FATHER OF "THE BLUES"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 26

FATHER OF "THE BLUES"

N a Brooklyn, New York, secondary school recently, hundreds of youngsters crowded into the assembly hall and gathered around W. C. Handy, the 81-ear-old "Father of the Blues." or more than an hour, the pioneer of American jazz blew on his old trumpet, sang songs and delighted the young students with his reminiscences of early jazz, which he helped ‘to create. William Christopher Handy was born in Florence, Alabama-in a log cabin -on November 16, 1873. His father was a Methodist minister and; in accordance with his strict code of ethics, forbade his son to play any musical instrument but the church organ. But music was in young W.C.’s body and soul. He says, "Why, anything I heard the birds sing, I knew how to arrange in its proper place." This urge to create music was so strong that he disobeyed his father. He bought an old cornet for a few coins and secretly learned to play it. He became so skilled with the horn that when he was graduated from high school in 1891 he was admitted to the Florence Brass Band.

He taught for one year and worked in a steel mill for another. Then came a depression and he was laid off. In desperation he turned to his music and organised first a quartet and then a nine-piece orchestra. With the latter he spent much time in New Orleans. It was there that he gathered many of the impressions of Negro life along the banks of the Mississippi River and on the wharves and streets of New Orleans that later inspired his unusual "blues" music, "In those days when I had to sleep on the levees I heard the roustabouts singing on the steamboats and it hung in my ears,’ Handy recalls. New Orleans, now called "the birthplace of the blues," was a gay, bustling city, and as it affected W. C. Handy, so too did its cosmopolitan influence affect the many other Negro musicians who supplied most of its dance music. Their songs reflect life as they lived it in the Mississippi River delta country. The novel jazz that they created has no recorded beginning. Because many of the musicians could not read music, they simply played it as they felt itimprovising as the song progressed. Some musical historians, however, find the origins of jazz and "blues" music in the strange duties that many

of the musicians performed. Often they wefe hired to play in funeral processions. On the way home from funerals, the same sombre music took on a more lively lilt. The slurs and _ syncopation they improvised turned into the new musical art -jazz. Many of America’s finest jazzmen learned their art during this period in the New Orleans locale. Handy settled in Mem phis, Tennessee, as ar orchestra leader and arranger of musical scores His famous "Memphis Blues" was composed in 1909 as an election-cam-paign song. It was the first piece incorporating a iazz break, but Handy sold it for 190 dollars because, at that time, he could not anticipate how popular it was to become. He later regained

tights to the music. Five years later he composed the song which made him famous-"The St. Louis Blues." When the old composer reached this point in his story to his young ad-

mirers, he raised his trumpet and blew the hauntingly beauti‘ul strain, "I hate to see that even’ sun go down." When he finished, the pupils stamped their feet wildly and applauded. "The St.-

Louis Blues" has been recorded more than 400 times, and has been so sustainingly popular that this composition alone earns the blind composer an average of 25,000 dollars in annual royalties. Althoughy Handy created unusual music simply because it was in him, critics describe his music as "based on the pristine 12-measure form and harmonic progressions.’ Handy had _ the soul of an artist, and"the things that interested him were the things with which "he was familiar, Whence he drew the title for his 1917 hit,.‘"The Yellow Dog Blues," no one seems to know. Not so difficult to place, however, are the names of streets and locations in cities where he travelled. Thus the "Beale Street Blues," published in 1917, was about life on Beale Street in Memphis; the "Atlanta Blues," published in 1924, was named for that city ,in Georgia. "Harlem Blues" gives impressions of the famous section of New York City. Other compositions, which, however, failed to attain the popularity of the "St. Louis Blues," include the "Perdido Street Blues," "Afro-American Hymn" and "I See Though My Eyes Are Closed." Today, W. C. Handy is still reaping the material rewards of his life as a composer-of new and exciting music. He is head\of his own music publishing house and is in demand as a radio and television personality. Other rewards, too, are his, such -as the satisfaction of being listed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair as among the 600 leading contributors te American culture. Then there are the rewards that continuously come from appreciative audiences such as the group of high school students in New York. As the blind, elderly composer finished telling these youngsters the story of his tee patted his famous trumpet and said: , "Life is something like this trumpet. If you don’t put anything in it you don’t get anything out. And that’s the truth."