Posted in Musical context, Non-musical context on May 9, 2008 | No Comments »
Wednesday night here in Savannah there was a showing of the Todd Haynes movie I’m Not There — his wild riff on the idea of Bob Dylan, using six different actors to portray aspects of Dylan-ness — at a coffee shop here, courtesy of The Psychotronic Film Society. It was pretty crowded, kind of too [...]
Posted in Musical context, New Orleans on April 28, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The NYT, if you didn’t see it, had what I thought was a pretty good article about “Louisiana 1927,” the Randy Newman song that has a kind of second meaning now, post-Katrina. I almost wrote something about that song on this site once, and maybe I’ll dig up my draft and try to revive it [...]
Posted in Musical context, New Orleans on March 20, 2008 | No Comments »
Irvin Mayfield’s latest venture: “A multimillion-dollar library system that reflects the city’s identity. It would start with a jazz-themed branch housing early recordings and reviews.”
I’d visit!
Posted in Musical context on March 20, 2008 | No Comments »
A rather fascinating writeup describes attempts to deconstruct creativity in the brain by studying … jazz musicians!
“There were a lot of constraints,” [researcher Charles] Limb said. “Some were ergonomic. The musicians would lie on their back in a tube, which came up to their shoulders. There was a coil around their head. They were looking [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Musical context on February 28, 2008 | No Comments »
So suggests Bettye LaVette in this interview. Regarding her past manager John Lewis she remarks:
He made me learn good songs, which enabled me to do Broadway or sing in New Orleans, because I knew “St. James Infirmary” and “Bill Bailey.”
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Musical context on February 21, 2008 | No Comments »
About two years ago, I wrote up some brief thoughts about a potential Jewish connection to “St. James Infirmary, thanks to some thoughtful observations by reader Larry Broomberg. (See that post here.) I noted at the time that I was (and remain) in no position to speak with authority on Jewish music, but that I [...]
Posted in Musical context, New Orleans on February 7, 2008 | No Comments »
I just recently mentioned the Trombone Shorty version of “SJI,” so I thought I’d pass along this: A recent NPR piece on Trombone Shorty. No mention of “SJI,” sadly, but interesting comments from writer Larry Blumenfeld, pillar of the N.O. music community Bob French, and Trombone Shorty’s brother James Andrews (also a pillar of the [...]
Posted in Musical context, New Orleans on February 6, 2008 | No Comments »
By way of WFMU’s Beware of The Blog, I came to this online exhibit by the Tulane University Hogan Jazz Archive. The subject is Riverboat Jazz, and it’s pretty interesting.
It’s sort of set up like a slideshow, and doesn’t take all that long (20 minutes?) to read through, so I recommend taking a peek. But [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Musical context, Versions on January 3, 2008 | No Comments »
I received an email a little while back from a reader in California, who wondered if there might be a connection between Dr. John’s 1982 “Touro Infirmary” — which I wrote about here — and Muggsy Spanier’s “Relaxin’ At The Touro.”
From what I was able to learn online, Spanier was born in Chicago in 1906 [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Musical context, Versions on December 28, 2007 | Comments Off
For a while now, bit by bit, I’ve been working my way through “The Folkways Collection,” a 24-part (!) Podcast series about Folkways Records. Today I hit episode nine, “The Blues.” About halfway through, Josh White’s “Free & Equal Blues” came up; the narrator explained the context, which was a protest/satire of the absurd practice [...]
[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.
