Cab Calloway - Two versions of SJI 1947 & 1964

This is about Cab Calloway. Sort of.

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.)

Cab Calloway, 1947

Cab Calloway, 1964

Believe it or not - The 4th edition of IWDtSJI (In both paper and e-book)

Iterations of the IWDtSJI cover through the years

Introducing the 4th edition of I Went Down to St. James Infirmary, over twenty years after we began.

I swore that the 3rd edition would be the last. What more could be uncovered???

But here we are. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. It's a great journey.

Reginald Foresythe - a 1932 Fantasia on St. James Infirmary

"The New Music of Reginald Foresythe"
This was the name of his band.
It was also his notion that he could
influence the musical atmosphere of jazz.

Reginald Foresythe isn't a name you hear much these days. He was born in 1907, and made a splash in both the U.S. and (his birthplace) Britain in the 1920s and 30s.

He was a talented pianist and accordionist. He's probably best known as leader of a band (piano, clarinet, saxes, bassoon - no trumpets!) called "The New Music of Reginald Foresythe." He certainly saw himself as an innovator. Jazzy, but not jazz. Well, jazzy with an odd, impressionistic, edge.

Popular songs of his carried titles such as "Serenade For A Wealthy Widow," "Berceuse For An Unwanted Child," "Dodging A Divorcee," "Dinner Music For A Bunch Of Hungry Cannibals," "Revolt Of The Yes-Men."

Among these was a piece titled "Deep Forest - A Hymn To Darkness #1." (Which was followed by "Lament For The Congo - A Hymn To Darkness #2.")

For this post, we are more interested in "Deep Forest - A Hymn To Darkness #1."

This was recorded only a couple of years after Louis Armstrong released his iconic version of "St. James Infirmary." The third recording of the song, Armstrong's became the template for future arrangements. And now, a couple of years after that 1929 release, we find a song using the SJI melody as a dominant feature of the piece.

Oh. That Louis Armstrong release, with Armstrong's Savoy Ballroom Five, featured Earl Hines on piano. Hines later recorded "Deep Forest," with its SJI melody, two years later. So did Paul Whiteman and his orchestra, in 1934.

Paul Whiteman was a big deal. He was the most successful popular artist of the 1920s. In that decade alone, 63 of his songs were top 40 hits. 13 of those reached #1. He is one of the biggest selling musicians in all of recorded popular music. He kept "Deep Forest" as an instrumental, disposing of Foresythe's lyrics:

At the call of day
I must lay my dreams away
Once again with my heavy load
I'm ploddin' on the road

Oh night where can you be
Please set the darkness free
Toilin' all the day in life's deep forest
You mean dreams and rest for weary me

SJI was recorded at least two dozen times between 1928 and 1930. But its melody was already being incorporated into new songs. Love and theft.

Reginald Foresythe - Deep Forest - A Hymn To Darkness #1

Paul Whiteman - Deep Forest