St James Infirmary Blues

I saw Gypsy Bill (perhaps inevitably, he isn't actually a Gypsy, but he passes for a bit of a hippie because he lives on a boat and has a pretty magnificent beard) playing in the pub the other night and he did a cracking version of St James Infirmary Blues. My companion for the evening professed not to know the song, so when we retired to the Casa Epictetus I played her several versions back to back, ranging from Louis Armstrong, surely the best known, through the very uptempo take by Tom Jones to the funereal effort of Georgie Fame. This quickly caused her to disappear off home; although not until after she had been very complimentary about the Pear & Chocolate cake. One of the performers that she missed out on because of her hasty exit was Sir Van the Man: