W. C. HandySt. Louis Blues 1914
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Artist/Composer: W. C. Handy
Keywords: Cylinder; acoustic; Popular; 1910s
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Artist/Composer: W. C. Handy
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Decca # 71726 23524A Larry Adler with John Kirby and his orchestra -Hamonica solo with orchestra -- undated
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Artist/Composer: W. C. Handy
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Radiex # 7023 2507 The Dixie trio fox trot -undated
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Artist/Composer: Victor Military Band
Date: 1914-07-15
Run time: 2:57
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andySt Louis blues
Al Bernard Tenor with orchestra - 1920
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W.C. Handy | |
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In July 1941, by Carl Van Vechten
| |
Background information | |
Birth name | William Christopher Handy |
Also known as | The Father of Blues |
Born | November 16, 1873 Florence, Alabama, U.S. |
Origin | Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. |
Died | March 28, 1958 (aged 84) New York City, New York, U.S. |
Genres | Blues, Jazz |
Occupations | Composer, songwriter,musician, bandleader, author |
Instruments | Piano, cornet, trumpet, vocals |
Years active | 1893 – 1948 |
William Christopher Handy(November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was ablues composer and musician, often known as the "Father of the Blues".
Ole Miss Rag (September 22, 1917)
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All Files: HTTP A ragtime composed by W.C. Handy and recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis (according to redhotjazz.com) in 1917 in New York. (Columbia A2420, Columbia 2913)
Also available at http://www.archive.org/details/Free_20s_Jazz_Collection
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: W.C. Handy
Date: 1917-09-22
Keywords: ragtime; jazz; 1910s; dixieland; W.C. Handy; 1917
Creative Commons license: Public Domain
Handy remains among the most influential of American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American form of music known as the blues, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the blues from a not very well-known regional music style to one of the dominant forces in American music.
Handy was an educated musician who used folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers. He loved this folk musical form and brought his own transforming touch to it.
Contents |
[edit]Early lifeJazz Piano Workshop 1965 Jaki Byard
Uploaded by greob. - Watch more music videos, in HD! to the pastor of a small church in Guntersville, another small town in northeast centralAlabama. Handy wrote in his 1941autobiography, Father of the Blues, that he was born in the log cabin built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal ministerafter emancipation. The log cabin of Handy's birth has been saved and preserved in downtown Florence.
Handy was a deeply religious man, whose influences in his musical style were found in the church music he sang and played as a youth, and in the sounds of nature inFlorence.
He cited the sounds of nature, such as "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", the sounds of Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art" as inspiration.
Growing up he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking and plastering. He bought his first guitar which he had seen in a local shop window and had secretly saved for by picking berries, nuts and making lye soap, without his parents' permission. His father, dismayed at his actions, asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?" Ordering Handy to "Take it back where it came from", his father quickly enrolled him in organ lessons. Handy's days as an organ student were short lived, and he moved on to learn the cornet.
[edit]Musical and social development
Handy joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.
While in Florence he belonged to a "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace, and described the music made by the workers as they beat shovels, altering the tone while thrusting and withdrawing the metal part against the iron buggies to pass the time while waiting for the overfilled furnace to digest its ore, "With a dozen men participating, the effect was sometimes remarkable...It was better to us than the music of a martial drum corps, and our rhythms were far more complicated."[1] He would note that "Southern Negroes sang about everything...They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect...". He would later reflect that, "In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues".[2]
In September 1892, Handy traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily. He obtained a teaching job in Birmingham but soon learned that the teaching profession paid poorly. He quit the position and found work at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer.
During his off-time, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read notes. Later, Handy organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World's Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. The trip to Chicago was long and arduous. To pay their way, group members performed at odd jobs along the way. They finally arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year. The group then headed to St. Louis but working conditions there proved to be very bad. The Lauzetta Quartet disbanded and Handy subsequently left St. Louis for Evansville, Indiana.
In Evansville, Handy's luck changed dramatically. He joined a successful band which performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. While performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, he met Elizabeth Price. They married shortly afterwards on July 19, 1896.
His musical endeavors were varied, and he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, moved from Alabama and worked as aband director, choral director, cornetist and trumpeter. At age 23, he was band master of Mahara's Colored Minstrels.
As a young man, he played cornet in the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and in 1902 he traveled throughout Mississippi listening to various musical styles played by ordinary Negroes. The instruments most often used in many of those songs were theguitar, banjo and to a much lesser extent, the piano. His remarkable memory served him well, and he was able to recall and transcribe the music he heard in his travels. In particular, he noted in his autobiography a blues-like guitarist he heard in Tutwiler, Mississippi.
Shortly after his marriage to Elizabeth Price in 1896, he was invited to join a minstrel group called "Mahara's Minstrels." In their three-year tour, they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma, through Tennessee, Georgia and Florida on toCuba, and Handy was paid a salary of $6 per week. Upon their return from their Cuban engagements, they traveled north through Alabama, and stopped to perform in Huntsville, Alabama. Growing weary from life on the road, it was there he and his wife decided to stay with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.
On June 29, 1900 in Florence, Elizabeth gave birth to the first (a daughter, Lucille) of their six children. Around that time,William Hooper Councill, President of Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (AAMC) (today namedAlabama Agricultural and Mechanical University) in Normal, Alabama, approached Handy about teaching music. At the time, AAMC and Tuskegee Institute were the only colleges for Negroes in Alabama. Handy accepted Councill's offer and became a faculty member that September. He taught music there from 1900 to 1902.
An important factor in his musical development and in music history, was his enthusiasm for the distinctive style of uniquely American music, then often considered inferior to European classical music. He was soon disheartened to discover that American music was often cast aside by the college and instead it emphasized foreign music considered to be "classical". Handy felt he was underpaid and felt he could make more money touring with a minstrel group. After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, he resigned his teaching position to rejoin the Mahara Minstrels to tour theMidwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he was offered the opportunity to direct a black band named the Knights of Pythias, located in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy accepted and remained there six years.
In 1903 while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, in the Mississippi Delta, Handy had the following experience. "A lean loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept... As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars....The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard."[2][3]
Partway through the evening, while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi (circa 1905 [1]), Handy was given a note that asked for “our native music”. After playing an old-time Southern melody, Handy was asked if he would object if a local colored band played a few numbers. Three young men with a battered guitar, mandolin, and a worn out bass took the stage. [4] (In recounting the same story to Dorthy Scarborough circa 1925, Handy remembered a banjo, guitar, and fiddle.[5]) “They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps “haunting” is the better word.”[4] [6]
Handy also noted square dancing by Negroes in Mississippi with "one of their own calling the figures, and crooning all of his calls in the key of G."[7] He would later recall this experience when deciding on the key for "St Louis Blues". "It was the memory of that old gent who called figures for the Kentucky breakdown-the one who everlastingly pitched his tones in the key of G and moaned the calls like a presiding elder preaching at a revival meeting. Ah, there was my key-I'd do the song in G."[8]
In describing "blind singers and footloose bards" around Clarksdale, Handy wrote, "surrounded by crowds of country folks, they would pour their hearts out in song"... They earned their living by selling their own songs - "ballets," as they called them-and I'm ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination."[9]
[]Transition: popularity, fame and business
In 1909 he and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee and established their presence on Beale Street. The genesis of his "Memphis Blues" was as a campaign tune originally entitled as "Mr. Crump" which he had written for Edward Crump, a successful Memphis, Tennessee mayoral candidate in 1909 (and future "boss"). He later rewrote the tune and changed the name to "Memphis Blues."
The 1912 publication of his "Memphis Blues" sheet music introduced his style of 12-bar blues to many households and was credited as the inspiration for the invention of the foxtrot dance step by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York–based dance team. Some consider it to be the first blues song. He sold the rights to the song for US$100. By 1914, when Handy was at the age of 40, his musical style was asserted, his popularity increased significantly, and he composed prolifically.
Handy wrote the following regarding his use of what he heard in folk song. "The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major..., and I carried this device into my melody as well... This was a distinct departure, but as it turned out, it touched the spot." [10] Again referring to "what have since become known as "blue notes"", Handy states that "the transitional flat thirds and seventh in my melody" were his attempt "to suggest the typical slurs of the Negro voice".[11]Regarding the "three-chord basic harmonic structure" of the blues, Handy wrote that the "(tonic, subdominant, dominant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts, honky-tonk piano players, wanderers and others of the underprivileged but undaunted class".[13]"The three-line structure I employed in my lyric was suggested by a song I heard Phil Jones sing in Evansville...While I took the three-line stanza as a model for my lyric, I found its repetition too monotonous... Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made."[12]
Another detail was noted, "In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like 'Oh, lawdy' or 'Oh, baby' and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits."[14]
Handy detailed the sources for his creations in his autobiography, as detailed above, and noted that, "it should be clear by now that my blues are built around or suggested by, rather than constructed of, the snatches, phrases, cries and idioms such as I have illustrated.” [15]
Writing about the first time St Louis Blues was played (1914),[16] Handy notes that "The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues...When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightening strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels."[17]
Because of the difficulty of getting his works published, he published many of his own works. In 1917, he and his business moved to New York City where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square.[18]. By the end of that year, his most successful songs: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "St. Louis Blues", had been published. That year the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the very firstjazz record and introduced jazz music to a wide segment of the American public. Handy initially had little fondness for this new "jazz" music, but bands dove into the repertoire of W. C. Handy compositions with enthusiasm, making many of them jazz standards.
While trying to establish his Memphis band, Handy complained to his Aunt Matt Jordan that other bands made mistakes while his men played "perfect". His Aunt remarked, "Honey, white folks like to hear colored folks make some mistakes." "In this one remark", wrote Handy, "can be hidden the source or secret of jazz."[19]
Handy's foray into publishing was noteworthy for several reasons. Not only were his works groundbreaking because of hisethnicity, but he was among the first blacks who were successful because of it. He self-published his works. In 1912, Handy met Harry H. Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was valedictorian of his graduating class atAtlanta University and student of W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of business. He earned his reputation by recreating failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.
While in New York City, Handy noted that "..I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn't... The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day...They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers." But, "Negro vaudeville artists...wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers."[20]Sometime during his association with Pace, Handy recounted the following experience with racism, one of many during his life time. "One morning, while passing the square on Beale Street that bears my name, I noticed a crowd of Negroes gathered around a skull. The day before, that skull had belonged to a pleasant, easy-going young fellow named Tom Smith. Now it was severed from his body. The eyes had been burned out with red hot irons. A rural mob, not satisfied with burying his body, had brought the skull back to town and tossed it into a crowd of Negroes to humiliate and intimidate them... All the brutal, savage acts I had seen wrecked against unfortunate human beings came back to torment me-particularly those in which the luckless one came near being myself." [15]
Handy associated with individuals such as Al Bernard, "a young white man" with a "soft Southern accent" who "could sing all my Blues". Handy sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in "an impressive series of successes for the young artist, successes in which we proudly shared". Handy also published the original "Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", both written by Bernard. "Two young white ladies from Selma, Alabama (Madelyn Sheppard and Annelu Burns) contributed the songs "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", with the music published by Handy's company. These numbers, plus our blues, gave us a reputation as publishers of Negro music." [21]
Expecting to make only "another hundred or so" on a third recordng of his "Yellow Dog Blues" (originally titled "Yellow Dog Rag"[22] ), Handy signed a deal with theVictor company. The Joe Smith [23] recording of this song (1919) became the best-selling recording of Handy's music to date.[24] [25]
Attempts "to introduce colored girls for recording our blues" were initially unsuccessful. "We were making too much money evidently." In 1920 however, Perry Bradford was able to get Mamie Smith to record two non blues songs written by himself, and published by Handy accompanied by a white band: "That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down". When Bradford's "Crazy Blues" became a hit as recorded by Smith, "Colored blues singers, being in great demand, were contracted forthwith." With the bitterness of sharp competition, "Our business began to fall away as steadily as it had grown."[26]
In 1920 Pace amicably dissolved his long-standing partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as lyricist. As Handy wrote: "To add to my woes, my partner withdrew from the business. He disagreed with some of my business methods, but no harsh words were involved. He simply chose this time to sever connection with our firm in order that he might organize Pace Phonograph Company, issuing Black Swan Records and making a serious bid for the Negro market. . . . With Pace went a large number of our employees. . . . Still more confusion and anguish grew out of the fact that people did not generally know that I had no stake in the Black Swan Record Company."[27]
Although Handy's partnership with Pace was dissolved, he continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. He published works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150 sacredcompositions and folk song arrangements and about sixty blues compositions. In the 1920s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City.
Bessie Smith's January 14, 1925, Columbia Records recording of "St. Louis Blues" with Louis Armstrong is considered by many to be one of the finest recordings of the 1920s.
So successful was Handy's "St. Louis Blues" that in 1929, he and director Kenneth W. Adams collaborated on a RCA motion picture project of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Smith have the starring role, since she had gained widespread popularity with that tune. The picture was shot in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.
The genre of the blues was a hallmark of American society and culture in the 1920s and 1930s. So great was its influence, and so much was it recognized as Handy's hallmark, that author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his novel The Great Gatsby that "All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor."
Later life
Following publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians entitled Unsung Americans Sing (1944). He wrote a total of five books:
- Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs
- Book of Negro Spirituals
- Father of the Blues: An Autobiography
- Unsung Americans Sing
- Negro Authors and Composers of the United States
During this time, he lived on Strivers' Row in Harlem. He became blind following an accidental fall from a subway platform in 1943. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1954. At age 80 he married his secretary Irma Louise Logan, whom he frequently said had become his eyes.
In 1955 Handy suffered a stroke, following which he began to use a wheelchair. Over 800 people attended his 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
On March 28, 1958, W. C. Handy succumbed to acute bronchial pneumonia and died. Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects. He was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.
Compositions
Handy's songs do not always follow the classic 12-bar pattern, often having 8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.
- "Memphis Blues", written 1909, published 1912. Although usually subtitled "Boss Crump", it is a distinct song from Handy's campaign satire, "Boss Crump don't 'low no easy riders around here", which was based on the good-time song "Mamma Don't Allow It."
- "Yellow Dog Blues" (1912), "Your easy rider's gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." The reference is to the Southern Railway and the local Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog. By Handy's telling locals assigned the words "Yellow Dog" to the letters Y.D. on the freight trains that they saw.[28]
- "St. Louis Blues" (1914), "the jazzman's Hamlet."
- "Loveless Love", based in part on the classic, "Careless Love". Possibly the first song to complain of modernsynthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're growing used to soulless soul."
- "Aunt Hagar's Blues", the biblical Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was considered the "mother" of theAfrican Americans.
- "Beale Street Blues" (1916), written as a farewell to the old Beale Street of Memphis (actually called Beale Avenue until the song changed the name); but Beale Street did not go away and is considered the "home of the blues" to this day. B.B. King was known as the "Beale Street Blues Boy" and Elvis Presley watched and learned from Ike Turnerthere.
- "Long Gone John (From Bowling Green)", tribute to a famous bank robber.
- "Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans.
- "Atlanta Blues", includes the song known as "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.
- "Ole Miss Rag" (1917), a ragtime composition, recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis[29].
Performances and honors
- On April 27, 1928 he performed a program of jazz, blues, plantation songs, work songs, piano solos, spirituals and a Negro rhapsody in Carnegie Hall.
- In 1938 he performed at the National Folk Festival in Washington, DC, his first national performance on a desegregated stage.
- He performed at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 and 1934 and the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940.
- In 1940, NBC broadcast an all-Handy program as part of its weekly series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. His songs were performed by Dinah Shore and by the composer himself.
- Louis Armstrong plays W.C.Handy (1954)
- He is referenced in Prof. Harold Hill's lead-in to the song Seventy-Six Trombones inMeredith Willson's 1957 musical The Music Man.
- In 1958, a movie about his life - appropriately entitled St. Louis Blues - was released starring legendary African-American musicians Nat "King" Cole (in the main role),Pearl Bailey, Mahalia Jackson, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. It was released the year of Handy's death.
- On May 17, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stampin his honor.
- Inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
- He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.
- He is referenced in Joni Mitchell's 1975 song Furry Sings the Blues.
- He is referenced in Marc Cohn's 1991 song Walking in Memphis, covered byLonestar, Cher, and other artists. "...Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues, in the middle of the pouring rain. W.C. Handy, won't you look down over me?"
- He received a Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in 1993.
- He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was a 1993 Inductee into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.
- Citing 2003 as "the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first Blues music..." the United States Senate in 2002 passed a resolution declaring the year beginning February 1, 2003 as the "Year of the Blues."
- Each November 16, Handy's birthday is celebrated with free music, birthday cake and free admission to the W.C. Handy Museum in Florence, Alabama. The hand-hewn log cabin made by his grandfather is his birthplace and museum.
- An autographed 1937 photo from W.C. Handy to Anton Lada of Lada's Louisiana Orchestra sold for $850 in 2006.
Awards, festivals and memorials
- The Blues Music Award, widely recognized as the most prestigious award for blues artists was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.
- The W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in the Muscle Shoals area of Florence, Alabama. Previous week-long festivals have featured jazz and blues legends including Jimmy Smith, Ramsey Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Blue Bland, Diane Schuur, Billy Taylor, Dianne Reeves and Charlie Byrd, Ellis Marsalis and Take 6. The festival also features a roster of annual regulars, called the W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars.
- W. C. Handy Park is a city park located on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The park contains a life-sized bronze statue of Handy.
- The W.C. Handy Blues & Barbeque Festivalis a week-long musical event that features blues and Zydeco bands from across the U.S and is held every June on the banks of the Ohio River in downtown Henderson, Kentucky.
- In 1979, New York City joined the list of institutions and municipalities to honor Handy by naming one block of West 52nd Street in Manhattan "W.C. Handy Place".
]See also
- St. Louis Blues (film)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[]References
- Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Da Capo paperback, New York; Macmillan, (1941) ISBN 0306804212.
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 140
- ^ a b Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 74
- ^ "Waiting for the train at Tutwiler", Triple Threat Blues Band
- ^ a b Father of the Blues: An Autobiography By W. C. Handy, Arna Wendell Bontemps Contributor Abbe Niles Published by Da Capo Press, 1991 pages 76,77. ISBN 0306804212, 9780306804212
- ^ On The Trail Of Negro Folk-Songs. by Dorthy Scarborough, assisted by Ola Lee Gulledge. Harvard University Press. 1925. page 269.
- ^ Richard Crawford, America's Musical Life: A History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 536, 537 ISBN 0393048101
- ^ W.C. Handy, Father of the BluesNew York: MacMillan, 1941, p. 85
- ^ William Christopher Handy, Father of the Blues, New York: MacMillan, 1941, p. 119
- ^ William Christopher Handy, Father of the Blues, New York: MacMillan, 1941, p. 87
- ^ William Christopher Handy, Father of the Blues, New York: MacMillan, 1941 no ISBN in this edition
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 99 no ISBN in this edition
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) pages 142, 143. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) page 99. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) page 120. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ a b Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 178
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) page 305. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) pages 99,100. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ Broadway: An Encyclopedia by Ken Bloom - Routledge; 2 edition (November 11, 2003) ISBN 0415937043
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 149
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 195
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan pages 196-197
- ^ Escaping the Delta: Standing at the Crossroads of the Blues, Elijah Wald. 2004. HarperCollins. paperback, page 283. ISBN 0060524235
- ^ Joseph C. Smith and His Orchestra
- ^ "Joseph C. Smith and His Orchestra"
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan pages 198
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan pages 200-202
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 202 no ISBN in this edition
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography By W. C. Handy, Arna Wendell Bontemps Contributor Abbe Niles Published by Da Capo Press, 1991 page 267. ISBN 0306804212, 9780306804212 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
W. C. HandySt. Louis Blues 1914
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All Files: HTTP Record GRINDING NOISES are removed however low original fidelity (250 to 2,500 cycles per second for acoustic) remains. Dates given, usually correct, are often just a guess.
6,500 of the original album covers for the sheet music of the 9,000 songs of this era is part of the file tag and your player should display it.
This audio is part of the collection: 78 RPMs & Cylinder Recordings
Artist/Composer: W. C. Handy
Keywords: Cylinder; acoustic; Popular; 1910s
This audio is part of the collection: 78 RPMs & Cylinder Recordings
Artist/Composer: W. C. Handy
Keywords: Cylinder; acoustic; Popular; 1910s
Creative Commons license: Public Domain
The Fiddleworms Live at W.C. Handy Festival Street Party
Collection: TheFiddleworms
Band/Artist: The Fiddleworms
Date: July 23, 2008 (check for other copies)
Venue: W.C. Handy Festival Street Party
Band/Artist: The Fiddleworms
Date: July 23, 2008 (check for other copies)
Venue: W.C. Handy Festival Street Party
Location: Florence, AL01- Intro
02- Shine
03- Heartbreak Escapade
04- You Come to Me
05- Russell rap
06- Noble Lie (with Donna Jean Godchaux MacKay)
07- I'm Not the One (with Donna Jean)
08- Crows (by Mitch Mann)
09- Tension
10- Tuning
11- Small Town Factory Man
12- Tuning
13- Rocking Chair
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Fiddleworms
2008-07-23
Court Street
Florence, Ala.
Church Audio CA-11>Church Audio STC-9000>Edirol R-09
DFC beside soundboard; 7' high; about 50' from stage.
W.C. Handy Festival street party.
The Fiddleworms are:
Russell Mefford: guitar, vocals
Rob Malone: guitar, vocals
David MacKay: bass
Daniel Ledford: drums
Clint Bailey: keyboards
Special guest: Donna Jean Godchaux MacKay on backing vocals.
Rollin' In The Hay Live at Bayou Blue on 2009-07-20 (July 20, 2009)
This was HAY's first of a handful of shows at the W.C. Handy Music Festival in Florence, Ala. (Muscle Shoals area). It was on the patio of a Cajun restaurant, Bayou Blue. There were a lot of people there when we arrived and I had to set up to the left side, but the monitors happened to be pointed our way for some reason! ; ) They played three sets, about 21/2 hours total. They played "Me and Opie" twice. The sound is really nice (one of my best) until the third set, which is only 20 minutes long. I had four idiots that had to stand in front of my table and run their damn mouths. The sound is still good, you can just hear voices that weren't noticeable before. It was my first HAY show and I got a taper shout out from Stan. I'll see them again if they come to town. Please point out any mistakes in the set list.
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Bessie Brown and her Jazz BandSt Louis Blues 1926
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Artist/Composer: Bessie Brown and her Jazz Band
Original Dixieland Jazz Band with Al BernardSt. Louis Blues (1921)
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This audio is part of the collection: 78 RPMs & Cylinder RecordingsIt also belongs to collection: audio_music
Artist/Composer: Original Dixieland Jazz Band with Al Bernard
Date: 1921-00-00 00:00:00
All Files: Maxine Sullivan
Maxine SullivanMaxine Sullivan - St. Louis Blues
78 RPM record GRINDING noises are reduced (with Goldwave). Dates, if given are a guess.
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
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Benny GoodmanBenny Goodman - St Louis Blues
78 RPM record GRINDING noises are reduced with Goldwave.
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: Benny Goodman
Keywords: Big Band; Orchestra
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: Benny Goodman
Keywords: Big Band; Orchestra
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Martha Copeland, the Hall Johnson Choir - St Louis Blues 1928
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ripped from a movie. cleaning this file was difficult. Background choir singers gives this recording the proper feeling for this as a blues song.
This audio is part of the collection: 78 RPMs & Cylinder Recordings
Artist/Composer: Martha Copeland, the Hall Johnson Choir
Keywords: Popular; 1920s; 78rpm
Creative Commons license: Public Domain
Marion Harris - St.Louis Blues (1920)
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: Marion Harris
Keywords: Popular
Artist/Composer: Marion Harris
Keywords: Popular
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Paul Reischmann Orch - St. Louis Blues 1935
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: Paul Reischmann
Keywords: Big Band; Orchestra
Glenn Miller Orch - St. Louis Blues March
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: Glenn Miller
Keywords: Big Band; Orchestra
Mound City Blue Blowers - St. Louis Blues
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Noble Sissle Orch - St. Louis Blues 1933
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Artist/Composer: Noble Sissle, Eube Blake
Keywords: Big Band; Orchestra
Billy Cotton Band - St Louis Blues
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: Billy Cotton
Keywords: Big Band; Orchestra
Artist/Composer: Billy Cotton
Keywords: Big Band; Orchestra
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Sylvester Weaver and Walter Beasley - St. Louis Blues 1927
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The Swing Billies - St. Louis Blues (inst.) 1937
jazzy style with a bit of country style. a MUST hear.
This audio is part of the collection: 78 RPMs & Cylinder Recordings
Artist/Composer: The Swing Billies
Keywords: Country or Western; 1930s;78rpm
This audio is part of the collection: 78 RPMs & Cylinder Recordings
Artist/Composer: The Swing Billies
Keywords: Country or Western; 1930s;78rpm
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Bob Crosby Bobcats - Boogie Woogie on St Louis Blues 1951
Bob Crosby Bobcats - Boogie Woogie on St Louis Blues 1951 | 2.61 MB |
GRINDING noises are reduced.
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: Bob Crosby Bobcats
Keywords: jazz; Big Band; orchestra; 78 rpm
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio
Artist/Composer: Bob Crosby Bobcats
Keywords: jazz; Big Band; orchestra; 78 rpm
Devine's Wisconson Roof Orchestra - new St Louis blues 1927
20s Jazz. excellent.
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Ray McKinley Orch, V=Johnny Desmond - St Louis Blues March
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All Files: HTTP78 RPM record GRINDING noises have been reduced by grimriper2u@yahoo.com. Song shared by youtube.
RayMckinleyOrchVjohnnyDesmond-StLouisBluesMarch_vbr_mp3.zip | VBR ZIP | 3.64 MB |
Al Bernard Orch, V=Carl Fenton - St. Louis Blues 1927
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Original Dixieland Jazz Band, V=Al Bernard - St Louis Blues 1921
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This audio is part of the collection: 78 RPMs & Cylinder Recordings
Artist/Composer: Original Dixieland Jazz Band, V=Al Bernard
Keywords: Big Band; 1920s; 78rpm;Orchestra
Artist/Composer: Original Dixieland Jazz Band, V=Al Bernard
Keywords: Big Band; 1920s; 78rpm;Orchestra
Creative Commons license: Public Domain
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