Handy, W(illiam) C(hristopher)

(b Florence, AL, 16 Nov 1873; d New York, 28 March 1958). American composer and bandleader. His main claim to fame is summarized by the controversial attribution of ‘Father of the Blues’ that he assiduously cultivated, that others applied to him and that became the title of his autobiography (1941). Whether or not he deserved this lofty reputation, there can be no doubt that Handy played a major role in the early popularization of the blues form and in the arrangement and adaptation of what was essentially a type of folk music into something that was acceptable and accessible to mainstream American and international tastes.

There are two main problems in cutting through the hagiography and arriving at an objective assessment of Handy’s role and importance in the blues and in American music. One is the fact that he viewed and treated the blues primarily as a musical form, whereas throughout most of its history it has existed also as a performance art and an evolving set of musical styles. The other is the fact that most of what we know about his life comes directly or indirectly from Handy himself. In different accounts details have varied and been altered, reinterpreted and polished to support his status as a central figure in blues music and an icon in 20th-century American music.

Handy’s life and career in music can be divided into several distinct phases. Up to 1903 there was a period of formal training in music, absorption and observation of various types of music ranging from folksongs and spirituals to popular ragtime and light classics, and an itinerant life with participation in late 19th-century currents in popular music, including quartet singing, leading a minstrel show band and college music teaching. From 1903 to 1911 Handy underwent a period of intensive exposure to African-American folk music, especially the newly emerging blues, in the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, and this music influenced his repertory as a bandleader, arranger and performer. The year 1912 saw him launch a successful career as a composer, arranger and publisher of blues music, in which he drew inspiration and material from what he had been exposed to earlier. His success lasted into the early 1920s. The remainder of his life was spent in consolidating his business position and reputation through high-profile performances and through his writings, in exploring other types of music with somewhat less success, in receiving many honours, and in serving as a spokesman and advocate for blues and black American folk music in general.

Handy was the son and grandson of Methodist ministers in Florence and his family expected him to follow in their footsteps. However, he showed an early interest in a musical career and eventually became proficient on organ, piano, guitar and especially cornet and trumpet. He studied vocal music for 11 years in the Florence District School with Professor Y.A. Wallace, a graduate of Fisk University, also studying popular music with the violinist Jim Turner. He left Florence in 1892 and organized a brass band in Bessemer, Alabama, and later a vocal quartet in Birmingham, Alabama. The quartet went on the road but was stranded in St Louis in 1893 without work. Handy drifted to Evansville, Indiana, and worked with local brass bands there and in Henderson, Kentucky. In 1896 he joined the band of Mahara’s Minstrels, where he became a lead cornettist, arranger, and eventually bandleader. For the next several years he toured throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Cuba, taking two years off (1900–02) to teach at the Agricultural and Mechanical College in Normal, Alabama.

In 1903 Handy took over the leadership of the Knights of Pythias band in Clarksdale, Mississippi. During his travels through the state’s Delta region he frequently heard performances of folk blues and was impressed by their popularity with both black and white audiences. He began arranging these songs and other popular ragtime tunes for his band. By 1907 Handy was resident in Memphis, leading the Knights of Pythias band there. They were hired to play for the 1909 mayoral campaign of E.H. Crump for which Handy arranged an instrumental version of a folksong that had been critical of Crump’s reform pledges. The tune was successful and helped Crump to win the election.

In 1912 Handy published Mr Crump as Memphis Blues, combining it with typical 12-bar, three-line blues strains to create a medley along the lines of a ragtime instrumental tune. Although it was not the first published blues, as Handy would later claim, it was certainly the most popular to date, especially after the publication the following year of lyrics by George A. Norton that prominently linked Handy and his band with the blues and Memphis. With Harry Pace, Handy established a publishing company, Pace and Handy (known as ‘The Home of the Blues’), later to become Handy Brothers, and had successes for the next several years with Jogo Blues (1913), St Louis Blues (1914), Yellow Dog Blues (1914), Joe Turner Blues (1915), Hesitating Blues (1915), Ole Miss (1916), Beale Street Blues (1917), Loveless Love (1921), Aunt Hagar’s Children Blues (1921), Harlem Blues (1923) and Atlanta Blues (1924). He recorded with his band for Columbia Records in 1917 and for Paramount and Okeh Records in 1922 and 1923. In 1918 he shifted his base of operations from Memphis to New York City.

From 1924 onward, Handy turned his attention increasingly to the arrangement and publication of traditional spirituals and to songs and tunes on broader African-American themes, including collaborations with a variety of lyricists. He consolidated his position in the blues with the publication in 1926 of an anthology of his works and those of other composers, and his autobiography in 1941. He produced concerts of African-American music and was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. A park on Beale Street in Memphis was dedicated in his honour in 1931 and a statue erected there in 1960. In his later years Handy frequently appeared at civic and charity events and spoke on behalf of the dignity of blues and folk music. A film based on his life, St Louis Blues, starring Nat ‘King’ Cole, was released in 1958, and in 1969 the United States honoured Handy with a postage stamp. The major annual awards for accomplishment in blues music are known as Handys in his honour.

WORKS

(selective list)

dates are those of copyright; first published in Memphis until 1918, thereafter in New York

Editions:Blues: an Anthology (New York, 1926, rev. 1972/R and 1990 by J. Silverman)W.C. Handy’s Collection of Negro Spirituals (New York, 1938)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GroveA (E. Southern)

SouthernB

D. Scarborough: ‘The “Blues” as Folk-Songs’, Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, ii (1923), 52–66

W.C. Handy: Father of the Blues: an Autobiography (New York, 1941/R)

A. Morrison: ‘W.C. Handy: Broadway’s Grand Old Man of Music’, Ebony, ix/11 (1953), 59–62

‘Evening Sun Goes Down’, Ebony, xiii/6 (1958), 96–8

E.R. Montgomery: William C. Handy, Father of the Blues (Champaign, IL, 1968)

G.W. Kay: ‘William Christopher Handy’, JJ, xxiv/3 (1971), 10–12

E. Southern: The Music of Black Americans: a History (New York, 1971, 3/1997)

E. Southern: Readings in Black American Music (New York, 1971, 2/1983)

E. Southern: ‘In Retrospect: Letters from W.C. Handy to William Grant Still’, BPM, vii (1979), 199–234; viii (1980), 65–119

L. Abbott and D. Seroff: ‘“They Cert’ly Sound Good to Me”: Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, and the Commercial Ascendancy of the Blues’, American Music, xiv/4 (1996), 402–54

D.A. Jasen and G. Jones: Spreadin’ Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880–1930 (New York, 1998)

E.S. Hurwitt: ‘W(illiam) C(hristopher) Handy’, International Dictionary of Black Composers, ed. S.A. Floyd jr (Chicago, 1999), 549–58

DAVID EVANS