Billie Holiday liked St. James Infirmary so much that ...

When I was browsing a favourite website this morning, Expecting Rain, I read some contributions by Scott Miller exploring Billie Holiday’s influence on Bob Dylan, which reminded me of a connection between Holiday and St. James Infirmary.

Billie Holiday was born 111 years ago this month. She really liked St. James Infirmary and wanted something similar but ‘original’ that she could take into the recording studio. The result was a song called Tell Me More based on SJI but with writing credit to Holiday herself. Holiday recorded the song in 1940.

In his book Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, Donald Clarke quotes songwriter Arthur Herzog. Herzog is recalling the encounter between Billie Holiday, himself, and his songwriting partner Danny Mendelsohn which led to the writing of the ‘new’ song (all of the following is from Donald Clarke’s book):

“Tell Me More” is credited to Lady herself. And on the subject of this song Herzog was grumpily funny in 1971. One evening, Danny Mendelsohn was at his house. “The house was two blocks below 14th and 8th Avenue. And we were four or five blocks away from Café Society. She used to come over sometimes Monday nights, which were her nights off.

I forget where she was living at the time. It made no difference to her because she lived all over the place. She popped up once living a floor under my younger son. He had an apartment on the west 80’s and discovered one day he was living above Billie.

She came rushing in to Danny. She was a great artist. Creative? No. She said to Danny, “Danny, I’ve got a great tune. Take it down for me.”

And she sings da-daing St. James Infirmary. So Danny says, “Yes Billie it’s a great tune but it’s St. James Infirmary.”

“Oh Danny bend it a little for me. Bend it.”

So Danny took out his pencil. Put it in blues time 4:4. Attached a bridge to it and said, “Alright Arthur, give me some words.”

So I popped the first thing that came into my mind “Tell Me More And More And Then Some.” Inane kind of thing. So we scratched this underneath and forgot about it completely.

Six months went by and there’s a record out. “Tell Me More” words and music by Billie Holiday, sung by Billie Holiday, accompanied by the Billie Holiday Orchestra, of which there was no such thing of course. There it was.

“Danny what are we gonna do about this?” This idiot friend has done this to us, and the song isn’t worth a goddamn. I mean St. James Infirmary.”

After she dies Herbie Marks [probably Herzog’s employer/publisher of the Edward B. Marks Music Company] called me up and said, “I seem to remember that you had something to do with this song?” And I’d like to do something with it.

And I said, “Herbie, I can’t prove anything but this song was written by yours truly and the late Danny Mendelsohn.” That’s how it happened. It never made any money.

Herzog is being unfair to their own “hack work.” To say nothing of using the word creative in a very limited sense. Lady had commissioned the song and even told them how to write it. Of course they should’ve got some credit. The song has a strong blues feeling and its lingering resemblance to St. James Infirmary doesn’t hurt a bit — so that it sounds as if you’ve heard it before, but you can’t remember where.

The way the words fall is pleasing and with the arrangements stop time movements and solo from Teddy (Wilson on piano), it’s an unusual love song and a nice record.

Song and Dance: The popularity of the foxtrot and the ongoing evolution of "St. James Infirmary"

 

The versions of “St. James Infirmary” that appeared in Carl Sandburg’s collection of traditional American songs (The American Songbag – ©1927) were written in 6/8 time. They were ballads, or dirges. One of the significant differences between these songs and the recordings that both included and followed the 1928 Louis Armstrong recording was a change in rhythm – to 4/4 time. With this change the song became danceable. One could dance the foxtrot to it.

The foxtrot originated around 1914 in vaudeville, by dancer Harry Fox. As part of his act Fox was executing trotting steps to ragtime music. Referred to as “Fox’s trot” the dance was set to a broken rhythm (slow-slow-quick-quick). Bit by bit the dance moves changed, and with remarkable speed the foxtrot came to dominate the dancehalls and the music scene—becoming the dance phenomenon of the 1920s. And the 1930s. And the 1940s. One could whirl around the dance floor, or one could execute the steps in the crush of a crowded venue, dancing (oh, dear!) close together and more or less in place. (From the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati: “… there are certain houses appropriate for such dances; but those houses have been closed by law.”)

People danced for the sheer fun of it. They danced for exercise. To aid digestion. To meet people. Dancehalls were ubiquitous. It would not be a great exaggeration to say that dancehalls littered the landscape like coffee houses in the 21st century. The exhibition ballroom dancers Irene and Vernon Castle were among the major celebrities of the day. By daringly including the scandalizing foxtrot in their routines, they sped its popularity. Even tragic songs like “St. James Infirmary” clothed themselves in upbeat danceable rhythms.

Janis Joplin sings St. James Infirmary in 1962

 

December 1962, a folk trio performed in Threadgill’s Tavern, in Austin Texas. An Amex portable reel-to-reel tape recorder caught part of their performance, which included “St. James Infirmary.” The trio, The Waller Creek Boys Plus One, consisted of Lanny Wiggins on guitar, Powell St. John playing harmonica, and Janis Joplin on guitar, autoharp, and vocals.

The three were students at the University of Texas. Joplin was nineteen years old, and five years away from the release of her first album.

A dozen years ago I found a physical copy of this song. It was on a flexi-disc, available from Tokyo. Recently I had it copied as a WAV file, and now as a much smaller MP3.

Here it is, below, along with the clinking of glasses and an abbreviated "Walk Right In." The latter was first recorded by Cannon’s Jug Stompers in 1929 and became a big hit for The Rooftop Singers in 1963.

Janis Joplin at UT in 1962
Photo Daily Texan

Since Blogger does not offer an option for audio postings, to access the MP3 please click here and scroll to the end of the article.

Mills was always a song plugger at heart. Also, listen to a test recording of "Everything is Hotsy Totsy Now" with Duke Ellington on piano, Irving Mills on vocals and kazoo.

Irving Mills and the New York skyline in the 1920s

Even as vice-president of Mills Music, president of Gotham Music Service, and music impresario extraordinaire, Irving Mills remained a song plugger at heart. He was a teenager when he first got into the music business and, together with his brother Jack, spent his early years pushing for the success of newly published songs. In 1919 Jack received a $500 bonus for his efforts in publicizing the song Dardanella (and creating, in the process, possibly the first sheet music million-copy seller). This became the seed money for Mills Music, Inc.

In the late 19th century pluggers were known as "boomers," for their ability to belt out a song that could be heard over long distances. They would often sing through megaphones, with racks of sheet music for sale in front of them. Or sit at pianos behind 40 foot counters at the back of a department store, where shoppers could ask to hear samples of the sheet music on sale. By Mills' day the boomer had become a plugger. A good one would become a sort of advertising whirlwind who, in the words of Isaac Goldberg, "by all the arts of persuasion, intrigue, bribery, mayhem, malfeasance, cajolery, entreaty, threat, insinuation, persistence and whatever else he has, sees to it that his employer's music shall be heard." A plugger might go to a concert and start singing loudly along with a song’s chorus, with the hope that the audience will pay attention, maybe sing along … and then go out to buy the record.

One of the tools at Mills' command was the recording studio and radio. In 1925 he became probably the first to advertise a song over the radio when he and his co-writer for the song, Jimmy McHugh, calling themselves "The Hotsy Totsy Boys," performed "Everything is Hotsy Totsy Now." Song plugging for the new electronic age.

In 1925 alone, “Everything is Hotsy Totsy Now” was covered by Gene Austin, The California Ramblers, Coon-Sanders Nighthawks, The Keystone Serenaders, Eddie Frazier and his Plantation Orchestra, and others. They made the song into a really big hit. Here is Mills’ client, Duke Ellington, on piano, and Irving Mills on vocals and kazoo.

Once he secured the copyright to "St. James Infirmary" Mills ensured that it received the widest possible airplay - the greater the number of recordings out there the more likely it would be played, the more popular it would become, and the more copies it would sell. (Mills looked at popular music as having a very short shelf life.) So, between his copyright in March of 1929 and the end of 1930, at least 19 versions of the song were recorded. These included two by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - managed by Mills. For these recordings they were known as the Ten Black Berries, and the Harlem Hot Chocolates. Irving Mills served as vocalist for that last one. Mills Merry Makers (created for recording purposes only), with musicians including Charlie and Jack Teagarden, Harry Goodman (brother of Benny), and Ruby Weinstein recorded a version. Mills could not have had any idea how eternally popular the song would become.

The Original Lyrics for "I Wish I Was in Dixie" (you might be surprised)

The lower half of page 29 of the Atlanta Constitution
newspaper, Sunday, July 14, 1895.

(Reprised from a 2018 entry)

I wish I was in Dixie; Hooray hooray!
In Dixie Land I'll take my stand
To live and die in Dixie
Away, away. away down south in Dixie

"Dixie" was a Confederate battlecry in the march against the Union. It had not been composed as a battle song, though.

Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904) premiered this song for a minstrel show a couple of years before the American Civil War broke out. As I documented in I Went Down to St. James Infirmary, while he was not the first blackface minstrel, Dan Emmett created the minstrel show (with his Virginia Minstrels) around 1841. At that time he wrote what is probably the United States' first homegrown popular hit, "Old Dan Tucker."

 Audiences usually assumed that minstrel songs were either original "negro songs," or written in the "negro style." Really, most were probably modified Irish ballads and jigs. The lyrics were printed in a sort of vernacular, to reflect speech patterns of the slaves. For instance, "I wish I was in the land of cotton / Old times there are not forgotten ..." was written as, "I wish I was in de lan ob cotton / Ole times dar am not forgotten ..."

Emmett's Virginia Minstrels toured Europe (to great reviews) but were short-lived, and by 1859 Daniel Emmett was working with Bryant's Minstrels as songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. For a rousing close to their show the Bryant's asked him for a stirring melody, "a regular whopper that would wake things up." Emmett quickly composed "Dixie" (aka "Dixie's Land," "I Wish I Was In Dixie," etc.).

Two years after its composition, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter and the Civil War was underway. The song, already popular, caught on like wildfire. Confederate soldiers, inspired by the thrilling strains of the chorus, rushed into battle "to live and die in Dixie."

Much of the lyric had changed in those two years. Racial references were erased, four-line stanzas became two-line stanzas, and the song's comic patter became racially indiscriminate.  It had migrated from a "comic" minstrel stage performance into a folk song.

Regarding this, the July 14, 1895 edition of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper explained that, "the words of the song have undergone many additions and modifications during the thirty-six years of its existence, but a pencil copy in the author's own hand gives the following as the original version, as sung in New York in 1859."

And so we read, in one of the original verses, "In Dixie lan' de darkies grow / 'Ef  white fo'kes only plants der toe / Dey wet the groun' wid 'backer smoke / An' up de darkie's head will poke / I wish I was in Dixie, etc."

Incredibly (a sad comment on the times they lived in) the article praised the lyrics as having considerable value: "Those who seek for literary excellence in the homely rhymes will be disappointed, but recognition of the author's design gives the key to their merit, and one sees in them unsurpassed reproduction of negro thought and versification."

"Unsurpassed reproduction of negro thought and versification." How could anyone, reading the lyrics, have even thought that, much less published it in a newspaper??

Although Emmett could be an absurdist (as illustrated by these lines from "Old Dan Tucker:" "Old Dan Tucker was a mighty man / Washed his face in a frying pan / Combed his hair with a wagon wheel / Died with a toothache in his heel"), his lyrics were often uncommonly denigrating (again, from "Old Dan Tucker": "Tucker on de wood pile - can't count 'lebben / Put in a fedder bed - him gwine to hebben / His nose so flat, his face so full / De top of his head like a bag ob wool").

Here, as reproduced by the Atlanta Constitution newspaper in 1895, are the first verses of Dixie's original lyrics. There are many more. The full lyric can be found in my book, I Went Down to St. James Infirmary.

I wish I was in de lan’ ob cotton;

Ole times dar am not forgotten —

In Dixie lan’ where I was bawn in,

Early orn ne frosty mawin.’

I wish I was in Dixie — Away! away!

In Dixie Lan’ I’ll take my stan’,

To lib an’ die in Dixie.

Away! away! away down souph in Dixie!

Away! away! away down souph in Dixie!

In Dixie lan’ de darkies grow,

Ef white fo’kes only plants der toe;

Dey wet de groun’ wid’ ’backer smoke,

An’ up de darkey’s head will poke.

I wish I was in Dixie, etc.

_____________________________________________
Here are two contemporary (and necessarily sanitized) versions of the two songs mentioned here. First, Bob Dylan, from his film Masked and Anonymous:

And Bruce Springsteen, from a 2006 tour:



In each case, double-click to receive the full-frame video.

Evolution Mama - Carl "Deacon" Moore's strangest recording

 

In an earlier entry I wrote about Carl Moore, a fascinating personality who became a central character in my book, I Went Down to St. James Infirmary. In 1938 he made his only four records. The sound files for three of those can be found here: 3 songs by Carl “Deacon” Moore and his orchestra.

I felt that his strangest record, “Evolution Mama,” deserved its own entry. The song was written by pianist and jazz orchestra leader Terry Shand (1904-1977) . . . according to the credit on Moore’s record label, anyway. It has rarely been recorded, most notably by the short-lived but influential Even Dozen Jug Band, whose members included Maria Muldaur, John Sebastian, Peter Siegel, and Steve Katz. That was in 1964. It was credited as a traditional tune.

Referring to the controversy over evolution vs creation ("Evolution Mama, don't you make a monkey out of me"), the song was probably a response to the “Scopes monkey trial” of 1925 (sixty-six years after Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published, fifty-four years after his Descent of Man). The trial took place in Tennessee, which had made the teaching of evolution illegal. Mississippi and Moore’s home state of Arkansas had similar legislation. Although the trial ruled that banning the teaching of evolution was unconstitutional, challenges continued into the late 1960s. A timeline of the trial can be found via this link.

During the trial, held in Dayton, Tennessee, the courtroom was packed (proceedings eventually moved outdoors due both to the heat and the fear that the courtroom floor would collapse), the streets became lively with souvenir stands; some events were akin to performance art - for example, a chimpanzee dressed in a three-piece suit, fedora, and spats, and a local man, short of stature and with a sloping brow, presented as a missing link. The main concern of the Creationists, of course, was the challenge to the long-established belief that man - and, indeed, every being - was created whole, through divine intervention.

In the song, Moore chants “I ain’t half man and I ain’t half beast / But I can do you more good than this here store-bought yeast / ‘Cause Evolution Mama, sweet smellin’ mama / Don’t you make a monkey out of me.”

Many of the references would be lost today; from the perspective of the 21st century, the song wouldn’t make much sense. Regardless of the time, though, it is a peculiar piece of work. One of my contacts, trumpeter Joseph Bennett, wrote this about a 1939 performance by Moore:
“When the Deacon was building to the climax of his show, and came to the final chorus of ‘Evolution Mama,’ his voice rose as he half-spoke, half-sang the words, “I’ve got a knife / and I’ve got a gun / I’m gonna cut you / if you stand still / and shoot you if you run / Evolution Mama / don’t you make a monkey out of me!” The audience roared approval, while the band rose in an FFF ending to close with a grand flourish. It was a boffo performance.”

Moore delivers those disturbing final lines with the relaxed good humour of an Arkansas hillbilly sitting on his front porch while recounting fond childhood memories. A strange song in more ways than one.

By clicking on the song title below, you can hear Carl “Deacon” Moore and his orchestra perform "Evolution Mama" - the song is courtesy of Moore’s wife, Marjorie Moore, and was transferred to cassette tape for me by the big band historian Joseph E. Bennett.

You can find the full lyric for "Evolution Mama" by clicking here.