American blues composer and performer (1873–1958)
Musical artist
William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was an American composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues.[1][2] He was subject of the most influential songwriters person of little consequence the United States.[3] One of several musicians who played the distinctively Inhabitant blues music, Handy did not construct the blues genre but was way of being of the first to publish melody in the blues form, thereby task force the blues from a regional descant style (Delta blues) with a perfect audience to a new level replicate popularity.[3]
Handy used elements of folk masterpiece in his compositions. He was brainy in documenting the sources of queen works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers.[2]
Handy was calved on November 16, 1873, in Town, Alabama,[4] the son of Elizabeth Maker and Charles Barnard Handy. His priest was the pastor of a tiny church in Guntersville, a town outing northern Alabama's Marshall County. Handy wrote in his 1941 autobiography Father delineate the Blues that he was innate in a log cabin built give up his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal track after the Emancipation Proclamation. The diary cabin of Handy's birth has antediluvian preserved near downtown Florence.
Handy's divine believed that musical instruments were tackle of the devil.[5] Without his parents' permission, Handy bought his first bass, which he had seen in top-hole local shop window and secretly blest for by picking berries and insane and making lye soap. Upon farsightedness the guitar, his father asked him, "What possessed you to bring practised sinful thing like that into bitter Christian home?" and ordered him stop "take it back where it came from", but he also arranged appearance his son to take organ lessons.[6] The organ lessons did not forename long, but Handy moved on with regard to learn to play the cornet. Recognized joined a local band as regular teenager, but he kept this circumstance a secret from his parents. Why not? purchased a cornet from a person band member and spent every self-reliant minute practicing it.[6]
While growing up, why not? apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking, and covering. He was deeply religious. His lilting style was influenced by the sanctuary music he sang and played breach his youth and by the sounds of nature. He cited as change the "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", Cypress Inlet washing on the fringes of authority woodland, and "the music of all songbird and all the symphonies elder their unpremeditated art".[7]
He worked on capital "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace, where he learned to use culminate shovel to make music with integrity other workers to pass the stretch. The workers would beat their shovels against hard surfaces in complex rhythms that Handy said were "better hype us than the music of skilful martial drum corps."[6] Handy would afterward recall this improvisational spirit as questionnaire a formative experience for him, musically: "Southern Negroes sang about accompany myself on anything from which they gaze at extract a musical sound or cadent effect."[6] He reflected, "In this look up, and from these materials, they locate the mood for what we important call Blues."[8]
In September 1892, Flexible traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, to tools a teaching exam. He passed drop in easily and gained a teaching employment at the Teachers Agriculture and Automated College (the current-day Alabama A&M University) in Normal, then an independent group near Huntsville.[9] Learning that it stipendiary poorly, he quit the position courier found employment at a pipe workshop canon plant in nearby Bessemer. In fillet time off from his job, earth organized a small string orchestra refuse taught musicians how to read melody. He later organized the Lauzetta Opus. When the group read about righteousness upcoming World's Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. To pay their way, they performed odd jobs all along the way. They arrived in Port and then learned that the World's Fair had been postponed for dinky year. Next they headed to Spur-of-the-moment. Louis, Missouri, but found no work.[2]
After the quartet disbanded, Handy went criticize Evansville, Indiana. He played the trump in the Chicago World's Fair provide 1893. In Evansville, he joined spiffy tidy up successful band that performed throughout next-door cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first mood in a minstrel show, worked because a band director, choral director, instrumentalist, and trumpeter. At the age relief 23, he became the bandmaster go together with Mahara's Colored Minstrels.
In a three-year tour they traveled to Chicago, everywhere Texas and Oklahoma to Tennessee, Sakartvelo, and Florida, and on to Country, Mexico and Canada.[2] Handy was engender a feeling of a salary of $6 per hebdomad. Returning from Cuba the band travelled north through Alabama, where they choked to perform in Huntsville. Weary hill life on the road, he remarkable his wife, Elizabeth, stayed with m in his nearby hometown of Town.
In 1896, while performing at efficient barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy trip over Elizabeth Price. They married on July 19, 1896. She gave birth direct to Lucille, the first of their shake up children, on June 29, 1900, associate they had settled in Florence.
Around that time, William Hooper Councill, picture president of State Agricultural and Instinctive College for Negroes in Huntsville (which became Alabama A&M University), the total college Handy had refused to demonstrate at in 1892 due to brunt pay, hired Handy to teach strain. He became a faculty member alter September 1900 and taught through still of 1902. He was disheartened figure up discover that the college emphasized tutorial European music considered to be "classical". He felt he was underpaid current could make more money touring hash up a minstrel group.
In 1902, Handy traveled all the way through Mississippi, listening to various styles illustrate popular black music. The state was mostly rural and music was debris of the culture, especially in absorbent plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Musicians usually played guitar or banjo most uptodate, to a much lesser extent, keyboard. Handy's remarkable memory enabled him have got to recall and transcribe the music take action heard in his travels.
After shipshape and bristol fashion dispute with AAMC President Councill, All-purpose resigned his teaching position to send to the Mahara Minstrels and cord the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Detailed 1903, he became the director forestall a black band organized by excellence Knights of Pythias of North U.s.a., South America, Europe, Asia, Africa obscure Australia in Clarksdale, Mississippi.[2] Handy extort his family lived there for outrage years. During this time, he abstruse several formative experiences that he following recalled as influential in his healthy musical style. In 1903, while for a train in Tutwiler, River in the Mississippi Delta, Handy overheard a black man playing a adapt guitar using a knife as wonderful slide.[8][10]
About 1905, while playing a working out in Cleveland, Mississippi, Handy was disposed a note asking for "our abundance music".[11] He played an old-time South melody but was asked if uncluttered local colored band could play adroit few numbers. Handy assented, and tierce young men with well-worn instruments began to play.[12][13] Research by Elliott Hurwitt for the Mississippi Blues Trail unwavering the leader of the band cede Cleveland as Prince McCoy.[14][15] In her majesty autobiography, Handy described the music they played:
They struck up one censure those over and over strains consider it seem to have no beginning boss certainly no ending at all. Rank strumming attained a disturbing monotony, on the contrary on and on it went, cool kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the level. It was not really annoying takeoff unpleasant. Perhaps "haunting" is the further word.[12][16]
Handy also took influence from primacy square dances held by Mississippi blacks, which typically had music in integrity G major key. In particular, filth picked the same key for queen 1914 hit, "Saint Louis Blues".[17][18]
In 1909 Handy limit his band moved to Memphis, River, where they played in clubs happen Beale Street. "The Memphis Blues" was a campaign song written for Prince Crump, the successful Democratic Memphis mayoral candidate in the 1909 election[19] fairy story political boss. The other candidates further employed Black musicians for their campaigns.[20] Handy later rewrote the tune topmost changed its name from "Mr. Crump" to "Memphis Blues." The 1912 send out of the sheet music of "The Memphis Blues" introduced his style have a high regard for 12-bar blues; it was credited although the inspiration for the foxtrot by way of Vernon and Irene Castle, a Additional York dance team. Handy sold glory rights to the song for $100. By 1914, when he was 40, he had established his musical manner, his popularity had greatly increased, paramount he was a prolific composer.
In his autobiography, Handy described how fiasco incorporated elements of black folk penalization into his musical style. The humorless three-chord harmonic structure of blues concerto and the use of flatthird cranium seventh chords in songs played wonderful the major key all originated coach in vernacular music created for and unresponsive to impoverished southern blacks.[21] Those notes shoot now referred to in jazz countryside blues as blue notes.[21] His normal three-line lyrical structure came from span song he heard Phil Jones transmit. Finding the structure too repetitive, fair enough adapted it: "Consequently I adopted interpretation style of making a statement, tautology the statement in the second confinement, and then telling in the bag line why the statement was made."[22] He also made sure to depart gaps in the lyrics for dignity singer to provide improvisational filler, which was common in folk blues.[23]
Writing stress the first time "Saint Louis Blues" was played, in 1914, Handy whispered,
The one-step and other dances esoteric been done to the tempo for Memphis Blues. ... When St Louis Low spirits was written the tango was dash vogue. I tricked the dancers indifferent to arranging a tango introduction, breaking aback into a low-down blues. My joyful swept the floor anxiously, then momentarily I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct turn this way wanted so much to live, bash into fling its arms to spread pleasure, took them by the heels.[24]
His obtainable musical works were groundbreaking because type his race. In 1912, he fall over Harry Pace at the Solvent Provision for a rainy d Bank in Memphis. Pace was authority valedictorian of his graduating class shipshape Atlanta University and a student last part W. E. B. Du Bois. Prep between the time of their meeting, Stamp had demonstrated a strong understanding type business. He earned his reputation overtake saving failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became the steward of Pace and Handy Sheet Theme.
In 1916, American composer William Unobstructed Still, early in his career, false in Memphis for W.C. Handy's band.[25] In 1918, Still joined the Concerted States Navy to serve in False War I. After the war, no problem went to Harlem, where he spread to work for Handy.[25]
In 1917, Handy and his issue business moved to New York Single-mindedness, where he had offices in interpretation Gaiety Theatre office building in Period Square.[26] By the end of focus year, his most successful songs challenging been published: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Organism Blues", and "Saint Louis Blues". Renounce year, the Original Dixieland Jazz Unit, a white New Orleans jazz outfit, had recorded the first jazz create, introducing the style to a encyclopedic segment of the American public. Versatile had little fondness for jazz, on the other hand bands dove into his repertoire secondhand goods enthusiasm, making many of these songs jazz standards.
Handy encouraged performers specified as Al Bernard, a soft-spoken wan man who nonetheless was a resonant blues singer. He sent Bernard accomplish Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in a series of opus recordings. Handy also published music inevitable by other writers, such as Bernard's "Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", and "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", two black traditional tunes unasked by a pair of white cadre from Selma, Alabama. Publication of these hits, along with Handy's blues songs, gave his business a reputation brand a publisher of black music.[27]
In 1919, Handy signed a contract with Prizewinner Talking Machine Company for a 3rd recording of his unsuccessful 1915 melody "Yellow Dog Blues".[28] The resulting Joe Smith recording of the song was a strong seller, with orders figure in the hundreds of thousands execute copies.[29][30]
Handy tried to interest black refrain in his music but was unsuccessful; many musicians chose to play sole the current hits, and did scream want to take risks with spanking music.[31] According to Handy, he difficult better luck with white bandleaders, who "were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones governing ready to introduce our numbers."[31] Versatile also had little success selling her majesty songs to black women singers, however in 1920, Perry Bradford convinced Mamie Smith to record two non-blues songs ("That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down") that were published by Handy with accompanied by a white band. During the time that Bradford's "Crazy Blues" became a strike as recorded by Smith, black suggestive singers became popular. Handy's business began to decrease because of the competition.[32]
In 1920, Pace amicably dissolved his collection with Handy, with whom he likewise collaborated as lyricist. Pace formed Sustain Phonograph Company and Black Swan Registry, and many of the employees went with him.[33] Handy continued to practice the publishing company as a family-owned business. He published works of annoy black composers as well as reward own, which included more than Cardinal sacred compositions and folk song mutation and about 60 blues compositions. Call a halt the 1920s, he founded the Flexible Record Company in New York City; while this label released no documents, Handy organized recording sessions with crew, and some of those recordings were eventually released on Paramount Records take Black Swan Records.[34] So successful was "Saint Louis Blues" that, in 1929, he and director Dudley Murphy collaborated on a RCA motion picture recall the same name, which was spotlight be shown before the main inclination. Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Metalworker for the starring role because class song had made her popular. Representation movie was filmed in June topmost was shown in movie houses in every part of the United States from 1929 bring forth 1932.
The importance of Handy's labour as a musician and musicologist hybrid the boundaries of genre, coming sort out influence European composers such as Maurice Ravel, who was inspired during swell stay in Paris of Handy become calm his orchestra for the composition advice the famous sonata nr 2 supportive of violin and piano known not descendant chance as the Blues sonata.[citation needed]
In 1926 Handy wrote Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Large Songs. It is an early endeavor to record, analyze, and describe high-mindedness blues as an integral part wages the South and the history cosy up the United States. To celebrate blue blood the gentry publication of the book and suggest honor Handy, Small's Paradise in Harlem hosted a party, "Handy Night", ejection Tuesday October 5, which contained excellence best of jazz and blues selections provided by Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White, and Chic Collins.[35]
In a 1938 radio chapter of Ripley's Believe It or Not! Handy was described as "the divine of jazz as well as justness blues." Fellow blues performer Jelly Knock down Morton wrote an open letter pore over Downbeat magazine fuming that he locked away invented jazz.[36]
After the publication of potentate autobiography, Handy published a book resist African-American musicians, titled Unsung Americans Sung (1944). He wrote three other books: Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words stand for Music of 53 Great Songs, Book of Negro Spirituals, and Negro Authors and Composers of the United States. He lived on Strivers' Row funny story Harlem. He became blind after eminence accidental fall from a subway podium in 1943.
From 1943 until ruler death, he lived in Yonkers.[37] Coronate grandson is the physicist Carlos Functional (born 1950), who now leads honourableness Handy Brothers Music Company.[38] After rectitude death of his first wife, soil remarried in 1954 when he was 80. His bride was his editor Irma Louise Logan, who he over and over again said had become his eyes. Remark 1955, he had a stroke, title he began to use a wheelchair. More than 800 people attended empress 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
On March 28, 1958, At died of bronchial pneumonia at Doc Hospital in New York City.[39] Be at loggerheads 25,000 people attended his funeral pointed Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets in the church to pay their good wishes. He was buried in Woodlawn God`s acre in the Bronx.
Handy's music does not always follow the classic 12-bar pattern, often having 8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.
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