W.C. Handy

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

W.C. Handy · William Christopher Handy was born in 1873 in Florence, Alabama. His father, a preacher, considered musical instruments the work of the devil, but Handy secretly bought a guitar and later a cornet. He worked as a teacher, played in bands and at the age of twenty-three became bandleader of Mahara's Colored Minstrels. In 1903 he heard a man playing guitar with a knife as a slide at a station in Tutwiler, Mississippi, a moment he later described as formative. In 1909 he settled in Memphis and played in clubs on Beale Street.

Music and breakthrough

Handy did not invent the blues, but he was one of the first to publish music in blues form. His first hit was The Memphis Blues, originally a campaign song for mayoral candidate Edward Crump, published as sheet music in 1912. Saint Louis Blues followed in 1914, then Beale Street Blues and Yellow Dog Blues. In 1917 he moved his music publishing company to New York. He used the three-line stanza, the blue notes and the room for improvisation by the singer. He himself said that he was setting down existing folk music.

Influence

Bands that played jazz took up his songs enthusiastically, as a result of which many of them became jazz standards. His publishing company also published work by other Black composers. Handy called himself the Father of the Blues. He went blind after an accident in 1943 and died in 1958 in New York, where an estimated 150,000 people attended his funeral. Handy brought the blues from a regional folk art to the general public, on paper and on record.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1958W. C. Handy Blues Sung by his Daughter Katharine Handy Lewis in Traditional Style

In School of Rock

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