Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans, Non-musical context on February 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Every city has its dive bars. Sometimes those bars have a reputation for being a bit dangerous, a bit of a risk. We all know these places; we’ve all been to them. The vague sense of edginess is part of the appeal.
Back when we lived in New Orleans, we had quite a number of such [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", 1. St. James (+ Tangents), Announcements, Friends, Letters From New Orleans book, Versions on November 19, 2007 | 2 Comments »
I’m very excited to report that I recently had the opportunity to guest-host my favorite music podcast, The Sounds In My Head, normally hosted by Daniel Dunham. Naturally I took that opportunity, and filled my entire episode with versions of “SJI.” As of Monday November 19, that is available here. Check it out!
If you’re coming [...]
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on November 11, 2007 | Comments Off
Every time I think I’ve gotten the last kind words I’ll ever get about LfNO, something unexpected pops up. Like this kind noticeon Burnin’.
Place is one of the central themes in my life. The importance it holds for me is not normal. So it makes sense that the last few books I’ve cracked–A Man Without [...]
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, Musical context, New Orleans on October 29, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Salon reports on something I find truly baffling: Police busting up jazz funeral processions in Tremé. You have to click through an ad to read the piece, but it’s worth it. Apparently a funeral involving a couple dozen musicians and “roughly a hundred” paraders, for the recently deceased tuba player for the New Birth Brass [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Announcements, Letters From New Orleans book on October 1, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Amazingly enough, this month marks the two-year anniversary of this site — still, so far as I know, the world’s only one-song blog.
That means it’s been more than two years since I updated the “St. James Infirmary” essay, and there are some things I’d like to add to it or change, based on all the [...]
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on August 17, 2007 | Comments Off
LfNO includes an essay called “Yvonne’s,” about a bar in our neighborhood by that name. Yvonne’s became Pal’s, and we used to go to Pal’s fairly often. So I was disurbed to read this news:
A brooding man sat on a blue barstool Wednesday at Pal’s Bar, a Mid-City neighborhood joint where, as usual, a dozen [...]
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on June 10, 2007 | Comments Off
Interesting to see that the Desire housing projects, subject of the long piece called “The Desire Line” in LfNO, are re-opening, after a fashion:
The “New Desire” — or Abundance Square, as developers christened it — has transformed into a cluster of colorful, new shotguns and other single family homes, managed by a private company. The [...]
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book on May 30, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Well, this doesn’t happen every day — in fact nothing like it has has happened in ages: A review of Letters from New Orleans, and an incredibly nice and perceptive one at that!
What makes my day about this is not the kind words per se, but that writer Colleen Mondor seems to see the book [...]
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, Musical context, New Orleans, The Rolling Jelly Series on August 28, 2006 | Comments Off
[Here is Part 8 of the Rolling Jelly Series]
Jelly Roll Morton’s discussion of jazz-funeral violence (in his 1938 conversations with Alan Lomax) was not the only context for simultaneous fighting and celebration in the New Orleans of his younger days. The Mardi Gras Indians could be a violent lot as well, he explained to Lomax. [...]
Posted in Friends, Letters From New Orleans book on August 24, 2006 | Comments Off
Look at this cool chick reading Letters from New Orleans! You know she’s cool because she’s got a rare first edition.
This arrived in the mail last week: It’s the new Garrett County Press catalog, and obviously it made my day, my weekend, my week, and my month.
You are encouraged to learn about the many fine [...]
[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.
