Interpretations: St. James Infirmary & Simple Twist Of Fate

Back in September I promised a series of contemporary interpretations of St. James Infirmary. We started with a young Rufus Wainwright. This is the second in that series and you will find two variations this time (plus a delightful interpretation of "Simple Twist of Fate").

First, David Mattson.

David Mattson on guitar

Now living in Largo, Florida, David has lived in all but one of the U.S. states, and a few other countries. He currently uses a Joe Beck alto guitar, made for him by a friend. His interpretation of SJI is a charming reimagining, with the refrain "her left hand brushing back her hair" transforming into a tender conclusion. He would use his rewritten SJI when doing soundchecks, or as an opener for gigs, allowing lots of room for improvisation.

This is a beautiful example of how SJI can be adapted by creative artists; always recognizable, always different.

Raygun Carver

Our second example.

Raygun Carver - a band name for Michael Soiseth - released his first album, "Moon Fields Yawning," in 2020. Raised around Port Angeles, he has an idiosyncratic sound, with refreshing interpretations and beautifully crafted originals. Of the latter, his "Everywhere You Go Is Where You'll Be," suggests that regardless of where we live, regardless of where we move, we remain who we are - changing the place does not change the person. Ahhhh, but maybe, changing the person can change the place?

His take on SJI is invigorating.

And, of course, not only traditional songs are open to interpretation. Raygun Carver's phrasing and timing on Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate" opens us up for a new listen. (For instance, cue in to Carver's song at about 1:10 - "like a freight train ...")

I am always grateful for fresh air.

About a 1930 lawsuit - you cannot copyright a song title

Inside cover of Denton & Haskins 1930 "St. James Infirmary."
Item should enlarge if clicked on.

In this blog entry - and in more detail in I Went Down to St. James Infirmary - I write about a 1930 New York court case where Irving Mills' music company sued the music publisher Denton & Haskins.

Denton and Haskins (D&H) were selling a song, "St. James Infirmary," that Mills Music had been heavily promoting over the previous year. (These were the early days of song recording when sheet music outsold records.) While the song published by D&H had the SJI title, the lyrics were much different. D&H hired Claude Austin to write new music and William J. McKenna to write a new lyric. (D&H also included current lyrics inside the front cover; see first image.) D&H were really pushing this issue. The cover title was St. James Infirmary or The Gambler's Blues also known as St. Joe's Infirmary. These were different titles for more or less the same song. So, they were confident in their assertion that they could market a song with a title that was already in use.

Cover Denton&Haskins SJI

Mills Music argued that Denton & Haskins was taking unfair advantage of their advertising and promotion, and thereby profiting from Mills' investment in the song. 

When I looked into this, the chief librarian at the New York Supreme Court kindly sent about 600 pages of testimony and legal argument. On trial and appeal Mills won the case, but when it was referred to the Appeals Court, he lost, and had to pay costs.

I had interpreted the judgements as supportive of Mills' claim, and only when I received an e-mail from a New York lawyer, Bruce R. Kraus, correcting my interpretation, did I realize that I had read the"dissenting opinion" as the court ruling.

Cover Mills Music SJI

Irving Mills did not appear in court, but submitted a signed affidavit. Among other admissions, he agreed that the song did not originate with him, or with Mills Music, or with "Joe Primrose." But since this was not a federal court, those admissions meant little as far as copyright and song ownership. As Kraus pointed out, this lawsuit served warning that Irving Mills and Mills Music were not to be fooled with; to challenge them could become an expensive proposition - Mills Music had deep pockets and were unafraid of confrontation.

Of course, this New York case was not about copyright, which is a federal and not a state matter. But, then again ... in the arguments for Mills Music, Irving was saying that I own this title, I have expended considerable effort, energy, and money in publicizing the song. It is unfair that another company gets to profit from my efforts.

Maybe it was due to this warning - the warning that Mills Music would aggressively challenge legal submissions - that the copyright for St. James Infirmary was never challenged in federal court, and Mills continued to profit from the song for many years.

As Bruce Kraus succinctly explained, "you cannot copyright a title." Copyright law considers titles or phrases to be too short; they contain insufficient creative effort to warrant copyright.

For instance, the Beatles famously recorded "The End" on Abbey Road in 1969. Two years earlier The Doors had recorded a song called "The End" on their 1967 eponymous debut album. So did Pearl Jam (2009), Kings of Leon (2010), and quite a few others.

How many songs have been titled "I Love You"?

From Bob Dylan's 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year speech:
“I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs. And I played them, and I met other people that played them back when nobody was doing it. Sang nothing but these folk songs, and they gave me the code for everything that’s fair game, that everything belongs to everyone.” (italics extra)

"Everything belongs to everyone," Dylan said. Utopian. Undeniably true. And that's St. James Infirmary.

Rufus Wainwright does SJI ... or The Unfortunate Rake?

There are so many interpretations of SJI. So many.

I am planning to post a few recent variations, starting with Rufus Wainwright. This song was recorded in 1998, part of his first album but excluded from it and re-introduced on a 25th anniversary CD.

Rufus creates a link between The Unfortunate Rake and SJI. He mixes them together as a kind of gumbo, combining lyrical touches from SJI and Streets of Laredo. Mostly, though, it's The Unfortunate Rake that he references.

The song starts:
"Early one morning at the St. James Infirmary
Early one morning in the month of May
I spied a young cowboy all wrapped in white linen
Wrapped in white linen, and as cold as the clay"

And later:
"Call for the doctor, come and heal my body
Call for the preacher to heal up my soul
For my poor head is aching and my sad heart is breaking
I'm a poor, rundown cowboy and hell is my doom"

Aside from the name of the institution (St. James Infirmary rather than St. James Hospital), this is pretty well The Unfortunate Rake - and nothing in this version, or any other version of The Unfortunate Rake, makes me think of SJI - either lyrically or melodically.

He delivers a good song.

This is not surprising: he is always brightly original, sparkling, in both his own compositions and his interpretations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmx20WwNOtA

Tony Bennett's first recording: St. James Infirmary

Tony Bennett in the U.S. Army, 1945.
(TonyBennett.com)

Tony Bennett, who died today at 96, made his first recording seventy-seven years ago:

After a distinguished career in the army (and a short-lived demotion for eating in a restaurant with a black friend, after which he was put on gravedigging detail), Tony Bennett recorded his first song. This was "St. James Infirmary," made in 1946. The song was on a V-disc, for American troops, and never released in the U.S. George Tannenbaum explains what V-discs are:

"V-discs were recordings done for American soldiers during World War II. Because there was a musicians strike in the U.S. at the time, V-discs were recorded but they never went on sale in the States. They were only for our overseas troops. Most of the records never came home and the masters of the recordings weren't treated with any special reverence. So for years it was rare to get a hold of a V-Disc recording--especially a rare one."

You can read about his army career here.

Bennett became Grandmaster of the Great American Songbook, a superb stylist whose recording history extended from 1952 ("Because of You") to 2021 ("Love for Sale," with Lady Gaga).

We miss you, Tony!

You can listen to the 1946 SJI here:

And here's a more contemporary version, from 1994:

Dylan, Rawls, McTell, SJI ...

Some of the people involved in the complex
and intriguing story of "St. James Infirmary."

MOMENTS BEFORE LAUNCHING INTO A PERFORMANCE of “St. James Infirmary” in 1941, jazz great Jack Teagarden referred to it as “the oldest blues I ever heard.” The first time I heard the song, sixty years later, it sounded utterly contemporary.

      I was alone in my apartment and listening to a new CD, The Finest in Jazz Vocalists. Lou Rawls was singing “St. James Infirmary.” I had been a Rawls fan as a teenager, and paid close attention. Rawls began with a mournful preamble, one that — I found out later — was written by Irving Mills in 1930 and is an infrequent addition to the song:

      When will I ever stop moaning?

      When will I ever smile?

      My baby went away and she left me

      She’ll be gone for a long, long while.

      I feel so blue, I feel heartbroken

      What am I living for?

      My baby she went away and she left me

      No no no never to come back no more.

      The band picked up the tempo and launched into the body of that version of the song (there are many versions):

      I went down to St. James Infirmary

      I heard my baby groan

      I felt so broken-hearted

      She used to be my own.

      Hearing that melody, I shot out of my chair and shouted into the empty room, “That’s ‘Blind Willie McTell’!” It brought to mind, with a jolt, the Bob Dylan song of that name. It’s not that the Rawls' melody was identical to  Dylan's, but there were similarities. For instance, both songs use the same basic chords. Thousands of songs are based on those chords, however, so it was probably in the pulse or the phrasing that the ­similarities revealed themselves. I have played these two songs to friends, who often hear no resemblance. For me, it was a revelation.

      Dylan recorded “Blind Willie McTell” in the spring of 1983 for his Infidels album, released in November of that year. “Blind Willie McTell” did not appear on the record, and neither did several others from those New York sessions ("Foot of Pride," "Someone's Got a Hold of my Heart"). “McTell” emerged on no official Dylan recording (bootlegs were another matter) until 1991, when Columbia released a three-CD set of alternate versions and previously unreleased material called The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1–3. This is where I first heard Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell.”

      “Blind Willie McTell” is a magnificent piece of songcraft in which both the poetry and the music carry us into broad terrain. Dylan accomplishes this not through conventional narrative, but through a series of vignettes, a cascade of images that, coupled with a compelling melody, conveys a landscape of conflict and despair. The chorus summons the musician of the title: “Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell.” Asked why he had omitted the song from his album, Dylan said he didn’t think he had recorded it right. The first time he performed the song in concert was August 5, 1997, at Montreal’s Du Maurier Stadium, fourteen years after recording it in the studio.

      Standing there, listening to Lou Rawls, I remembered Dylan’s words near the end of “Blind Willie McTell” — “I’m gazing out the window of the St. James Hotel.” Here, in a song melodically reminiscent of “St. James Infirmary,” Dylan seemed to be paying homage. I made up my mind to find out more about “St. James Infirmary.” Little did I know that this was the beginning of a very long journey, eventually leading to I Went Down to St. James Infirmary.

RIP Gordon Lightfoot

As a music lover (and fellow Canadian), I need to mark Gordon Lightfoot's passing.
He died yesterday, May 1, at the age of 84.

                                                        "Ring Them Bells"

Most remembrances will mention "In the Early Morning Rain," "If You Could Read My Mind," "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," and so on. He wrote hundreds of songs with nary a bad one among them. I prefer to include a couple of more obscure songs. His cover of Dylan's "Ring Them Bells," and "Black Day in July," a song that was banned in the U.S. due to sensitivity over the 1967 Detroit race riots (from which the city has not recovered).

                                                      "Black Day in July"

It is difficult to overestimate Lightfoot's importance to North American folk/popular music.

You're a singular talent, Gordon! Keep on singing!!!

                                                      

Gallimaufry and SJI

Gallimaufry. I'd never heard this word until I encountered the website, The Attic of Gallimaufry. The word has a French origin and derives from a kind of 16th century stew. Hash. Hotchpotch. Jumble. Jambalaya. Grab bag. Conglomeration. Pastiche ...
As the site says, the entries are: "Things found by the way, Beyond the temporal horizon, Halcyon shades of kindled times."

Such as? Well, you'll just have to pay it a visit. You will find something that grabs you. I am reading about When WWII paratroopers shouted "Geronimo!"  and When Jazz Was Cool.

Among this fascinating menagerie I was pleased to find my book, I Went Down to St. James Infirmary.

The head page for The Attic of Gallimaufry article

 

All images in this entry are from The Attic of Gallimaufry. This article is heavily illustrated; you will find Janis Joplin, Carl Sandburg, Josh White, King Oliver, Jack Teagarden, Allen Toussaint, Coleman Hawkins, Washboard Leo, Django Reinhardt, Eric Clapton, and many others.

Rob Walker, founder of the
first blog dedicated to SJI

The entry also features a 45-minute The Sounds in My Head program guest-hosted by Rob Walker, creator of the first-ever blog dedicated to St. James Infirmary. Here Walker presents variations of the song with a relaxed, informed commentary. This one's a lot of fun so put some time aside and give it a listen.

This is good stuff! Thank you, Attic of Gallimaufry, for your attention.

Great web page! Give it a try.