This, to the left, is the generic cover of the 1929 sheet music for "St. James Infirmary." The cover was designed so that a performer's image could be inserted without breaking the flow, as in the next picture. In those days images had to be set physically - that is, with an editor's hands placing the components in place. And so it was important for the Mills organization - and everybody else - to create flexible background images.
This is the first music score ever released for "St. James Infirmary." In the same year Mills Music (aka Gotham Music Service) also released an orchestral arrangement for SJI (which you can find elsewhere on this blog - search "sheet music"). The Mills music machine was fully engaged. The song had been subsumed.
Ahhh. But while it's the first music score for "St. James Infirmary," the sheet music for "Gambler's Blues," an earlier title for the song, had been printed four years earlier. The composer credits were to, not Joe Primrose, but Phil Baxter and Carl Moore. I wrote a bit about it here: The Golden Grail - you'll find more in the book.
"St. James Infirmary" aka "Gambler's Blues" had been around for many years before being taken into a recording studio. There were a ton of variations. There were many verses. The song, chameleon-like, changed its colour for the environment it stumbled into. The sheet music below, the first of its kind, gives us a taste of the song. But the song was more than this. It assumed many shapes; there were many versions.
While researching the book I Went Down to St. James Infirmary, I collected quite a few sheet music scores for popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s. All contained the piano score, and most included the chords for ukulele accompaniment. None of this sheet music refers to guitar accompaniment.
The ukulele is a relatively recent creation, Hawaiian in origin, it probably developed in the late nineteenth century - although with precedents in the Portuguese machete, which is probably related to the European lute (dating back about 800 years), which is probably related to the Arabic oud (dating back thousands of years) ... and so on.
It's doubtlessly a truism, but it bears reiterating: everything - including musical instruments and musical composition - is related to something that came before.
Following concerts in the U.S. by some Hawaiian bands, the ukulele became intensely popular in the early years of the jazz era. So, whether the sheet music was for Phil Baxter's "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas," or Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher," or "St. James Infirmary," it was likely to have the ukulele chords included.
Now, what does SJI sound like as played on ukulele?
I recently exchanged some brief emails with Toronto ukulele player, Jennifer Schmitt. She had just posted a recording of the song on YouTube, and was curious about how to credit the composer ... "it was a favourite of my father's. He died ten years ago today, and I used some of my Lake Opinicon time to record this in his memory."
I like Schmitt's treatment of the song. Direct, expressive, and sweetly melodic.
Bob Dylan was a central figure in the writing of my book I Went Down to St. James Infirmary; it was his "Blind Willie McTell" that set the ball rolling ("I'm gazing out the window of the St. James Hotel ..."). Here are three of my favourite Dylan songs. What would you include?
1. When the Deal Goes Down. 2006. In this song I imagine the singer at the bedside of a dying spouse, lover, holding her/his hand, and maybe whispering closely. ("I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true, I'll be with you when the deal goes down.")
2. Red River Shore. 1997. In which the girl on the Red River Shore represents a youthful ideal - say, a struggle towards understanding, or a religious striving, a Gurdjieffien goal, perhaps. But this is now lost to the aged singer. ("The dream dried up a long time ago; don't know where it is anymore ...")
3. Stormy Weather. 2017 - well, it was written in 1933 by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. When Dylan sings, "I'm weary all the time," you can feel it in your bones.
The New Orleans country band Loose Cattle has just released a video of their version of "St. James Infirmary." If you follow this link you can read about this interpretation, and watch the video. The song starts off slowly, and quickly builds, develops a country twang. You will like what you hear.
Michael Enright is one of the most celebrated hosts on Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) radio. His The Sunday Edition- with its mixture of revelatory cultural and political content - has a large and dedicated audience.
Last year a friend in the tiny village of Val Marie, Saskatchewan - the writer and performer Madonna Hamel (you can read her latest musings here) - traveled east to take care of business. On the way she stopped off at her old haunt, the CBC studios in Toronto. She gave Michael Enright a copy of I Went Down to St. James Infirmary. A few months after that I received a message from Chris Wodskou, a CBC producer affiliated with Enright's show. And not much later I was in the CBC Victoria studios, chatting with Michael about "St. James Infirmary."
The interview, complete with snippets of sundry versions of SJI, is fun. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Thanks Michael. Thanks Chris. Thanks Madonna. Thanks to all of you!!
I have been searching Library of Congress copyright records for an article I am writing about the original Carter Family. I took some detours into "St. James Infirmary" territory; here are actual song copyright entries for some of these songs.
The first version of SJI to enter the copyright books was "Gambler's Blues," in 1925. While credited to Carl Moore and Phil Baxter, this (under the title "Those Gambler's Blues") was collected as a traditional song by the poet Carl Sandburg, in his 1927 book The American Songbag. Hmmmm.
This copyright, to the fictional Joe Primrose, was registered in March, 1929.
The recording, by Louis Armstrong & His Savoy Ballroom Five, was recorded in December, 1928 - three months earlier than the copyright. Something was afoot.
27, 1927; E 672418; Porter Grainger, New York. 13674
"Dyin' Crap Shooter's Blues" was recorded three times in 1927, and then abruptly forgotten ... until resurrected by Blind Willie McTell in the 1940s. McTell was very convincing when describing how he wrote this song - but, obviously, he didn't. Bob Dylan's lyric for his song, "Blind Willie McTell" - "I'm standing in the doorway of the St. James Hotel" - was partly responsible for the writing of this book, I Went Down to St. James Infirmary.
It might get better than this, but one wonders how.
Friend Michael Ward-Bergeman composed this brilliant interpretation of St. James Infirmary and is also the accordionist in the video. From the Vancouver TED talks in February 2016, the Silk Road Ensemble cooks at a high heat and the vocalist, Rhiannon Giddens, grabs the song impeccably. Together they run through fields and marshes, howl through trees, bend with the wind, fly across oceans and deliver an interpretation of St. James Infirmary that is fit for the world wherever we are.
A reader let me know that, in posting the 1929 orchestral score for St. James Infirmary, I had neglected to include the part for second trumpet.
This score, probably the first published orchestration, included parts for piano, alto sax, bass, trumpet, drums, violin. trombone, banjo. You can find the other sheets scattered through this blog (search "sheet music").
Selling for 50 cents, the score was arranged by famed banjoist Fred Van Eps, and published by Gotham Music Service, an arm of Mills Music, Inc. Mills Music was co-owned by Jack and Irving Mills. Irving Mills was Joe Primrose, who didn't write the song.
But, hey, the dj - a dentist by the name of Michael J. Mand - talks over Toussaint's piano at the beginning of the broadcasts, in fact chats with his audience (in an informal, meandering - appealing - way) before moving into the subsequent playlist, which really is a fascinating cornucopia of popular music past and present. Check out the site, listen for a while; I am sure you will discover something you like.
And it is a very fine program. Michael carefully crafts each weekly show around a theme, and is not afraid to air three successive versions of the same song if it fits the momentum. He can easily move from the 1920s to contemporary recordings, although his favourite timeline seems to be the late '50s to the present day. If you are among those who miss Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, tuning in here might be the salve you have been looking for.
This month Michael interviewed me about the theme song for his program, St. James Infirmary. If you look for the December 2, 2016 show here you can catch the action, and get a taste of an internet radio show/podcast worth following. (The interview itself starts at about 32 minutes in.)
Some of the characters who appear in I Went Down to St. James Infirmary.
(Painting and collage by the author,
with apologies to Albert Gleizes.)
We're excited about this book. But many people who read this blog might not know how I Went Down to St. James Infirmary approaches its subject. It occurred to me that a good way to address this would be to post the Introduction to this new, revised edition.
Image of Ye Olde Rose & Crown Theatre Pub copied from Google Maps
Ye Olde Rose & Crown, one of London's finest olde pubs, stands at 53 Hoe Street. The Walthamstow Folk Club operates out of the pub's back room/theatre on Sunday evenings. On one of those evenings the London roots musician Simon Prager (who finds inspiration in the music of the Rev. Gary Davis) took the stage. A song from that night was - you guessed it - a stirring rendition of "St. James Infirmary."
(You might have to double-click on the image to view in its intended perspective.)
Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land is Your Land,"
has been making the news lately. A class action lawsuit is hoping to bring the
song into the public domain.
Guthrie published the song in 1945 (although he wrote it five years earlier). At that time copyright extended for 28 years beyond the date of publication,
after which it could be re-registered for a further 28 years. Guthrie did
not renew the copyright, and so it should have entered the public domain in
1973. A publishing company, though, registered the song as a new creation in 1956 (eleven years after Guthrie published the song) and renewed it in 1984 -
by which time the length of copyright had been extended considerably. Clearly (as with
Irving Mills and "St. James Infirmary"), they had no right to ownership of the
song.
Guthrie based his melody on earlier songs.
An old turn of the 20th century Baptist hymn called
"Oh My Loving Brother":
Which The Carter Family used for their song "Little
Darling Pal of Mine," recorded in 1928:
And again for "When the World's on Fire," recorded in 1930:
In this context it is interesting that - as I
discuss in "I Went Down to St. James Infirmary" - song publisher
Ralph Peer asked the Carters to modify the traditional songs they heard in
their native Appalachia in such a way as to allow the songs to move from the
public domain into copyrightable material. Peer then assumed the copyright for his publishing
company, and kept the Carters loyal to him by assigning them a portion of the royalties (which was a
better deal than most publishers were offering at the time). Some writers,
such as Barry Mazor in his important (if hagiographic) 2015 biography
"Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music," (Chicago Review
Press - with a co-copyright credit to Peer's publishing company Southern Music) assert that this is just good business. The reasoning goes that it is the business of song
publishing, and the profits that flow from it, that allow these songs to
survive and enter public consciousness. In this way capitalism is good for our
commonality and for cultural well-being. More idealistic assertions
suggest that song ownership should always reside with the writer, that simply
because you have more money does not give you the right to profit excessively from somebody
else's work; publishing revenue should be enough. Simply because there is a common practice does not make it a right practice.
The final edition of I Went Down to St. James Infirmary was printed in November, 2015, six months ago. A month later Pam and I moved from our acre of land in the village of Val Marie, Saskatchewan, to a three-storey walk-up in the metropolis of Victoria on Vancouver Island.
Once before - at the New Year of 2013 - I ventured away from the principal theme of this blog to post a song by Look out Mama, the trio I belonged to in Val Marie. We held a very occasional gig at the Val Marie Hotel, attended by tens of people (actually, not a bad audience in a village of a hundred souls).
So, in celebration of the second and final edition of I Went Down to St. James Infirmary, and of (approximately) the eighth anniversary of this blog, I am posting another Look Out Mama performance. James Page on lead guitar, Colleen Watson on rhythm guitar, myself on percussion and lead vocal.
As with the song "Look Out Mama" (not to be confused with the name of our trio, Look Out Mama), I wrote this ditty. The lyric is based upon the initial meetings between the philosophers G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky in 1914 Moscow. In earlier years Ouspensky (Dan) had experimented with drugs like ether (in the lyric, Esther) and hashish (Mary Jane) - but soon abandoned them. Lots of poetic license here, and apologies to the real world for that.
This was our first performance of the song (it became more nuanced in later versions). Many thanks to Pam Woodland for the video, recorded live at the Val Marie Hotel in 2013. (Double-click on the video the get the full image.)
Dan & Van
Dan had been traveling with Esther and Mary Jane
But one day they left him standing out in the rain
Bells were sounding across the river
Through the mists he could see
That all of this time they'd been moving through the same country
Where do you want to go, where are you going to stay
You know it's all the same
Place you are in, place with a different name
Van once trained tigers in Turkestan
Herded horses in Montana and Saskatchewan
He'd worked on the trains, drove camels across the plains
Picked grapes from the vines
Dug for coal and gold down in the mines
Where do you want to go, where are you going to stay
You know it's all the same
Place you are in, place with a different name
Dan met Van in an ice palace in Rome
Dan said to Van I've been searching for my home
Van told Dan, better sit down here
You've no place left to go
Keep your eyes open for the next hundred years or so
Try to your eyes open for the next hundred years or so
Try to keep your eyes open, you've nowhere left to go
This is the first music score ever released for "St. James Infirmary." In the same year Mills Music (aka Gotham Music Service) also released an orchestral arrangement for SJI (which you can find elsewhere on this blog - search "sheet music"). The Mills music machine was fully engaged. The song had been subsumed.
