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.
The revivalist “Influenza Blues” was recorded on March 17, 1962 in Berkeley, California and released, along with material by other artists, on an LP entitled “Bad Luck and Trouble.” The singer was Essie Jenkins who accompanied herself on the piano. Insofar as I have been able to determine, she never made another recording. But some information on her is provided in the linear notes for the original album:
Born and raised in Mt. Holly, Arkansas, Mrs. Jenkins learned to play piano and sing in her church. She played all over Arkansas till she was 15 — then she moved to Nebraska and in 1944 she came to California — but everywhere she continued her playing and singing in various Churches of God in Christ. She met K.C. Douglas in California and played with him in his blue band for awhile, having always liked the blues ever since she heard Sonny Boy Williamson and Kokomo Arnold as a youngster.
Who then is the author of this jeremiad? As Bob Groom noted in a fine article in Acoustic Blues (No. 12; Winter, 1995-96), Jenkins’ song is essentially identical to “Memphis Flu, ” a song attributed to Elder David Curry. Curry was also associated with the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), now the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. But whereas Jenkins sang “It was in nineteen hundred and nineteen, yes, men and women were dying,” Curry’s song began, “In nineteen hundred twenty-nine,/ Men and women sure was dyin’.” Curry’s version, which was recorded in 1930, referred to a new flu outbreak the year before — the worst to hit America since the pandemic a decade earlier. Perhaps Curry updated prior lyrics to make them more timely. But I suspect that Jenkin’s version retrofitted Curry’s lyrics to correspond with the greater catastrophe. (In any event, a different song clearly identified the original pandemic as a divine scourge — Jesus is Coming by Blind Willie Johnson).
Here is the classic recording of “Memphis Flu,” as sung by Jo-Ann Williams. She is accompanied on guitar by Curry and on piano by Charles Beck, another COGIC “Elder.” The tune was borrowed from “With His Stripes We Are Healed,” a gospel hit for he Reverend F.W. McGee a few years earlier.
This stirring music has been described as providing a glimmer of what would later become rock and roll. Like many other recordings, it has even been identified on a few occasions as the first rock and roll record. No one would be more embarrassed by such a claim that than Elder Beck. In a spirited 1956 release entitled, “Rock and Roll Sermon,” he sampled Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” for the purpose of condemning it, and accused rock music of destroying civilization and rolling people “into the penitentiary” and “the electric chair.” Still, the achievement of the old-time COGIC performers stands. Those who rock against rock rock nonetheless.