The St. James Infirmary Blues by Louis Armstrong

In the old folk songs from the early 20^th and late 19^th Centuries, passed down through families and generations into the very soul of our culture, death is a common theme. This should not be surprising. These were harder times than they are now. Death was a fact of life that people faced on a daily basis.

In one of my favorites “St James Infirmary Blues,” the story is surprising, at once beautiful and, well, a little bit ugly. The narrator goes down to his neighborhood bar and speaks to a man who has recently witnessed his “baby’s” death, and thus has begun to think a little bit about his own death.

Here are the lyrics, as used in Louis Armstrong’s quintessential 1928 recording.

It was down in Old Joe’s barroom,
On the corner by the square,
Drinks were being served as usual,
And a goodly crowd was there.

When up stepped old Joe McGuinny
His eyes were bloodshot red;
As he poured himself more whiskey,
This is what he said:

I went down to the St. James Infirmary
I saw my baby there,
Stretched out on a cold white table,
So sweet, so cold, so fair.

So Let her go, let her go, God bless her;
Wherever she may be
She may search this wide world over
but she’ll never find a sweet man like me.

When I die, want you to dress me in straight laced shoes
A box back coat and a Stetson hat;
Put a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain
So the boys know I died standin’ pat.

There are sixteen cold black horses,
Hitched to her rubber tired hack;
There are seven women goin’ to that graveyard,
and only six of ’em are coming back.

Now that you’ve heard my story,
pour me one more shot of booze;
And if anyone comes askin’ about me,
Tell ’em I got, Saint James Infirmary blues.

Some, such as Salon.com’s Sarah Vowell, have been troubled by this song, despite a few apparently disarming lines sprinkled throughout. After the initial shock of seeing his baby’s dead body, Old Joe instantly begins thinking about himself, of how he would like his own funeral to be conducted as a patent display of wealth and material status, so “the boys know I died standing pat.” And what are we to make of his assumption that even after death she’s going to search “the whole wild world over” for someone else? Even in the spirit world, apparently, Old Joe does not have much faith in his baby’s fidelity.

And yet, there is something powerful and elemental in this song, in its stark and frank depiction of that which would bring up God-knows-what in all of us. The complexity of the emotions found here, love, sorrow, fear, jealousy, even envy, lend the song an enduring element of mystery and elusiveness, which in turn has tempted interpretations from performers ranging from Allen Toussaint to Tom Jones to the White Stripes.

Take this (my favorite) rendition by the folk/rock trio The Devil Makes Three. What begins in the same slow, swinging tempo of Armstrong, falls into a wildly kinetic instrumental with the duo singers keeping pace. The sense is of Old Joe’s funeral as a party of wild abandon, where the death informs the mourners’ thoughts, but does not define their reaction. And when the singer says: “Thirteen men goin’ down to that old graveyard/ There’s only twelve of them men comin’ back,” the death that we remember is that of his loved one, and we assume, then, that he has decided to live with her forever (even if that is not exactly what the song says).

One of the reasons folk songs endure, after all, is that they are open to interpretation. This freedom allows for individualization, for introspection and self-reflection. And what causes more self-reflection than death? Way back when this song was originally penned, death was far more palpable a presence than it is today. These songs were one way that people could process its immediacy, its scary inevitability. Given those circumstances, we should not be surprised that we will not always be uplifted by what we find.