Friday, May 27, 2016

In Celebration - Another Look Out Mama

I am looking back this evening. Reminiscing.

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

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Book Review from Malcolm Shaw

I Went Down to St. James Infirmary just received the following review from the magazine VJM, otherwise known as Vintage Jazz Mart. The reviewer, Malcolm Shaw, has long been intensely involved with jazz history; among many other accomplishments he was editor of Brian Rust's legendary compendium Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942). (Incidentally, I used those Rust volumes extensively during my research into the "St. James Infirmary" song - and so it was incredibly rewarding for me to read Shaw's review.)

I was touched by some of Malcolm's comments:  "Bob Harwood is a rara avis. That this Irish-Canadian finds within him the inspired doggedness to try and unravel this massive ball of tangled yarn not just once, but now for the third time in a decade and a half ... is an enigma in itself. He does it in amazing detail ... This work is unique, so if you don’t have it, get it."
Here is that review:

BOOK: I WENT DOWN TO ST. JAMES INFIRMARY (2nd edition)
By Robert W. Harwood
Harland Press, 1426 Newport Avenue, #306, Victoria, BC V8S 5E9, Canada
Softbound, 255pp., illustrated, US$29.50 incl. shipping

The creative process, that apparently aleatory, yet in hindsight demonstrably logical path by which works of art and entertainment evolve into new and different forms, is in itself as fascinating as the study of the works themselves.
Bob Harwood uses St. James Infirmary as a case study in musical genealogy. Works of art, he says, don’t come into being as unique flashes of inspiration. They are influenced by what went before, and this particular song blends elements from several antecedents. Forms of artistic expression, he says, (in this case tunes and lyrics) bump into each other across genres and cultural boundaries and lead to fresh, rather than new, creations. In opening the book, Bob quotes Jack Teagarden’s 1941 performance of the tune with the Armstrong All-Stars, where Tea calls it “the oldest blues song I know.” His reaction, to quote part of the book’s subtitle, is: “where did this dang song come from, anyway?” And thus begins the journey.
The book is about a musical enigma, but it could equally well be about any work of art in human history. Every creation is inspired by or bases itself on earlier works, says Harwood. The tune comes from … somewhere, but just where? It pops up in several differing forms, a series of tunes and airs in different eras and venues that bump into one another over time, culminating in one particular rendering’s emergence as an immense hit at the end of the 1920s. The song’s supposed antecedents go back before the turn of the century and in some cases, over the ocean; a cluster of concurrent hand-me-downs; selectively contorted and adapted to a greater or lesser extent by whomever was the performer, sometimes under similar and sometimes totally different titles. There are the supposed ancestors and congeners: The Unfortunate Rake; Dyin’ Crapshooter’s Blues; Gambler’s Blues; some with musical “branches” that reach out even to the western states where I now live, like Streets of Laredo. Which raises the question: did Billy the Kid know and hum some forebear of St. James Infirmary a hundred and twenty years ago, a few miles from where I sit? Go on, tell me I’m weird.
Although clearly “traditional” and part of the public domain, the version of the song we all know is then legally registered, claimed and defended as the creation of one Irving Mills, under the name of Joe Primrose. Even at the time of the claim, it was obvious that Mills’ claim to have written the tune was as valid as Ferd Morton’s to have created jazz. It was well known in the music world of the day that there were other, earlier versions even within that decade, several of them on record, some attributed to different authors or different sources; some with similar words, others with similar melodies; each version, it seems, spawning the next. Harwood meticulously follows each thread of supposed origin; supports some of them and debunks others.
A handful of names we all know pop up as principal players in the story: Don Redman, Blind Willie McTell, Fess Williams. There are many others, less familiar to jazz and blues enthusiasts, whose fingerprints are also all over the story. Incongruously, even Bob Dylan enters the story late in Act V. It’s a fascinating tale.
Bob Harwood is a rara avis. That this Irish-Canadian finds within him the inspired doggedness to try and unravel this massive ball of tangled yarn not just once, but now for the third time in a decade and a half (the first was Harwood’s A Rake’s Progress, in 2002; then this book’s first edition, six years later) is an enigma in itself. He does it in amazing detail, following each trail to a conclusion or… in some cases, to none. I won’t tread on Mark’s very fine review of the 1st Edition in 2008’s Winter issue, because the substance of the work is the same; but rather point out what the changes and differences are between editions. First, this one is longer, because it has new stuff about some of the actors in the drama. And there is an index, where previously there wasn’t. There is closer documentation of the origins of the different lyrical strains in the song, especially the “Let her go, let her go…” verse. The text of each chapter has been entirely rewritten, end-to-end, for clarity (did I say Harwood was dogged?) And in particular, the relationship of the song to The Unfortunate Rake, stated by some to be the indisputable root source of the ditty, is reevaluated and found to be no more solid in that category than anyone else’s theory of the song’s origin.
There is also a discussion in depth about Mills’ assertion and defence of his claim to copyright on the work, or whether the material he claimed to be his was even copyrightable, since it came from the public domain. Then there’s the question of copyright in general and its societal value. As one who has seen my own work and that of colleagues similarly snaffled and locked up for an eon or two, I also have a dog in that particular fight. As clearly occlusive and reprehensible as it may seem, the “grab it and go” practice became common with musical compositions, as Tin Pan Alley grew and the music business became immensely lucrative. Certainly, Consolidated Music Publishing, the owner/operator of Chicago’s OKeh brand, routinely paid black composer-performers including Louis Armstrong $25 per selection for both the recorded performance and the publishing rights to the song. Louis spent the fee in a week, but the royalties went on for decades, and they didn’t go to him. Harwood makes a cogent argument that, since all artistic creation builds on the precedent body of work, the copyright process stops the creative and innovative process cold. As it was for Mills then, or for whomsoever today, it’s not about ethics or truth; it’s a question of who gets to the copyright office first.
The book is one of a kind. Bob Harwood states that this is the end of the story, as far as he has it in him to tell it. This work is unique, so if you don’t have it, get it.
     Malcolm Shaw, Vintage Jazz Mart Review, Summer 2016

Friday, April 29, 2016

SJI as inspiration for a major 21st century play


"Exhilirating ...  ingenious, impossible to resist!" (San Francisco Chronicle)

"A high energy hallucination ... one of the best musical productions I've ever seen at American Conservatory Theater!" (SF Weekly)


These are just two of many enthusiastic reviews of the musical drama, The Unfortunates. A surrealistic tale of gambling, war, inner (and outer) conflict, disease (inner and outer), the play emerges as a startling metaphor for the strangeness of 21st century life, and the historical flow of events that led us here.

The play's title is derived from the old British song, "The Unfortunate Rake," which - according to popular myth - traveled the ocean and eventually transformed into "St. James Infirmary." I am convinced that the connection between the two songs is more tenuous than has been generally assumed, and that SJI was more firmly rooted in American bedrock. But songs do travel strange paths. They influence each other. They immigrate and emigrate and evolve, the song of today standing squarely on the shoulders of its predecessors. And so SJI serves as a suitable metaphor. Big Joe ("In the corner stood Big Joe McKinney...") is the main character, although it is a strong ensemble production.

You can find a comprehensive overview here (as a pdf): "Insight into the play, the playwrights, and the production" of The Unfortunates.

Below, you can watch four of the five creators of The Unfortunates discuss their play, including its intimate connection to the historical movement of song, and the centrality of "St. James Infirmary" to the genesis and shape of the production.



(Double-click on these videos to see them in their proper dimensions.)

"Bold and bizarre ... diverse and electrifying!" (StarkInsider.com)
"Richly imagined, slightly surreal ... a high octane mashup of music and modern-day myth." (San Francisco Examiner)
"Red-hot! Gospel, hip-hop and blues light this funky steampunk fantasy ... electrifies from start to finish." (Bay Area News Group)

Here is a trailer for an early version of the play, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (like Bob Dylan, they change things as they go along):




"A wonderfully demented antiwar parable steeped in Louis Armstrong's classic 'St. James Infirmary,' this is a surreal 90-minute frolic from the cabaret to the gallows and back. ... The healing power of music is a blessing for us as well as The Unfortunates." (The Mercury News)


"St. James Infirmary" continues to inspire, over a century later.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

HAPPY HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY, MARJORIE MOORE!!!!!

On April 6th, 2016, Marjorie Moore is 100 years young! Through much of her life Margie was intimately involved with the big band scene during the jazz and the dance era, and then with the country music scene after World War II. The Moore name was attached, as co-author, to the first recording of "St. James Infirmary" (aka "Gambler's Blues") in 1928.

Marjorie and I have enjoyed several telephone conversations over the years. We have exchanged letters. She was most helpful when I was deeply into researching the first edition of "I Went Down to St. James Infirmary." There cannot be a more warm, welcoming, and dynamic woman.

Interested readers can find out more about Margie by searching her name on this blog.

For now, I simply wish to extend my thanks and admiration to Marjorie Moore on her one hundredth birthday. Congratulations. You have all my respect and all my love.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Looking for a new topic to research. Maybe Charley Case???

Since the publication of the second (and final) edition of I Went Down to St. James Infirmary, I have been searching for another topic to write about. Perhaps Charley Case?

Case (1858-1916) was a blackface comedian I encountered while researching the history of SJI; he makes a brief appearance in the book.

Charley Case would stand alone on a stage and recount elaborate tales while twirling a bit of string between his fingers. His comedy was subtle; his audience often "got" the joke after Case had already launched into his next narrative, interrupting it with gales of laughter. Extremely popular in his time but forgotten now, he was, I think, the original American standup comic.

From a writer's perspective, the problem with Case is that very little is known about him. The most complete history is documented in twenty pages of the book Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry 1890-1919. This is not much to base an entire book upon.

So ... can anybody out there help? Case died tragically, unaware of his importance in the evolution of popular entertainment. Without Charley Case in the background, Richard Pryor (or Milton Berle) would have been an entirely different comedian. He was that significant.
Inquiries into the early years of SJI