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.
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.
