Before “The Unfortunate Rake”

Views differ on whether “SJI” ought properly be traced quite so far back as “The Unfortunate Rake.” My take remains that there’s somewhat of a connection there, so I read with interest today this entry on NineBullets.net. It’s about “The Cowboy’s Lament”/”Streets of Laredo” a song cycle with a connection to “The Unfortunate Rake” that [...]

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New (to me) versions week (3): Magnolia Sisters’ “Barroom Blues”

In a comment on the About page of this site, JP Bruneau wrote: “There’s a version of ‘Barroom Blues’ that’s not on your list. It’s in Stripped Down the new Cd (on Arhoolie Records) by The Magnolia Sisters, an all women Cajun band. In the liner notes I read that the band learned the song [...]

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Louvin Brothers version…

Literally since January I’ve had a half-written post about the Louvin Brothers’ “SJI” variation “Let Her Go, God Bless Her,” in my “drafts” folder. And yet I never find time to write it. Been that kind of year. Anyway, our friend Robert W. Harwood has meanwhile stepped up with a post about that very song. [...]

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Q&A Series (2): “I Went Down To St. James Infirmary,” by Robert W. Harwood

[Part 1 is here.] Q: Anybody who starts looking into “SJI” these days will before too long encounter the theory that connects it back to “The Unfortunate Rake.” But the link wouldn’t be obvious to anybody who simply heard “The Unfortunate Rake” and “SJI” back to back. I’m pretty sure that in my case, when [...]

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McGinley v. McKennedy (v. McKenny)

An interesting question came across the transom the other day, from a Mr. McGinley. I mention that name because it’s actually related to his question. You may recall that many singers use a longer set of lyrics for “SJI” that include the narrator walking into Old Joe’s Barroom, on the corner by the square, or [...]

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Q&A: Ezra Sims

Something like a year and a half ago, I received an email from composer (and blogger) Daniel Felsenfeld, who suggested that I look into the work of Ezra Sims. Specifically, Felsenfeld told me, Sims had written some pieces partly based on Louis Armstrong’s “St. James Infirmary” – “mostly because of the microtones involved.” At the [...]

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Quick takes on other versions

And finally, just to bring to a conclusion my unintended mini-series on versions brought to my attention by my communication with Jason Baldinger, a couple more quick notes. First, one of the versions he said he’d played, and that I didn’t know, was by Tony Rice. (Rice’s work “spans the range of acoustic music, from [...]

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Another quick tangent

I have no real memory of the movie Bang The Drum Slowly, though I’m fairly I certain I saw it years ago — years before, for instance, I was paying any attention to “St. James Infirmary,” or its musical cousins such as “The Streets of Laredo” (or “The Cowboy’s Lament”). The question has popped into [...]

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A brief detour

Back in December, when things were a bit hectic at No Notes HQ, I had a bit of correspondence with Jason Baldinger, a DJ at WRCT in Pittsburgh. He’d just done a show that involved spining about 30 versions of “SJI” and its antecedents, and some of the material wasn’t familiar to me. The bit [...]

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"Barroom Blues"

A site called “Get Underground” has an overview piece called “The Strange Career of an Unfortunate Rake.” While the broad outline is not wildly different from what’s in the essay that this site spun out of, there are a couple of interesting tidbits. First: Who was it that came up with the earliest trace of [...]

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