Gavin B.

Glad you like Fast Eddy's music. I'm totally in love with his music too. The song performed by Eddy's Band, St. James Infirmary, is one of the oldest songs in the American folkways. .
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As it so happens, Flower Child's comments provides the opportunity for a seamless segue into my Song of the Day feature which offers four versions of the jazz/blues classic St. James Infirmary.

Song of the Day


Above is a picture of the original sheet music of St. James Infirmary. The composer is listed as "Joe Primrose" which was an alias for a music publishing executive who made a false claim of writting the song to collect sheet music royalties on a public domain song.

St. James Infirmary- Four Different Versions

I first heard a version of St. James Infirmary when I was collecting and doing field recordings of blues and jazz musicians for the Smithsonian folkways collection way back in the Seventies. It was sung by a New Orleans street singer and blues musician named Snooks Eaglin

I thought it was about the coolest song I've ever heard and later on I learned that just about about every jazz and blues performer in New Orleans did some sort of version of the song. Nobody knew who wrote the song. The earliest sheet music credits the song to "Joe Primrose" a long time psuedonym for Irving Mills who ran the largest music publishing house in New York from 1919 until 1965. Irving Mills was not the writer of the song.

The song's origin goes back to the 19th Century and both Blind Willie McTell and Big Bill Broonzy said they first heard versions of St. James Infirmary when they were children in the 1890s. So it's likely that the royalty minded Mr. Mills was engaged in the sleazy act of registering a copyright on a public domain song for his own self enrichment. Keep in mind this was in the era that predated the rise of recorded music and the primary source of royalties were sheet music sales not record sales. Many American families had pianos in their homes and played the popular music of the day on piano, instead of listening to it on a record player. The mass marketing of RCA Victrola record player changed all that, but that's another topic.

St. James Infirmary was first popularized by Louis Armstrong in 1928 and the song has long been linked to the Cresent City jazz and blues tradition.

I've collected over 100 versions of the song by jazz, blues, R&B, folk and rock and roll musicians. My 100 different collected versions is just the tip of the iceberg because there must be 10,000 different versions of the song floating around in cyberspace and private record collections. I even have a version of St. James Infirmary by an Hawiian ukulele player. Some versions of the song are titled Gambler's Blues.

St. James Infirmary is about the saddest song I've ever heard. The songs haunting lyrics have an unadorned authenticity of an everyday conversation.

It's basically a blues song, but the use of minor chords makes it sound more like a funeral dirge. The song opens with a man coming viewing the dead body of his wife (or maybe girlfriend) laid out on a slab in the St. James Infirmary. Most versions have lyrics typical of the Louis Armstrong version:

St. James Infirmary ( Version #1 New Orleans Jazz Ensemble Style) - The Old School Band The two guest artists artists on this 1983 live rendition are what makes this video so special. The first guest is the female vocalist Lillian Boutté. During her musical studies at New Orleans' Xavier University, she sang in the gospel choir, before being discovered by Allen Toussaint, who used her as a background singer when producing the likes of James Booker, Patti Labelle, the Neville Brothers, the Pointer Sisters and Dr. John.

The second guest artist is legendary trumpter Doc Cheatham who was a longtime associate of King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Ma Rainey and Cheatham was the lead trumpeter for the Cab Calloway Band an all black jaza orchestra that rivalled the Count Basie and Duke Ellington band for recruiting the most talented black jazz musicians. Cheatham is the guy who emerges from the shadows in dark glasses to take the first solo in the video:



St. James Infirmary ( Version #2 Swedish Blues Style) - Jers, Lindbom & Zetterlund. It's hard to belive that this trio of young musicians is from Sweden because they have the American blues idiom nailed with this harmonica, mandolin, and doublebass instrumental version of the song. All three musicians play with passion, conviction and soul. Filip Jers' use of vibrato on his harmoica playing is quite skillfully rendered.



St James Infirmary (Version #3 Folk Blues Style) - Snooks Eaglin This is that first version of the song by New Orleans street singer Snooks Eaglin and it began my long oddessy to unravel the origins of the song. For all my research on the origins of the song, St. James Infirmary's origins remain as elusive and ambiguous as ever. The true writer of the song has acheived his own kind of immortality by becoming so notably anonymous.



St. James Infirmary (Version #4 New Orleans Piano Style) - Doug Duffey. Doug is an old NOLA homeboy of mine and he plays piano in the ornate style of old school New Orleans blues piano masters. This 1991 live performance by Doug is my currently my favorite version because St. James Infirmary is the kind song that lends itself perfectly to a 3 am rendition in a smokey Bourbon St. after-hours joint, sung a lone piano player with an oversized taxi driver's hat bobbling on the top of his head.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt