The original work for "When the Levee Breaks" was produced by the blues musical duo known as "Kansas Joe McCoy" and "Memphis Minnie." The lines at the end of the song, "Going to Chicago; sorry but I can't take you", quote "Going to Chicago Blues" by Jimmy Rushing and the Count Basie Orchestra. In the first half of 1927, the Great Mississippi Flood ravaged the state of Mississippi and surrounding areas. It destroyed many homes and ravaged the agricultural economy of the Mississippi Basin. Many people were forced to flee to the cities of the Midwest in search of work, contributing to the "Great Migration" of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century. During the flood and the years after it subsided, it became the subject of numerous Delta blues songs, including "When the Levee Breaks", hence the lyrics, "I works on the levee, mama both night and day, I works so hard, to keep the water away" and "I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan, gonna leave my baby, and my happy home". The song focused mainly on when more than 13,000 residents in and near Greenville, Mississippi evacuated to a nearby, unaffected levee for its shelter at high ground. The tumult that would have been caused if this and other levees had broken was the song's underlying theme.[1][2]
Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin had the original McCoy and Minnie recording in his personal collection. He removed and rearranged lines and line parts from the original song and added new lyrical parts, and combined it with a revamped melody. Recording for the song took place in December of 1970. The Led Zeppelin version features a distinctive pounding drum beat by John Bonham recorded in a three-story stairwell, driving guitars and a wailing harmonica, all presumably meant to symbolize the relentless storm that threatens to break the levee, backing a powerful vocal performance by Robert Plant. The vocals were processed differently on each verse, sometimes with phasing added. The famous drum performance was recorded by engineerAndy Johns by placing Bonham and a new drumkit at the bottom of a stairwell at Headley Grange, and recording it using two Beyerdynamic M160 microphones at the top, giving the distinctive resonant but slightly muffled sound.[3][4] The drum break has long been popular in hip hop and dance music circles for its "heavy" sound, and has been sampled for many tracks.[5] At one time the remaining band members took legal action against The Beastie Boys for their use of this drum sample on their first album.[6]Jimmy Page recorded Plant's harmonica part using the backward echo technique, putting the echo ahead of the sound when mixing, creating a distinct effect. The song was recorded at a different tempo, then slowed down. Plant then sang in the sort of in between key the song was now in (approximately F minor), which explains its sort of flat and sludgy sound, particularly on the harmonica and guitar solos. This also made it very difficult to accurately reproduce live. This song was the only one on the album that was not remixed after a supposedly disastrous mixing job in the US (the rest of the tracks were mixed again in England). The original mixing done on this song was kept in its original form. Because this song was heavily produced in the studio, it was difficult to recreate live. The band only played this song a few times in the early stages of their 1975 U.S. Tour.
Cultural meaning
The song has a significant second connotation, aside from the literal breaking of water-retaining levees by floodwaters. The song was inspired originally by an event rife with social strife (when the levees broke in 1927, black labor was forced to repair it at gunpoint), and this fact carries through in the lyrics. Plant expanded the lyrics to include such phrases as "If you're goin' down south / they got no work to do / if you don't know 'bout Chicago" that add to the original themes of the poor being disenfranchised--the poor, working classes are the ones whose homes are going to be destroyed by floodwaters, and they are the ones who will have nowhere to go afterward. The second connotation of the song is built on an interesting twist. If the song is interpreted as a social statement reflecting class issues, then the poor themselves become the raging storm, restrained by oppressive (often governmental) institutions (the levees), and who will inevitably strike down what restrains them. In this interpretation, 'when the levee breaks,' it will be the former oppressors whose constructs are destroyed and who are cast out into the cold. In this interpretation, the song serves as a warning to oppressive upper classes that if they provoke a raging storm of social fury, they may sit on their social levee and "weep and moan," but "crying won't help [them], praying won't do [them] no good."
Other versions
Several other artists have covered the song or played it live:
Rosetta Stone covered it on the album An Eye For The Main Chance in 1991
Leftover Salmon did a version on the Ask the Fish live album in 1995. According to Jimmy Page, he is the one who set up and recorded the drum sound from this song.
Gov't Mule has been playing it in concert since 2005.
A Perfect Circle included a version on their cover album eMOTIVe in 2004. There were few changes in lyrics but the melody was very different from Led Zeppelin's version.
At the beginning of Temptation by The Tea Party, there is a sped-up drum solo at the beginning. When slowed down, it is not unlike the beginning of When the Levee Breaks.
Stream of Passion as b-side on their single Out in the Real World and on their live album/DVD Live in the Real World, both in 2006.
Marcelo Nova, a Brazilian singer, covered in the 2001 album Tijolo na Vidraça.
New Orleans native jam band Galactic did a version containing no words, which became a regular rotation in their sets post-Katrina.
Joe Bonamassa uses the songs main riff for his song The River.
Kid Rock and his band covered it in his pre fame days in concert in the middle of Prodigal Son which sampled the drum beat to the song.
Trivia
Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
Led Zeppelin: Dazed and Confused: The Stories Behind Every Song, by Chris Welch, ISBN 1-56025-818-7
The Complete Guide to the Music of Led Zeppelin, by Dave Lewis, ISBN 0-7119-3528-9
References
^ Cheseborough, Steve (2004-05-01). Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 132-133. ISBN 1-57806-650-6.
^ Garon, Paul (1992-04-01). Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie's Blues. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80460-3.
^ ab Welch, Chris (1998-10-01). Led Zeppelin: Dazed and Confused - The Stories Behind Every Song. Thunder's Mouth Press, pp. 70, 72. ISBN 1-56025-188-3.
^ abc Lewis, Dave (2004-09-01). Led Zeppelin: The Complete Guide to Their Music. Omnibus Press, p. 33. ISBN 1-84449-141-2.
