{"id":1224,"date":"2016-05-31T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=1224"},"modified":"2022-02-08T19:03:31","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T00:03:31","slug":"saint-james-infirmary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/saint-james-infirmary\/","title":{"rendered":"Saint James Infirmary (Dave Van Ronk)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"St  James Infirmary\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mNsnePtIZLw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One of Dave Van Ronk&#8217;s great flagwavers &#8212; he generally called it &#8220;Gambler&#8217;s Blues&#8221; &#8212; this was my father&#8217;s favorite out of his repertoire. They were friends from the moment I had Dave over to my folks&#8217; place and my father came out of the kitchen to ask if he liked Russian red cabbage &#8212; he did, and then they got to trading stories about their youths in Brooklyn, and talking about<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1251 size-full alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Van-Ronk-Gamblers-blues.jpg?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Van-Ronk-Gamblers-blues.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Van-Ronk-Gamblers-blues.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/> African and Pre-Columbian art, and the relationship developed from there. Each took great pride and pleasure in knowing the other, and when my dad died in 1996, I asked Dave to sing this at his memorial service, and also to say a few words.<\/p>\n<p>Dave talked a little about their shared love of art, then got around to his initial diffidence at knowing a world-class biologist, and told how, after a year or so, he finally got up the courage to ask my dad what he&#8217;d done to earn a particular prize. He said my father looked at him very solemnly and said, &#8220;Dave, they gave me that prize for fitting lobsters with contact lenses.&#8221; Then he sang &#8220;St. James Infirmary,&#8221; in all its grand, shouting majesty. Those guys were made for each other.<\/p>\n<p>As for the song and Dave&#8217;s relationship to it, I summed that up as well as I could in the notes to his final album:<\/p>\n<p><em>Dave would sometimes tell of singing this song while sitting in with a jazz group at the Stuyvesant Casino in the early 1950s, and having Jimmy Rushing, the legendary vocalist of the Count Basie Orchestra, add a couple of verses from a seat at the bar. On his old repertoire cards, he gave his source as <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1249 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/unfortunate-rake.jpg?resize=283%2C280&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"283\" height=\"280\" \/>\u201cJosh White\/\u2018Unfortunate Rake\u2019 cycle.\u201d White\u2019s version was the standard template for folksingers of Dave\u2019s generation, and <\/em>The Unfortunate Rake<em> was an album compiled for Folkways by the folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein, who produced Dave\u2019s first two solo albums. Goldstein assembled the LP as a teaching aid, showing the evolution of this ballad from a nineteenth century English broadside about a young man dying of syphilis, through a change of gender and continent into \u201cThe Bad Girl\u2019s Lament,\u201d a journey west to become \u201cThe Streets of Laredo,\u201d and various other permutations, including Dave\u2019s recording of this African-American variant. Goldstein wrote that the original St. James Hospital was \u201ca religious foundation for the redemption of \u2018fourteen sisters, maidens, that were leperous, living chastely and honestly in divine service.\u2019\u201d Not Dave\u2019s kind of joint, but fortunately the folk process provided him with more congenial surroundings.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Dave\u2019s early recordings of this song did not include the guitar break, which he told me he added in the early 1960s just to piss off Danny Kalb. Kalb, who became the lead guitarist in Dave\u2019s Ragtime Jug Stompers and something of a rock star with the <\/em><em><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1280 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Dave-Van-Ronk-and-Danny-Kalb.jpg?resize=204%2C232&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Dave Van Ronk and Danny Kalb\" width=\"204\" height=\"232\" \/><\/em><em>Blues Project, took guitar lessons from Dave and annoyed the hell out of him by learning all the arrangements instantly and playing them more cleanly than Dave could. In revenge, Dave said, he gave Kalb one last lesson, at the end of which, as Kalb was walking out the door, he played him this guitar break, then threw him out without showing him how it was done.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t believe that story, but I enjoy it. Likewise the song, which I play more or less the way Dave taught it to me, though I make no attempt to emulate his singing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of Dave Van Ronk&#8217;s great flagwavers &#8212; he generally called it &#8220;Gambler&#8217;s Blues&#8221; &#8212; this was my father&#8217;s favorite out of his repertoire. They were friends from the moment I had Dave over to my folks&#8217; place and my father came out of the kitchen to ask if he liked Russian red cabbage &#8212; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/saint-james-infirmary\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Saint James Infirmary (Dave Van Ronk)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Saint James Infirmary (Dave Van Ronk) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/saint-james-infirmary\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saint James Infirmary (Dave Van Ronk) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of Dave Van Ronk&#8217;s great flagwavers &#8212; he generally called it &#8220;Gambler&#8217;s Blues&#8221; &#8212; this was my father&#8217;s favorite out of his repertoire. They were friends from the moment I had Dave over to my folks&#8217; place and my father came out of the kitchen to ask if he liked Russian red cabbage &#8212; &hellip; Continue reading Saint James Infirmary (Dave Van Ronk) &rarr;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/saint-james-infirmary\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-05-31T11:00:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-02-09T00:03:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Van-Ronk-Gamblers-blues.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/saint-james-infirmary\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/saint-james-infirmary\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elijah Wald\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"headline\":\"Saint James Infirmary (Dave Van Ronk)\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-05-31T11:00:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-02-09T00:03:31+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/saint-james-infirmary\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":603,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/saint-james-infirmary\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/05\\\/Van-Ronk-Gamblers-blues.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/saint-james-infirmary\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/saint-james-infirmary\\\/\",\"name\":\"Saint James Infirmary (Dave Van Ronk) - 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It was in my parents' living room, late at night, after a fair amount of whiskey had been drunk, and he had it in a twist\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/van-ronk-folksinger-e1491663832129.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1135,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/georgia-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":1224,"position":2},"title":"Georgia Rag (with advice from Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My largely accidental reworking of a great Blind Willie McTell piece, illustrating a long disquisition on my first lesson with Dave Van Ronk, and so forth.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/six-black-blues-mann.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1347,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/friend-of-mine\/","url_meta":{"origin":1224,"position":3},"title":"He Was a Friend of Mine (Dave Van Ronk &#038;co)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This was one of the first songs I ever heard from Dave Van Ronk, and remained a staple of his repertoire throughout his career. When he recorded it in 1963 he credited it to Bob Dylan, but in later years would say, \"I learned this from Bob Dylan, who learned\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"von schmidt - cahn","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/von-schmidt-cahn.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1414,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/gaslight-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":1224,"position":4},"title":"Gaslight Rag (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk was not primarily a songwriter, but he turned outsome gems and oddities over the years. 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