Friend of NO Notes Carl Wilson appeared this weekend on To The Best of Our Knowledge to talk about his book Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. This is Mr. Wilson’s entry in the famous 33 1/3 series of books about single albums. I’ve read this book — which is [...]
Archive for the ‘One song / one album’ Category
Let’s Talk About Taste
Posted in Friends, One song / one album on December 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
From the comment-bag (1): More on covers & originals
Posted in Musical context, One song / one album on December 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This comment from Egypt Urnash, on the recent post about covers and originals and ur-originals, deserves attention, and I know not everybody reads comments, so I’m bringing it front and center: All the covers that I think of as “good covers” are the ones that take the original and deconstruct it in some way. A [...]
Covers, originals, and ur-originals
Posted in One song / one album on November 26, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Got an interesting note the other day from friend of no notes Alex Rawls, who is doing a little research for a writing project: He’s thinking about covers and originals, and how in some cases there is a sort of ur-original, against which all covers are judged. “SJI” doesn’t exactly fit that category, I don’t [...]
The story of “Jolene”
Posted in One song / one album on October 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Okay, it has nothing to do with “SJI,” but in the spirit of taking apart a single song that’s been covered many times, NPR has a fairly delightlful little feature on Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” And of course they can do what we can’t with “SJI,” which is speak directly to the song’s writer. I was [...]
6 Links
Posted in Friends, New Orleans, One song / one album, Other Music +, Public Housing on April 14, 2006 |
1. Pal Karen Schoemer talks about her new book on the radio show On Point. She’s joined by Nellie McKai (who reviewed her book for the NYT), Patti Page, and Fabian. The book is called Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with ’50s Pop Music. Here’s an excerpt on the NYT site, which I guess [...]
"A Rake’s Progress," Part One: Q&A with Robert W. Harwood
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Antecedents and Variations, One song / one album, Q&As on April 10, 2006 |
Of all the contacts I’ve made since posting the first version of my “St. James Infirmary” essay online in 2003, none has been more consistently amazing than Robert W. Harwood, who knew a tremendous amount about the song and its history, and even wrote a self-published book on the subject, called A Rake’s Progress. This [...]
Obsession, Expertise, and Uncertainty
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", Musical context, One song / one album on March 4, 2006 |
I’ve been a bit negligent about posting lately, not because I’m out of things to say, but because we’re still away from home and I can’t finish any of the various half-written items I have planned without consulting materials back at headquarters. But in the meantime, I did want to mention a recent email exchange. [...]
“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
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Versions
