The cry of a guitar... the cry of a heart. "W. C." HANDY (Father of the Blues)

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WILLIAM CHRISTOPHER "W. C." HANDY
1873-1958

FATHER OF THE BLUES

( African American composer, bandleader, & publisher)

W.C. Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, November 16, 1873, the son of former slaves. His first instrument was the coronet, and he advanced from lessons in a barbershop to studying classical music. While still a teenager Handy began teaching school but left for better paying work in a factory. At the age of twenty, he organized a quartet to play the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, a gathering that attracted other musical luminaries of the time, notably ragtime pianist Scott Joplin.

After the fair, Handy toured with various ensembles and taught music at Alabama A&M in Huntsville. He left teaching and joined Mahara's Minstrels in 1896 as a cornetist. Handy toured the country with the group, and quickly became their leader. In 1903, he moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, to direct the Colored Knights of Pythias, an entourage that performed for both whites and blacks. During a performance for a white audience, a request was made to "play some of your own music." When the band resumed, the whites shouted that Handy was not honoring their request. During a break, three local black men with stringed instruments took the stage and played a primitive blues that brought an appreciative reaction from the crowd. The crowd's reaction caused the bandleader to reconsider the band's repertoire, noting the strong response that "primitive music" created. In 1903, while waiting for a train at a station in Tutwiler, Mississippi, Handy heard a black musician playing a guitar with a knife. The man was singing about going Where The Southern Crosses The Dog, and Handy recalled "it was the weirdest music I'd ever heard." The man's singing was answered by the crying sound that his guitar made as the knife slid along its metal strings. The influence of rural song forms on the classically trained Handy would find its celebrated outlet in his published work.

Teresa Biddle-Douglass, Nashville

Suggested Reading(s): Lynn Abbot and Doug Seroff, "'They Cert'ly Sound Good to Me': Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, and the Commercial Ascendancy of the Blues," American Music 14 (1996): 402-55; W. C. Handy, Father of the Blues (1941).

Musicians jamming with W.C. Handy (Memphis/Shelby Co. Public Library

Musicians jamming with W. C. Handy.

Memphis/Shelby County Public Library.

GLO

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