When I began research into the history of "St. James Infirmary," it was obvious that Porter Grainger would become a major character in the book. It wasn't long before I came to the realization that Grainger is one of the great-but-forgotten songwriters of the early 20th century.
1939 photo of black musicians/composers in Harlem. (Click on the image to enlarge.)
Until I looked into census records, his birth date was unknown. Not because it was hidden, but because interest in him was so low that nobody had bothered to look.
Still, here he is in a 1939 photograph of major black composers/musicians in Harlem. Jelly Roll Martin, Eubie Blake, Kay Parker, Perry Bradford, James P. Johnson ... Porter Grainger (right of photo, beside Claude Hopkins in the white suit).
Death Certificate for Porter Grainger
Gradually he sank out of sight. He remains in the pantheon of the forgotten.
It was long thought that, due to dating of copyright renewals in his name, Grainger died in New York between 1951 and 1955. In fact, he died on October 30, 1948. (A genealogy researcher who goes by the name ladylorax recently unearthed the death certificate on ancestry.com.)
When the certificate was completed, his name was entered as "Porter, Granger" (that is, Granger Porter)—hence the difficulty in finding the record. He was living at 1300 Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was brought to the Passavant Hospital at noon, where he remained for twenty minutes (which suggests he was DOA). Cause of death was written as "Pneumonitis, due to dentures lodged in his trachea." In other words, he choked on his dentures. He was 57 years and 9 days old.
This caused me to reflect – in a roundabout way – that musicians are sometimes stimulated to write songs about ... Bob Dylan. Here are three of those songs – two of which ask "What if I was Bob Dylan?"
1. In 2010 the Italian musician, Roberto Tardito, released a song in both Italian ("Se Fossi Dylan") and English ("If I Were Dylan").
Towards the end of "If I Were Dylan" Tardito sings:
I'd have a long story to tell, a hard long story Of money, women, disillusion A secret longing to go far away To walk on distant paths, never trodden before If I were Dylan I'd not speak any more I'd not speak any more
Alas, I could find no computer link (including Spotify) for either the Italian or the English recordings. However, about fifteen years ago I bought an mp3 of the song. Blogger does not permit the loading of audio files. But Substack does, and you can find this rarity by travelling to my Substack version of this post. Click here.
2. In 2010 Cade and the Taliesins released the song "If I Was Bob Dylan" on their album The Spiral. Cade and the Taliesins is, again, close to impossible to find information about (although their album is on Spotify). The band is probably from the U.S. and is brainchild of Cade Johnson. Do they still exist? Who is Cade Johnson?
In the opening of "If I Was Bob Dylan," a love song, Cade sings:
If I was Bob Dylan I would write a new song everyday If I could be your Bob Dylan I would speak to you in metaphors always
3. In 2008 Cat Power released "Song to Bobby" on her album Jukebox. In contrast to the above, I suspect all readers know of Cat Power, who has recently toured with her interpretation of Dylan's 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert.
In the opening of "Song to Bobby," Cat Power sings:
I wanna tell you I've always wanted to tell you But I never had the chance to say What I feel in my heart from the beginning til my dying day
There must be other songs of this ilk. Can you send your favourites?
Tardito answered (thank you Google's translator for this):
"If I were Dylan, I'd have the credit and attention to allow me to experiment, both in the studio and live, that constantly break the mold. Or rather: I am and feel like a free artist, I'm not under the control of a multinational. I don't care in the slightest what people might like or dislike, I don't try to accommodate anyone. I don't make calculations. Today I'm on this path, nothing prevents me from taking another tomorrow. Of course, if I experiment, it's under the eyes of a few; if Dylan or his colleagues do it it's under the eyes of the world."
Sometime in June, 2025 YouTube posted an entry devoted to Dylan's song "Blind Willie McTell," which went unreleased for eight years after it was recorded. The song is referred to as "a masterpiece." I am uncomfortable with the bandying about of that word, but, yes, it is a masterpiece. The video is about 50 minutes long, and revelatory for any fan of Dylan's music.
Pam and I encountered this item accidentally. One evening, after supper, we were scanning YouTube options on our TV. The algorithms (I guess it was that) steered us to an entry devoted to the complicated history essential for the evolution of that song.
At one point, early in the video, I turned to Pam and uttered, "That's I Went Down to St. James Infirmary."
Possibly 75% of the research that went into the script of this 50 minute piece came from our book.
This video is a fascinating piece of work, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the development of songs. Interested in old weird Americana. Interested in the junction between songs new and olde. Interested in something both informative and fun.
Calloway was, according to my count, the twenty-second person to record "St. James Infirmary." This was a mere three years after Fess Williams' and the Royal Flush Orchestra's initial release, then titled "Gambler's Blues," in 1927. One year after Louis Armstrong's version (recorded in 1928, released in 1929).
Cab restricted the song to the three verses that Louis Armstrong definitively recorded in 1928 (the 3rd recording of the song). Fess Williams, on the other hand, included eight verses.
As I wrote about in the book I Went Down to St. James Infirmary, other early recordings (for instance, two versions by the Hokum Boys in 1929 (4th & 5th overall)) had a much different lyric, now forgotten - but, still, obviously SJI.
Carl Sandburg's written notation - the first one ever (1927) could only scrape the surface of the many versions that were making the rounds throughout North America with solo blues singers, small and large touring bands, in fancy night clubs and sleazy bars and back porches and living rooms and brothels and street corners and music halls, before the recording studios more or less defined (and restrained) the song into the variations we hear today.
Cab Calloway, performing at Harlem's notorious Cotton Club in the 1930s, used SJI as his theme song. Until, using the same opening and the same melodic structure, he substituted Minnie the Moocher - which was based upon a "traditional" song (also documented in Sandburg's "American Songbag") titled Willie the Weeper.
This is such a small part of the story, and it's pretty recent.
(Btw I have no doubt that Michael Jackson studied Calloway's moves.)
The long history of this song is fascinating.
So, in a nod to recent history, here are two videos of Cab Calloway performing St. James Infirmary. The first is from 1947, from his movie "Hi-Di-Ho," seventeen years after his first recording of the song. (He presents the protagonist as a hopeless failure, rather than the gambler who could afford the extravagant funeral arrangements.) The second is from his 1964 appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," preceding The Beatles' third appearance. (You can see both of these on my blog entry from 2021.)
%2016x12x72.jpg)
