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That depends on your definition of the word "relic." A relic in the medieval Christian sense is a holy object that could be wholly creepy. Talismans of mystery and desire, relics were frequently hacked-off body parts of saints. "Let's walk 200 miles to kiss the tooth of John the Baptist!" said the medieval pilgrim.

In a secular world, songs like "St. James Infirmary" work the same way. That's what a cover version is -- a pilgrimage, a chance to traipse to the song and fill in the blanks. The riotous Cab Calloway soups it up and turns the wake into a party, clanging swinging horns around the room as if to raise the dead. Eric Burdon and the Animals rewrite the song so they can stop off at a bar before the viewing since, sensibly, they need a drink first. And Lily Tomlin, inexplicably, once did the song on "Saturday Night Live." Vaguely pissed off and a little too who-gives-a-shit for my taste, her performance nonetheless captures the song's essential weirdness. Because: a) Why did she choose this particular song for this particular show in the first place? b) Who's idea was it to dress up the SNL band, a bunch of guys with random facial hair, as nurses? And c) Isn't it a little too cute that before she can start singing the song, she has to take a thermometer out of her mouth? (That's a prop joke we would have been above even in the 4-H talent show.) So even though her actual performance is a little lackluster, to see Tomlin with a flower behind her ear sitting on top of Nurse Paul Schaeffer's grand piano is nonetheless mesmerizing.

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My favorite version of the song, even more than Armstrong's, is by Bobby "Blue" Bland. On his album "Two Steps From the Blues," he skips the Stetson hat/watch chain nonsense and actually performs it as a true love song, adding the unselfish thought that he wishes he could take her place and that "she was all I ever lived for." Snakefarm call their album "Songs From My Funeral," but Bland's version is the only one that's actually respectful enough to be played at a funeral. Bland has the same blueprint as Armstrong, and even has a brass band backing him up, but with the way his voice throbs and tears up and practically collapses, he convinces the dumbstruck listener that if the short song were any longer it would kill him dead.

The fact that "St. James Infirmary" can go from Bobby Bland's suicide to Cab Calloway's dance party, Eric Burdon's bar and Lily Tomlin's brain is an indicator of the song as a kind of blank screen, a place to project oneself onto. Or maybe it's a black hole: The origins of "St. James Infirmary" are characteristically mysterious. Sometimes, one imagines because of specific lyrics or arrangements, it is attributed to Duke Ellington associate Irving Mills, sometimes to a Joe Primrose (or Joe Primerose) -- Armstrong's various recordings of the song divide between these two. Usually it is credited as "traditional." I buy the latter. Even if it was authored in the last 100 years by an identifiable songwriter, the fact that nearly every singer of the song changes its words around suggests that it holds the malleability of an ancient folk song. That word infirmary has the British air of those old Scotch-Irish ballads (my researches found a St. James Infirmary in Dublin as far back as 1667), and you can see how a jazz hipster of the 1920s could make the dead girl his "baby" in a New York minute, even if she'd been a "lady" since Elizabeth was queen.

But I like to think "St. James Infirmary" predates the Tudors. It is called "St. James," isn't it? The shrine of St. James at Spain's Santiago de Compostela was the focal point of the medieval pilgrimages. It was at the end of the pilgrimage route, the place where all the crazy zealots eventually ended up. As Dante Alighieri wrote at the end of the 13th century, a pilgrim can be defined "in the narrow sense" as "the man who travels to or from the sanctuary of St. James." For medieval Christian pilgrims, going down to St. James was a grueling, once-in-a-lifetime blowout. Thanks to records, the modern music pilgrim can crawl under the covers and go down there every night. The only tough question is who you're going with -- Bobby or Louis? Snakefarm or Cab?
salon.com | Oct. 6, 1999

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