The venerable New Orleans jazz and blues standard, “St. James Infirmary Blues,” also known as “Gambler’s Blues,” belongs to a collection of similarly themed songs that have evolved from the same Anglo-Saxon ballad root over several centuries.  Variations of the song have followed a common basic narrative: someone is dying (a gambler, a soldier, a sailor, a prostitute) who requests a decent funeral ceremony.  The action takes place in a number of settings, ranging from Lock Hospital in Dublin, St James’ Hospital in London, Old Joe’s Barroom, Big Kid’s Barroom or even the streets of Laredo.   

The outline of the song was composed by a Scottish piper in the MacCrimmon clan as early as the 1600’s. In the eighteenth century, the tune circulated as the folk ballad “My Jewel, My Joy” in Ireland and as “The Unfortunate Rake” in Britain about someone dying of syphilis on the stairs of the St James’ Hospital in London.  In its next reincarnation, the tale was known as “The Young Girl Cut Down in Her Prime,” also set at St James Hospital in London with verses about funeral procession that would carry over in America. Somewhere along the chain of oral transmission (probably during the 19th century), some singer reversed the sexes of the main characters. The dying person is a “Young Girl Cut Down In Her Prime,” and her malefactor is a young man.  One variation of the “Unfortunate Rake” lineage was adapted with a frontier theme, telling the story of a cowboy who drinks, gambles and gets poisoned, appearing in the American West as “The Dying Cowboy,” “The Cowboy's Lament,” and the well-known “The Streets of Laredo.” 

By the 1920’s the rhythm of the song had been configured to appeal to dancers. In the American south and urban jazz circuits, “Gambler’s Blues/St James Infirmary” was a staple of dance bands before a recording studio ever heard of it. Classic female blues singer Lucille Hegamin performed it on the East Coast vaudeville circuit, but never recorded a version. Fess Williams and His Royal Flush Orchestra’s “Gambler’s Blues” (1927), written by Carl Moore and Phil Baxter, was the first known recording to use the classic’s basic lyrics. That same year, American poet and writer Carl Sandburg included the song “Those Gambler’s Blues” in his 1927 book “The American Songbag,” a version that Jimmy Rodgers would record in 1930. During the booming Jazz Age of the 1920’s in Chicago, jazzman Eddie Condon later recalled that at the corner of 35th and Calumet, “around midnight you could hold an instrument in the middle of the street and the air would play it.  That was music.” 

But the definitive contemporary version is Louis Armstrong’s bluesy 1928 performance, the first recording to use the title “St James Infirmary.” That version was arranged by giant of the swing era and clarinetist Don Redman. Redman had heard Al Katz and his band play the song in a Detroit ballroom sometime in 1925, then modified it in a foxtrot dance style, which is what is heard in Armstrong’s version. The success of Armstrong’s recording led to about 20 or so additional recordings of the number during the 2-year span of 1929 and 1930.  The song was copyrighted to Irving Mills under the pseudonym Joe Primrose in 1929. During the 1930’s, it was a very widely performed number in the big band era.  Cab Calloway and His Orchestra (1931) made a powerful recording.