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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZHANDY, W.C.(b William Christopher Handy, 16 November 1873, Florence AL; d 28 March 1958, NYC) Songwriter and publisher who discovered the blues; his 'St Louis Blues' is one of the most-played and most-recorded American songs of all time. He also played cornet. He was bandmaster of a minstrel show at age 22; subsequently led his own bands, founded music publishing company in Memphis c.1908 with Harry Pace; they moved it to NYC in 1918. He gradually lost his sight during the 1930s but continued active until his death. At a gig somewhere in the South he heard a string trio playing 'one of those over-and-over strains that seem to have no very clear beginning and certainly no ending at all ... the kind of stuff ... associated with cane rows and levee camps'. This 'haunting' music was rewarded with a shower of silver dollars from the crowd, and Handy had discovered black American folk music; he used the idioms both musical and lyrical and was one of the first songwriters to use 'blue' notes (flatted thirds and sevenths). His first hit song, 'Memphis Blues' in 1912, was written in 1909 as 'Mr Crump', a mayoral campaign song for E.H. 'Boss' Crump in Memphis; 'St Louis Blues' came along in 1914, other world-famous Handy songs are 'St Louis Blues' '14, 'Yellow Dog Blues' same year (there were two hit singles on 'Yellow Dog Blues' in the USA in 1958), 'Beale Street Blues' 1916, 'Loveless Love' 1921 (better known as 'Careless Love', a hit by Ray Charles '60-2), 'Aunt Hagar's Blues' 1922, plus 'Hesitating Blues', 'Long Gone', 'Chantez-Les Bas', 'Atlanta Blues', many others. Bessie Smith made a famous version of 'St Louis Blues' in 1925 with young Louis Armstrong accompanying her; Fats Waller recorded beautiful versions of 'St Louis' '26 and 'Beale Street Blues' '27 on the pipe organ, with a vocal by Alberta Hunter on one take of 'Beale Street'; but there are countless recordings of all these songs: 'St Louis Blues' was calculated to have been the most-recorded song in the USA 1890-1954 after 'Silent Night'; 'Star Dust' was no. 3. Handy was delighted with Armstrong's LP Plays W.C. Handy '54. It used to be said that Handy's songs were not really blues, but we are less pedantic now; the middle 'tango' section of 'St Louis' is a good example of what Jelly Roll Morton called 'the Spanish tinge'. Handy published Blues: An Anthology '26, Book Of Negro Spirituals and pamphlet Negro Authors And Composers Of The United States '38, autobiography Father Of The Blues '41. Biopic St Louis Blues '57 with Nat 'King' Cole is regarded as dire. The annual blues awards in USA, awarded at a Blues Foundation jamboree in Memphis every year, were named after Handy until 2006; they are now called the Blues Music Awards. Next thing we know they'll change the name of the Oscar to the Movie Movie Award. |