Uploaded August 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Day 144 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Also known as St. James Infirmary.
Sandburg writes: "This may be what polite society calls a gutter song. In a foreign language, in any lingo but that of the U. S. A., it would seem less vulgar, more bizarre. Its opening realism works on toward irony and fantasy, dropping in its final lines again to blunt realism. Text and melody are from the song as given (A) by Henry McCarthy of the University of Alabama."
Many early jazz & popular recordings attribute authorship (of the popular version) to "Joe Primrose," a pseudonym for Irving Mills. His copyright, though, seems to have been registered in 1929, or after Armstrong's influential recording. Presumably he was registering ownership rather than authorship. (PJS in The Traditional Ballad Index)
Day 144 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Also known as St. James Infirmary.
Sandburg writes: "This may be what polite society calls a gutter song. In a foreign language, in any lingo but that of the U. S. A., it would seem less vulgar, more bizarre. Its opening realism works on toward irony and fantasy, dropping in its final lines again to blunt realism. Text and melody are from the song as given (A) by Henry McCarthy of the University of Alabama."
Many early jazz & popular recordings attribute authorship (of the popular version) to "Joe Primrose," a pseudonym for Irving Mills. His copyright, though, seems to have been registered in 1929, or after Armstrong's influential recording. Presumably he was registering ownership rather than authorship. (PJS in The Traditional Ballad Index)
