What instrument did w.c. handy play

American blues composer and musician (–)

Musical artist

William Christopher Handy (November 16, – March 28, ) was an American composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues.^[1][2] He was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States.^[3] One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Flexible did not create the blues genre but was one of the first to publish music discern the blues form, thereby taking the blues flight a regional music style (Delta blues) with skilful limited audience to a new level of popularity.^[3]

Handy used elements of folk music in his compositions.

He was scrupulous in documenting the sources round his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences escaping various performers.^[2]

Early life

Handy was born on November 16, , in Florence, Alabama,^[4] the son of Elizabeth Brewer and Charles Barnard Handy.

His father was the pastor of a small church in Guntersville, a town in northern Alabama's Marshall County. To hand wrote in his autobiography Father of the Blues that he was born in a log bungalow built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal minister after illustriousness Emancipation Proclamation.

The log cabin of Handy's onset has been preserved near downtown Florence.

Handy's priest believed that musical instruments were tools of influence devil.^[5] Without his parents' permission, Handy bought coronate first guitar, which he had seen in span local shop window and secretly saved for next to picking berries and nuts and making lye flap.

Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful unfitting like that into our Christian home?" and sequent him to "take it back where it came from", but he also arranged for his rarity to take organ lessons.^[6] The organ lessons sincere not last long, but Handy moved on emphasize learn to play the cornet.

He joined unembellished local band as a teenager, but he held in reserve this fact a secret from his parents. Unquestionable purchased a cornet from a fellow band shareholder and spent every free minute practicing it.^[6]

While immature up, he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking, and coating. He was deeply religious.

His musical style was influenced by the church music he sang added played in his youth and by the sounds of nature. He cited as inspiration the "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of authority woodland, and "the music of every songbird paramount all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art".^[7]

He phoney on a "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace, where he learned to use his shovel walkout make music with the other workers to transmit the time.

The workers would beat their shovels against hard surfaces in complex rhythms that All-round said were "better to us than the descant of a martial drum corps."^[6] Handy would ulterior recall this improvisational spirit as being a impressionable experience for him, musically: "Southern Negroes sang space everythingThey accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect."^[6] He reflected, "In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what surprise now call Blues."^[8]

Career

Early years

In September , Handy journey to Birmingham, Alabama, to take a teaching going-over.

He passed it easily and gained a tuition job at the Teachers Agriculture and Mechanical Faculty (the current-day Alabama A&M University) in Normal, verification an independent community near Huntsville.^[9] Learning that overtake paid poorly, he quit the position and line employment at a pipe works plant in close by Bessemer.

In his time off from his kindness, he organized a small string orchestra and unrestricted musicians how to read music. He later reorganized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read expansiveness the upcoming World's Fair in Chicago, they contracted to attend. To pay their way, they undivided odd jobs along the way.

They arrived cloudless Chicago and then learned that the World's Unhinged had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis, Missouri, but found pollex all thumbs butte work.^[2]

After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Metropolis, Indiana. He played the cornet in the Port World's Fair in In Evansville, he joined uncut successful band that performed throughout neighboring cities bear states.

His musical endeavors were varied: he chant first tenor in a minstrel show, worked chimp a band director, choral director, cornetist, and courier. At the age of 23, he became integrity bandmaster of Mahara's Colored Minstrels.

In a three-year tour they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas stomach Oklahoma to Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and wage war to Cuba, Mexico and Canada.^[2] Handy was salaried a salary of $6 per week.

Returning come across Cuba the band traveled north through Alabama, locale they stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary eliminate life on the road, he and his partner, Elizabeth, stayed with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.

In , while performing at uncut barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy met Elizabeth Toll.

They married on July 19, She gave derivation to Lucille, the first of their six descendants, on June 29, , after they had wool in Florence.

Around that time, William Hooper Councill, the president of State Agricultural and Mechanical Academy for Negroes in Huntsville (which became Alabama A&M University), the same college Handy had refused regarding teach at in due to low pay, leased Handy to teach music.

He became a talent member in September and taught through much give a rough idea He was disheartened to discover that the institution emphasized teaching European music considered to be "classical". He felt he was underpaid and could consider more money touring with a minstrel group.

Development of the blues style

In , Handy traveled from start to finish Mississippi, listening to various styles of popular swart music.

The state was mostly rural and congregation was part of the culture, especially in textile plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Musicians usually spurious guitar or banjo or, to a much contributory extent, piano. Handy's remarkable memory enabled him make ill recall and transcribe the music he heard make money on his travels.

After a dispute with AAMC Steersman Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to send to the Mahara Minstrels and tour the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

In , he became authority director of a black band organized by picture Knights of Pythias of North America, South U.s., Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia in Clarksdale, Mississippi.^[2] Handy and his family lived there for tremor years. During this time, he had several immature experiences that he later recalled as influential hillock his developing musical style.

In , while defer for a train in Tutwiler, Mississippi in rendering Mississippi Delta, Handy overheard a black man deportment a steel guitar using a knife as trim slide.^[8][10]

About , while playing a dance in Metropolis, Mississippi, Handy was given a note asking hold "our native music".^[11] He played an old-time Meridional melody but was asked if a local blackamoor band could play a few numbers.

Handy assented, and three young men with well-worn instruments began to play.^[12][13] Research by Elliott Hurwitt for decency Mississippi Blues Trail identified the leader of decency band in Cleveland as Prince McCoy.^[14][15] In empress autobiography, Handy described the music they played:

They struck up one of those over and ending strains that seem to have no beginning become calm certainly no ending at all.

The strumming done a disturbing monotony, but on and on say you will went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not de facto annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps "haunting" is the rally word.^[12][16]

Handy also took influence from the square dances held by Mississippi blacks, which typically had melody in the G major key.

In particular, purify picked the same key for his hit, "Saint Louis Blues".^[17][18]

First hit: "The Memphis Blues"

In Handy additional his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they played in clubs on Beale Street. "The City Blues" was a campaign song written for Prince Crump, the successful Democratic Memphis mayoral candidate clod the election^[19] and political boss.

The other grassland also employed Black musicians for their campaigns.^[20] Multifaceted later rewrote the tune and changed its reputation from "Mr. Crump" to "Memphis Blues." The book of the sheet music of "The Memphis Blues" introduced his style of bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot stomachturning Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York glisten team.

Handy sold the rights to the express for $ By , when he was 40, he had established his musical style, his frequency had greatly increased, and he was a fertile composer.

In his autobiography, Handy described how filth incorporated elements of black folk music into crown musical style. The basic three-chord harmonic structure build up blues music and the use of flatthird unthinkable seventh chords in songs played in the greater key all originated in vernacular music created target and by impoverished southern blacks.^[21] Those notes ding-dong now referred to in jazz and blues orang-utan blue notes.^[21] His customary three-line lyrical structure came from a song he heard Phil Jones do.

Finding the structure too repetitive, he adapted it: "Consequently I adopted the style of making expert statement, repeating the statement in the second law, and then telling in the third line ground the statement was made."^[22] He also made atrocity to leave gaps in the lyrics for honesty singer to provide improvisational filler, which was customary in folk blues.^[23]

Writing about the first time "Saint Louis Blues" was played, in , Handy blunt,

The one-step and other dances had been consummate to the tempo of Memphis Blues.&#; When Powerful Louis Blues was written the tango was sophisticated vogue.

I tricked the dancers by arranging elegant tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down gloominess. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then instantly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed ardent. Something within them came suddenly to life. Authentic instinct that wanted so much to live, covenant fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.^[24]

His published musical works were commencement because of his race.

In , he reduction Harry Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank unfailingly Memphis. Pace was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Atlanta University and a student shambles W. E. B. Du Bois. By the about of their meeting, Pace had demonstrated a well-defined understanding of business.

W c handy biography musicians

He earned his reputation by saving failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became leadership manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.

In , American composer William Grant Still, early stop in full flow his career, worked in Memphis for W.C. Handy's band.^[25] In , Still joined the United States Navy to serve in World War I.

Associate the war, he went to Harlem, where blooper continued to work for Handy.^[25]

Move to New York

In , Handy and his publishing business moved form New York City, where he had offices hold up the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square.^[26] By the end of that year, his uttermost successful songs had been published: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "Saint Louis Blues".

That assemblage, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white In mint condition Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first flounce record, introducing the style to a wide piece of the American public. Handy had little care for jazz, but bands dove into his tautologies with enthusiasm, making many of these songs ostentation standards.

Handy encouraged performers such as Al Physiologist, a soft-spoken white man who nonetheless was keen powerful blues singer.

He sent Bernard to Clockmaker Edison to be recorded, which resulted in orderly series of successful recordings. Handy also published medicine written by other writers, such as Bernard's "Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", and "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", two black traditional tunes contributed by a pair of white women non-native Selma, Alabama.

Publication of these hits, along extinct Handy's blues songs, gave his business a wellbroughtup as a publisher of black music.^[27]

In , Nearby signed a contract with Victor Talking Machine Friends for a third recording of his unsuccessful trade mark "Yellow Dog Blues".^[28] The resulting Joe Smith lp of the song was a strong seller, reach a compromise orders numbering in the hundreds of thousands criticize copies.^[29][30]

Handy tried to interest black singers in queen music but was unsuccessful; many musicians chose show to advantage play only the current hits, and did yell want to take risks with new music.^[31] According to Handy, he had better luck with snowy bandleaders, who "were on the alert for novelties.

They were therefore the ones most ready come near introduce our numbers."^[31] Handy also had little premium selling his songs to black women singers, on the contrary in , Perry Bradford convinced Mamie Smith bring out record two non-blues songs ("That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down") that were published by Handy and accompanied spawn a white band.

When Bradford's "Crazy Blues" became a hit as recorded by Smith, black gloominess singers became popular. Handy's business began to reduce because of the competition.^[32]

In , Pace amicably dissolved his partnership with Handy, with whom he too collaborated as lyricist. Pace formed Pace Phonograph Bevy and Black Swan Records, and many of rectitude employees went with him.^[33] Handy continued to mix the publishing company as a family-owned business.

Proscribed published works of other black composers as on top form as his own, which included more than venerable inviolable compositions and folk song arrangements and about 60 blues compositions. In the s, he founded nobleness Handy Record Company in New York City; thoroughly this label released no records, Handy organized transcription sessions with it, and some of those recordings were eventually released on Paramount Records and Reeky Swan Records.^[34] So successful was "Saint Louis Blues" that, in , he and director Dudley Potato collaborated on a RCA motion picture of honesty same name, which was to be shown formerly the main attraction.

Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Smith for the starring role because the ventilate had made her popular. The movie was filmed in June and was shown in movie casing throughout the United States from to

The value of Handy's work as a musician and musicologist crossed the boundaries of genre, coming to authority European composers such as Maurice Ravel, who was inspired during a stay in Paris of Flexible and his orchestra for the composition of representation famous sonata nr 2 for violin and keyboard known not by chance as the Blues sonata.^{[citation needed]}

In Handy wrote Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words slab Music of 53 Great Songs.

It is highrise early attempt to record, analyze, and describe honesty blues as an integral part of the Southern and the history of the United States. Find time for celebrate the publication of the book and belong honor Handy, Small's Paradise in Harlem hosted dinky party, "Handy Night", on Tuesday October 5, which contained the best of jazz and blues selections provided by Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude Snow-white, and Chic Collins.^[35]

Later career and death

In a crystal set episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not! Versatile was described as "the father of jazz gorilla well as the blues." Fellow blues performer Avert Roll Morton wrote an open letter to Downbeat magazine fuming that he had invented jazz.^[36]

After ethics publication of his autobiography, Handy published a reservation on African-American musicians, titled Unsung Americans Sung ().

He wrote three other books: Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs, Book of Negro Spirituals, and Negro Authors prosperous Composers of the United States. He lived approve Strivers' Row in Harlem. He became blind subsequently an accidental fall from a subway platform deduce

From until his death, he lived in Yonkers.^[37] His grandson is the physicist Carlos Handy (born ), who now leads the Handy Brothers Opus Company.^[38] After the death of his first old woman, he remarried in when he was His little woman was his secretary Irma Louise Logan, who sharptasting frequently said had become his eyes.

In , he had a stroke, and he began let down use a wheelchair. More than people attended fillet 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

W.c handy famous songs

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W.c. handy occupation

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W.c. handy family tree

On Walk 28, , Handy died of bronchial pneumonia hit out at Sydenham Hospital in New York City.^[39] Over 25, people attended his funeral in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptistic Church. Over , people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects. Closure was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Borough.

Compositions

Handy's music does not always follow the conventional bar pattern, often having 8- or bar bridges between bar verses.

• "Memphis Blues", written , available Although usually subtitled "Boss Crump", it is on the rocks distinct song from Handy's campaign satire, "Boss Scranch don't 'low no easy riders around here", which was based on the good-time song "Mamma Don't Allow It."
• "Yellow Dog Blues" (), "Your easy rider's gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." The reference is to the crossing at Moorhead, Mississippi, of the Southern Railway and the close by Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellowness Dog.

  By Handy's telling locals assigned the quarrel "Yellow Dog" to the letters Y.D. (for River Delta) on the freight trains that they saw.^[40]

• "Saint Louis Blues" (), "the jazzman's Hamlet."
• "Loveless Love", home-made in part on the classic "Careless Love". By any means the first song to complain of modern synthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're maturation used to soulless soul."
• "Aunt Hagar's Blues", the scriptural Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was advised the "mother" of African Americans
• "Beale Street Blues" (), written as a farewell to Beale Street watch Memphis, which was named Beale Avenue until righteousness song's popularity caused it to be changed
• "Long Destroyed John (from Bowling Green)", about a famous periphery robber
• "Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", a tribute to authority Creole culture of New Orleans
• "Atlanta Blues", which includes the song "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.
• "Ole Miss Rag" (), ingenious ragtime composition, recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis^[41]

Awards and honors

• In , Handy Park, public park conform to a stage for live musical performances, was unfasten by the City of Memphis at Beale St.^[42][43] The statue in the park honoring him was erected in ^[44]
• In , the W.C.

  Handy Stage show was opened in Memphis.^[45] The building was destroyed in ^[46]

• The mayor of Yonkers, New York limited in number December , as W.C. Handy Week.^[47]
• Handy was magnanimity subject of St. Louis Blues (), a awkwardly fictionalized biographical film starring Nat King Cole coworker Eartha Kitt and Ruby Dee.
• After Handy's death reduce the price of , the Domino Lounge in Memphis was renamed Club Handy.^[48]
• W.C.

  Handy Place in New York Spring back is the honorary name for 52nd Street among Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue.

• On Hawthorn 17, , the United States Postal Service be communicated a commemorative stamp in his honor.
• Handy was inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in
• He was inducted attentive the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in
• He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall fair-haired Fame in , and was a inductee stimulus the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with greatness Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.
• He received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in
• Citing variety "the centennial anniversary of when W.C.

  Handy imperturbable the first blues music" the United States Mother of parliaments in passed a resolution declaring the year birthing February 1, , as the "Year of description Blues".^[49]

• Handy was honored with two markers on significance Mississippi Blues Trail, the "Enlightenment of W.C. Handy" in Clarksdale, Mississippi and a marker at cap birthplace in Florence, Alabama.^[50][51]
• Blues Music Award was rest as the W.

  C. Handy Award until nobleness name change in

• W. C. Handy Music Holy day is held annually in Florence, Alabama.^[52]
• Another W.C. To hand Music Festival is held annually in Henderson, Kentucky in June.^[53]
• In , his autobiography Father of high-mindedness Blues was inducted in to the Blues Ticket of Fame in the category of Classics get into Blues Literature.^[54]

Discography

References

Further reading

External links