Here's a massive collection of versions of The Saint James Infirmary Blues: chunk 1, chunk 2.
When a musician covers a song, the original is always hanging there in the back of the mind of a listener who knows it. Maybe you think the cover does violence to the original, maybe you think the cover twists it around fascinatingly to see something new (and sometimes the original artist agrees; see Dylan on Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower, or Trent Reznor on Johnny Cash's Hurt), maybe it's just a fairly generic exercise in duplication with nothing to really add, intentionally or unintentionally.
But with an "old standard", a tune only attributed to "tradition", there is no ideal original. Not in reality, at least. Perhaps there's a Platonic ideal of the song, somewhere in the universe, and each version of this old standard is another shadow it casts on the wall of the cave in front of us. Some of them are from straight-on angles, on a flat wall. Some of them are from strange angles, on a wall that ripples and changes.**
When I listen to Cab Calloway's familiar version*, then the Animals' psychedelic take, the Ventures' instrumental version**, the beat-focused version by Snakefarm, Dr. John's Touro Infirmary, the White Stripes, Jim Morrison moaning a couple of lines with no help from the rest of the Doors during a live set, Tom Jones, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and more... ...am I starting to see that multidimensional entity that is a story about a dead lover, and a narrator who's more concerned with how they'll look at their funeral than their loss?
The girl on the slab is cold, but so is the man telling the story and calling for another drink.
Or is that the only way he's allowed to even hint at his grief, and celebrate life while he's still got it?
* familiar to me, at least, thanks to the Fleischer Snow White
**which keeps on straying into The House of the Rising Sun for me. Oh I'm goin' down to St. James cathouse/To see my baby there/She's stretched out on a long red bedsheet/So sweet, so cold, so much...
***compare, for instance, the narrative of Infirmary to the narrative of The Unfortuate Rake, a 19th-century song which Infirmary evolved out of.
**** much more discussion of Infirmary can be found on a blog called NO Notes, which was where I found those two pages I started this post with a link to, and where the first version of this post went as a comment.
When a musician covers a song, the original is always hanging there in the back of the mind of a listener who knows it. Maybe you think the cover does violence to the original, maybe you think the cover twists it around fascinatingly to see something new (and sometimes the original artist agrees; see Dylan on Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower, or Trent Reznor on Johnny Cash's Hurt), maybe it's just a fairly generic exercise in duplication with nothing to really add, intentionally or unintentionally.
But with an "old standard", a tune only attributed to "tradition", there is no ideal original. Not in reality, at least. Perhaps there's a Platonic ideal of the song, somewhere in the universe, and each version of this old standard is another shadow it casts on the wall of the cave in front of us. Some of them are from straight-on angles, on a flat wall. Some of them are from strange angles, on a wall that ripples and changes.**
When I listen to Cab Calloway's familiar version*, then the Animals' psychedelic take, the Ventures' instrumental version**, the beat-focused version by Snakefarm, Dr. John's Touro Infirmary, the White Stripes, Jim Morrison moaning a couple of lines with no help from the rest of the Doors during a live set, Tom Jones, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and more... ...am I starting to see that multidimensional entity that is a story about a dead lover, and a narrator who's more concerned with how they'll look at their funeral than their loss?
The girl on the slab is cold, but so is the man telling the story and calling for another drink.
Or is that the only way he's allowed to even hint at his grief, and celebrate life while he's still got it?
* familiar to me, at least, thanks to the Fleischer Snow White
**which keeps on straying into The House of the Rising Sun for me. Oh I'm goin' down to St. James cathouse/To see my baby there/She's stretched out on a long red bedsheet/So sweet, so cold, so much...
***compare, for instance, the narrative of Infirmary to the narrative of The Unfortuate Rake, a 19th-century song which Infirmary evolved out of.
**** much more discussion of Infirmary can be found on a blog called NO Notes, which was where I found those two pages I started this post with a link to, and where the first version of this post went as a comment.