Posted in "St. James Infirmary", MySpace/YouTube/Etc., New Orleans, Non-musical context, Versions on July 9, 2007 | No Comments »
Speaking of Wynton Marsalis & “St. James Infirmary,” a relevant bit of Spike Lee’s When The Levees Broke popped up on YouTube recently. If you haven’t seen Lee’s epic documentary about Katrina and its aftermath, I highly recommend it. If you have seen it, you know that the “SJI” tune pops up early in [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Non-musical context on June 18, 2007 | No Comments »
I have little information about this, but was intrigued to see this reference to a July 21st reading, presented in Chicago by the Congo Square Theater Company, of “Brian Tucker’s ‘St. James Infirmary’.” Poking around the only thing I found was this brief (but extremely promising) description: “bluesy noir examination of the soulless inhabitants of [...]
Posted in Antecedents and Variations, Non-musical context on June 4, 2007 | No Comments »
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 [...]
Posted in Musical context, New Orleans, Non-musical context on May 5, 2006 | Comments Off
1. Gallery of VD-education posters. You may recall from the essay that this site is spun off from that “The Unfortunate Rake” (the song from which “SJI” descended) is basically about a guy who contracted VD. A 1916 poster from France reads: “Soldier, the country counts on you — keep healthy. Resist the temptation of [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Lyric deconstruction, Non-musical context on April 25, 2006 | Comments Off
Lately I’ve been working my way, rather slowly, through Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax. I’ll have more to say about that later, but there was a bit on Disc Four that caught my attention, and reminded me of another exchange I had with a reader some time [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Antecedents and Variations, Musical context, Non-musical context on April 11, 2006 | Comments Off
Here is the second installment in a four-post series drawn from an interview with A Rake’s Progress author Robert W. Harwood. (Part one can be read here.)
Q: The first section of the book contains a wealth of contextual material about the early recording industry, and how black jazz and blues performers fit into that (or [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Antecedents and Variations, Intellectual property, Musical context, Non-musical context on April 3, 2006 | Comments Off
To be perfectly honest, I’ve never been much of a Roger McGuinn fan. I don’t even find much pleasure in Sweetheart of the Rodeo, even after years of trying (on the theory that so many people with good taste seemed to like it so much). Nevertheless, McGuinn does have a version of “St. James Infirmary” [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Lyric deconstruction, Non-musical context, St. James Infirmary (the building) on March 16, 2006 | Comments Off
So, where was the St. James Infirmary? The St. James Infirmary, I mean. This is a question many fans of the song have speculated about, in one way or another.
I touched on this very briefly in the most recent version of the “St. James Infirmary” essay. There was, it is said, a St. James Methodist [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Non-musical context, Versions on February 21, 2006 | Comments Off
You may notice among the thrilling features at right is a link to an old Betty Boop cartoon that features Cab Calloway singing “St. James Infirmary.” I knew for a long time that this cartoon existed, but have Andrew “Salty” Saltmarsh to thank for the link. Mr. Saltmarsh is the co-prioprietor of Ozprog.com, an Australian [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Non-musical context, Q&As on February 16, 2006 | Comments Off
A while back, Rosemarie Harmon wrote in with an interesting observation, about “St. James Infirmary.” She is at work on a book, The Moral Career of a Stripper, and said that “St. James Infirmary” was, at one time, “a standard for exotic dancers – before rock ‘n’ roll ht the skin houses.” She continued:
“I worked [...]
[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.
