One Of Jazz's Most Enduring Crossovers Has No Known Author

"St. James Infirmary Blues" is best remembered for the classic recordings by trumpeter Louis Armstrong in 1928 and legendary Cotton Club bandleader Cab Calloway. The latter's haunting, theatrical version featured in a famous sequence in the 1933 Betty Boop film, "Snow White." The jazz classic has been recorded countless times since then, by artists working across a range of genres. Yet despite its fame, the song's original author remains shrouded in mystery, with distinct versions being passed down through generations under several different names long before it was ever written down as sheet music or recorded. 

Music scholars have long been interested in uncovering the roots of this unique song, which is especially dark in its willingness to explore the theme of death. In its most famous version, the narrator heads to the titular infirmary, where he sees the body of his deceased lover. He then reflects on his own mortality, imagining his body well-dressed at his funeral. In the final lines of the song, it is revealed that the narrator is telling the story to drinking companions, and calls for another shot of booze.

The images in the song are vivid and seemingly easy to parse. Interestingly, there is a lot more detail to explore in the song's themes, especially once you take a look at earlier versions of the song from which Armstrong's and Calloway's evolved. In some cases, these variations only add to the mystery surrounding the song's origins.

The lyrics to "St. James Infirmary Blues" begin with the narrator heading to see the remains of his lover, which no doubt makes for a shocking introduction. Yet the turn towards the character's own funeral plans may come across as strangely abrupt. "She will search this wide world over / But she'll never find another sweet man like me," the narrator sings in the second verse, making it clear that they are wrapped in thoughts of themeslf rather than the deceased lover. But the title of the song alone gives a big hint as to why this might be.

 The song is often linked to in the traditional English 19th century song "An Unfortunate Rake," aka "The Unfortunate Lad," with which the later "St. James Infirmary Blues" shares many elements. Another traditional song, called "Those Gambler's Blues," is another strikingly similar precursor to "St. James Infirmary Blues," containing many of the same lyrics in a longer arrangement.

According to some scholars, "St. James Infirmary Blues" emerged from early traditional songs that lament death from sexually transmitted diseases, suggesting that the song may be the story of a woman who has died of syphilis. The narrator, then, is preoccupied with thoughts of his own death because, as the woman's lover, he realizes he may also already be infected with the fatal disease, although, with no explicit lyrical reference it is also possible to read the song as one of direct mourning.

Despite its status as a traditional song in the public domain, "St. James Infirmary Blues" has been the subject of controversy over who gets credits for its recordings. While many of the song's key elements appear as "Those Gambler's Blues" in poet Carl Sandburg's famous 1927 collection of traditional folk songs called "The American Songbag," a similar composition called"Gambler's Blues" had already been credited to Phil Baxter and Carl Moore in 1925. Other composers were also incorporating elements of the traditional song, such as the narrator's funeral imaginings, into their own work and crediting the whole composition as their own, further muddying the picture.

In the 1930s, a publisher named Irving Mills even gained ownership of the rights to the original despite the song having no known author, leading in one case to legal action against a musician attempting to record it as a song in the public domain. Nevertheless, "St. James Infirmary Blues" has remained a much-performed and much-recorded track, with garage rockers the Animals recording it in 1968, and later, the White Stripes recorded a version with adapted lyrics on their debut album in 1999. Other adaptations ensured the classic song of love and death continued to evolve.