Influenza Blues — From Flu to Rock
For a long time, the Dog has been too preoccupied to indulge his musicological pretensions. But I want to do something to commemorate the fact that, like much of the world’s population, I am under orders to shelter in place. In this time of crisis, I find myself reflecting on the great flu pandemic of 1918-19. I find doing so oddly comforting. In dim historical retrospect, it appears as a discrete event that came and went, with nothing comparable to follow for over a century.
But the pandemic was horrifying. It may have killed fifty million people, over triple the toll of the First World War. Indeed, it was so traumatic that for decades it was largely blotted out from our cultural memory.
The British journalist Richard Collier once wrote that the “Spanish Lady,” as the pandemic was called, “inspired no songs, no legends, no works of art.” This, of course, is an overstatement. Among the exceptions were three different songs published from December 1918 to June 1919 entitled “Infuenza Blues,” — a ragtime composition; a Broadway show tune; and a lament for a lost sweetheart. Google the phrase, however, and you will be linked to a fourth song, It informs us that the flu was a punishment from God:
This fascinating, if rather offensive piece, has a curious history. It is not clear if it was written about the great flu pandemic at all.