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"When the Levee Breaks" is a blues song written and first recorded by husband and wife Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929. The song is in reaction to the upheaval caused by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

It was famously re-worked by English rock group Led Zeppelin as the last song on their fourth album, released in 1971. The lyrics in Led Zeppelin's version were based on the original recording, as was the version performed by A Perfect Circle on their final album eMOTIVe released in 2004.

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". 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]

"When the Levee Breaks"
Song by Led Zeppelin
from the album (Led Zeppelin IV)
Released	November 8, 1971
Recorded	December 1970 – March 1971
Genre	Blues-rock
Length	7:08
Label	Atlantic
Writer(s)	Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie
Producer(s)	Jimmy Page
(Led Zeppelin IV) track listing
Going to California (7)	"When the Levee Breaks" (8)

Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin had the original McCoy and Minnie recording in his personal collection. Deleting and rearranging lines and line parts from the original song and adding new lyrical parts, combined with a revamped melody, Led Zeppelin made the song their own. Recording for the song took place in December of 1970.

The Led Zeppelin version features a distinctive and often-sampled 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 famous drum performance was actually recorded by Andy 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 break has long been popular in hip hop and dance music circles for its "heavy" sound and has been used for many tracks,^[5] notably including Enigma's Return to Innocence, Tomoyasu Hotei's Battle Without Honour Or Humanity from the Kill Bill soundtrack, "Army Of Me" by Björk, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" by Sophie B Hawkins, "Lyrical Gangbang" by Dr. Dre off his record-breaking debut recording, The Chronic, the demo version of "Where Will You Go" by Evanescence, the second theme song of the Pokémon anime series and the Beastie Boys' "Rhymin & Stealin" from their 1986 album Licensed to Ill.

Jimmy Page recorded Plant's harmonica part using the backward echo technique, putting the echo ahead of the sound when mixing, creating a unique effect.

Because this song was heavily produced in the studio, it was difficult to recreate live. The band only played this song a few times on their 1975 U.S. Tour. Page and Plant had performed it on their MTV Unplugged appearance and their 1995-96 world tour.^[4][3] John Paul Jones worked the song into the tour for his two solo albums.^[4]

In 2004 another version leaked to the bootleg community with essentially the same instrumentation but a different vocal from Robert Plant, different lyrics and some verses out of order.

• by Judge on the CD edition of their EP There Will Be Quiet... in 1990
• by W.A.S.P. on the bonus disk of The Crimson Idol in 1991
• by John Campbell on his Howlin' Mercy album in 1993
• by Kristin Hersh, formerly of the Throwing Muses, on the Strings EP in 1994
• by Leftover Salmon 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.
• by Tori Amos on her 2005 world tour.
• by A Perfect Circle on their cover album eMOTIVe in 2004. There were few changes in lyrics but the melody was very different from Led Zeppelin's version.
• by Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha on in their cover album Re-Covers in 2005
• by 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.
• by film score composer John Powell on the soundtrack to the 2006 film Ice Age: The Meltdown.
• Bob Dylan's song "The Levee's Gonna Break" on the 2006 album Modern Times is loosely based on the song.
• by New Orleans drummer Stanton Moore's 2006 solo effort entitled III, as the song's subject has been compared to the effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans; it is also the main theme for the event.
• By New Orleans native jam band Galactic. Their version contains no words and became a regular rotation in their sets post-Katrina.

• The lyrics to this song (written by Memphis Minnie in 1927) are based on The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. African-American plantation workers were forced to work on the levee at gunpoint, piling sandbags to save the neighboring towns. Hence the lyrics, "I works on the levee, mama both night and day, I works so hard, to keep the water away." After the levee breached, blacks were not allowed to leave the area, and were forced to work in the relief and cleanup effort, living in camps with limited access to the supplies which were coming in. Many left at the first chance since there was no work in the Delta after the destruction of all of the plantations; hence the lyrics, "Oh cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do no good" and "I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan, gonna leave my baby, and my happy home"
• Memphis Minnie McCoy (born Lizzie Douglas), was a Blues artist who recorded this in 1929. Robert Plant had the record in his collection.
• Heavily produced in the studio, this was difficult to perform live, which Led Zeppelin did only twice: once in a "warm up" gig in Denmark before their 1975 US tour, and again on their second night in Chicago.
• The vocals were processed differently on each verse, sometimes with phasing added.
• Jimmy Page's backward echo technique, where he would put the echo ahead of the sound, was used on the harmonica.
• Many rap songs have sampled the drums on this. This is because of the clean, uninterrupted drum break at the beginning. The Beastie Boys used it on "Rhymin' and Stealin'" which opened their first album Licensed To Ill. Other songs to use it include "Midnight" by Ice-T, "Lyrical Gangbang" by Dr. Dre, "Kim" by Eminem and "Beats and Pieces" by Coldcut.
• The song was recorded at a different tempo, then slowed it down. Plant then sang in the sort of in between key the song was now in, 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 seemed to suit it very well, so it was kept in its original form.
• John Bonham's drums were recorded in a stairwell at Headley Grange with the microphones planted 3 stories up. The drum sound echoed skyward and was captured on the mics, creating a very innovative and distinctive sound.
• A Perfect Circle covered this on their third album Emotive. The album is made up of covers that changed normal upbeat songs into very dark political songs.
• Since 78 years have passed since Memphis Minnie's version was recorded in 1929, the song is now in the public domain, meaning anyone can record it without paying royalties.
• Page and Plant played an acoustic version on their 1995 No Quarter tour, swapping it with "Nobody's Fault But Mine" at times.
• When the Levees Broke, a documentary on Hurricane Katrina, is a play on the title of the song.

• List of sampled songs
• List of songs about disasters

• 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