Bobby Bland - St James' Infirmary

Bobby Bland - St James' Infirmary

I've decided I waffle on way too much in me descriptions, so I'll tell you this is a great piece of trumpet backed blues that'll give you a shiver right up your spine: all you need to do is press play!

Also a King of Bobby Bland's status needs nowt from me: there's a mountain of biography on t'interweb for anyone wanting it.

The only further point I'm going to make about the record itself is that the British issue is punctuated correctly unlike the US offering, BUT the sound quality of the US one is much better than the British one even though it's 50 year old styrene and the UK is vinyl!

Kind of sums up our nations perfectly that!

That should have annoyed everyone but, if anyone has carried on reading past the word 'punctuation' what my waffle gland's really getting tweaked by is the song itself. Based on an 18th century traditional English folk song "The Unfortunate Rake" (aka "The Young Man Cut Down in His Prime") it is about a sailor who uses all his money on prostitutes and then dies of VD.

The details of the song which proliferated across the English speaking world have varied with time, place and politics but it always tells of a youth cut down in his (sometimes her..) prime because of morally questionable actions. In American for example gambling and alcohol usually kill off the youth.

St. James' Hospital itself was a religious foundation treating leprosy in London [till 1532 when Henry VIII built St. James' Palace on top of it] and the song involves one man telling another at a bar about going down to St. James' Infirmary to tragically find his girl (his 'baby') dead.

Folk songs vary massively, but a typical version goes:

I went down to St. James Infirmary,
Saw my baby there,
Set down on a long white table,
So sweet, so cold, so fair.
Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Wherever she may be,
She can look this wide world over,
She'll never find a sweet man like me.

So that shiver was created 500 years ago in England by a dead blond girl whose ghost is now running her fingers up and down your spine!

Hope that was worth the waffle. Regardless of all that shite above it is still a kicking bit of blues!

Enjoy!

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[TheStudioluv]

THanks this is a good one

[thegreatmarkjohnson]

@TheStudioluv

Thanks. You'll probably ;like this one on my channel then... it's much better:

Oscar Bishop & The Bishops - (Gonna Have To) Put You Down

Mark

[Dickneeds]

My 2nd favorite BBB record. Another fantastic version is by Jason D. Williams on his RCA CD.