no notes

nonotes.wordpress.com

2007-04-03T18:23:00.000-04:00

That address above is the new home of this site. This site, this blogger site, won't be updated anymore.

So go check out the new digs!

"After The Deluge" continues...

2007-03-05T11:20:00.000-05:00

I guess I can't announce every new installment of Josh Neufeld's "After the Deluge" project, since it's going to go on for a long time and there will be a lot of it. So after this, it'll be up to you to keep track on your own, if you want to. Anyway Chapter One just went up, and you can check it out here.

Also on that site, they're posing some sound files, including a brief one of Brobson Lutz (a character in Josh's tale -- and a character in real life, actually) talking about bars in New Orleans. He's not saying anything that anybody with passing familiarity of the city won't already know, but still.

Lutz, of course, is mentioned in the "Luncheon" chapter of Letters from New Orleans. (A book that goes sadly unmentioned on the site linked above, but I guess that's because it's not about Katrina. That's okay. Go check it out anyway.)

More Hot 8

2007-03-05T07:55:00.000-05:00

So, there's another blog at Arts Journal that is concerned with New Orleans & music. It's called Listen Good. I only came upon it this morning, by way of the current top post that happens to be partly about the Hot 8 (and mentions a performance of "SJI.") The writer apparently lives in Brooklyn, but is spending some time in New Orleans. As I understand it. He seems to have written about the city and its musical culture in the past.

Anyway, the specific subject of the post is the final installment in a series of weekly gigs that the Hot 8 has been doing with Dr. Michael White. Excerpt:

Hot 8 founding member and tuba player Bennie Pete invited Dr. White if he'd like to begin working with the band for what grew into a series of workshops as well as performances.

"Bennie said, 'I'm tired of playing funk,'" recalled White, "which surprised me."

The informal workshops were a mixture of rehearsals and discussions about musical elements -- repertoire, harmony, dynamics, and so on -- but also about the history, social purpose, and shared values.

"I learned a lot about some things I had been uncertain about in the past," Peete told me in between sets at the café. "Answers to questions I'd never asked before."
But last night, the musicians -- ten strong, including the Hot 8, White, and guest tenor saxophonist John Gilbert (formerly of the Rebirth Brass Band) -- sounded anything but academic. "St. James Infirmary" moved from dirge-like to uptempo, and sweeping the crowd along in its mood shift. ...

I'll be keeping an eye on the site...

Not helpful

2007-03-01T11:52:00.000-05:00

So I'm a big fan of the Houston Rockets, being a Houston native and all. But I find Tracy McGrady's reaction to New Orleans being the site of the 2008 NBA All Star Game to be not very helpful:

When they first mentioned to me that the All-Star Game was going to be in New Orleans, that was the first thing I thought about: How much security are they going to have for the players and everybody there?

I don't think it's the right city to have this type of event right now. I know the city is in need of trying to get back on its feet, but safety comes first. I'm sure they're going to do a lot of research and look into this before they make this decision.

I mean, okay, there are crime problems in New Orleans, but this is kind of discouraging sign of how the city is viewed these days. Too dangerous for an NBA star to visit!

On the other hand, reading the Houston Chronicle story about this, maybe what I'm under-estimating is how much mayhem an All-Star game brings to town:

Law enforcement officials were kept busy during this year's All-Star Weekend. Las Vegas police reported 403 arrests and four shootings, including three people shot in an incident allegedly involving NFL player Adam "Pacman" Jones. While there were no arrests at the NBA players' hotel, several players have said they did not feel safe to leave the hotel or official events.

Hm. Finally, Rocket guard Rafer Alston brings class into the equation:

If it's like that [in New Orleans] now, what happens when you have 500,000 people on their way down there and people who earn a substantial amount of money down there? Right now, it's pretty unsafe.

Not helpful.

Okeh 8657

2007-02-23T09:05:00.000-05:00

From to time, the original 78 rpm record of "St. James Infirmary" as performed by Louis Armstrong pops up on eBay. I watch the bidding, but I don't get involved. I'd love to own the thing itself, but my turntable doesn't do 78, and then there's the matter of the cost. In the most recent auction for a copy of Okeh 8657 ("in stunning E+ condition and is still in its original Okeh sleeve"), which ended Wednesday, the winning bid was $245.28.

A little more than I'm willing to pay.

Le Guest

2007-02-22T07:07:00.000-05:00

Part-time N.O. resident Harry Shearer sometimes devotes his radio show, Le Show, to earnest discussion of what's up in the city, post-Katrina. He did that this week (February 18 episode) and I was pleased that his guest was Lolis Eric Elie. The interview starts out with a discussion of what non-New Orleanians tend not to understand about about Carnival. Elie also offers an interesting answer to why Ray Nagin was re-elected, a more nuanced take than I'm used to hearing about Nagin himself.

And toward the end, almost in passing, he makes an observation about the worldwide reputation of New Orleans: "We used to be known for Louis Armstrong. Now we're known for Hurricane Katrina."

Some of Shearer's previous choices of guests to talk New Orleans have been, frankly, pretty annoying. But this one is good.

You can listen to the whole thing, or just the Elie segments, here.

Eats

2007-02-21T07:07:00.000-05:00

What's the opposite of New Orleans? One plausible answer might be: Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Or maybe that's just me. Either way, our friend (and longtime Park Slope resident) Paul Lukas writes in the New York Sun that there is, of all things, a good New Orleans-style restaurant, called NoNo Kitchen .... in Park Slope! Paul knows his food, so I'd take it seriously. Check it out.

Super "SJI"

2007-02-13T07:11:00.000-05:00

I don't know what to make of the fact that not a single person has mentioned to me that -- apparently -- "St. James Infirmary" was used in a Super Bowl ad this year!

I mean, I didn't watch the Super Bowl, or go to any of the web sites that archive all the ads, but, come on, it was one of the most-watched broadcasts in history. Wasn't there any overlap between Bowl watchers and No Notes loyalists?

Anyway, once I belatedly got wind of this, I looked into it. The ad in question was a spot for the NFL itself. Here is the spot.

According to this article, it ran with two minutes left in the game. It was one of those ads that was part of the trend this year of having "regular people" either pitch ad ideas, or simply make ads and submit them. The NFL had a contest in which fans pitched their ad concepts, and as of this writing at least, you can still check out a bunch of the pitches on this portion of the NFL's web site.

The guy who won is "Gino" (number 5) on that web page, so if you click on that you can hear his concept. But if you don't want to bother (and I don't blame you), I'll just tell you. He envisioned "a montage of sad fans," as that article linked above puts it, doing things that humorously convey their over-the-top enthusiasm for football, and the pathos of the season being over two minutes hence: A guy morosely putting away his big, foam Number 1 finger, that kind of thing. Gino's idea was that the soundtrack would be "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday," by Boyz II Men. And the tagline would be something along the lines of "It's hard to say goodbye." (A footnote: Although all these ad contests were hyped as being chances for plain ol' folks to have a shot ad-making, Gino is described as a man who "works for a marketing firm in Portland, Maine.")

To actually execute the ad, the NFL brought in a very famous advertising director. And some things got tweaked. The most notable tweak from my point of view, of course, is the change from a Boyz II Men song to, yes, an instrumental passage from "St. James Infirmary."

It's actually a fascinating choice. As you know, the song is, in fact, partly about the difficulty of saying goodbye -- in the song's case, saying goodbye to a dead lover, stretched out on a long white table. She ain't coming back next season, of course. Because she's dead.

While "St. James Infirmary" and its predecessors and descendents are open to a variety of interpretations, the baseline subject matter is mortality. And although wordless, the snippet they chose for the ad definitely has a dirge-like quality to it, one of the moments early in a jazz funeral before celebration has begun. Indeed, the ad seems to suggest a jazz funeral, as it begins with a shot of some slow-parading musicians.

It's a weird note to hit, don't you think, sports fans?

Of course, most Bowl watchers are probably not quite as tuned into the meaning of "St. James Infirmary" as I am. In fact, judging by how long it took for this news to reach me in the first place, I'm guessing that when it comes to people knowing what the song was about and finding its placement a little strange, the NFL had nothing to worry about.

"It's messed up around here"

2007-02-05T07:41:00.000-05:00

The NYT assesses the violent-crime problems of New Orleans:

Other cities have plenty of murders. But only in New Orleans has there been the uniquely poisoned set of circumstances that has led to this city’s position at the top of the homicide charts. Every phase of the killing cycle here unfolds under the dark star of dysfunction: the murderers’ brutalized childhoods, the often ineffectual police intervention, a dulled community response, and a tense relationship between the police and prosecutors that lets many cases slip through the cracks.
Hurricane Katrina’s devastation loosened the fragile social restraints even further, making the city perhaps more dangerous than ever.

Toward the end, there's this:

Most of the violence involves black men killing other black men. Out of the 161 homicide victims last year, 131 were black men. Most of the suspects were also black men.
When the pattern of black-on-black violence is occasionally broken, white fear and outrage are redoubled. This happened earlier this month after the killing of a white filmmaker, when thousands of people marched on City Hall to demand change, a majority of them whites.

One might also speculate that when the pattern of black-on-black violence is broken, the New York Times decides to order up a long piece on the situation. But still. It's worth reading.

Razing issues, again

2007-02-02T10:12:00.000-05:00

Back to one of my hobbyhorses: project teardowns.

Some of the best-known razing of public housing has been in Chicago. Less widely understood is that while Chicago did tear down some notoriously bad-for-living projects, it renovated others. In light of this, a thoughtful op-ed in the T-P asked recently: "Can HANO follow its Chicago counterparts in distinguishing between bad housing projects, which need to be torn down, and good ones, which don't?" Once again, Lafitte is cited as an example of public housing that should, perhaps, be saved.

Lafitte's handsome, people-scaled two- and three-story buildings are set in what used to be gardens before decades of neglect. They were built solidly and with great care by Creole craftsmen who would not be surprised that Katrina didn't do much damage.

The architecture here clearly did not cause the residents' suffering; it fell victim to drugs, crime, poverty, poor schools and lack of opportunity, just as they did.

Lafitte's buildings are mirrored all over the country in postwar middle-class housing complexes still in congenial service in close-in suburbs, even though these aren't as solidly built. And other public-housing officials are rehabilitating older garden-style projects.

The Chicago Housing Authority, while still demolishing the 28 monstrous high-rises of the Robert Taylor Homes, has renovated the 454-unit garden-style Trumbull Park project, built in 1938 with a scale and quality that resembles Lafitte, which was built three years later.

[Thanks CRF]

After the Deluge

2007-02-02T07:44:00.000-05:00

Our old pal Josh Neufeld has a new comics project moving along on the World Wide Web. It's called After The Deluge, and it's about Katrina. Here's part one, here's part two -- it's going to be an epic, looks like. Check it out.

More on Dinerral Shavers

2007-01-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

The WWOZ Street Talk blog has a nice audio piece about Hot 8 snare drummer Dinerral Shavers, whose tragic death was noted here recently. Producer/correspondent Matt Sakakeeny interviews some of the students Shavers worked with at L.E. Rabouin High School, where he got a music program going, and to others who knew his work. One good piece of news is that others have stepped din to work with the young musicians, and the high school band is expected to be a presence during Carnival this year. It's worth a listen.

Next year

2007-01-27T13:42:00.000-05:00

I'd watched the first part of the game at home with a couple of friends -- we heard horns playing just before the end of the first quarter and for a second thought it was coming from the television, but it turned out to be a second-line parade happening just outside. A crowd of 40-50 people, 98.2 percent of them dressed in Saints paraphernalia, had stopped to dance to the 8- or 9-piece brass band.

Read the rest of Culture Gulf's account of the last game of the Saints' season here...

As a bonus, the entry includes a Trombone Shorty/Michelle Shocked MP3. What I'd really like to hear is the street-brass-funked version of "Crazy" she describes. But that, of course, is an only-in-New Orleans thing...

hip-hop service

2007-01-23T06:03:00.000-05:00

hip-hop service
Originally uploaded by Zervas.

... on MLK BLVD in Portland. The latest entries to the Flickr collection, from Zervas....

Hot

2007-01-20T07:15:00.000-05:00

AnimaMundi passes along this YouTube video of the Hot 8. I know I've seen this, and I hope I haven't actually posted it before, but in any case it's worth checking out. Although the title is "Hot 8 Brass Band on tour in France," it's actually footage of a street parade in New Orleans. If the only parade footage you've seen of New Orleans is mainstream Mardi Gras stuff, you should see this.

Thanks Marco!

SJI In The News

2007-01-16T17:09:00.000-05:00

"St. James Infirmary" is of course a song whose story turns on death, and in New Orleans one of the places one might here it was during funeral parades. So it's maybe not that much of a surprise that in my regular sweep of the news for mentions of the song, both recent occurences that I happened were in articles related to people who have recently passed away ... or gone on home, as some might say.

One notice brings the news that Wynton Marsalis will be taking the place of his recently departed friend Ed Bradley as the host of the radio show "Jazz At Lincoln Center." And on the February 22 installment of the program, he will evidently be doing double duty. The description of the episode:

Wynton Marsalis & Friends: Armstrong's Hot Fives -Select veterans from Jazz at Lincoln Center's Orchestra - Wycliffe Gordon, Victor Goines, Walter Blanding Jr. - recreate Louis Armstrong's revolutionary recordings from the 1920's. Marsalis' inspired soloing channels the greatness of his New Orlean's predecessor on "Cornet Chop Suey", "Fireworks", and "St. James Infirmary." 19-year-old pianist Jonathan Batiste astounds the audience with his traditional stride technique.

Meanwhile, those of you who follow the news in New Orleans are no doubt aware of the sad death of flimmaker Helen Hill. Apparently before coming to New Orleans, she lived for some time in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a newspaper there, The Chronicle Herald, reports on a memorial service for here there this past weekend.

In keeping with the spirit of the afternoon, many people were dressed in suitably unconventional outfits, which included funny hats, ballet tutus and funky footwear. Listeners heard saxophones, trumpets, banjos, drums, tambourines, a clarinet and kazoos....

True to form, the Halifax parade began as a sombre gathering, with musicians providing a plaintive rendition of the tune St. James Infirmary. By the time the crowd approached its destination several blocks later, an appropriate send-off for Ms. Hill was ushered in with a raucous version of When the Saints Go Marching In.

MLK

2007-01-16T05:45:00.000-05:00

Speaking of MLK: I posted a kind of miniature higlight reel of MLK BLVD on Murketing.com, right here.

The subject of MLK Blvds etc. came up on yesterday's installment of the African-American roundtable, on News & Notes on NPR. Host Farai Chideya introduced one question by noting that for people her age (I think she's in her 30s):

By the time [people our age] reached our tweens or our teens, you had MLK Boulevards all over the country, and usually they were in some of the most jacked-up neighborhoods that you will ever find. So there was this complexity that I had in my mind: Why are they going to honor this man by naming the dingiest, dead-end street after him? ... Hearing the words Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. don't necessarily bring hope to younger generations the way they did to previous generations...

Culture Gulf

2007-01-15T08:04:00.000-05:00

It's just come to my attention that our friend Cynthia Joyce is writing Culture Gulf, "a digest of arts and cultural journalism related to the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast," part of the Arts Journal's network of blogs. And she's still our friend, even though she didn't tell us she was doing this!

Seriously, I'm really excited to learn this, and you should definitely check it out and keep an eye on it.

Still burning

2007-01-14T13:33:00.000-05:00

We used to live a walkable distance from the big Orleans neutral ground where they pile up xmas trees and burn them every New Year's. And yet, we never went. That was stupid. Check out this YouTube video of this year's event.

Out. Of. Control.

The really is no other place even remotely like New Orleans...

Nine Times

2007-01-11T07:16:00.000-05:00

A recent Gambit article recaps the Neighborhood Story Project, which I've mentioned here before and which has gotten a decent amount of attention in the past. About halfway down, there's something I hadn't known, which is the existence of a newer post-Katrina volume in the series, titled Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward, "written by several members of Nine Times, a social aid and pleasure club." The piece notes:

The powerful last chapter centers on the flooding, exodus and painfully slow return of Ninth Ward folk. "We have another Katrina through here," bristles Ella, a queen of the Blackfoot Hunters Mardi Gras Indian tribe. "I'm gonna wade in the f--king water and stay my ass right here. I told my children, 'I do not want to die and be buried in Houston. ... You all bury me in Houston, I don't know nobody in them graveyards."

There's lots of interesting stuff in the article (some of it drawn from the books) about New Orleans public housing, including the ill-fated Desire complex that is of course the subject of a long chapter in LfNO.

Also there's this about the parading organizations:

The stories of the clubs [in Coming Out the Door.... ] have timely resonance since City Hall quadrupled the cost of a parading permit, to more than $4,000. The city claims the cost of policing parades has risen because of violence at the second lines. Club members, who spend months working on costumes, argue for the peaceful dignity of their tradition. The crisis of the second-line clubs has thrown a searchlight on the deeper question: Is poverty the problem, or a drug culture permeated with guns?
Wynton Marsalis made a passionate argument for the second line in his subcommittee report to the Bring New Orleans Back Commission. The lengthy report documented 70 Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs and 47 Mardi Gras Indian gangs pre-Katrina. No one knows just how many of these groups are displaced.

Letter from NYC

2007-01-11T07:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I randomly checked in at Silence of The City, which I mentioned some time ago, and noticed something surprising. I don't know if I missed this before or what, but the most recent entry there is by none other than friend-of-this-site Sari Wilson! Go there and read her piece "Measuring Up" right away. It begins like so:

On select Sunday evenings, Brooke Cenicola, a manager of the lingerie shop Linda's, sends around energetic emails with subject headers like “It's Time Again for Bra School” and “What? . . . Bra School?” Cenicola is putting out the call for models for her weekly school held at Linda's Soho location (motto: "Love Hurts, Your Bra Shouldn't"), a spacious duplex packed with lingerie and swimwear from the likes of Rosa Cha, Moschino, and Cosabella. Cenicola began the school to train Linda's sales staff in the discriminating and subtle art of bra fitting.

Come on. You want to read the rest don't you?

Sad news

2007-01-08T06:44:00.000-05:00

Just yesterday I belatedly learned -- after E came across something about it online -- that 25-year-old Dinerral Shavers, snare drummer and original member of the Hot 8, was killed in New Orleans in late December. He was, according to this news story, shot in the back of the head, while in his car. Shavers was also a music teacher, at L.E. Rabouin High School, where:

He had recently begun the school's first-ever marching band. "I've got 80 kids marching -- we're making history at Rabouin," he said proudly in an interview earlier this week. The band was already booked for several Mardi Gras parades.

A subsequent article indicates that a 17-year-old named David "Head" Bonds has been arrested and charged with the murder, which may have somehow been fallout from a feud between Bonds and Shavers' stepson.

At the center of the feud may have been resentment for "Uptowners," such as Shavers' stepson, moving into territory of the "Govs," short for Gov. Nicholls Street, a name adapted by teens from that neighborhood. The feud, police sources said, may have spilled over into John McDonogh School and a club near South Claiborne and Tulane avenues.

This is all very sad. And there's a lot of sad news coming out of New Orleans these days.

I've written about the Hot 8 (the band whose performance of "St. James Infirmary" got me started on this whole project) here and here.

From the Ninth Ward

2006-12-29T06:20:00.000-05:00

Probably you caught the news that John Edwards announced that he's running for president and 2008, and more interestingly, made the announcement from the Ninth Ward. Turns out that our friend Cynthia Joyce was there, and wrote about it for Salon. It wasn't hard to find the event, she writes: "In this nearly deserted swath of the city, where few locals have returned and screen doors dangle from abandoned houses, a gathering of more than three people is pretty conspicuous."

Even in New Orleans, where a sort of poverty pornography has taken hold over the last year and a half -- everyone from Brad Pitt to Juvenile has paraded through to pimp their pet projects -- "people feel forgotten," Edwards said. He urged Americans to "get their hands dirty."

It's an interesting read, particularly a brief encounter toward the end with a woman who lives near the spot where the TV cameras were gathered for the Edwards news. Check it out....

The Lee doc...

2006-12-27T06:30:00.000-05:00

We still haven't seen the Spike Lee documentary about Katrina, but that should change in the next few weeks. The DVD version is out now, and on our Netflix list. Three discs! That's a lot of documentary. Anyway, I came upon an interesting bit on a site called Cinematical, mulling whether there might have been any music-rights issues in putting together the DVD version: "But that's just me being curious, because I don't mind a few minor edits or music changes if it means I can see the movie again. (As long as they keep 'St. James Infirmary' on the soundtrack, even though it does make me cry.)"

N.O. Lit

2006-12-19T08:13:00.000-05:00

A recent Reuters story is headlined "New Orleans writers struggle to pen rebirth story." It begins:

Quirky characters, raucous music, jazz funerals, a warm climate and plenty of service-industry jobs made New Orleans an ideal base for writers and a rich backdrop for their work.

But, 16 months after Hurricane Katrina, the southern city that inspired Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, John Kennedy Toole and Anne Rice risks losing its unique place on the literary landscape. The city's recovery is plodding and many writers remain in exile around the United States....

The article doesn't really sync up very well with that headline. I think there's just one example of a specific new piece of post-Katrina fiction, a play called "Rising Water," by John Biguenet, a Loyola English prof. But perhaps there's more to come.

blockbuster on mlk

2006-12-12T07:19:00.000-05:00

blockbuster on mlk
Originally uploaded by Zervas.

Another recent MLK BLVD addition, one of two from Portland. You sort of have to click through to really see how curious this is.

firehouse2.jpg

2006-12-12T07:17:00.000-05:00

firehouse2.jpg
Originally uploaded by blitzcat.

Several new shots have appeared lately in the MLK BLVD Flickr pool. Here's a nice one from Greensboro.

"Cold Cash" Jefferson...

2006-12-10T10:14:00.000-05:00

... wins??

Yes. But that's not even weirdest part.

Guilty pleas by aides and associates who admitted to bribing the New Orleans Democrat, and the revelation in court documents that FBI agents had found $90,000 in marked bills in Jefferson's freezer, had prompted pundits to begin inking his political obituary. Instead, Jefferson, 59, scored a decisive win largely by routing [opponent Karen] Carter in Jefferson Parish.

What? Apparently, Harry Lee was really anti-Carter, and threw his (ahem) weight behind Jefferson as a result. Here's the story.

I'm not sure I would characterize any of this is as good news for New Orleans.

It's not a tuba

2006-12-10T10:09:00.000-05:00

Enjoyable NPR piece here on the sousaphone, featuring Julius McKee of the Dirty Dozen. A good listen, if you need to brush up on the difference between a sousaphone and a tuba, and why one is ideal for second lines.

Also interesting: The piece is apparently part of a series on "the lower frequencies" in music. Hunh.

"SJI" on the air in Pittsburgh

2006-12-07T17:07:00.000-05:00

An interesting note came in today from Jason Baldinger, who has a radio show in Pittsburgh called "Does Your Hometown Really Care." He just did an episode of "SJI" versions. There's no way, I gather, for you (or me) to actually hear it, but he does have the playlist up right here. There a few items on his list that I'm not really familiar with, so that bears further investigation.

Notably: Elton Britt, "St. James Avenue," and Tony Rice, "St. James Hospital." Also, the Dock Boggs versions that's mentioned here, I've heard a snippet of that, but have never gotten around to investigating the full story.

He also includes a couple of items that might be familiar to dedicate readers of this site (anybody? anybody?) such as the Die Like a Dog recording, and Barbara Dane's recording of "When I Was A Young Girl."

Update: Mr. Baldinger passes along a bit of extra info on the above tunes.

Elton Britt's "St. James Avenue," he says, is a "just a slight variant based on Jimmie Rodgers' take, a little peppy country-politan number complete with the Jordinairres."

Tony Rice's "St James Hospital" is "a bluegrass version that is note for note Doc Watson's version from his self titled Vanguard release from 1964." (Both are on iTunes, see below.)

More later on Dock Boggs, and "When I Was A Young Girl."

"St. James Hospital," Tony Rice

"St. James Hospital," Doc Watson

SJI In Jersey...

2006-12-06T08:13:00.000-05:00

All About Jazz reports from the Cape May Jazz Festival, where this year's theme was "New Orleans Comes to Cape May."

Brightly colored beads were passed out everywhere, a number of restaurants added New Orleans specialties to their weekend menus, and there was even a poignant Second Line parade down the asphalt “boardwalk.” The opening concert by a nine-member all-star band led by drummer Herlin Riley proved to be the weekend highlight, packing Convention Hall for its opening Friday night set. The second set drew a smaller but more enthusiastic crowd that danced with joyous abandon during the closing numbers. The multi-generation band featured clarinetist Michael White, trumpeter Christian Scott, pianist Jonathan Batiste, saxophonist Victor Goines, trombonist Corey Henry, bassist Roland Guerin and singer Topsy Chapman....

The second show featured two astonishing arrangements—a rollicking, shuffle-beat version of “Caravan” and a Henry-dominated version of “St. James Infirmary” that was set to a boogie-woogie rhythm.....

Love to hear that...

Still Counting

2006-12-04T07:16:00.000-05:00

The T-P had an item this weekend suggesting that remains discovered in the ruins of the Lower Ninth Ward last Wednesdsay night may be those of a Katrina victim. It's mind-blowing that this could still be going on, more than a year after the fact. "Coroner Frank Minyard," the story adds, "told the City Council last month that the Michoud area of eastern New Orleans had never been searched for bodies since Katrina and should be investigated as soon as possible."

Not counting these remains, 28 Katrina dead have been "found in New Orleans since March, when a federal mortuary service shut down and turned the collection of bodies over to the coroner's office."

For the record...

2006-12-01T14:43:00.000-05:00

Despite the skepticism here that the "Jass & Jassism" editorial from the June 20, 1918, Times-Picayune, linked at right, might be an "urban myth," I assure that I have in my files -- I just pulled it to double-check -- a printout from the microfilm of relevant (dated) page of the paper itself. Beats my why the other source cited dates the thing to June 17, 1917. I'm looking at the printout now (it's not a text-only printout, it's microfilm of an actual newspaper page), one more time, just to make sure I'm not crazy: There's the date, and there's the piece.

Here's the best image I can come up with under the regrettable limitations of the home-office scanner:

Now it goes back in the files, and I can get back to, you know, tasks that don't involve clearing my reputation.

Art in Houston

2006-11-26T08:43:00.000-05:00

Yes, there is art in Houston, and artists. The Houston Chronicle has a piece about the warehouse district that's been quite artist-friendly over the years. Having grown up outside Houston and gone back from time to time over the years, I can say it's been really amazing to watch this area take shape over time. Needless to say the latest development is: luxury development!

The groundbreaking for luxury townhouses on Commerce Street caught the eyes of artists working in warehouses across the street.

On land where the Art Park once showcased metal sculptures, utility lines now stick up from the ground — a signal that downtown development is slowly creeping east of U.S. 59 into the 2200 and 2300 blocks of Commerce.

To save their galleries, studio spaces and metal-work facility, some of the artists involved in the Commerce Street Artists Warehouse — commonly called CSAW — drew up a long-term plan to preserve the old warehouses they lease.

More about the project teardowns

2006-11-26T08:37:00.000-05:00

The housing project teardowns in New Orleans remain in limbo for now because of a lawsuit. Here's the T-P story. Some excerpts:

The Housing Authority of New Orleans said this week in court papers that the lawsuit threatens the estimated $681 million redevelopment of what it calls the "Big Four": C.J. Peete in Central City; Lafitte in Treme; St. Bernard in the 7th Ward; and B.W. Cooper, which sits between Earhart and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards.

Filed in June, the lawsuit has yet to draw any conclusive rulings from U.S. District Court. ...
For now, the vast low-rise complexes remain a frozen landscape of failed housing for the poor, with thousands of homes shuttered, fenced-off and lying in wait for redevelopment.

Except for a portion of the apartments at Cooper, the four complexes marked for redevelopment have been shuttered since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast 15 months ago. HUD has tagged each for demolition, yet has not formally approved any such plans....

Passing mention of Desire, the torn-down and supposed-to-be-rebuilt complex I wrote about in LfNO:

Before Katrina, HANO had embarked on a $700 million redevelopment plan for five of its 10 traditional housing sites. Private developers worked on the "new" Desire complex in the Ninth Ward and the River Garden neighborhood that replaced the former St. Thomas complex in the Lower Garden District, while HANO was developing new units at Fischer, Florida and Guste.
Since the storm, only Fischer and Guste in Central City are still on the redevelopment track by HANO.

"A sweet white woman down in Savannah, GA..."

2006-11-25T08:18:00.000-05:00

So, I check Home of the Groove today, and there's a link to some James Booker concert clips on YouTube. I'm not a Booker expert at all, but I do like his take on "SJI" quite a bit, so, okay, I'll check those out. The link is to clips of Booker performing in France in 1978. And the lyrics of the first song catch my attention because they mention Savannah (where we recently moved). I don't always listen very closely to lyrics, but this time I did, and here's the first verse, to a very upbeat R&B-ish rolling tune:

There was a sweet white woman
Down in Savannah, GA.
She made love to my daddy
In front the KKK.

She made love to my daddy,
You know in front the KKK.
Yeah! Yeah!

Okay, so, you know, that got my attention. The song is called "Papa Was a Rascal." I ended up watching the clip about six times. Here it is:

It's quite a song. Couldn't find much information about it, but I recommend that you check it out. The lyrics are, in general, pretty strange. Here are the rest:

You know my papa went to Boston
And took a gangster's gal.
She stole away with my papa,
From old Italian Sal.

She stole away with my daddy,
You know from old Italian Sal
Yeah! Yeah!

When I was a young boy
About the age of nine
I found a sweet Prussian woman
You know I made her mine

I found a sweet Prussian woman
You know that I made her mine
Mine! Mine!

I found a sweet Prussian woman
You know that I mader her mine
Yeah!

You know my sister and my momma,
They both begin to say:
"You know we all better watch out
For the CIA."

I said we all gotta watch out
watch out for the CIA
Yeah Yeah.

We all better watch out
watch out for the CIA.

Oh well my papa was a preacher
He was a lover too
Well yes my papa was a rascal
Why can't I be one, too?

Well if my papa was a rascal,
Why can't I be one too?
Yeah!

You know my papa was a rascal,
Baby want to be one, too.

The song also appears -- in a different performance of course -- on Resurrection of the Bayou Maharajah, in a medly with "Tico Tico."

The Bethany & Rufus version

2006-11-22T14:40:00.000-05:00

Bethany & Rufus are a singer-and-cello duo, mentioned on this site the other day: She's the daughter of Pete Yarrow from Peter, Paul and Mary, and he's a "renowned cellist." Their CD, 900 Miles, includes a version of "SJI," and thus gets our attention here.

The arrangement is sort of spacey and echo-y and ethereal, with Bethany's voice dominating the spare mix. The cello is plucked, rather than sawed, which I found a bit disappointing. Bethany has a perfectly fine voice, but like many contemporary versions of the song, this one is long emote-ing, and short on genuine emotion. It's a bit of a lounge piece, almost. In fact, you could just about imagine it being really effective as the backdrop music in a noirish movie scene, set in some faded-glory nightclub, after hours.

"St. James Infirmary," by Bethany & Rufus

MLK BLVD/ Chattanooga

2006-11-22T07:17:00.000-05:00

10-13-16-mlk-chattanooga-tnn01.jpg
Originally uploaded by crfranko.

Some great shots from Chattanooga added to the MLK BLVD Flickr pool by our friend crfranko. I love the color on this one, but the whole batch is really good -- including the "Pimp Oil" sign. Check em out.

"An expression of modern-day invention worth looking into!"

2006-11-21T07:22:00.000-05:00

Here, via YouTube, is a pretty interesting five-minute film, "Record-making with Duke Ellington." According to whoever posted it on YouTube, it's a "promotional short for Irving Mills' short-lived Master and Variety labels." (Irving Mills, of course, is the "Joe Primrose" who took credit for "SJI.")

There's a little bit, very staged, of Ellington directing his band, but the real point of the film is to show off the technical wonders of making the physical record, described by a breathless announcer. But you know what? He should be breathless. The process is really cool!

For the record, found this on the WFMU blog.

"Illiterature"

2006-11-20T07:32:00.000-05:00

On the obits page today I learned (belatedly, obviously) of Albert B. Friedman, a scholar drawn to what his obituary calls "the proletarian bustle of ballads, sung narratives that were composed and transmitted orally by generations of unlettered bards." Friedman compiled the Viking Book of Folk Ballads (later reprinted as The Penguin Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World), the introduction to which included his observation: "Ballads are songs or performances, not poems. They are not literature, but illiterature." Says the obit:

Mr. Friedman’s work helped to animate the postwar “ballad revival” in the United States, the renewed interest in traditional English and Scottish ballads (and their Appalachian offspring) that reached its apex in the late-1950s and 1960s.

Tearing things down

2006-11-19T16:12:00.000-05:00

Today's New York Times has an article about the project tear-downs in New Orleans, something that I've mentioned here before, and is of interest to me in part because of things I learned while writing the piece in the book called "The Desire Line." The article is by Nicolai Ouroussoff. An excerpt:

Billed as a strategy for relieving the entrenched poverty of the city’s urban slums, [the teardown] is based on familiar arguments about the alienating effects of large-scale postwar inner-city housing.
But this argument seems strangely disingenuous in New Orleans. Built at the height of the New Deal, the city’s public housing projects have little in common with the dehumanizing superblocks and grim plazas that have long been an emblem of urban poverty. Modestly scaled, they include some of the best public housing built in the United States.

Furthermore:

If the sight of workers dynamiting an abandoned housing complex was a cause for celebration in Chicago’s North Side, the notion is stupefying in New Orleans, whose public housing embodies many of those same New Urbanist ideals: pedestrian friendly environments whose pitched roofs, shallow porches and wrought iron rails have as much to do with 19th-century historical precedents as with late Modernism.
More specifically, they were inspired by local developments such as the 1850s Pontalba Apartments and late-19th “Garden City” proposals, whose winding tree-lined streets and open green spaces were seen as an antidote to the filth and congestion of the industrial city.
The low red-brick housing blocks of the Lafitte Avenue project, in the historically black neighborhood of Treme, for example, are scaled to fit within the surrounding neighborhood of Creole cottages and shotgun houses. To lessen the sense of isolation, the architects extended the surrounding street grid through the site with a mix of roadways and pedestrian paths. As you move deeper into the complex, the buildings frame a series of communal courtyards sheltered by the canopies of enormous oak trees. Nature, here, was intended to foster spiritual as well as physical well being.

And finally:

The point is not that projects like Lafitte should be painstakingly restored to their original condition; nor are we likely to return to the same spirit of social optimism that created them any time soon. None of the projects rise to the level, say, of the best Modernist workers housing built in Europe in the 1920s, some of which were such refined architectural compositions that their apartments are now occupied by upper-middle-class sophisticates.
But they certainly rank above the level of much of the conventional middle-class housing being churned out today. And it is not difficult to imagine how a number of thoughtful modifications — the addition of new buildings, extensive landscaping, extending the existing street grid to anchor the project more firmly into the city — could transform the project into model housing.

I'm not naive about the problems that have beset public housing in New Orleans and elsewhere. But as you might guess by the fact that I'm now linking to the article a third time, I think it's definitely worth reading.

"Reader as amateur musician"

2006-11-19T14:47:00.000-05:00

Here's something that I gather Zadie Smith said recently:

The idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you.

What I like about this is that contradicts the generally accepted the idea that certain forms (books) are less "interactive" than other forms (computer games, etc.). I would actually say that although Smith is using movie-watching as an negative example, you can actually watch a movie just as actively as you can read. Depending on the movie, depending on the book. I think of consumption of creative works as being fundamentally active, not passive at all. It always bugs me when people talk about the ability to literally control a character (or whatever) in a creative work is the only way you can be involved in it.

By the way, I say above that "I gather" Smith said this because I haven't listend to the radio interview that it came from -- I just saw this bit quoted on BoingBoing, which credits another blog, which credits another blog etc.

Anyway, I like Smith's point, and how she made it.

The Old Town School of Folk Music/Pete Special Version

2006-11-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

Earlier I mentioned the new album, Old Town School of Folk Music Songbook: Volume 1, which includes a rendition of "St. James Infirmary."

The Old Town School of Folk Music itself is an institution based in Chicago, and founded in December 1957. "The first five years of the School’s history mirrored the boom in folk music at that time," an official history explains. "Enrollment grew and programs expanded. Over 150 students attended guitar and banjo classes on a weekly basis." The school also hosted performances by people like Big Bill Broozny and Josh White. (White's "SJI" rejiggering, "Free and Equal Blues," is discussed here.)

The school grew through the 1960s, declinded in the 1970s, then has gradually rebounded. "Today enrollment in Old Town School tuition programs averages close to 6,000 students per week, 2,700 of them children," the site says, and the school offers various community programs and workshops and so on.

As the previously noted Chicago Sun-Times article explained, along the way the school has had a kind of semi-official songbook -- originally a stapled-together batch of "117 easy-to-learn songs reflecting the North American folk music tradition -- songs such as 'Trouble in Mind,' 'Deep River Blues,' 'St. James Infirmary' and 'Midnight Special.'" This songbook is less of an actual book than a periodically revised collection. Now the school has rounded up a variety of performers to do renditions of many of the songs on a series of four CDs, the first of which is, of course, the thing I'm writing about here.

The version of "SJI" on the disc is performed by Pete Special. I don't know much about him, but I gather he's a contemporary Chicago blues-club guy; here's his sparse site (it plays music at you the second you arrive, so be warned), and here's something with a glowing quote about him from Dan Akroyd. He's got a growly voice, maybe a little like Dr. John, or possibly Tom Waits. His take on the tune is, for my take, both a little too traditional (in the arrangement) and a little too hammy (in the vocal delivery). But maybe that's just me.

"St. James Infirmary," performed by Pete Special on The Old Town School of Folk Music Songbook: Volume 1

"Barroom Blues"

2006-11-14T08:27:00.000-05:00

A site called "Get Underground" has an overview piece called "The Strange Career of an Unfortunate Rake." While the broad outline is not wildly different from what's in the essay that this site spun out of, there are a couple of interesting tidbits.

First: Who was it that came up with the earliest trace of the "Rake," believed to date to 1790? It was Irish musicologist P.W. Joyce, the piece, by Mike Morris, says.

Second: Toward the end of his piece, as Morris notes the "Streets of Laredo," "St. James Infirmary," and "Gamblers Blues" variations, he also mentions the song "eventually making it to California, where a migrant named Herman Davis stumbled through a dirge to his fate entitled Barroom Blues." Following that link leads to a Library of Congress page that is part of a "Voices from the Dust Bowl" project, and it seems that Davis (who I'd of course never heard of) recorded a sort of Woody Guthrie-ish version in 1941, at the "Arvin FSA Camp." There's an MP3 to listen to, and I think Morris is right in using the word "stumbled" to describe Davis's performance.

Finallly, Morris has a couple of interesting related links at the end: to The Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads collection; and The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection.

Thought for food

2006-11-13T17:52:00.000-05:00

One level this is sort of depressing:

Many people [in N.O.] are living in gutted homes and have no means of preparing their own meals, said [Debra South] Jones, who lost her eastern New Orleans home to Katrina.
"We found that for a lot of people, the only meal they get is the lunch that we provide. So we tried to find a way to give them another meal," said Jones.

On the other hand, it's good to read that Jones's organization, a food bank called Just The Right Attitude, is involved in the efforts to help those people. It's "one of several United Way partner agencies that have made changes to their programs to meet the needs of those affected by Katrina," according to this T-P story, which ends:

In this post-Katrina era, the United Way is supporting only programs that are most effective in delivering results that positively impact the community through relief, recovery and rebuilding.
In the past, the fund made annual allocations to agencies, but it now makes short-term grants to programs and services that meet priority needs.

The United Way's $20 million fund-raising campaign kicked off in August and continues through March. The agency hopes to raise $14 million locally and $6 million nationally.

For information about donating, call (504) 827-6824 or log on to www.unitedwaynola.org.

Itchy Acres

2006-11-12T15:35:00.000-05:00

Before Savannah, before Jersey City, before New Orleans, before Manhattan and Brooklyn, before Dallas and Austin, I grew up sort of in the orbit of Houston, Texas (in what was then the town of Katy, and what is now basically another suburb of the ever-expanding Space City). People love to hate on Houston, but I actually maintain that it's kind of a cool place. You just have to know where to look. The Three Percent Theory described in LfNO is defintely in full effect in Houston. There's cool stuff going on, you just have to know where to look.

Maybe I'll go into that more some other time, but the reason I bring it up now is this interesting story in today's Houston Chronicle. "Rising property values have begun to drive [artists] from close-in neighborhoods" like Montrose and the Heights, inside the 610 Loop, where they've always been. "Now, they're building brand-new metal houses and studios outside the Loop."

That movement is most visible north of Loop 610 and west of Interstate 45 in wooded, historically black neighborhoods such as Acres Homes and Independence Heights.
Some of Houston's best-known artists either already live and work there or have bought property with plans to build. The roster includes The Art Guys, Paul Kittelson, Carter Ernst, Virgil Grotfeldt, Terrell James, Lee Littlefield, Ed Wilson and Tim Glover.

The area is now being referred to as "Itchy Acres."

Slow "Road Home" [?]

2006-11-11T07:05:00.000-05:00

Here's something from today's NYT:

The $7.5 billion program to rebuild Louisiana by helping residents repair or replace their flooded homes has gotten off to a slow start, frustrating government officials and outraging many homeowners who say they are still in limbo 14 months after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Though nearly 79,000 families have applied to the program, called the Road Home, only 1,721 have been told how much grant money they will receive. And just 22 have received access to the cash, which was provided by federal taxpayers and is being distributed by the state.
...

Many hopes have been pinned on the Road Home program, which is widely considered the most important factor in rebuilding the ruined neighborhoods of New Orleans and is also meant to start an economic boom in southern Louisiana.

Update: On the other hand, the T-P says:

The number of storm-affected families winning approval for rebuilding grants through Louisiana's Road Home program has tripled in the past week, and officials said Friday that they expect to meet Gov. Kathleen Blanco's goal of approving 10,000 grants by the end of the month.

Hmm.

SJI In The News

2006-11-08T09:31:00.000-05:00

Well it's been a while since I've done one of these, what with the hiatus and all. Let's see what's up.

Bethany Yarrow, daughter of Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, has an album out with "renowned cellist Rufus Cappadocia," according to Purdue student paper The Exponent. It's called 900 Miles, and it's traditional folk with "an alternative edge, funk, groove and world music." Among the cuts on the record: "St. James Infirmary." I haven't heard this yet, but more soon on that front.

Here is an article from the Chicago Sun-Times about The Old Town School of Folk Music, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2007. (Here's the history of the school.) This occasion is being marked a bit early by the release of a four-CD set called The Old Town School of Folk Music Songbook. And yes, "SJI" is on it. Again, more later on this.

Texasgigs.com reviews an Irvin Mayfield performance in Richardson (outside of Dallas) Texas:

After a seductive love song entitled "Ballad of the Hot, Long Night," which was then followed by an up-beat Latin number honoring Tito Puente, the NOJO ended the evening with "St. James Infirmary" -- an emotional piece in the vein of the traditional New Orleans funeral processional. The song began dreary and mournful as the wailing brasses symbolized the march to the grave. But the tone gradually shifted into a parade-like cavalcade that Mayfield had referred to beforehand as nothing short of "a rejoicing of life." Young couples throughout the packed performance hall tapped their feat and smiled while a bold few waved handkerchiefs above their heads as they danced up and down the aisles. And all throughout the audience, the pepper-gray heads of elderly jazz lovers bobbed ever-so-slightly to the rhythm.

During the hiatus, I got a note from somebody saying that while my SJI essay mentioned Arlo Guthrie having recorded "Streets of Laredo," I'd failed to point out that he also does "SJI." It's true, and it seems to be part of his regular set these days, per this concert review from The Ann Arbor News.

Here is a Desicritics review of a DVD called From the Big Apple to the Big Easy, which includes a Kermit Ruffins "SJI" take.

And finally, here's oddest "SJI" reference in the news: A column in the Palm Beach Post, making fun of Florida politician Katherine Harris, who I guess thinks the media is out to get her, includes this sarcastic line: "I suppose she will expose me and all the other [cynical media] members, and our long-range plot to overthrow morality and replace it with fun. She might even divulge our short-range plan to replace the 'Star Spangled Banner' as our national anthem with 'St. James Infirmary Blues,' which is much easier to sing and sounds great in a baseball stadium."

Signs

2006-11-08T08:02:00.000-05:00

Originally uploaded by Mamish.

This fine photo by one of my Flickr favorites, Mamish, reminded me of the Signs of Life book. I'm not actually sure if Mamish has pictures in that book; I think he does. But not this one. I assume. Anyway, I'm reminded that they're having a release party of some sort at:

Galapagos, 70 North 6th Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, Wed., November 15th, 7-10 pm.

My connection to this book is that I was asked to contribute a blurb -- to the press release! That had never happened to me before.

Kansas City Frank

2006-11-06T10:22:00.000-05:00

Super-dedicated -- disturbingly dedicated -- readers of this site might remember this earlier entry on the version of SJI recorded by Frank Melrose under the name Kansas City Frank and his Footwarmers.

Or not. But I remember it, and so I was interested to hear a little NPR bit about a recently released Melrose recording, from a 1940 session, under the title "Bluesiana." No, "SJI" isn't on it, but the NPR review had some nice snippets and made me want to know Melrose's work a little better. The reviewer points out that the man often referred to as "Kansas City Frank" was actually a Chicago guy, and even his Footwarmers sides were made in Chicago. The upshot of the piece was that this session shows off the "other Chicago style" -- a style associated with young, white musicians. The most interesting musical snippet was Melrose's take a Jelly Roll Morton tune; apperently he and Morton were pals.

Is the hiatus over or what?

2006-11-04T08:42:00.000-05:00

To be honest, the date snuck up on me -- it's already November!

It's been, to say the least, a busy stretch that included us moving again, to Savannah, GA. We're still in the settling-in process, so while I have some cool stuff saved up, I'm not quite ready to go full-on yet. So I'm back to posting, but probably on a light schedule for another month.

I'm also considering switching this project over to a Wordpress format.

And I'm thinking about adding some additional elements.

So, we'll see.

Meanwhile, here's something that GK sent along. I'd seen this before, but wasn't aware that it was on YouTube. It's not exactly a direct link to SJI, but it's an interesting example of a modern musician playing with traditional influences: Kid Koala's "Basin Street Blues:"

Mini Hiatus-Breaker

2006-10-03T08:51:00.000-04:00

The hiatus is still in effect, but:

I have to pass along this tidbit from a recent Associated Press interview with Tony Bennett. The crooner (no other word for it) reveals: "My biggest influence is jazz. At the end of the Second World War, I became a librarian for the Armed Forces Network and I used to sing with this big orchestra, and the first record I ever made was 'St. James Infirmary Blues.' ...."

Oddly, I've never heard that. I'm adding it to my to-do list, post-hiatus.

On Hiatus Until November 1

2006-09-08T08:52:00.000-04:00

Because of a crush of personal and professional obligations over the next two months or so, the "no notes" site will be on hiatus until November 1. I'll resume the Rolling Jelly series around then, and start dealing with several interesting items that have piled up but that I haven't had time to deal with lately.

It's possible that if some really interesting "SJI" news comes along between now and then, I'll post about it, but things are looking pretty busy, so no promises.

Meanwhile I will keep updating my other and completely unrelated site, where there happens to be a recent music-related entry if you're interested: It's about an excellent project overseen by my friend Marc "Disquiet" Weidenbaum, building on the remixing of the famous Byrne/Eno record My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, and it's worth checking out.

To kill time in the interim, you can always revisit the past entries touted in the links at right, or the version-specific entries linked further down the column.

If you would like to be notified when the site is back to business, feel free to sign up for the "no notes" mailing list, also at right.

Till November, then...

Perhaps Nagin was onto something ... ?

2006-09-07T09:51:00.000-04:00

From The Onion:

NYC Unveils 9/11 Memorial Hole

"From the wreckage and ashes of the World Trade Center, we have created a recess in the ground befitting the American spirit," said New York Governor George Pataki from a cinderblock-and-plastic-bucket-supported plywood platform near the Hole's precipice. "This vast chasm, dug at the very spot where the gleaming Twin Towers once rose to the sky, is a symbol of what we can accomplish if we work together."

The rest is here. It's funny. And very on point.

Let's just hope that, four years from now, The Onion isn't running a similar piece with Louisiana politicians presiding over the Hurricane Katrina Miles And Miles of Empty Ruins Memorial.

'Signs of Life'

2006-08-29T08:28:00.000-04:00

New book alert: "Signs of Life is a moving collection of photos of the hand-made signs that appeared in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Profits from sales of the book will go to two organizations still working in the area: Common Ground Relief and Hands On Network."

The forward is by Josh Neufeld, author of Katrina Came Calling and the forthcoming The Vagabonds, Vol. 2: "Of Two Minds." (Details about those on his site.)

More about Signs of Life (including purchase mechanism) here, and at SignsOfLifeBook.com. And here's a Flickr slideshow.

Mash & Hoax

2006-08-29T08:01:00.000-04:00

Just when you (well, when I) thought BoingBoing had devolved into nothing but "Xeni is on TV again," and "Cory has another promotional event tomorrow," the site comes through with some great stuff.

First: None other than Xeni links to "Wu Orleans," in which DJ BC has mixed various pieces of New Orleans music with the raps of the Wu Tang Clan. It's pretty great. "Dirty Brass," mashing Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Old Dirty Bastard, for instance, is wonderful. "Boxing Fats Domino," featuring Fats and various Wu Tang members, is also pretty hot. It seems that none of this involved, you know, copyright clearance, so I don't know how long it will be available. Give it a listen, whodi.

And then: Xeni comes through again, with a pointer to this CNN story about The Yes Men, pretending to be a HUD official, informing an official gathering of 1,000 contractors at the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit that HUD wasn't going to tear down the projects after all. CNN's site summarizes:

"This year, in New Orleans, I'm ashamed to say we have failed," he said.
To change that, HUD would reverse its plans to demolish 5,000 units "of perfectly good public housing," with housing in the city in tight supply, he said.
Former occupants have been "begging to move back in," he said. "We're going to help them to do that."
The government's practice had been to tear down public housing where it could, because such projects were thought to cause crime and unemployment, he said.
But crime rates in the city are at a record high and there is no evidence that people in the projects are more likely to be unemployed, he said.
The man added that it also would be essential to create conditions for prosperity.
Toward that end, he said, Wal-Mart would withdraw its stores from near low-income housing and "help nurture local businesses to replace them."

According to CNN, a HUD spokesperson called the hoax "sick."

The Rolling Jelly Series (8): Indians

2006-08-28T07:02:00.000-04:00

[Here is Part 8 of the Rolling Jelly Series]

Jelly Roll Morton’s discussion of jazz-funeral violence (in his 1938 conversations with Alan Lomax) was not the only context for simultaneous fighting and celebration in the New Orleans of his younger days. The Mardi Gras Indians could be a violent lot as well, he explained to Lomax. As I noted in one of the stories in Letters From New Orleans, the old-timer Indian guys all make references to this stuff, but I was never sure about whether to believe it. Well, Morton’s recollections are obviously of an era that pre-dates even the oldest old-timer among contemporary Indians, but here’s what he had to say.

He explained the Indians to Lomax like so: “These people, they had the idea that they wanted to act exactly like the old Indians did in the years gone by, and they wanted to live true, to, to traditions of their style.” There were only four or five “tribes” in the city, but when they showed up at one of the big Carnival parades, even ones that “cost millions of dollars,” they would steal the show. “If a band of Indians was coming, why the parade wouldn’t have anybody there. Everybody would flock to see the Indians.”

The Indians were a feature of the city, he said, for as far back as he could remember. As a child, he added, he was a spy-boy – which is a sort of lookout, trying to spot rival tribes coming. “They was always kids that did the spyin’. These were real men that did this Indian dance and played the Indians. And their main object was to make the enemy bow, and they would use this word, when the spy-boys would meet another spy-boy, they said, ‘Bow-wow. Bow-wow. Ah, bow-wow.’ I don’t remember all the words they used to use. They’d point their fingers to the ground, ‘Bow-wow.’”

That, of course, is where the violence could start. Many of theses Indians were armed, he continued. “Some even had pistols. And I have known many cases where there have been killings in the city of New Orleans with the Indian bands.”

<-- Part 7.

Speaking of Katrina...

2006-08-27T14:37:00.000-04:00

If you have a spare hour this weekend -- not likely, but still -- you might want to give a listen to an episode of the public-radio show Speaking of Faith, an episode that I guess first aired a little less than a year ago but is just as relevant now, titled, Seeing Poverty after Katrina. One excerpt:

Host Krista Tippett: And, you know, it's hard even to find people in our public life, politicians who are talking about poverty, justice in the sense that you're talking about justice, structures of poverty, and making that any kind of priority for our public deliberation.

Dr. David Hilfiker: Well, that's certainly true. I mean, we have come a long way. The last 25 years have seen a turn. What we earlier called "greed" or "selfishness" is now called something like "the market," and it's this fascination that we have with the market, that everything has to go through the market.

Ms. Tippett: Do you think that's happened in the last 25 years?

Dr. Hilfiker: Well, sure. I'm just taking back to the '60s, for instance.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Dr. Hilfiker: You know, Michael Harrington writes a book called The Other America. All of a sudden people discover poverty. You know, 'Oh, dear, we didn't know this, but we've got poverty in our country.' And the general response is, 'Oh. Well, we need to do something about that. And not only that, but we can, and we've got the power to do that.' So out of that comes, you know, President Johnson's Great Society program.

Today, you know, my fear out of Katrina is that we will once again see the poverty, but that will fade into believing that if we just, you know, encourage these folks to make better use of the market that then we'll all be fine. This notion that we are responsible for one another, that we belong in a community together, that we need to create just structures, is a very foreign one now.

Letter from NYC (from, um, ten years ago...)

2006-08-25T11:30:00.000-04:00

Earlier this summer I read this article in The Village Voice about a site called The Silence of the City. That site is a project of an NYC writer and editor named Mac Montandon, and basically it publishes stories that were written for the Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker, but ultimately were not published there. I loved this idea and went to the site, read the pieces, had a great time.

Quickly enough, my thoughts turned to ... me!

I had a moment, in the mid-1990s, of trying to get into the Talk of the Town section. I actually succeeded on one occasion, and I thought I had made it. Of course, I hadn't, and all my subsequent attempts to get anywhere in that section, or any section, of the magazine, fizzled. There was one piece in particular that I spent a lot of time on, and that seemed so right for the section, to me. Of course, that was the piece that was not only not published, but was basically the end of my "relationship" with the magazine: The relevant editor simply stopped returning my calls. I got the message: Rejected!

It just so happens I still have that piece in my hard drive ... so I sent it to Montandon. And he published it! It's all about a night club singer in a Russian night club in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. I won't say I'm proud of it, but I couldn't be happier that it has, finally, found a home, a mere decade after the fact. At the moment it's the second item on The Silence of the City, "Nighclubbing: A Big Starr In Little Odessa." But you should check out as many of the pieces on the site as you can. It's all really cool stuff. My hat is off to Montandon...

Update (August 26): Montandon talked about the site earlier this week on Leonard Lopate's show on WNYC; you can listen to it here. Lopate's other guest in the segment is Jon Friedman, host of The Rejection Show, which I wasn't familiar with but sounds pretty interesting. As I understand it, The Rejection Show has been done live at Mo Pitkins (site of the one and only New York City reading in support of Letters from New Orleans, as I'm sure you'll recall) on Tuesday nights, but will next appear at the Spiegeltent in New York (I guess check the show's site if you want updates or details on that). The Lopate segment is quite thoughtful, and recommended.

GC Press Appreciation Moment

2006-08-24T20:07:00.000-04:00

Look at this cool chick reading Letters from New Orleans! You know she's cool because she's got a rare first edition.

This arrived in the mail last week: It's the new Garrett County Press catalog, and obviously it made my day, my weekend, my week, and my month.

You are encouraged to learn about the many fine books published by GC Press. Like Even A Daughter Is Better Than Nothing, by Mykel Board, or The George W. Bush Coloring Book, by Karen Ocker. (Not pictured, sorry, but this is my site, not theirs.) Then you can buy some, and then you can go tell your favorite bookseller to get in the game and stock all of them.

What's Going On With The Dirty Dozen....

2006-08-24T07:44:00.000-04:00

Well this is intereting: The Dirty Dozen Brass Band has done an album, due out on August 29, that is a re-creation of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." This NPR interview indicates that on a certain level it is the band's response to Katrina.

Plus, the title track features CHUCK D!!

Did everyone else know about this already? It certainly sounds like something worth hearing. I'm looking forward to checking it out. Meanwhile, The band's label, Shout! Factory, has the title cut and some others, available for listening via stream, right here.

Update (August 26): The mighty Home of the Groove has conducted, and of course posted, an interview with Dirty Dozen co-founder Roger Lews.

Henry "Red" Allen's live take: 1964

2006-08-23T17:26:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me that maybe somebody had posted the "SJI" segment of the Spike Lee doc on Youtube. No such luck, but there are a few other new clips since last time I searched that site. Like this one:

That's Henry "Red" Allen doing a rather rousing version of the tune on a "a 1964 TV show with the very good British Jazz Band of Alex Welsh," according to the person who posted the clip. It's pretty cool, and one of the more exciting versions I've heard in a while -- there's even a call-and-response moment, and a guitar solo! I'd never heard this version, so I was pretty pleased to come across it. Allen's trumpet work truly sparkles. Recommended.

SJI In The News

2006-08-23T14:32:00.000-04:00

We don't have HBO, so I guess we'll be waiting for the DVD version of When The Levees Broke. I'm looking forward to seeing it at some point, for a lot of reasons, one of which is that it has a "St. James Infirmary" moment. I've already mentioned that, but it comes up again in this week's installment of ... "SJI In The News."

This writeup of Spike Lee's documentary on Bloomberg.com (?), includes this mention:

The film leaves many lasting images: Wynton Marsalis singing a wry version of ``St. James Infirmary,'' residents making boats out of refrigerators, an elderly black woman wrapped in an American flag. Lee, who uses a great deal of archived footage, includes many dead bodies, some swollen to grotesque and almost cartoonish size.

And a review from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram includes this:

Though "Levees" is divided into four parts, roughly running from nervous anticipation yet poor preparation for the storm's arrival, to the troubled and time-consuming recovery, each overlaps the other in a blur of haunting imagery: trumpeter Terence Blanchard's mother breaking down as she visits her home for the first time after the storm; Wynton Marsalis dolefully singing a snatch of "St. James Infirmary"; the dead bodies in the flooded streets.

On a separate note, I've also been hearing from various friends down in N.O. who have seen the film. Here is one comment:

You're so lucky that you are not here for the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I'm sick to my stomach with all the stuff. A person can't escape it. Since everyone was in shock last year, the "tributes" are so overwrought that it seems that people are trying to "cash in". As Bob French said this morning on his program on WWOZ, "there is nothing to celebrate...what happened to New Orleans is disgusting."

Anyway, hope you had a chance to see Spike Lee's work last night (second piece tonight) on HBO. He nailed the tone. I guess it's his maturity as a filmmaker that allowed him to capture the catastrophe and (I think) his understanding of what led up to the events last year.

The Rolling Jelly Series (7): Celebrations & Violence

2006-08-21T08:13:00.000-04:00

[Here is Part 7 of the Rolling Jelly Series.]

There’s a good deal of violence in New Orleans, and it’s not all that unusual for that violence to unfold in what seems like a strange context: during parades. In an incident earlier this year, for example, an 18-year-old guy shot up a funeral parade, wounding one man and killing another, before being shot himself by police.

Jelly Roll Morton and the other musicians Alan Lomax interviewed talked quite a bit about parades, jazz funerals, second lines – and, in fact, the violence that accompanied those events, from time to time.

Let’s begin with what Morton had to say to Lomax (in their 1938 conversations) about jazz funerals around the turn of the 20th century. "Of course, everybody in the city of New Orleans was always organization-minded, which, I guess, the world knows,” he told Lomax. “A dead man always belonged to several organizations.” These “clubs, and, uh, we'll say, secret orders,” were instrumental in organizing and funding the funeral, and rounding up a band to perform. (The musicians in such bands, Morton pointed out, did not make the same kind of money that a piano player such as himself could make.) The dead man would be buried during the day, never at night, and in a vault, never “in the mud.”

As the mourners left the cemetery, “the band would get ready to strike up,” Morton continued. “They'd have a second line behind 'em, well, maybe a couple of blocks long, with broomsticks, baseball bats, and all forms of ammunition, we'd call it, to combat some of their foes when they come to the -- to the dividing line." Then Morton stopped talking and played "Didn't He Ramble."

But Lomax, not surprisingly, wanted to know what happened with the baseball bats.

"Well, on the way home,” Morton said, “everything was sad when they'd be playing the dead march. There would be no fights, no trouble. But on the way back, they had boundary lines. … When they got to a dividing line, which was supposed to be their district, they'd better not cross. If they do, they would be beaten up. And sometimes they were beaten up so bad that they had to go to the hospital. That's the way it always ended in New Orleans."

<-- Part 6. Part 8 -->

More on the Lee doc...

2006-08-20T11:54:00.000-04:00

Another note or two regarding the Spike Lee documentary:

Our friend Cynthia Joyce has a nice piece in Salon about attending the New Orleans premiere:

People had been talking for weeks about how the New Orleans premiere of Spike Lee's much anticipated Hurricane Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke," was sold out, so it was a little eerie when we arrived at New Orleans Arena Wednesday night to find that fewer than half of the 14,000 who'd reportedly snatched up the free tickets actually showed up for the event. Maybe they'd heard there would be no alcohol sold in the arena. Certainly Lee's ambitious film -- sweeping in its scope, emotionally intense and a challenge to watch in one sitting -- could drive just about anyone to drink. It's also possible that all those people who didn't show up don't live here anymore. The new New Orleans can be a pretty lonely town sometimes.

Which is partly why watching a Katrina documentary with thousands of other local residents -- certain to be a gut-wrenching experience -- also carried with it the possibility of catharsis. All summer long, apprehension about the first anniversary of "The Storm" (First? Really? Why does everyone look 10 years older already?) has been steadily building. With so many people still assessing their losses, coming up with a meaningful commemoration can be difficult. I know that 11 months ago I would never have predicted that I might be sitting in the arena across the street from the Superdome -- eating nachos, no less -- eager to watch more footage of what I thought I'd witnessed too much of already....

[Continue reading here. You might have to get past an ad to get to the piece, but it's worth it.]

Also, here's an interview with Lee on NPR's "News & Notes."

SJI In The News

2006-08-17T16:03:00.000-04:00

Most of the news mentions of "SJI" lately continue to be in Van Morrison concert reviews and previous. Enough already!

There's one non-Morrison related bit, though, from Dave Walker's Times-Picayune review of the Spike Lee documentary When The Levees Broke, a four-hour production to air on HBO:

The heart of Act One is a sequence in which schoolboy Glenn Hall III plays "St. James Infirmary" on his horn to accompany footage of people wading out of their neighborhoods, then Wynton Marsalis sings it.

Of course I already wanted to see this documentary ... but now it's mandatory.

(Thanks to GK and Morris.)

Chicago's Historic King Drive

2006-08-14T14:46:00.000-04:00

SV102721
Originally uploaded by deltasly101.

A recent addition to the MLK BLVD pool: Flickr contributor deltasly101 has an excellent set called Historic King Drive, revealing "some of the greatest architecture in Chicago." This particular shot that I've chosen to post here is not exactly representative, but I happened to love the colors. Anyway his set is great, check it out.

The Rolling Jelly Series (6):

2006-08-14T12:02:00.000-04:00

[Here is Part 6 of the Rolling Jelly Series.]

So since I devoted the last installment of the Rolling Jelly Series to defending New Orleans from accusations that it’s somehow an unusually segregated or racially tense place, it’s only fair to parse some of Alan Lomax’s interviews for evidence of, yes, racial tension.

I’m going to skip Morton’s comments on these matters, as they’ve been picked over by others. I’m also more interested in Lomax's 1949 interviews with other musicians, because you might think that 40 or 50 years after the period the men are discussing, they could be a little more open. But the interesting thing here is how careful they are. You have to listen between the lines, for the good, for the bad, and for the just plain mysterious nature of racial relations among musicians and the members of their audiences.

Lomax asked Leonard Bechet: “What kind of man was Bolden? Personally?

“Personally,” Bechet offered, “he was a light-brown skinned man, you know?”

In another interview, Lomax asked Albert Glenny: “What kind of a fellow was Bolden?”

“He was about my color,” Glenny replied, before adding: “About as tall as me.”

So, let’s just say race is something these guys were aware of. Anyway, Bechet made this interesting comment when explaining to Lomax what his brother (Sidney, of course) got out of playing in front of various kinds of audiences and with various kinds of musicians, some Creole, some black. “You have to play real hard, when you play for negroes,” he said. “Ya understand? You got to play hard, you got to go some. To avoid any criticism. If you happen to be a little different from them, you got to come up to the mark. You gain that drive … These people, ya understand, they play like they’re killing themselves.”

Interestingly, he also called that playing style “more artificial.” But for whatever reason Lomax didn’t pick up on that comment, and Bechet was never given a chance to explain what that he meant. Too bad.

Anyway, a recurring theme is conflict between “nice” Creole music, and the music of the rougher “other side” -- jazz. In time, the Creole musicians joined into the hotter music, of course, and one of Lomax’s interviewees said, rather sweetly, that now jazz would help straighten out “misunderstanding among the races.”

I’m more inclined to endorse a comment Bechet made, talking more strictly about the musical context, of what it meant when those different players got together, and what they created: “Ya understand -- like wild.” That sounds right. Like wild.

<-- Part 5. Part 7 -->

SJI In The News

2006-08-08T10:33:00.000-04:00

Van Morrison hogs the "SJI" news roundup this week. The Kansas City Star article about him mentioned las week is reprinted in The Mercury News, and in somewhat truncated form in The Journal News (of New York State). And a concert review in the Philadelphia Inquirer said Morrison's "heart obviously belonged to oldies like the New Orleans funeral march 'St. James Infirmary.'"

And a sort of weird little writeup in The Herald (UK) on the Ediburgh Jazz Festival includes this note: "Over in George Square, the Sydney Zenith Jazz Band delighted a packed Spiegeltent with their own brand of trad, and proved that there's still life in such old warhorses as 'My Gal Sal' and 'St. James Infirmary'."

Mayhem, before and after

2006-08-08T10:04:00.000-04:00

Perhaps the most memorable violent crime to occur in New Orleans during our years there was the car-wash assault. It happened at a car wash on Louisiana that we used to drive by all the timie, and it happened while it was still light out. Three guys with assault rifles -- assault rifles! -- went after two others guys, apparently trying to avenge an earlier murder.

The quintessentially New Orleans twist is that the two guys they shot were, in fact, the wrong guys. They had nothing to do with that murder. They were both seriously wounded, but survived.

This attack was captured on videotape by surveillance cameras, and was quite a sensation on the local news.

The T-P says today that one of the shooters just got a 10-year sentence. That seems rather light to me, given the circumstances (and the paper adds that he is a "multiple offender," but I don't know the details there). At least they managed to arrest the three shooters. That's something.

Anyway, if you happened to miss it, the Times ran a good story the other day about the drug-and-violence problems of post-Katrina New Orleans; here it is reprinted in another paper.

The drug trade in New Orleans is flourishing again, after its dealers, who evacuated to the regional drug hub of Houston, forged closer ties to major suppliers from the Mexican and Colombian cartels. They have since brought back drugs to New Orleans in far larger shipments than before, as the seized truck illustrates, essentially creating violent distribution gangs now spread over a much bigger area.

The Rolling Jelly Series (5): Free, easy New Orleans

2006-08-07T13:00:00.000-04:00

[Here is Part 5 of the Rolling Jelly Series.]

New Orleans at the turn of the 20th Century was, as Jelly Roll Morton described it to Alan Lomax, "a free and easy place. Everybody got along just the same.” Perhaps, in the wake of Katrina, that sounds quite different from the modern New Orleans, which many have portrayed as a city of shameful divisions, its good-time façade concealing awful racial tensions and poverty. But as I’ve said elsewhere, I think a lot of that kind of commentary was motivated by the simple urge to project such problems onto one, distant place, rather than the deal with the extent to which the same issues bedevil every city in contemporary America.

“There wasn't no certain neighborhood for nobody to live in, only with the St. Charles Avenue district, which is considered the millionaire district," Morton said of his years in New Orleans, and there is something in this observation that holds true, in my opinion, a century later. I remember reading a certain lefty journalist railing about how the Lower Garden District should be converted into a mixed area as New Orleans rebuilds. If you look at the actual data you will learn that it was already a mixed area when Katrina hit. More mixed in terms of race and class groupings, I dare say, than the neighborhoods your typical lefty journalists inhabit. The problem with New Orleans was not that it had hidden away a few terrible pockets of poverty out of sight in a mostly affluent city. New Orleans was a largely poor-to-working-class city, with one or two pockets of affluence – like the “millionaire district” a bit further upriver on St. Charles. That little part of town, the place Morton referred to, is also the place where a handful of paranoid rich people called in private security commandos to defend their valuables after Katrina.

"Everybody just went anyplace they wanted,” Morton told Lomax. “Many times you would see some of those St. Charles Avenue bunch right in one of those honky tonks. They called theirselves slumming, I guess, but they was there, just the same. Nudging elbows with all the big bums."

Morton was glossing race and class ugliness of course, and I’d be doing the same if I pretended there were no problems. There were problems. But I believe in a world that’s not either/or, but both. New Orleans was both a free and easy place, and a troubled one. It was both a place where everybody just went anyplace they wanted – and a place where there were some pretty significant exceptions to that rule. In other words, the New Orleans Morton talked about sounds familiar, to me.

<-- Part 4. Part 6 -->

Blogger dispatch from Satchmo Festival

2006-08-06T08:31:00.000-04:00

This morning I came upon this brief, recent dispatch from the blog Pints of Drivel, about the Satchmo Fest in N.O. An excerpt:

Early this afternoon, the leader of some brass band asked the crowd, “how many of you are local?” Over half the crowd raised their hands. “Did I say local,” he said, “I meant loco. But there’s no difference, you’ve got to be crazy to be here.” The crowd went nuts. “That’s right, we’re back!” he said.

The writer goes on to mention Trombone Shorty's set, which concluded with, yes, "SJI." He also cites Letters from N.O., which is always exciting and gratifying.

SJI In The News

2006-08-01T06:25:00.000-04:00

Two items this week.

In The Kansas City Star, John Mark Eberhart writes about Van Morrison: "Another reason for Morrison’s creative longevity may be his devotion to the arts. He has released four albums in the last five years, writing songs that draw on media ranging from films ('Just Like Greta') to folk ballads ('St. James Infirmary') to country music."

And in the Times-Picayune, Dave Walker (no relation, but a friend of ours) has a piece about two upcoming N.O. documentaries, both being promoted at a TV critics event out in Hollywood. Irvin Mayfield was there in connection with the publicity efforts for one of the projects. Walker relates:

Mayfield addressed the reluctant-evacuee question -- still baffling to a lot of nonresidents -- with a personal revelation.

"My father was a victim of drowning due to Hurricane Katrina," he said, to a suddenly airless room. "There was something like 8 to 9 feet of water in the street where he was.

"He didn't want to leave. It was a major evacuation. My mother left, and she talked to my dad and said he should leave. And he was just like a lot of people in the city (who said), 'And go where? To do what? And why?'

"I still get responses (from) people saying, 'Do you know what? I'd rather stay in my house with enough peanut butter and water, and get on my second floor and watch the water go for two months, than go back to Houston or Baton Rouge or experience what I experienced in other places.' "

Then Mayfield, who'd packed his trumpet for this trip west, closed the session with a solo rendition of "St. James Infirmary Blues."

The Rolling Jelly Series (4): Sartorial Matters

2006-07-31T07:40:00.000-04:00

[ Here is Part 4 of the Rolling Jelly Series.]

In an earlier post I touched on some of the sartorial matters relating to "St. James Infirmary." And at various points in his conversations with Alan Lomax, Jelly Roll Morton had a thing or two to say on the subject of style. It's clear Morton had a sense of style himself: Lomax describes him showing up for their 1938 interview sessions in gold rings, a sharp suit, and a diamond "set in gold in his front incisor."

In his young New Orleans days, Morton professes, he always wore "a Stetson hat and a pair of Edwin Clapp shoes." That earlier post was basically about Stetsons. Interestingly, Edwin Clapp shoes are mentioned in some versions of "SJI," but I've learned very little about the company, or brand. (If you know something, speak up!)

Morton also goes into an excellent breakdown of tough-guy -- gangsta? -- style. "All those boys in New Orleans dressed very well," he observes, although he seems not to be particularly impressed by certain trends. He says, for example, the red flannel undershirt was a real status marker in this crowd, and certain ladies were impressed by it -- but Morton seems to find it silly, and to find the women who were impressed by it to be not worth bothering with. Also:

They all had the real tight trousers, those days. When they'd get into their trousers, they'd fit 'em like a sausage. ... I'm telling you, it was very, very seldom that you could really button the top of a person's trousers. .. And they had suspenders and -- of course, they didn't really need any suspenders because they was so tight fitting. And it was one of the fads that they would take on suspender down, as they would walk along with a walk that they had adopted from the river, which they called "shooting the agate."

Lomax tries to get a little more detail on what that means. Morton does his best: "It was a kind of a very mosey walk, with holding two fingers down, one finger on each hand ... the index finger ... With the arms stiffed out, you know, especially when they would be standing."

While Morton went for the Edwin Clapp shoes, some of these "tough babies" preferred "what they call St. Louis flats and the Chicago flats."

These shoes were made with the cork soles on 'em and no heels and would turn up in the front. A lot of times they would have different designs in the toes of the shoes, such as gamblers' designs, such maybe a club, or a diamond, a heart, or a spade. I have heard later on that even some of 'em had made arrangements to have some kind of electric light bulbs in the shoes with a battery in their pocket, and when they would get around some Jane or something that was kind of simple, and they could make her -- as they call making 'em -- why they'd press a button in their pocket and light up the little bitty bulb in the toe of their shoes.

Lomax seems to have a little trouble believing this. In fact, he revisited the subject in 1949, with some of the musicians he interviewed later, who were contemporaries of Morton's. In a conversation with Albert Glenny and Leonard Bechet, he brought up "sporting life" style. Neither man really seemed interested in the subject, but it's clear even from there dismissive comments -- about silk shirts or the "funny shoes" that "turned up" that some of the tastelessly flashy men wore -- that Morton wasn't all wrong.

Later, when Lomax asked whether Buddy Bolden ever wore his shirt open with a red undershirt showing, Glenny denied it. "Oh no," he said. "Well, I ain't gonna say that, because I knew him better. ... I used to drink with him and play with him, and have a good time with him, myself." Then he laughed.

<-- Part 3. Part 5 -->

Q&A: Barry Lee Pearson, on African-American ballads...

2006-07-28T11:00:00.000-04:00

Barry Lee Pearson has been teaching a course on ballads and folk songs at the University of Maryland for about 30 years, and a course on blues songs for almost as long. He’s also written a number of books, and overseen several CD compilations, including the recent “Classic African-American Ballads.” (It includes the Snooks Eaglin version of "SJI.")

As he writes in the accompanying notes, that collection’s goal is "to reacquaint the listener with a relatively neglected body of African-American folksong." He draws a distinction between these "story songs" and the blues, and defines the ballad in this context as "a song that tells a story, comes in short verses (with or without a refrain), and is sung to a short, repeated melody."

Most of the selections are African-American compositions; "St. James Infirmary" is one of four that are "adopted from British traditions." (The others are "The Gallis Pole," "Mouse on the Hill," and "Stewball.") Pearson writes that the heyday of the African-American ballad was the period from 1885 to 1925, an era of black migration from the rural South to cities from St. Louis to New York. He goes on to explain other factors that led to the neglect of these ballads as a particular form: many were covered and reworked by white singers, and many scholars were put off by "the lack of a cohesive chronological storyline ... misread[ing] improvisation as forgetfulness or confusion." But in Pearson's view, one of the great traits of these ballads is the way individual singers altered them.

Barry Lee Pearson was kind enough to spend some time on the phone recently, answering a few questions I had. A lightly edited transcript of that conversation follows.

Did you have specific songs in mind at the beginning of the process of putting this together?

I approached Smithsonian Folkways, wanting to do a ballads CD. African-American ballads, while they were kind of central to folk-song scholarship thirty or forty years ago, have kind of fallen by the wayside as people have become focused on blues. My constraint was that I essentially had to use the Smithsonian folkways catalog, so what I wound up using was different than some of my initial ideas.

And was “St. James Infirmary” on the list from the beginning?

I have to admit when I started I was probably thinking more of African-American compositions. But the more I thought about it, I realized it was more important to do a representation of the songs that were in the African-American repertoire. “St. James Infirmary” was strongly an African-American song, even though its earliest roots came from Britain. It was adapted so much by African-Americans. As soon as it got localized – perhaps in New Orleans – and especially after the Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong versions, big hit versions, it really resonated with the African-American community.

I first heard John Cephas sing it, back in the 1980s. It was so central to his repertoire, that song used to tear him up on stage, his version was so soulful.

I liked what you had to say in the liner notes about how some scholars would say such-and-such doesn’t make narrative sense, so that’s a problem. But those weren’t errors, it was a different context.

It’s interesting to me, the more I work on this. There’s a lot of interesting transitions from ballads to blues, from the Anglo European perspective to the African-American perspective, and the aesthetics of what constitutes a good song. But it’s pretty clear to me from the earliest writings that Anglo Europeans or white Americans did on African-American music, that they really had very little understanding of the concept of improvisation, or of suiting a song to the context. They’d always be asking people, “Where’d you learn that song? How’d you learn a song about what’s happening now?”

It doesn’t mean there wasn’t improvisation in European songs as well. But African-American tradition was so directed to group participation, and the event, it put a high premium and value on being able to come up with your own version of the song that suited the occasion. Especially for dancing audiences, being able to keep the song going as long as you could -- people wanted that.

I guess the other factor is the legal system: Someone just claims the writing credit under the law, whatever the tradition.

It’s a problem that you run into all the time. In those days, that’s just what you did, until someone called you out. For a lot of these songs, you’ll find that they have hundreds of copyright applicants. And a lot of people would claim a song because it really was their version – like “John Henry,” people would say “Yeah, I wrote that, that’s my way of doing it.” The legal system is one thing, and what happens in a tradition is another.

Clearly storytelling in song, the folk tradition, goes back quite a ways. Is that something that black musicians began doing in the context of the United States, or were they drawing on a different African narrative tradition?

African narrative songs are a little bit different. They’re a lot like what you might think of in European tradition as epic songs – really long, long narratives. There’s hundreds and hundreds of those throughout Africa.

The ballad has specific characteristics: the short verse, sung to the repeated melody, and coming in a specific stanza format. As far as I’m concerned, despite the fact that most blues artists will say a blues song tells a story, it’s a very different type of story. It’s more like a person thinking about something out loud. In other words, in a ballad, you’re going to have actions occurring. Often somebody gets killed. In a blues song, a person’s going to threaten to kill somebody if they don’t get right. But with some exceptions, it doesn’t occur. It’s a person thinking about what might happen in the future, not a straightforward description, “Here’s what happened.”

Also you’ll find a sort of more cause-and-effect format in a lot of ballads, like “Stagolee.” And the blues songs, because it’s a much more ritualistic form, it’s designed for people to think about the situation they’re in, and maybe offer potential directions – you might change, I might change – that’s where a blues song is going to end. In the ballads you have a narrative that describes something that occurred.

Does the ballad have a geographic home base, as people link Mississippi to the blues, and New Orleans to jazz?

It’s an interesting question, because you find ballads in a lot of places. Many of them are urban songs, and if I were to really look at a pathway where the tradition seems to be strongest, it would be along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Louisville, Cincinnati maybe, and then especially St. Louis and Memphis. The river pathway seems to be one of the strongest ways these works were disseminated.

I also think piano players were important. At least at one time, they were the ones creating a lot of these narratives. Like Jelly Roll Morton, in his recordings for Alan Lomax, has one called “The Murder Ballad” –

I just heard that! It’s amazing, it goes on for thirty minutes.

Right. And that indicates to me that this was a format people were familiar with. And you find similar things with some other piano players who are more blues artists. I think this was a tradition, not unique to piano players, but at one point in time they were familiar with this idiom, so they could talk about local events, in a tavern, maybe if it was in Memphis, and a local celebrity or hero got into a scrape or whatever, yeah, they could come up with a song about it.

You also compare the ballad form to rap.

That came about through talking about it in class, especially when hip hop first came along and people complained about how violent it was. I would say, “If you want to hear something violent, listen to some of the Child Ballads.”

The real connection to me would be the connection to urban music, talking about street life, semi-improvised, using a lot of the same themes. I do think there’s a strong correlation.

SJI In The News

2006-07-25T08:09:00.000-04:00

A new concert series at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium (in Columbus, Ohio) debuted this past Friday night. The series is called "JazZoo." The theme of the first concert: "A Night In New Orleans."

Unfortunately, the artistic director (and singer and trumpet player) of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, Byron Stripling, "has been ill," according to The Columbus Dispatch, and had to be temporarily replaced at the last minute. "While it wasn't a great concert," the paper relates, "the musicians worked hard and salvaged the evening with some inspired playing."

One of the songs performed was, yes, "St. James Infirmary." According to the review, this number was "dedicated to Stripling."

You know, as much as love "SJI," if I were ill, I don't think this particular song, with its various ruminations on death and funeral arrangements, is the first thing I'd want dedicated to me.

Chair

2006-07-22T10:09:00.000-04:00

Couldn't resist trying out this clever Warholizer tool. Fun! This is one of the MLK BLVD pix, and with this treatment actually sort of reminds me of the Warhol electric chairs. Though of course he wasn't using colors like this at the time.

Gamblers, blues, and government revenue streams

2006-07-22T08:01:00.000-04:00

From the Times-Picayune:

Louisiana's video poker revenue is up 17 percent even though there are 714 fewer machines in operation than before Hurricane Katrina struck....

Video poker revenue is up 9 percent in Plaquemines Parish, 50 percent in Jefferson Parish and more than 60 percent in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes. Dry parts of these parishes now shelter most of their pre-storm population, plus scores of recovery workers and locals displaced from Katrina's strike zone ...
In Orleans Parish, barely half the 1,670 pre-Katrina machines are running these days, and revenue is down 40 percent. St. Bernard Parish video poker revenue is down 83 percent, with most of its machines out of commission.

Seven for the Ladies...

2006-07-19T10:35:00.000-04:00

Got an interesting reader question, from a jazz singer down in D.C. who apparently prefers to remain anonymous. She asked about versions of "St. James Infirmary" sung by women. There are a handful. First (as she notes) lots of people mention the Janis Joplin version, although that's one that for whatever reason I've not personally gotten hold of. But here are the others that I do know about and have heard:

1. The oldest, perhaps, is Mattie Hite's "St. Joe's Infirmary (Those Gambler's Blues)." It's very earthy and very bluesy, and might be my favorite vocal rendition by a woman. Recorded in 1930, it appears on a CD with the less-than-imaginative title Female Blues Singers, Volume 9. There are also a number of nice tracks on that disc by a singer named Edmonia Henderson.

2. I think the most recent version with a woman on vocals is the Isobel Campbell/Mark Lanegan take, which I wrote about earlier this year.

3. I would guess that the weirdest version sung by a woman was Lily Tomlin's performance of the song on Saturday Night Live, in 1975, accompanied by men wearing nurse costumes. Here is a transcript of that inexplicable sketch.

4. "Marvalous" Marva Wright did a version of "SJI" on her 1990 album, Heartbreakin' Woman. It's a very melodramatic, blues-soaked take.

5. I'm a fan of Ingrid Lucia and the Flying Neutrinos, who we saw live once or twice back when we lived in N.O. Her rendition of the song appears on the album Live From New Orleans. It's a fun one for New Orleans music fans because it's a duet with James Andrews, and they mess around with lyrics in ways that are corny yet pleasing. (I'm pretty sure Andrews and Lucia first met as street musicians.) It's not a breakthrough version in any way, but it has a nice feeling to it, and inspires nice memories... It's available on iTunes or, if that's not your kind of thing, it also happens to be one of the samples available here. See her live if you ever get the chance.

6. Another interesting version with female vocals, and a sort of modern, electronic-ish musical approach, is the one by Snakefarm, on the 1999 album Songs From My Funeral. I'm personally not crazy about it, but some people like it.

7. Finally, there's Della Reese's take, from a 1959 album called The Story of The Blues. Of the various women-sung versions, this one does happen to have some notable lyrical adjustments. After locating us in the infirmary, with her man stretched on the table, covered in white, she sings:

Though he treated me mean and lowdown,
Somehow I didn't care.
My soul is sick and weary,
And I hope we'll meet again up there.

Empowering? Well, no. But I don't think that particular lyrical riff appears in any other version I know.

In another, and to me, at least, more satisfying change, she includes but nicely tweaks the funeral-garb request, asking to buried in "the new look, with a velvet coat and a real-gone hat," as well as a 20-carat diamond ring. Nice.

"St. James Infirmary," performed by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan

"St. James Infirmary," performed by Marva Wright.

"St. James Infirmary," performed by Ingrid Lucia & The Flying Neutrinos (with James Andrews)

"St. James Infirmary," performed by Della Reese

SJI In The News

2006-07-18T11:45:00.000-04:00

Three mentions of "SJI" in the news this week.

Two are in reviews of the Chris Thomas King record, Rise. Jay N. Miller of The Patriot Ledger writes that the album includes "hoary old chestnuts like 'St. James Infirmary,' which has never sounded more affecting than it does here, its dark lyrics achieving a resonance beyond words." (Uh, no comment.) Tom Henry of the Toledo Blade says Thomas's take on the song is "majestic."

The third mention is in a Boston Today blip about the Boston Grammar School Jazz Band playing in the park: "Traditional New Orleans-style jazz with a lively, up-tempo feel is the band's forte, with well-known favourites such as 'You Rascal You,' 'When The Saints Go Marching In' ... [and] 'St James Infirmary Blues,' " etc. This is not Boston, Mass., by the way -- it's a Boston in the U.K., about 120 miles north of London.

See the things you learn here?

The Rolling Jelly Series (3): More On Songwriting

2006-07-18T10:13:00.000-04:00

In the first -- and admittedly way too long -- installment of the Rolling Jelly series, I recounted some of what Jelly Roll Morton had to say about authorship and intellectual property issues. There is one footnote on that from Alan Lomax's 1949 interviews with other New Orleans musicians who knew Morton and his mileu.

Lomax asked Johnny St. Cyr about Morton's songwriting. St. Cyr says that, yes, Morton wrote "Wolverine" and was playing it way back in 1906, well before it was published, as well as "Whining Boy." Lomax also asked about "Tiger Rag:" “Jelly Roll seaid that he developed that tune.”

St. Cyr replied a little evasively that the Dixieland Jazz Band and was the first outfit he heard playing it, supposed to be there number. Lomax pursued this and St. Cyr said:

Well, I’ll tell ya. Those boys, they learned their instruments down here, and they picked up pretty much, their numbers from parts from differetn numbers down here, made up thee tunes. That Tiger Rag was nobody’s particular melody. It was a combination of several different melodies they picked up and just put ‘em together.

Kind of remind me off Blind Willie McTell explaining that for "Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues," which he suggested he'd written over a few-year period, "I had to steal music from every which a-way to get it, get it to fit."

<-- Part 2 / Part 4-->

2 Links

2006-07-17T09:22:00.000-04:00

I know you're all on the edge of your seats, waiting for the next installment of the Rolling Jelly series. But while I get my act together on that and deal with some things related to the day job, here are two links of interest.

1. GK sent along this nice Times-Picayune audio-visual feature on the town of Erath, LA, and the citizens grappling with the notion of moving their town to higher ground -- or sticking with the way things are.

2. Mamish, down in N.O., sent along a link to recorded interview with Antoinette K-Doe. She mentions trying to get the anniversary of K-Doe's death turned into a national holiday, as well as the upcoming re-opening of the Mother-In Law in late August. There'll be a party: "Lots of free food. Cash bar." Toward the end there's a discussion of what Ernie did to bring the races together.

Thank you, gentlemen...

The 14-Accordion Version

2006-07-13T07:24:00.000-04:00

Actually maybe it's more than 14 accordions. Maybe it's 18. It's a lot of accordions, is what it is. My favorite podcaster Daniel (you should really hear the sounds in his head) stumbled across a version of "St. James Infirmary" by The Main Squeeze Orchestra, and kindly passed this news along to me. The Main Squeeze Orchestra's site says the group is "the only all-female accordion ensemble in the western world." (Apparently it was organized by some guy who was "plagued with visions of the 18 glossy accordions, the wall of sound, the pigtails" -- which is either a little creepy or a great gimmick. Or both.)

Anyway: The music. One of the MP3s available here is in fact, "SJI." It's a live recording, I think from 2003. Obviously it's an instrumental version, and it's a really good one. The arrangement (um, accordions) has a lovely Eastern European feel, and is highly recommended. It's very Jarmusch, actually, now that I'm listening to it again. I can really imagine one of his characters walking along a deteriorating cityscape, finishing a cigarette, as this plays... Then he ends up at some weird carnival.... And then...

Never mind. Far as I can tell the band doesn't have a CD out as of yet, but here's a schedule of live gigs that I hope will soon be updated. Seems like a band worth seeing.

SJI In The News

2006-07-11T10:46:00.000-04:00

Google News serves up two mentions of "SJI" this week:

First, a writeup in Allaboutjazz.com about a recording of trumpet player Bill Coleman and band performing in Paris in October 1952. (This is the main material on a double CD called The Complete Philips Recordings, which also includes a half-dozen studio numbers.) In that Paris show, the reviewer writes:

Coleman weaves in and out of this vaguely chaotic mise en scène, playing his lovely solos (“St James Infirmary,” “Red Top,” “Royal Garden Blues”), singing blues affably, joking with the audience in good French with an upbeat but cool composure to which a Zen monk could aspire.

Second, another piece about Chris Thomas King's Rise (discussed here earlier), this one from The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Rolling Jelly Series: Places About Town

2006-07-10T13:19:00.000-04:00

One of the things that was interesting to me about listening to the Jelly Roll Morton stuff was his occasional mentions of specific spots in New Orleans. It was because of this, in fact, that I launched yet another Letters From New Orleans new-technology extravaganza: The LfNO Platial map.

Now, originally, I just thought it would be interesting to point to some of the locales that Morton mentions. Then I thought: Hey, I could also point to the locales that I mention, in LfNO!

And so that's what I did: Both. Plus I layered in notations related to the spinoff "MLK BLVD" project, and this spinoff, the "SJI" obsession Web site you are reading right now.

One last thing: Morton tells an impressive story about witnessing a killing at Jackson Hall, during a Buddy Bolden gig. He says Jackson Hall is in the Garden District, and puts it at the cover of Jackson and Franklin. Well, these days, Jackson and Franklin are in different parts of town and don't cross. If you have any ideas whatsoever as to where this spot may have been, let me know...

<-- Part 1 // Part 3 -->

The Fretboard Journal

2006-07-07T13:16:00.000-04:00

The new issue of The Fretboard Journal arrived the other day. If you're a musician, a guitar player for example, you should really check this out. (I'm actually not a musician, but even I find it interesting, and besides the publisher, Jason Verlinde, is a nice guy, who liked LfNO.)

I don't know how they're pulling off such a posh printing job, it's really quite a beautiful publication. For me the highlight of this, the second issue, is a photo essay on guitar string packaging. I love that kind of thing, and some of the old packages featured are delightful.

Also of interest to me was a nicely done review of a new complete-works Django Reinhardt. And of interest to many, I believe, will be the cover story, on Neko Case. Apart from being one of the most celebrated figures in the indie-ish music world at the moment, she's also a collector of tenor guitars.

Oh, and they have a blog as well .

"Let Her Go" (revisited)

2006-07-06T07:45:00.000-04:00

Following my post the other day about "Let her go" popping up in "Ascension Day" (on the Costello/Toussaint album The River In Reverse), an interesting note arrived from Paul Stamler.

He says that the line "Let her go, let her go" is "not native to the song 'St. James Infirmary.' Rather, it is a graft, from an old song which may be of Irish origin. It's variously known as 'Go and Leave Me If You Wish To,' 'Dear Companion,' or 'Fond Affection,' and it's a song of lost love (lost as in an abandoned lover, not lost to death). It's really a family of songs, just as 'St. James' Hospital/Infirmary' is, with somewhat fluid boundaries. It's also a line that floats into a few other songs, including 'Sweet Heaven.'" He points me to the "Traditional Ballad Index," associated with the folklore department of California State University, Fresno, where there is an entry on "Dear Companion."

I remain as confident as I can be, without having any access to Costello himself, that it's "St. James Infirmary" he was quoting in "Ascension Day." But I am extremely interested in the general thread that Mr. Stamler has pointed me toward here. While I hadn't really thought about it, the "Let her go" stuff is not in "The Unfortunate Rake," so it must have been added in at some point before "St. James Infirmary" emerged. I don't have direct familiarity with any of the songs cited in the entry that Mr. Stamler pointed me to, but now I have a new wish list of tunes to track down and listen to.

I'll keep you posted, of course.

Thanks, Mr. Stamler...

SJI In The News

2006-07-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

Only one mention of "St. James Infirmary" was found this week by Google News Alerts. It's a review of the new Chris Thomas King album, by Gerald M. Gay in the Arizona Daily Star.

Blending heartfelt original blues ballads with traditional material, "Rise" reads almost like a storybook, taking listeners from the days following Katrina to the eventual acceptance and recovery process....

Mixed in with King's own tracks are traditional melodies — many made famous by one of New Orleans' most popular musicians, Louis Armstrong. Songs like the solemn "St. James Infirmary" and the upbeat "What a Wonderful World," which finishes out the album, add an old-school New Orleans flavor to the release.

The Rolling Jelly Series: Copyright Issues

2006-07-03T15:33:00.000-04:00

Some months ago I bought Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings. This is an eight-CD set, with two books, in a box that's supposed to look like a piano. Pretty fancy. The material itself has been released in various forms before, many times, for many years. But it was new to me.

I rationalized this expense as a quasi-research item: Hearing Morton talk to Alan Lomax in 1938, about New Orleans in the first fifteen or twenty years of the 20th century, could provide (cough) valuable context for my "St. James Infirmary" project. Of course, Morton never mentions "St. James Infirmary," which was no surprise -- surely somebody would have mentioned it to me by now if he had.

Most of what I'd read about Morton's conversations with Lomax focuses on his racial attitudes, or on some of his wilder claims about his own role in jazz history, or on his identification of "the Spanish tinge" as a vital element in New Orleans jazz. That's all fine, but it wasn't the stuff that caught my attention.

Today I begin a series of posts discussing the things that did catch my attention. I'm thinking I'll try to do this every Monday, in an open-ended, "rolling" fashion, until I'm done.

The first topic is copyright. Obviously, there's a "St. James Infirmary" sub-plot on this, since the evidence is pretty strong that this was basically a traditional song when Joe Primrose (Irving Mills) claimed it in the late 1920s.

Morton's first mention of copyright issues comes relatively early on in his discussions with Lomax. Specifically, he mentions several songs that he wrote around 1905, including "You Can Have It, I Don't Want it," and adds: "Of course, I never got any credit for it," because somebody else claimed it.

Why, Lomax asks, didn't Morton copyright his tunes back then? Morton replies:

Well, I'll tell you why we didn't copyright 'em ... not only me, but a many other. Why the publishers thought they could buy anything they wanted for fifteen, twenty dollars. Well, the fact was that, at that particular time, the sporting houses were all over the country, and you could go in any town. If you was a good piano player, just as soon as you hit town, you had ten jobs waiting for you. So we all made a lot of money, and ten or fifteen or a hundred dollars didn't mean very much to us during those days....

So the publishers, we didn't give 'em anything. So they decided, 'We know a way to get 'em.' So, they -- a lot of publishers -- would come out with tunes, our melodies, and they would steal 'em.

But we kept 'em for our private material. That is to battle each other in battles of music. Battles of music is old, ages old. And of course, if we had the best material, we was considered one of the best men. And of course, the best players always had the best jobs. And the best jobs always meant plenty money.

The subject of publishing comes up a number of times: various songs that were known among musicians to have been written by so-and-so -- but somebody else published it. It's pretty clear that it was a bit of a chaotic time in terms of working out who would get credit for what.

And after all, as much attention as gets focused these days on the transitions of the music business, it's easy to forget the transitions that it has gone through before. In the first decades of the 20th century, who really knew how important publishing rights to various jazz and blues numbers would be? From about 1904 onward Morton was a peripatetic guy, and tells stories of piano battles and other adventures everywhere from Alabama and Mississippi and Texas to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles. It was, no doubt, an economically sound decision to avoid the publishers to keep songs secret to protect the business interests of the traveling piano player in the early 20th century -- economically sound, that is, in the short term.

And there's one other element of Morton's discussions of this issue that's worth note, I think: He never really talks about anything as being "traditional," per se. That is, for any given tune, he pretty much always produces a name of somebody who actually wrote it, whether it's him, or Buddy Bolden, or whoever. In some cases, it seems that Morton is guilty of overly aggressive credit-claiming, too. For instance, he says he composed "Tiger Rag" -- not (as Lomax noted) a very credible authorship claim.

Point is, it seems that it's not that Morton didn't believe in the idea of authorship. It's just that he doesn't seem to take seriously the link between authorship and whoever's name was attached to the published version of the song.

And certainly by the time he sat down to talk to Lomax, Morton seen the way that economics and musical authorship intersect change quite a bit from the days of battling rival piano players in "sporting houses." As Lomax later wrote in Mister Jelly Roll, by the 1920s, Morton was figuring out that "it was more profitable to publish and own music than it was to compose or play it."

Indeed.

Part Two -->

FYI

2006-07-01T09:41:00.000-04:00

Just so you (whoever you are) know, all author proceeds from Letters From New Orleans are still being rediricted to relief/charity efforts in N.O.

Also just so you know, it's not like this adds up to some whopping sums of money, but, you know, every little bit helps.

I hope.

Anyway, the most recent royalty dough came in the other day, and this time that means donations to: New Orleans Legal Assistance, and The New Orleans Kid Camera Project.

Let Her Go...

2006-06-30T06:54:00.000-04:00

A while back, in a post I can't seem to find now, I sang the praises of Allen Toussaint's "Tipitina and Me," which appeared on the Our New Orleans fundraiser CD. I was interested to learn that one of the songs on the much-anticipated Toussaint/Elvis Costello collaboration CD, The River In Reverse (recorded in New Orleans, not long after Katrina), was this very song -- with lyrics added on by Costello. (According to the cover story on Costello & Toussaint in the current No Depression, Costello's adding these lyrics was sort of the ice-breaker to the collaboration.) Most interesting for my purposes is that Costello quasi-quotes "St. James Infirmary," singing at one point, "Let her go, let her go, God bless her...."

This is the only song on the CD I've heard all the way through. I'm a huge Costello fan, and a Toussaint fan, too, but the truth is none of the snippets I've heard from the disc have really caught my attention. And I have to say that, despite my Costello fandom, I find his lyrics here a totally unnecessary tack-on to a beautiful ad moving piece of music. (As you may know, the song is basically "Tipitina," Professor Longhair's famous tune, done in a minor key, a shift that alters things into a mood that somehow captures post-Katrina-ness perfectly, for me anyway.) I was pretty interested in hearing "Ascension Day" because, while I haven't heard anybody else remark on this, I feel I'm able to hear some musical nods to "St. James Infirmary" in "Tipitina and Me." In any case, the full passage goes: "Let her go, let her go, God bless her. She hasn't been gone long enough for me to miss her -- 'cept for every minute of every hour of every when I wish I could possess her."

Come on. Is it just me being a bad mood, or isn't that sort of, you know, terrible?

Maybe the rest of the CD is better. Here's an NPR piece about it. And also just to reiterate: "Tipitina and Me" is fantastic, and you should check it out.

"Tipitina and Me," by Allen Toussaint

"Ascension Day," by Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello

SJI In The News

2006-06-29T07:09:00.000-04:00

Google News sends along three items this week.

First, New Orleans-based Offbeat has a review by Geraldine Wyckoff of the new Chris Thomas King album (mentioned here yesterday), noting its inclusion of "St. James Infirmary."

Second, The Post-Standard (of Syracuse, I believe) has a somewhat cryptic item praising an outfit I'm not familiar with, called Nick Palumbo's Dixieland Update, for helping "keep alive the Bourbon street tradition ... with classics like 'Basin Street Blues" and "St. James Infirmary.'" Okay.

And third and finally: The Mail Tribune: Southern Oregon's News Source, has a writeup on the Elvis Costello and Allen Touissaint collaboration, The River In Reverse.

Costello called Katrina "a fierce-tempered woman — aided by some nincompoops." The hurricane songs make it clear that although the event was an act of God, Costello and Toussaint feel there's plenty of blame for Providence to share with the city of New Orleans, Louisiana officials and the Bush ("Heckuva job, Brownie") Administration.

Costello's "The River in Reverse" is perhaps the angriest cry in this respect ("There must be something better than this/I don't see how it can get worse").

But the anger strives for nothing if not redemption, as in the anthemic "Ascension Day," a minor key take-off on Professor Longhair's "Tipitina" by way of "St. James Infirmary."

Actually that characterization at the end is sort of an exaggeration, but I'll have more on that tomorrow.

[Self-serving PS: Allaboutjazz.com has some kind words about Letters From New Orleans. Thanks!]

New version review: Chris Thomas King

2006-06-28T15:54:00.000-04:00

What I assume to be the very latest new version of "St. James Infirmary" appears on the album Rise (official release date: yesterday), by Chris Thomas King. King is probably most famous for his role in the film "O Brother Where Out Thou?" but in Louisiana he's fairly well known for his actual occupation: blues musician. More about his background here. I hadn't heard this, but evidently he lost a home and recording studio Uptown; this new record is a post-Katrina effort.

The best thing about his mostly traditional take on "St. James Infirmary" is his revision of the singer's request to be decked out with a "20-dollar gold piece on watch chain" at his funeral (so they boys will know he died standin' pat). Thomas's character asks, instead, for "an iced-up crown medallion on my neck chain." Thomas has experimented with hip hop, and of course of "iced-up" is basically rap slang for diamond-encrusted -- a nice updating.

Beyond that: I enjoyed Thomas's vocal delivery here, but I'm really not a fan of his guitar playing. And being a little pressed for time, I'm going to leave it at that.

"St. James Infirmary," by Chris Thomas King.

Tragicommerce

2006-06-25T07:31:00.000-04:00

Well here's a rare crossover: The day job column today has a New Orleans connection. It's about Da Mayor In Your Pocket, mentioned here previously. No-registration-required link if you want to read it.

Big Al Carson's Take

2006-06-22T14:22:00.000-04:00

Got a nice surprise from Ashley Morris the other day: Another version of "SJI" that I didn't own. It's by The Magnificent Sevenths featuring Big Al Carson. (Carson, Mr. Morris says, has a regular gig at the Funky Pirate on Bourbon Street.)

Mr. Morris accurately describes the version as: "Not revolutionary, but not bad." At nearly six minutes, it's leisurely, bluesy, and a little melodramatic.

Carson opts for the version of the lyrics in which the singer beholds his deceased lover and declares that he wishes "it were me instead." (Bobby Bland does it this way, for example) As I've said elsewhere, this is more narratively rational than the lyrics as Louis Armstrong and others deliver them -- but it's also not as interesting. I'm partial to those versions in which the singer beholds his late beloved and declares that she'll "never find another man like me." It's a strange thought (insofar as she's dead, and presumably not looking to play the field), but a magic one. Lots of songs are narratively rational, few have that compelling mystery.

Anyway, what doesn't make narrative sense in the rational version is why the singer at one point or another starts talking about his wishes for his own funeral. Or it least it usually doesn't make sense to me.

This time, however, Carson is so wound up and wailingly insistent -- he spends almost the entire final minute drawing out these lines: "I wish it were me, it were me lying on that cold white table, my skin so cold so fair, it were meeeeeee ... iiiinnnnnn ... steaaaaaaaaaaaaad!" -- that it gave me pause.

I mean, this guy sounds like he really does wish it were him instead. He sounds like he's consumed with the idea. Like he can't stop thinking about it. Like maybe he won't be able to go on living after delivers that last note, he can't stand it so much.

No wonder he's thinking about his funeral arrangements.

Thanks again, Mr. Morris!

SJI In The News

2006-06-20T07:34:00.000-04:00

Well, I expected a dropoff in "St. James Infirmary" mentions after the first weekly Google News Alert (since the first alert would basically gather every reference in the Google News universe at that moment, and the second alert would only pick up mentions from the past week). But still: That dropoff is pretty severe, with just one mention this week.

A column in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, by staff music critic John Pitcher, recounts a performance by the Eastman Jazz Ensemble (here's the link; see second item), which is associated with the Eastman School of Music. Mr. Pitcher writes:

Eastman has a terrific record of turning out successful jazz musicians. On Monday night, one of the school's most illustrious alums, trumpeter Byron Stripling, joined the Eastman Jazz Ensemble for an exhilarating set. As a trumpeter, Stripling had everything: a fabulous technique, an exquisite sense of phrasing and a tone that was both brilliant and brimming with emotion.

A dynamic and charismatic performer, Stripling also has a powerful and earthy baritone voice, which he put to good use in such standards as "St. James Infirmary."

Not being familiar with Byron Stripling, I did a little search and found his site.

The Snooks version & the ballad context

2006-06-16T09:02:00.000-04:00

Extremely dedicated readers of this site may recall a December 2005 post wherein I did my best to answer a question from reader Klaas T. of Amsterdam. He was looking for an old Snooks Eaglin version, and I was able to point him to the 1959 Folkways record, Snooks Eaglin: New Orleans Street Singer. At the time, all I'd heard of that version was the sample available on the Folkways site.

Turns out that this same recording appears on a new CD called Classic African-American Ballads, which I recently bought and which deserves a moment of consideration. As scholar Barry Lee Pearson explains in the CD booklet, the point of the compilation is "to reacquaint the listener with a relatively neglected body of African-American folksong." He draws a distinction between these "story songs" and the blues, and defines the ballad in this context as "a song that tells a story, comes in short verses (with or without a refrain), and is song to a short, repeated melody."

Most of the selections are African-American compositions; "St. James Infirmary" is one of four that are "adopted from British traditions." (The others are "The Gallis Pole," "Mouse on the Hill," and "Stewball.") Pearson writes that the heyday of the African-American ballad was the period from 1885 to 1925, an era of black migration from the rural South to cities from St. Louis to New York. One of his most interesting observations is this:

Many black ballads, as products of these urban environments, provide glimpses of African-American city life at the turn of the century, but that view is generally from the bottom up, having little to do with the middle class or upper class. In fact, the songs were the bane of the uplift movement because they portrayed lower-class street life and celebrated violence, anti-police sentiments, black-on-black crime, and saloon culture involving pimps, prostitutes, and other characters similar to those celebrated in today's gangster rap.

He goes on to explain other factors that led to the neglect of these ballads as a particular form: many were covered and reworked by white singers, and many scholars were put off by "the lack of a cohesive chronological storyline ... misread[ing] improvisation as forgetfulness or confusion." But in Pearson's view, one of the great traits of these ballads is the way individual singers altered them -- and of course that's one of the themes I bang away at endlessly with "St. James Infirmary."

Pearson also has very interesting notes on many of the individual selections. His bit on "SJI" doesn't have anything that I haven't covered in the thousands of words of I've spilled on the subject, but it's interesting to see parallels with other tunes. It's quite a good collection. But my favorite point is Pearson's comparison of these ballads to contemporary rap:

Looking back one hundred years, we see a form that is remarkably familiar: urban music that combines storytelling and improvisation, focusing on themes of street culture, protest, and violence.

Pearson discussed the CD on NPR not long ago.

Also, the Snooks collection that I cited back in December has since made its way into the land of iTunes, so his version is now available there. It's a good one.

"St. James Infirmary," by Snooks Eaglin

Razed Expectations

2006-06-15T10:18:00.000-04:00

Calliope (Post-Katrina)

I have a really bad feeling about the news that four New Orleans housing projects are now slated for demolition. I don't have any illusions about the problems of the projects, but when I was researching the long piece in LfNO about the Desire projects, I got pretty familiar with the extremely bad history of broken promises about public housing. I won't recap all of that here, but, it's depressing and enraging.

The projects that will be razed are St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete (Magnolia, spawning ground of the Cash Money empire), and Cooper (Calliope, pictured). The HUD honcho is quoted in the T-P saying:

We're making the president's vision a reality with an innovative plan which will reopen nearly half of the city's public housing but also bring about a renaissance in public housing neighborhoods. Rebuilding and revitalizing public housing isn't something that will be done overnight. Our redevelopment represents a major step forward. Sadly, not all residents will be able to return home in the near future.

Sure, sure. Guys like this have been talking about major steps forward for decades. What distresses me about it is that people in public housing, obviously, have few resources, and maybe even fewer advocates. The only politician speaking up for them is William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, probably the least effective elected official in America right now. It seems to me hardly anybody else cares what happens to these people. For all the righteousness and rage in post-Katrina New Orleans, I don't hear a whole lot about making sure the most defenseless citizens aren't victimized and tossed aside yet again.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it'll all work out this time. I certainly don't have any easy solutions. But reading about this just gives me a sinking feeling.

The T-P story did have this bit about the Desire projects, the first updated I've heard.

HUD has run the city's public housing authority since 2002, after years of rampant mismanagement and corruption took its toll on the complexes and their residents.

By late 2005, HANO, directed by a one-person board of commissioners who is appointed by HUD, was making headway in its far-reaching renovation of public housing complexes. Desire and Florida in the 9th Ward were pastel-colored rows of townhouses and shotgun-type homes.

"Katrina made a bad situation worse," Jackson said. "A massive redevelopment effort was under way when the hurricane hit."

Today, Desire -- renamed Abundance Square -- and Florida are vacant, muck-stained neighborhoods. Desire was a Hope IV project, part of a federal grant program that transforms public housing into mixed-income housing.

"The developer of Desire has indicated a strong desire to bring it back online as a development," Keller said. "They are working with the insurer right now to get funds available."

I drove around Desire and Florida in October, last time I was in New Orleans. The pastel-colored housing looked pretty desolate. I'm pretty sure Desire flooded big-time. We'll see if this "strong desire" to do something there ever materializes.

SJI In The News

2006-06-13T15:30:00.000-04:00

Introducing a new and, really, spectacularly absurd feature to this site: "St. James Infirmary In The News." Through the power of Google News Alerts, I now get a weekly digest of links to articles that mention "St. James Infirmary." Starting this week, and continuing until I decide to stop, I bring you the highlights.

The most interesting thing was the passing (and somewhat cryptic) mention in this Chicago Sun Times article that the organizer of the Chicago Blues Festival "uses the fest to educate the public about the music at its roots, creating daily themes ('Drivin' Wheel,' 'St. James Infirmary,' etc.) that reflect some aspect of blues history." And indeed a peek at the festival's schedule shows that the final day was titled "St. James Infirmary." Unfortunately, that was last Sunday, so ... I don't know, looking at the schedule, quite what it means. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail!

Elsewhere: A column in the West Island Chronicle notes the "Unfortunate Rake" (antecedent of "Streets of Laredo" and "SJI") as an example of an Irish folk song transported to America.

In the 19th century, the Irish were poor. Because they were poor, they joined the British army. And the British army would allow only a very few of them to marry. So, with their miserly army pay, the rest had to seek out stunningly cheap prostitutes. That's what led to a song, The Unfortunate Rake, about a young man dying of venereal disease. And, when their enlistments were over, some Irish carried that song to America where they found unskilled work as cowboys. (Maybe it was the morality of America that made them clean the song up so their cowboy died of gunshot wounds [in "Streets of Laredo"].)

But you can't keep a sexually active man down. Before long, the song popped up as a piece of New Orleans blues called St. James Infirmary; and the hero was dying of venereal disease again.

Actually I'm not so sure about some of the assertions made there about the song(s), but still. Here's the piece.

& Finally: Nashville City Paper notes that "SJI" appears on the new CD Guaranteed Absolutely Pure, by the Jake Leg Stompers. . . . A Boston Phoenix writer says: "The small and striking singer Holly Brewer [possibly of Humanwine, per minimal Web research] looks like a star waiting to happen, particularly after the chilling version of 'St. James Infirmary' I saw her do at Shaun Wortis and Suzi Lee's Mardi Gras show this year." . . . A writeup of an Arlo Guthrie performance refers to SJI as "Cisco Huston's 'St. James Infirmary,' an instrumental honky-tonk tune he learned from the stack of 78 rpm records his father kept in the basement." (I don't know much about Cisco Huston, but I'm pretty confident that "SJI" is not his tune; it must be a version Woody Guthrie happened to own, right?) . . . . A Guthrie performance is also written up in The Albany Times Union ... A Richmond Times-Dispatch feature basically about Jazz Fest reports that Mahogany Brass Band singer/trumpeter Brice Miller "struggled to control his emotions during a joyous romp through classics such as 'Basin Street Blues' and 'St. James Infirmary,' in which he compared stricken New Orleans to his lover 'laid out on that long white table.'" . . . And another Jazz Fest writeup, in All About Jazz, includes this among the highlights:

Steve Turre, guesting with local trombonist Troy 'Trombone Shorty' Andrews, brought stellar guidance to the young band, updating a wild sound on classic songs such as 'St. James Infirmary'. In evening performances around the city, Turre, possibly inspired by a tour of the flooded areas, blasted emotional depth through his trombone at Snug Harbor and made his signature conch shells cry and moan with a young band of future jazz stars from the University of New Orleans. .... Donald Harrison, nicknamed 'Mister Cool Breeze' by none other than Shirley Horn, played his signature tune with gusto; he was joined onstage by George Coleman, blowing a fat saxophone on a more traditional version of 'St. James Infirmary.'

Wait a minute -- I'm Mr. Cool Breeze! Anyway, that's it for this week... I'm guessing this was an unusually large number of references. We'll see. Meanwhile: Now you're up to date.

Bass, How Low Can You Go?

2006-06-09T07:22:00.000-04:00

From The Guardian:

From Keane to Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Queens of the Stone Age side-project Eagles of Death Metal to the revered fem-rock trio Sleater-Kinney, rock is being, if you will, de-bassed. ... Meanwhile, most of those who operate in music's lower registers are hardly making the most of their time. The finger-stretching that once characterised the best bass-playing has all but disappeared: these days, rock's remaining bassists tend to find out what chords the guitarist is playing, memorise what are known as the "root notes" and thrum along. . . .

Here's the article.