Jim Rooney Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years.
More about Eric Von Schmidt→Added
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