April 7, 2008 by nonotes
All About Jazz describes a White House event featuring guests the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Kermit Ruffins, and others. Also:
As the night wound down and the guests were either asked to leave or escorted out, Condy Rice sat in at the piano, she is a fine pianist by the way, and did a credible version of “St. James Infirmary.”
I’m thinking the key, though, is the date on this item: April 1. I think I just about got Fooled.
[Or: The Point of this Site]
A couple of years ago I did some research into the song "St. James Infirmary," wrote up what I found, emailed that essay to friends and posted it on my web site (as part of a series of "Letters From New Orleans," as I was living in that city at the time). Based on the feedback, I wrote a second version of the essay, and asked for more feedback. Based on that, I wrote a third version.
And now, this site: A place to collect some of the links, leads, thoughts, and suggestions relating to the song that readers (from Finland, The Netherlands, Australia, Spain, England, Sweden, Canada, and all over the U.S.) have sent me. This may lead to a fourth and significantly expanded version of the essay, some day. Also on this site: Plenty of tangents.
Never heard "St. James Infirmary"? Start here.
The most recent version of my "St. James Infirmary" essay is now a few years old. But it's still a fairly decent overview of what I know about the song, and why I'm interested in it. You can read it either in the book Letters from New Orleans (see below), or in the archives of The Gambit, the New Orleans weekly that published the piece as a book excerpt when LfNO came out.
This site is a partial spinoff of the book Letters from New Orleans, published by the unstoppable Garrett County Press. My interest in "St. James Infirmary" is the subject of one essay in the book. All author proceeds from the book still go to post-Katrina relief efforts, so I think it's okay for me to say: You ought to buy it.
Actually, she *is* an accomplished pianist. Her folks wanted very much for her to become a (classical) pro. When she was 17, she went to a summer piano camp for the first time, and was daunted by the often much younger talent she encountered. She returned from the camp, and flat told her parents she was done with music.
Cheers!
Hill
Yes. Correct. But read the item, and you’ll see it’s clearly a joke.
She still plays to this day, but informally — and a classical repertoire, not “SJI” at the White House.