"St. Louis Blues" by W.C. Handy

There are so many firsts, so many "fathers" and so many "kings" of the blues, one wonders sometimes. But separating fact from legend, truth from old-time rumor is one of the things that  Song of the Day is all about. Sometimes, even, its possible to do just that. (The historians and musicologists we know below paved the way.)

In review, Mamie Smith did record the first blues song. That much is true. But the King of the Delta Blues, well…, some believe it was Charlie Patton, others believe it was Son House. Both we believe are true. We also believe that Blind Lemon Jefferson was paternal to the Texas Blues, and Blind Blake was the forebearer of the Piedmont Blues.

In talking about "firsts", there are a few women we’re going to focus on shortly. That would have to start with Ma Rainey, then Bessie, and Billie, and Sippie too. We can’t forget  Louise Johnson either; she wasn’t as well known as the others, but she was certainly the first female bluesperson to record out of the Delta.

When it comes to firsts though, W. C. Handy is the first of all the other firsts. Here we are talking about "the father of the blues."

Ok, now lets qualify "father of the blues", then we’ll spend some very enjoyable time with W.C. Handy. He was not a bluesman in the traditional sense of what that means. His background, temperament and culture was not that of a Delta bluesman. He was a preacher’s son out of Alabama; his grandfather became an African Methodist Episcopal minister after emancipation.  Rather than a beginning as a sharecropper, he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking and plastering, but instead became a school teacher as a young man.

Deeply religious, Handy was also an exceptionally educated musician. The earliest influences to his musical talent were found in the church music he sang and played as a youth. He could read, write, transpose and document music. Handy taught music theory and how to read notes to other musicians. His instruments of choice were trumpet and piano.

In 1912, Handy wrote and published "Memphis Blues", the first time ever the word "blues" was used in a published song.

Unlike any of the founding Delta blues fathers, Handy also understood the business of music in his day. After moving to New York in 1917, Handy became a notable music publisher, and at one time he owned a record company as well. As a music publisher, which has much to do with becoming so influential with the birth of the blues, he published works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150 sacred compositions and folk song arrangements and about sixty blues compositions. (This was before any of the Delta blues forefathers ever recorded.)

In fact it was Handy who inspired his friend, Perry Bradford, to write "Crazy Blues", the first blues song ever recorded. As we have noted, the success of this record proved the financial viability of "race records," and from that point on the record industry never looked back.

Handy is credited with giving the blues its contemporary form. He took the blues from a not very well-known regional music style to one of the dominant forces in American music.  What he did, essentially, was publicize the blues… and make it acceptable for the rest of the world.

The W.C. Handy Award is the most prestigious honor currently awarded to blues artists. W.C. Handy also has his own US postage stamp.

William Christopher Handy (b. Nov 16, 1873, Muscle Shoalst, AL d. Mar 28, 1958, New York, NY) Perhaps the unique characteristic that Handy had as an early interpretive musician was his interest in other music that he heard, particularly that of the Mississippi Delta.

Circumstance led Handy to the Delta, and I suppose we’re all lucky for it. In 1903 Handy took a job in Clarksdale, Mississppi to direct a black band named the Knights of Pythias. He remained in the Delta for six years. There, in 1903, while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, just outside of Clarksdale, Handy experienced one of the quintessential early blues stories ever told.

He was asleep on a bench, and this is how Handy tells it in his book, Father of the Blues: An Autobiography,  "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." (The man was singing this lyric, "goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog", which is about a railroad intersection in Morehead, MS not far away. The man was singing about where he was going.)

We’ve mentioned above Handy having a near pitch perfect ear. In his book he tells a story about watching black square dancers in Clarksdale with "one of their own calling the figures, and crooning all of his calls in the key of G." He later recalls 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."

Both of these stories are important, and Handy’s musical ear is a key to his influence. Because he could read and write music, and had the discipline to always document what he heard, Handy had the means to later remember and study music that was important to him. This later influenced both songs of his own, and other musicians that he published and produced. Remember, this was all before there was a record player available in any portable, affordable form.

One thing in particular we like about the Tutwiler story is the time that it took place. Who Handy heard, that lean Negro playing slide guitar and singing the blues is forever unknown.  In 1903, we can tell you who it was not. Charlie Patton, then only 16 years old, was not in Tutwiler that night; it was not him. Son House was only 1 years old, and Willie Brown was only 3. What this means is Handy first heard the blues in an earlier form. What influenced Handy that night in Tutwiler, that sound, is the same thing that influenced the key forefathers of the Delta blues as we know it today.

W. C Handy was the first musician to note, discuss and use the "blue note" in a published sound. Here’s how Handy describes it in his autobiography, ""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." Again referring to "what have since become known as "blue notes"", Handy further states that "the transitional flat thirds and seventh in my melody" were his attempt "to suggest the typical slurs of the Negro voice". (here)

That Handy came to the Delta, to Clarksdale in particular (remember, Son House and Willie Brown were from there) is fortunate. That he had that ear, and that talent, is even better. That he went to New York to expose what he heard to the rest of the world is a huge piece to the puzzle of how the blues began.

"St. Louis Blues" (lyrics and sheet music here) was one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song. Since Handy published it in 1914, it  has become a standard and part of jazz musicians’ repertoire. It  it has been covered by many, both as a song and as an istrumental, from Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith to Glenn Miller and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Called "the jazzman’s Hamlet", St. Louis Blues became so popular that it inspired the dance know as "The Foxtrot".

The version with Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong on cornet is considered by many to be one of the finest recordings of the 1920s. It was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993.

Bonus: (here’s only a few)
Since the it was published in 1914, the song has enjoyed great popularity both as a song but also as an instrumental. Here are a few of notable versions. (We can really hear the blues in the Bessie Smith version, which figures.)

"St. Louis Blues",  Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong version
"St. Louis Blues",  Nat King Cole version
"St. Louis Blues",  Django Reinhardt version
"St. Louis Blues",  Glen Miller Orchestra version
"St. Louis Blues",  Dave Brubeck version
"St. Louis Blues",  Chet Atkins version
"St. Louis Blues",  John Fahey version
 

Previous Song of the Day here.

References: (click on ‘em, and click on the book to get one!)
Bob Santelli	Gayle D. Wardlow	Nancy Meyer	Robert Palmer	John Barry	Ed Komara	Peter Aschoff
About this and that: I know and have worked with most of the folks here, with the exception of Robert Palmer and John Barry. At present Robert Santelli is the Executive Director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. It is Gayle Dean Wardlow who is particularly associated with research into the lives of Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson. Our friend Nancy Meyer managed Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy, among others, and has distinguished herself in artists royalty recovery for some 30 years. Deep Blues and Rising Tide are must reads to understand the world from which it all sprung. Ed Komara, also a good friend, was curator of the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi for years, and now Music Librarian at SUNY Potsdam. Peter Aschoff, PhD was my dear friend, mentor, and blues historian, musicologist and cultural anthropologist for whom this work is dedicated.

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Posted by Richard Bolen on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 3:20 pm.