“SJI” on the uke

Up The Lazy River, a blog about “Learning to play the ukulele,” brings up “SJI” in a post about minor chords. Excerpt:

These chord groups are fun to play and practice on a regular basis. They’re grouped in the way you will likely find them in songs, and they almost sound like songs in themselves. As a matter of fact, the first group Dm, Gm, A7 and back to Dm are used in St. James Infirmary, a well known traditional American sad song.

Of course, as it’s played in New Orleans, it starts sad, but pretty much turns into a raucous affirmation of life. In a way that’s a little jarring if you think about it. Which as you know, I have, way too much.

Stream-able Touissaint live set on NPR

In a May 20th set at the Village Vanguard, Touissaint plays a bunch of material from Bright Mississippi. The band for the gig includes Don Byron, Christian Scott, Marc Ribot, David Piltch, and Jay Bellerose. “SJI” comes up pretty early — about 12 minues into the nearly hour-and-a-half set. Joe Henry (who produced Bright Mississippi) takes the vocals and does a nice job. Full set list and other details + plus audio link here.

“An easy song to remember … You just try not to ruin it”

Friend of no notes Alex Rawls has a great piece about Allen Toussaint in the current Offbeat, check out the whole thing here.

I will of course just share you with the “SJI” moment:

He hadn’t performed any of the songs before including “St. James Infirmary,” despite the song’s status as a standard in New Orleans. “I hadn’t paid much attention to it, but it’s an easy song to remember,” Toussaint says. “I didn’t give it much thought, but for some reason the intro came to me like that. It was something I had done before on the piano, but never used.”

In that intro, he teases the melody with a little trilled, morse code-like figure before playing the melody as a series of single notes played only with the right hand. With each pass through the verse, he adds levels of complexity. “As far as my part is concerned, that’s the most unique thing about the song by this pianist—the intro and the interlude. That song is a good song on its own and is easy to remember. You just try not to ruin it.”

First: Rather charming modesty.

Second: I’ve always thought I could hear what sounds an awful lot to me like an “SJI” cameo within Toussaint’s “Tipitina And Me.” I thought I’d written about that once on this site, but I can’t find it in the archives, so maybe I just thought about it.

Touissaint kudos

The T-P and NYT both site “SJI” in their nice writeups about Allen Touissaint’s new record and performances in support of it. I haven’t bought the disc yet, but will soon, and more on it later.

Calloway (again)

On the Ed Sullivan show (noted earlier):

Dylan deconstructor

Some of the most interesting tips I got while researching the SJI essay came from a Dylan fanatic who had learned of the song by way of Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell.” That tune pops up on on this list of songs Dylan “didn’t write.”

As you can guess if you’ve poked around this site much, I think the story of “SJI” is very much about the fluid nature of song-authorship, certainly when you’re dealing with something that’s been “in the tradition” for as long as “SJI” and its antecedants has. And on a more particular note: To whatever extent “Blind Willie McTell” borrows from McTell’s “Dyin Crapshooter’s Blues,” recall that friend of no notes Robert W. Harwood has shown that McTell borrowed that tune from somebody else.

That said, the list is worth a look to somebody (like me) who has some interest in how songs get rewritten, borrowed, whatever, and who is not a certified Dylanologist.

Reflections on death, while Amstrong plays

This blog has a curious entry consisting of two quotes, one from Philip Roth, and one from Jean Birnbaum, dealing with mortality; and a video of Louis Armstrong performing “SJI.” Interesting juxtaposition. Rather than reproduce the entire entry, I’ll just link to it, and let you draw your own conclusions.

Odd “SJI” reference of the week

One place I tend not to expect to come across references to “SJI” is on the Freakonomics blog — particularly when they are making a point about something on the public-radio show Marketplace.

But here’s the deal. Marketplace recently changed the background music it plays when summarizing the day’s stock-market figures: They switched to a different version of “We’re In The Money” (aka “The Gold Diggers Song”)  a piece actually written during the Great Depression. Previously, the version they used was upbeat. Now it’s slow and bluesy, a change that apparently is meant to  be more in-step with our economic times.

Freakonomics, setting aside its usual focus on, economics, money, and psychology, pivots to music critic mode and opines that the new rendition is “eerily reminiscent of ‘St. James Infirmary.’”

Decide for yourself if they have a point by listening a clip of the new version, performed by Joe Mattzie, here. You’ll also find clips of the prior version, as well as tunes the show plays on days when the market is down. (And: Here is the Marketplace piece explaining the switch, and that song’s history.)

As for what it might say about the economic zeitgeist if a business show is playing a tune “eerily reminiscent” of “SJI” while sharing news that the Dow is up … well, I’ll let you decide that for yourself, too.

Shepp’s “SJI,” live

I have a couple of versions of Archie Shepp performing “St. James Infirmary,” but I didn’t seem to have the one that this blogger links to. It comes from a 1985 live album, California Meeting. A particularly sultry workout, it stretches for more than seven minutes, and is lovely. (That said, the cited blogger asserts that the best way to hear “SJI” is live at Preservation Hall — a fair stance to take.)

Animation in progress?

This past December somebody wrote to me about an in-the-works new animation of “SJI,” to serve as a video for a performance of the tune by the present lineup of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. I haven’t heard anything about that since, but this appears to be a frame from that project, which I guess is still in the works. Looking forward to seeing it some day!