Posted in "St. James Infirmary", The Thing Itself on July 25, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Here’s something I have no logical reason to own: A player piano roll. Of course, it’s a “St. James Infirmary” player piano roll, so when it popped up on eBay, I bid on it. And I won: $11.50 plus shipping. It arrived yesterday. For a little while I felt pretty silly as opened the [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", The Thing Itself on February 23, 2007 | Comments Off
From to time, the original 78 rpm record of “St. James Infirmary” as performed by Louis Armstrong pops up on eBay. I watch the bidding, but I don’t get involved. I’d love to own the thing itself, but my turntable doesn’t do 78, and then there’s the matter of the cost. In the most recent [...]
Posted in "St. James Infirmary", The Thing Itself on January 4, 2006 | Comments Off
It has occurred to me, of course, that I ought to take a look at the thing itself: The physical record that contained the Louis Armstrong rendition of “St. James Infirmary,” from 1928. While the authorship of the song tends to be credited to Joe Primrose on modern-day Cds and anthologies like the one I [...]
[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.
