Resurrection of the El Torreon mirrored ball!

Cover for 1925 sheet music.

Phil Baxter (music), along with Carl Moore (lyrics), were the first of many to claim authorship of the song "St. James Infirmary." They printed the sheet music (then named "Gambler's Blues") in 1925. This was three years before Louis Armstrong recorded it with writing credit to Don Redman (well, until the second pressing, when Joe Primrose emerged as the "author").

Phil Baxter and Carl Moore

Both Baxter and Moore are important characters in the tale of "St. James Infirmary," and both are detailed in the book  I Went Down to St. James Infirmary.

Phil and the Texas Tommies in 1926, a year before they
became the house orchestra at the El Torreon Ballroom.
Trombone. Trumpet. Drums. Piano. Clarinet. Banjo.

Phil Baxter, a Texan, and his band "The Texas Tommies" roamed the land dressed in Stetson hats and cowboy boots, performing hot jazz in the many dance halls that spotted the landscape. Forgotten today, they were a major draw. In the years 1927-1933 they served as the house band in Kansas City's hottest dancehall, the El Torreon Ballroom.

Phil and the Texas Tommies in Kansas City c 1927 
Photo taken at the El Torreon Ballroom.

Here is an excerpt from I Went Down to St. James Infirmary:

"The El Torreon was huge. It had room for two thousand dancers. It was decorated in an exotic Spanish motif. Clouds, projected onto the high vaulted ceiling, floated across glistening stars. The dance floor was illuminated by a massive mirror ball of a hundred thousand facets that hung from the ceiling. The El Torreon's opening night featured a double bill. The Texas Tommies, now an orchestra of sixteen musicians, had traded in their cowboy gear for tuxedos. At the opposite end of the dance hall stood the Coon-Sanders Nighthawks, back in Kansas City for a three-week stint. The Nighthawks were once the most popular band in the city but had relocated to Chicago three years earlier."


That mirrored ball struck me as extraordinary, prefiguring the decorations of the disco era. It must have been a fantastic sight in the 1920s, giving the dancehall an exotic, unforgettable atmosphere.

Almost a century later the mirrored ball has been resurrected. The El Torreon underwent many changes since Phil Baxter's day. From a 1920s fancy ballroom ("the tallest building in Kansas City") to a skating rink to a rock 'n roll arena renamed "The Cowtown Ballroom" in the 1970s - where Frank Zappa, Ravi Shankar, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Paul Butterfield, Van Morrison, The Byrds, BB King, King Crimson, Captain Beefheart, and many others performed.

And then the mirrored ball was taken down and put into storage.

In subsequent years (after 1974) the El Torreon served as a flea-market venue, a church, etc.

The mirrored ball has been resurrected, 45+ years later. You can see it in the Kansas City Museum.

These days, the El Torreon hosts weddings, business meetings, and special events.

Here is a link to an article about the resurrection of the mirrored ball.

Here is a link to its present incarnation.

And here is a preview to a movie about the Cowtown Ballroom of the 1970s - when the mirrored ball still spun above the stage.

  St. James Infirmary.

Borges, tattoos, conspiracy notions, and SJI

A quick post, here. Three items that I've had on the burner.

1. Jorge Luis Borges, singer of St. James Infirmary

Are you familiar with Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)? Argentinian, he is often considered one of the premier fiction writers of the age. While he received many international awards, many think it atrocious that he was not given the Nobel prize for literature.

Borges' short story collection, Labyrinths, had a big impact on me.

And, abstract writer par excellence, he was a big fan of St. James Infirmary. He enjoyed singing it.

2. A tattoo artist imprinted stop-motion impressions of the cartoon featuring Cab Calloway circa 1932. 76 inkings on 76 bodies.

3.  Conspiracy theorists put forward the notion that the the SJI cartoon predicted Covid-19.