One of the essays in Letters from New Orleans is about jazz funerals, and as I’ve noted before “SJI” is frequently played in jazz funerals in New Orleans. So that’s my excuse for mentioning a couple of Soup Greens links: Here is the author of that blog performing “Flee As A Bird” — “a morbid bluesy number with a Spanish tinge that was published in 1857. I discovered it because Jelly Roll Morton quotes it in ‘Dead Man Blues.’” More info if you click that link.
Second link: Some videos, of which two interested me: clips of jazz funerals, from 2006, and 2007. The first, I gather, is for a former city council member, but I don’t know who. The second, a longer and more impressive clip, is for Kerwin James, the New Birth Brass Band tuba player. Suffice it to say, many jazz funerals are a good deal more modest … but just as moving.
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 
