W. C. Handy
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W.C. Handy photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941 |
William Christopher Handy (
November 16 1873 –
March 28 1958) was an
African American blues composer and
musician, often known as "
the Father of the Blues."
W. C. Handy remains among the most influential of
American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the style of music that is distinctively American, he is credited with its invention not only because he was formally educated and able to notate his music for publication and hence, posterity, but because of
syncopated rhythms, a style unique to his
music.
While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the
blues from an obscure regional music style to one of the dominant forces in American music.
Handy was an educated musician who used
folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers. He loved this simple early music and brought his own transforming touch to it.
Handy was born in
Florence, Alabama to freed
slaves, Charles Bernard Handy and Elizabeth Bewer Handy. His father was
pastor of a small charge in
Guntersville, Alabama, another small town in northeast central
Alabama. Handy wrote in his 1941
autobiography Father of the Blues, that he was born in the
log cabin built by his
grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an
African Methodist Episcopal minister after
emancipation.
Handy was a deeply religious man, whose influences in his musical style were found in the church music he sang and played as a youth, and in the sounds of nature in his hometown,
Florence, Alabama.
He cited the sounds of nature, such as "
whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises," the sounds of Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art" as inspiration.
Growing up he apprenticed in
carpentry,
shoemaking and
plastering, and bought his first
guitar that he had seen in a local shop window and had secretly saved for by picking berries, nuts and making lye soap, without his parents' permission. His father, dismayed at his actions, asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?" He then ordered him to "Take it back where it came from," and enrolled him in
organ lessons. His days as an organ student were short lived, and he moved on to learn the
cornet.
Handy joined a local blues band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow bandmember and spent every free minute practicing it. An exceptional student in school, he placed near the top of his class. In September of 1892, Handy traveled to
Birmingham, Alabama to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily. He obtained a teaching job in Birmingham but soon learned that the teaching profession paid poorly. He quit the position and found work at a pipe works plant in nearby
Bessemer.
During his off-time, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read notes. He formed a quartet called the "Lauzetta Quartet". When the group read about the upcoming World's Fair in
Chicago, they decided to attend. The trip to Chicago was long and arduous. To pay their way, group members performed at odd jobs along the way. They finally arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year. The group then headed to
St. Louis but working conditions there proved to be very bad. The Laurzetta Quartet disbanded and Handy subsequently left St. Louis for
Evansville, Indiana.
In Evansville, Handy's luck changed dramatically. He joined a successful band which performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. While performing at a barbecue in
Henderson,
Kentucky, he met Elizabeth Price, and they married shortly afterwards (on
July 19,
1896). Henderson
His musical endeavors were varied, and he sang first
tenor in a
minstrel show, moved from Alabama and worked as a
band director,
choral director, cornetist and
trumpeter. At age 23, he was band master of Mahara's Colored Minstrels.
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W.C. Handy, ca. 1900, Director of the Alabama Agriculture & Mechanical College Band |
As a young man, he was playing
cornet in the
Chicago World's Fair in
1893, and in
1902 he travelled throughout
Mississippi listening to various musical styles played by ordinary
Negroes. The instruments most often used in many of those songs were the
guitar,
banjo and to a much lesser extent, the
piano. His remarkable memory served him well, and he was able to recall and transcribe the music he heard in his travels.
Shortly after his
marriage to Elizabeth Price in
1896, he was invited to join a minstrel group called "Mahara's Minstrels." In their three year tour, they travelled to
Chicago, Illinois, throughout
Texas and
Oklahoma, through
Tennessee,
Georgia and
Florida on to
Cuba and was paid a salary of $6 per week. Upon their return from their Cuban engagements, they travelled north through
Alabama, and stopped to perform in
Huntsville, Alabama. Growing weary from life on the road, it was there he and his wife decided to stay with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.
On
June 29 1900 in Florence, Elizabeth gave birth to the first of their six children (a daughter, Lucille). Around that time,
William Hooper Councill, President of
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in
Normal, Alabama (a small community just outside Huntsville) approached Handy about
teaching music. At the time, AAMC was the only college for Negroes in Alabama. Handy accepted Councill's offer and became a faculty member that September. He taught music there from
1900 to
1902 which is today named
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University.
An important factor in his musical development and in
music history, was his enthusiasm for the distinctive style of uniquely American music which was often considered inferior to
European classical music. He was soon disheartened to discover that American music was often cast aside by the college and instead emphasized inferior foreign music considered to be "classical". Handy felt he was underpaid and felt he could make more money touring with a minstrel group and after a dispute with AAMC President Councill, he resigned his teaching position to rejoin the Mahara Minstrels to tour the
Midwest and
Pacific Northwest. In
1903 he was offered the opportunity to direct a Black band named the Knights of Pythias, located in
Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy accepted and remained there six years.
In
1909 he and his band moved to
Memphis, Tennessee and established their presence on
Beale Street. At that time, American society and culture was distinctively segregated and Handy's observations of Whites responses to native Black music in conjunction with his own observations of his habits, attitudes and music of his ethnicity served as the foundation for what was later to become the style of music popularized as "the Blues."
The genesis of his "Memphis Blues" was as a campaign tune originally entitled as "Mr. Crump" which he had written for
Edward Crump, a successful
Memphis, Tennessee mayoral candidate in
1909 (and future
"boss"). He later rewrote the tune and changed the name to "Memphis Blues."
The
1912 publication of his "Memphis Blues" sheet music introduced his style of 12-bar blues to many households, and was credited as the inspiration for the invention of the
foxtrot dance step by
Vernon and Irene Castle, a
New York-based
dance team. Some consider it to be the first blues song. He sold the rights to the song for $100, and by
1914, at age 40, his musical style was asserted, his popularity increased significantly, and he composed prolifically.
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W.C. Handy with his 1918 Memphis Orchestra - Handy is center rear, wearing moustache, holding trumpet. |
Because of the difficulty of getting his works published, he published many of his own works, and in
1917, he and his business moved to
New York City. By the end of that year, his most successful songs, "Memphis Blues," "Beale Street Blues," and "
St. Louis Blues" had been published. The
Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white
New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the very first
jazz record that year, introducing jazz music to a wide segment of the American public. Handy initially had little fondness for this new "jazz" music, but jazz bands dove into the repertoire of W. C. Handy compositions with enthusiasm, making many of them
jazz standards.
Handy's foray into
publishing was noteworthy for several reasons. Not only were his works groundbreaking because of his
ethnicity, but he was among the first blacks who were successful because of it. The rejection of his manuscripts for publication led him to self-publish his works. In
1912, Handy met
Harry H. Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was
valedictorian of his graduating class at
Atlanta University and student of
W.E.B. DuBois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of
business and earned his business reputation by rebuilding failing businesses. Handy liked him, and he later became manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.
In
1920, frustrated at
white publishing companies that would buy their music and lyrics and record them using white artists, Pace amicably dissolved his long standing partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as
lyricist, and resolved to start his own record firm which he later named
Black Swan Records.
For years, scholars thought Handy was a founder of
Black Swan Records. However, Handy wrote, "To add to my woes, my partner withdrew from the business. He disagreed with some of my business methods, but no harsh words were involved. He simply chose this time to sever connection with our firm in order that he might organized Pace Phonograph Company, issuing Black Swan Records and making a serious bid for the Negro market. . . . With Pace went a large number of our employees. . . . Still more confusion and anguish grew out of the fact that people did not generally know that I had no stake in the Black Swan Record Company."
Although Handy's
partnership with Pace was dissolved, he continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business, and published other works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150
sacred compositions and
folk song arrangements and about sixty blues compositions.
In the
1920s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City.
Bessie Smith's
January 14 1925 Columbia Records recording of "St. Louis Blues" with
Louis Armstrong is considered by many to be one of the finest recordings of the 1920s.
In
1926 he authored and edited a work entitled
Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs, which is probably the first work of its type which attempted to record, analyze and describe the blues as an integral part of the
U. S. South and the
.
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W.C. Handy celebrating his 65th birthday at the Cotton Club. |
So successful was Handy's "St. Louis Blues" that in
1929, he and
director Kenneth W. Adams collaborated on a
RCA motion picture project of the same name which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested Blues singer Bessie Smith be placed in the starring role since she had gained widespread popularity with that tune. The picture was shot in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the
United States from
1929 to
1932.
The
genre of the blues was a hallmark of American society and culture in the 1920s and 1930s. So much so was its influence and Handy's hallmark, that author
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his novel
The Great Gatsby that, "All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor."
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W.C. Handy at Harlem Hospital with hundreds of get-well cards & telegrams. |
Following publication of his
autobiography, Handy published a subsequent book on
African American musicians entitled
Unsung Americans Sing, which was published in 1944. He wrote a total of five books:
#
Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs#
Book of Negro Spirituals#
Father of the Blues: An Autobiography#
Unsung Americans Sing#
Negro Authors and Composers of the United StatesIn this time period, he lived on
Strivers' Row in
Harlem. An accidental fall from a
subway platform in
1943 resulted in his
blindness. Following the death of his first wife, he remarried in
1954 at age 80 to his
secretary Irma Louise Logan, who he frequently said had become his eyes.
In
1955 he suffered a
stroke and became confined to a
wheelchair. Over 800 people attended his 84th birthday party at the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
On
March 28 1958, W. C. Handy succumbed to acute bronchial
pneumonia and died. Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem's
Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects to one of the worlds greatest musicians and songwriters.
He is buried in the
Woodlawn Cemetery in
Bronx, New York.
Handy had a house in
Memphis, Tennessee.
Handy's songs don't always follow the classic
12-bar pattern, often having
8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.
*"Memphis Blues," written
1909, published
1912. Although usually subtitled "Boss Crump," it is a distinct song from Handy's campaign satire, "Boss Crump don't 'low no easy riders around here," which was based on the good-time song "Mamma Don't Allow It."
*"
St. Louis Blues" (
1912), "the jazzman's
Hamlet."
*"Yellow Dog Blues" (
1912), "Your easy rider's gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." The reference is to the
Southern Railway and the local
Yazoo Delta Railroad, called the Yellow Dog.
*"Loveless Love," based in part on the classic, "Careless Love." Possibly the first song to complain of modern
synthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're growing used to soulless soul."
*"Aunt Hagar's Blues," the biblical
Hagar, handmaiden to
Abraham and Sarah, was considered the "mother" of the
African Americans.
*"Beale Street Blues" (
1916), written as a farewell to the old
Beale Street of
Memphis (actually called Beale Avenue until the song changed the name); but Beale Street did not go away and is considered the "home of the blues" to this day.
B.B. King was known as the "Beale Street Blues Boy" and
Elvis Presley watched and learned from
Ike Turner there.
*"Long Gone John (From Bowling Green),"
rap-style tribute to a famous bank robber.
*"Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)," tribute to the
Creole culture of
New Orleans.
*"Atlanta Blues," includes song known as "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as chorus.
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W.C. Handy, age 75, appearing in Billy Rose's "Violins Over Broadway," is introduced by Cab Calloway. |
* On
April 27 1928 he performed a program of jazz, blues, plantation songs, work songs, piano solos, spirituals and a Negro rhapsody in
Carnegie Hall.
*In
1938 he performed at the
National Folk Festival in
Washington, DC, his first national performance on a desegregated stage.
* He performed at the
Chicago World's Fair in
1933 and
1934 and the
New York World's Fair in
1939 and
1940.
* In
1940,
NBC broadcast an All-Handy program.
* In
1958, a movie about his life - appropriately entitled
St. Louis Blues - was released.
* On
May 17 1969, the
United States Postal Service issued a
commemorative stamp in his honor.
* He was inducted into the
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in
1983.
* He received a
Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in
1993.
* He was also a
1993 Inductee into the
Alabama Music Hall of Fame with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.
* Citing 2003 as "the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first Blues music..." the
United States Senate in 2002 passed a
resolution declaring the year beginning
February 1 2003 as the
"Year of the Blues."* Each
November 16, Mr. Handy's birthday is celebrated with free music, birthday cake and free admission to the W.C. Handy Museum in Florence, Alabama. The hand-hewn log cabin made by his grandfather is his birthplace and museum.
* Is acknowledged in the song "Walking in Memphis" by
Marc Cohn.
* The
W. C. Handy Award was the most prestigious award for blues artists. It was renamed "The Blues Music Awards." for 2006.
*
The W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in the Shoals area of
Florence, Alabama. Previous week-long festivals have featured jazz and blues legends including
Jimmy Smith,
Ramsey Lewis,
Dizzy Gillespie,
Bobby Blue Bland,
Diane Schuur,
Billy Taylor,
Dianne Reeves and
Charlie Byrd.
* W. C. Handy Park is a city park located on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The park contains a life-sized bronze statue of Handy.
*
Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by
Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Da Capo paperback, New York; Macmillan, 1941 ISBN 0-306-80421-2.
Listen
*
Handy's Memphis Blues Band 1922 performance of "St. Louis Blues": audio on redhotjazz.com*
Bessie Smith sings the "Saint Louis Blues," accompanied by Louis Armstrong and Fred Longshaw, 1925: audio on redhotjazz.comRead
*
W.C. Handy website at the University of North Alabama*
Official Site of the Annual W.C. Handy Music Festival in Florence, Alabama*
W.C. Handy's 1993 Lifework Award for Performing Achievement; Induction into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame *
The Blues Foundation's W.C. Handy Blues Awards*
Book excerpt on Handy by Tom Morgan*
Year of the Blues Official website*
Brief W.C. Handy biography by Maisah B. Robinson, Ph.D.*
Rare American Sheet Music Collection at Duke University, shows musical content of published sheet music
*
United States Library of Congress African-American Sheet Music Collection, 1850-1920 (from
Brown University), a searchable database; shows copies of original works
*
Photographs of W.C. Handy's gravesite
