Throughout history, mankind has been plagued with sickness and disease. Often malady has caused great social change or turmoil. The Seven Plagues delivered the Jews from Egyptian rule. The Bubonic Plague eased overpopulation woes and changed the world's diet. Spanish Influenza ended the first World War. HIV ended the Sexual Revolution. But those are only the big ones. Every day we encounter disease face-to-face. One in every three people we know or meet are infected with some sort of affliction. As the planet's population reaches seven billion, we are priming ourselves for another epidemic to alleviate overcrowding. The question is not if, but when. This theme is no better traced than through music, and one of the great songs to detail illness is "St. James Infirmary." This jazz/blues standard is commonly credited to Joe Primrose, but a deeper history actually exists, tracing it back to both England through the ballad "The Unfortunate Rake" and Ireland, where Celts sang "The Bard of Armaugh" for centuries. The British incarnation of the song detailed a man who contracted venereal disease through prostitutes that "cut him down in his prime." When the song moved to the States, the cowboy music singers turned it to "Cowboy's Lament" or "Streets of Laredo." However the Jazz Era brought it to New Orleans with Primrose and Louis Armstrong, popularizing that very song as "St. James Infirmary." Since then, many artists have taken a crack at it, adding their own touches to it, from The Pine Hill Haints, Doc Watson, Janis Joplin, the White Stripes, the Doors, and many, many more.
No illness has infected the annals of music history more than TB which wracked the great minds of history just as disease wracked their bodies. TB goes for the lungs, causing coughing spasms, spitting up blood, and severe weight loss. The disease existed long before it was recognized, having previously been blamed for many other problems, including vampirism. It's easily considered the most poetic of diseases perhaps because it's taken out more of the creative geniuses than most other maladies. Some men in history who, with this time bomb in their bodies, performed like a juggernaut, releasing creative works at a fevered clip. John Keats died at 25 after only four years of publishing and is known as one of Britain's top poets. Jimmie Rodgers produced an alarming rate of songs, sometimes lying on a cot between takes, up until he died. Dr. John Holliday lost his dentistry practice due to his coughing fits, but changed careers and cemented his legacy in the lore of the American West. Others cut down by TB: Chekov, George Orwell, Thomas Wolfe, Simon Bolivar, Vivian Leigh, and Franz Kafka.
Another common affliction in music lore is lovesickness and scores of artists have documented its symptoms. However the dichotomy of the disease is no more apparent than two classic songs, "Fever" by Peggy Lee and "Lovesick Blues" by Hank Williams. Lee's soulful, sultry voice discusses the attraction Romeo and Juliet felt for each other, but leaves it to the listener to determine the ending to this star-crossed reference. Captain Smith and Pocahontas are referenced much to the same effect. Despite these allusions, the listener is left to believe that Peggy Lee's fever is one we'd wish to contract. Hank Williams' response tells a different story. The protagonist in "Lovesick Blues" wails and yodels his lament over being "in love with a beautiful gal" that leaves him "nobody's sugardaddy now." It should also be noted that the author of this song is Irving Mills, which is a pseudonym for "St James'" Joe Primrose.
The theme of the slow death continues with "Goin' Down Slow," a song that describes the final reflections of a fast-living man. Although the song was written by "St Louis" Jimmy Oden, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon immortalized it with Wolf's guttural, gravelly protests against the grave that counteract with Dixon's boastful reminiscences. The song is also best known for entering the term "Great Googly Moogly" into the American lexicon.
Another affliction prevalent in modern society is drug addiction and Social Distortion's "Sick Boys" deftly handles that theme. Sickboy is a term that gained popularity in the late 1970s-early 80s for junkies going through withdrawal. As the effects of the narcotic (cocaine, heroin) wear off, the addict becomes sick, often sweating and vomiting. One of the compelling characters from Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting earned the name Sickboy due to this habit.
Richard Cheese's rendition of the classic "Down Withthe Sickness" (originally by Disturbed) was featured in Zack Snyder's reimagining of Dawn of the Dead (2004), which offers a take on my favorite pandemic of all time: reanimation of the dead. Zombie infections have been plaguing creative curiosities for centuries, presumably going back as far as Gypsy times in Eastern Europe, pre-Colombian slave trade days in Africa, and of course, Haitian voodoo lore. But not until George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the Dead movies that followed, has zombie culture invaded the zeitgeist. The zombie holocaust usually involves either a disease that attacks the living or a condition that reanimates the dead, but either way, one bite and the apocalypse is thankfully on its way. Because as I always say: "I know we all have to die sometime, just why can't it be at the same time."
Colonel JD Wilkes pens a murder ballad with "Somethingin the Water" by Th' Legendary Shack Shakers which details the troubles of his hometown of Paducah, Kentucky, where the Union Carbide's uranium enrichment plant had been leaking chemicals. Many Union Carbide employees later sued after years of exposure and complaints of symptoms like "baby fingers growin' out of his elbows." The entire community was affected, but Wilkes draws a line from Union Carbide to another tragedy. On Dec. 1, 1997 at Heath High School in Paducah, a fourteen-year old student opened fire and killed three of his classmates praying in a group.
Cu'Chulainn is Ireland's great mythological hero, similar to Greece's Achilles. His "battle frenzy" endeared him to the people and cemented his place in Ulster lore. Many legends exist about Cu'Chulainn, most notably the myth of his "wasting sickness." Due to his failure to secure two birds for his wife at a fair, he was cursed for a year with a sickness that caused the mighty warrior to deteriorate. Irish folk singer Shane MacGowan of the Pogues, who sang "The Sick Bed ofCuchulainn" on the awesome album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, constructed quite a reputation for himself with self-destructive behavior including drunkenness and hooliganism and this song sets typical antics of such a tough against the legendary site of the legendary warrior's decay. Does this mirror the decay of Irishmen everywhere, a comment on the old adage: "God invented whiskey so the Irish could not rule the world?"
So what will the next major affliction of mankind be? What will be the cause of the next pandemic? In the 1980s, HIV and nuclear holocaust were the major scares. The 90s exposed the world to the African danger of killer bees and Ebola. The turn of the century showed us that anthrax was more than a metal band and made terrorism more of a reality. Swine flu and bird flu never quite measured up to the pandemic we were promised. But throughout time, as population swells, nature has a way of righting the ship. Whether it be plague or war or climate change or a cataclysmic event, we could stand to lose a few billion people for the sake of mankind and its future. As we near seven billion people -- three times as much as it was only sixty years ago -- we have to face the brutal facts: the end is near. Disease will overcome us all.
Repent now, before it is too late.
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