Sorry for the melodramatic headline. But “coupla stray notes” didn’t seem adequate. First: Shortly after returning from our trip to N.O. in connection with the very enjoyable Hypothetical Development Organization opening, I was pleased to receive in the mail the book Louisiana Rambles: Exploring America’s Cajun and Creole Heartland, by Ian McNulty. I managed to [...]
Archive for the ‘Letters From New Orleans book’ Category
Fire and destruction
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on April 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Nice & noted
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book on January 3, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
This is pretty cool: Virtual Memories/Gil Roth names LfNO among his “favorite nonfiction books of the decade” just ended! The full list of fiction and nonfiction titles, with concise commentary, is here.
Mother In Law requiem
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on December 24, 2010 | 3 Comments »
E told me several weeks ago she’d read that the Mother In Law Lounge (a setting explored in LfNO) was closing. There’s a nice batch of pictures of the exterior on the WFMU blog, here. Steve Witchbeam writes: Under the impression it was still a happening venue I headed over there with Crow Hill Gnostic [...]
Funds for robot transportation sought
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book on June 29, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Kal Spelletich, an artist who makes “machines and robots,” and a central figure in the “3% Theory” essay in Letters From New Orleans, is trying to raise money to bring his work from San Francisco to New York for a gallery show. He’s doing this through Kickstarter so there are premiums if you choose to [...]
Beads, revisited again
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on March 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Turns out I have two more items bookmarked from the previously mentioned Sociological Images blog, so I’ll just quickly clear the decks here. First: In this earlier post I mentioned the documentary about Mardi Gras beads (Mardi Gras: Made In China). This post on Sociological Images checks in on the subject of beads: The writer, [...]
A shameless interlude
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book on February 21, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Forgive me, if you will, for posting this comment about Letters From New Orleans from the blog “Where Y’at? The New Orleans Course.” I think you’ll see why I can’t resist: A few years back, after I returned from my first post-Katrina visit to New Orleans, I picked up a slim book called Letters from [...]
Mardi Gras: The Research
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on February 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »
In several essays in Letters From New Orleans, I explored some of the distinct, yet interlocking, versions of Mardi Gras that unfold every year. So I know that Carnival is rich territory. But can it be addressed with academic rigor? Perhaps so. The Miller-McCune website (I have no idea what that it is — it [...]
Beads
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on February 2, 2010 | 1 Comment »
In one of the essays in Letters From New Orleans, I made passing mention of the origins of Mardi Gras beads — murky, made in China, and beyond that I didn’t want to know the details, if you know what I mean. Well, someone else did want to know the details. MARDI GRAS: MADE IN [...]
A few links…
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on December 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
We got to spend a few days in New Orleans recently, mostly in connection with stuff E was doing at PhotoNOLA. It’s amazing how far that event has come in just a couple of years — kudos to folks like Jennifer Shaw for their determination and success. Thanks to a busy schedule and some supremely [...]
SAV signage
Posted in Letters From New Orleans book, New Orleans on October 4, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Sassy’s, originally uploaded by R. Walker. If you recall the recent post here about New Orleans sign-painter Lester Carey, you know I’m interested in hand-painted signs on local businesses — and Savannah also has its share. Here and there I’ve taken snapshots of a few, but most as part of my Savannah MLK set, gathered [...]
“St. James Infirmary”
[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 Essay
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.
The Book
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.
Podcast!
Categories
- "St. James Infirmary"
- Announcement
- Announcements
- Antecedents and Variations
- Folk/Tradition
- Friends
- In performance
- Intellectual property
- Irving Mills/Joe Primrose
- Letters From New Orleans book
- Lyric deconstruction
- MLK BLVD
- Movies & Television
- Musical context
- MySpace/YouTube/Etc.
- New Orleans
- Non-musical context
- One song / one album
- Other Music +
- Public Housing
- Q&As
- Questions (and sometimes answers)
- St. James +
- St. James Infirmary (the building)
- Thanks
- The Hot 8
- The Rolling Jelly Series
- The Thing Itself
- Uncategorized
- Versions
Versions
