"High Water (For Charley Patton)" is a song by Bob Dylan, released on his 31st studio album "Love and Theft" in 2001. The song draws its title from the Charley Patton song "High Water Everywhere", which is one of many songs based on the 1927 Louisiana flood. Other songs about the event include Memphis Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks" (later recorded by Led Zeppelin), and Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927".
The song directly quotes three classic American songs in the last two verses, first the traditional ballad "The Cuckoo" with the line:
"The cuckoo is a pretty bird
She warbles as she flies."
Robert Johnson's "Dust My Broom" with the line:
"I'm getting up in the morning
I believe I'll dust my broom."
Charlie Pattons " Shake it and break it" with the line:
"You can shake it, you can break it, you can hang it on the wall." Bob's amended version of this line is "Bertha Mason shook it – broke it, then she hung it on a wall."
Famous quotes containing the words high, water and/or charley:
“I asked my mother for fifty cents
To see the elephant jump the fence.
He jumped so high he reached the sky,
And didn’t get back till the Fourth of July.”
—Unknown. I Asked My Mother (l. 1–4)
“Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not “Devil’s wine,” but God’s wine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Twenty years ago I wanted to move to a nice place so our Charley would grow up a nice boy and learn a profession. But instead we live in a jungle, so he can only be a wild animal. D’you think I picked the East Side like Columbus picked America?”
—Abraham Polonsky (b. 1910)