The Death of Enrico Caruso and St. James Infirmary

Most readers of this blog know that Irving Mills was intimately entangled with the history of the song "St. James Infirmary" - as the fictional ‘composer’ of the song (Joe Primrose), as the manager of various performers who recorded the song, as the impresario who publicized the song, and as the vice-president of the company that published the sheet music.

Until the early 1950s, sheet music outsold records. It was much more important to retain revenue from sales of sheet music than from the sales of records.

In 1921, the Mills brothers (Jack and Irving, not the vocal quartet) were struggling publishers. Rising from poverty in New York City, largely on the strength of their ability to promote - or plug - other people's songs, Jack and Irving Mills eventually became owners of one of the most productive and important music publishing companies in North America - Mills Music. Formed in 1919, it was initially called "Jack Mills Inc." and in 1921 the company struck gold. The opera singer Enrico Caruso was the most beloved, revered, and recorded artist of the era. He had just died, age 48, and Jack Mills Inc. bought the rights to a song titled "They Needed a Song Bird in Heaven (So God Took Caruso Away)." The song became so popular that Time magazine described it as: "a ditty that was scratched from every phonograph, mewed through the sinus cavities of every cabaret tenor who could boast a nose, caroled by housewives at their tubs and business men at their shaving." (I should emphasize here that "housewives at their tubs" refers not to bathtubs, but to washing tubs—where the laundry was done by hand.)

"They needed a songbird in Heaven
To sing when the angels would play
So God told the angels where one could be found
They came and they took him one day".

It is possible that, were it not for this ditty, Mills Music would not have survived to, seven years later, discover and promote a gritty folk song called "St. James Infirmary."

Popular as "They Needed a Songbird in Heaven" was then, it has been completely forgotten today.