In 1929, husband and wife, Kansas “Joe” McCoy and Memphis Minnie recorded a song entitled, When the Levee Breaks in reaction to the upheaval caused by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. It was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States. Click for the continuation.

Then, in 1971 and as a part of their fourth album, Led Zeppelin picked up their guitars at Headley Grange, where the band used the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio and re-worked the original version into a stronger, deeper blues-rock tempo that still shakes my soul today. It is the last song on the album and is one of the best finishers to date (in our opinion). The song makes me shut my eyes every time. While the Led Zeppelin version is still under copyright by the band, the original song by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie is currently in the public domain.

The Led Zeppelin version features a distinctive pounding drum beat by John Bonham, 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 vocalist Robert Plant. The vocals were processed differently on each verse, sometimes with phasing added. Plant 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 (again, the lyrics focused on the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927), and combined it with a revamped melody.

From the original version by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie:

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break.
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break.
And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay.

Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan.
Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan.
Thinkin’ ’bout my baby and my happy home.

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break.
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break.
And all these people have no place to stay.

According to Led Zeppelin guitarist and producer Jimmy Page, the song’s structure “was a riff that I’d been working on, but Bonzo’s drum sound really makes a difference on that point.” The famous drum performance was recorded by engineer Andy Johns by placing Bonham and a new drumkit at the bottom of a stairwell at Headley Grange, and recording it using two Beyerdynami M160 microphones at the top, giving the distinctive resonant but slightly muffled sound. Page later explained:

“We were playing in one room in a house with a recording truck, and a drum kit was duly set up in the main hallway, which is a three storey hall with a staircase going up on the inside of it. And when John Bonham went out to play the kit in the hall, I went “Oh, wait a minute, we gotta do this!” Curiously enough that’s just a stereo mike that’s up the stairs on the second floor of this building, and that was his natural balance.“

To listen to the song, click here.