Everything about W C Handy totally explained
William Christopher Handy (
November 16 1873 –
March 28 1958) was a
blues composer and
musician, often known as the "Father of the Blues".
Handy remains among the most influential of
American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the style of music that's distinctively American, he's credited with giving it its contemporary form not only because he was able to notate his music for publication and hence, posterity, but because of
syncopated rhythms, a style unique to his music.
While Handy wasn't the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the
blues from a not very well-known regional music style from the
Mississippi Delta 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 folk musical form and brought his own transforming touch to it.
Early life
Handy was born in
Florence,
Alabama to Charles Bernard Handy and Elizabeth Brewer. His father was the
pastor of a small church in
Guntersville, 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. The log cabin of Handy's birth has been saved and preserved in downtown Florence.
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
Florence.
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'd 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.
Musical and social development
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 Lauzetta 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).
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.
As a young man, he played
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. In particular, he noted in his autobiography
a blues guitarist he heard in
Tutwiler, Mississippi.
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, throughout
Texas and
Oklahoma, through
Tennessee,
Georgia and
Florida on to
Cuba, and Handy 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 (a daughter, Lucille) of their six children. 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 and Tuskegee Institute were the only colleges 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 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 1903 while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, in the Mississppi Delta, Handy had the following experience.
"A lean loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept... As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars....The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I'd ever heard."
Partway through the evening, while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi (circa 1905
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“They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It wasn't really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps “haunting” is the better word.”
Transition: popularity, fame and business
In
1909 he and his band moved to
Memphis, Tennessee and established their presence on
Beale Street. The genesis of his "Memphis Blues" was as a campaign tune originally entitled as "Mr. Crump" which he'd 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 US$100, and by
1914, when Handy was aged 40, his musical style was asserted, his popularity increased significantly, and he composed prolificly.
Handy had this to say regarding his use of what he heard in folk song. "The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I'd never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect...by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although it's prevailing key was major..., and I carried this device into my melody as well... This was a distinct departure, but as it turned out, it touched the spot." It is now impossible to tell just how much Handy himself wrote, and how much originated with the itinerant singers that he heard.
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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 organize 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 didn't generally know that I'd 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 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
history of the United States.
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'd 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 great was its influence, and so much was it recognized as 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."
Later life
Following publication of his
autobiography, Handy published a subsequent book on
African American musicians entitled
Unsung Americans Sung, 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 States
In 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.
He is buried in the
Woodlawn Cemetery in
Bronx, New York.
Compositions
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's 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."
"Saint 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 didn't 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)", tribute to a famous bank robber.
"Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans.
"Atlanta Blues", includes the song known as "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.
Performances, honors, recognition, miscellany
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.
He is referenced in Prof. Harold Hill's lead-in to the song Seventy-Six Trombones in Meredith Willson's 1957 musical The Music Man.
In 1958, a movie about his life - appropriately entitled St. Louis Blues - was released starring legendary African-American musicians Nat "King" Cole (in the main role), Pearl Bailey, Mahalia Jackson, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. It was released the year of Handy's death.
On May 17 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.
Inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.
He is referenced in Joni Mitchell's 1975 song Furry Sings the Blues.
He is referenced in Marc Cohn's 1991 song Walking in Memphis, covered by Lonestar, Cher, and other artists. "...Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues, in the middle of the pouring rain. W.C. Handy, won't you look down over me?"
He received a Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in 1993.
He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was 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.
An autographed 1937 photo from W.C. Handy to Anton Lada of Lada's Louisiana Orchestra sold for $850 in 2006.
Awards, festivals and memorials
The Blues Music Award, widely recognized as the most prestigious award for blues artists was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.
The W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in the Muscle 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, Ellis Marsalis and Take 6. The festival also features a roster of annual regulars, called the W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars.
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.
The W.C. Handy Blues & Barbeque Festivalis a week-long musical event that features blues and Zydeco bands from across the U.S and is held every June on the banks of the Ohio River in downtown Henderson, Kentucky.
In 1979, New York City joined the list of institutions and municipalities to honor Handy by naming one block of West 52nd Street in Manhattan "W.C. Handy Place".Further Information
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