W. C. Handy

             William Christopher Handy, known as the “father of the blues,” was one of the principle figures responsible for the blues’ expansion out of the Mississippi Delta and into the realm of popular music. Although he eventually became a historian and proliferator of the blues, his musical beginnings were firmly rooted in the Western Classical tradition. In his autobiographical Father of the Blues, Handy discusses how he learned the “rudiments” of music under the classically trained Y. A. Wallace, who instructed his students in the sol-fa system. [1]

             At the age of 15, Handy joined Bill Felton ’s traveling minstrel troupe, and, in his words, “that was my baptism. I have been a trouper ever since.” [2]   He describes how these troupes performed “marches” “classical overtures,” and “popular airs,” all of which were vastly different from the blues tradition that was developing contemporaneously in the Mississippi Delta. Indeed, when he encountered a “ragged” man who used a knife as a slide to play guitar melodies that mimicked his singing while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, Mississippi, he at first considered it “the weirdest music I had ever heard.” [3]   In fact, what he heard was a relatively unremarkable example of the Delta style.

             Handy was intrigued by this ragged man and his music, and he began orchestrating blues songs and incorporating blues elements into his compositions. In doing so, he brought blues music to a much wider public, and “blues music quickly proliferated throughout the South” as other traveling shows and singers (like Ma Rainey) continued cultivating the blues audience. [4]   Thus, Handy was a crucial conduit from the Delta style to the popular Classic blues style that would subsequently pave the way for rock, jazz, and other styles. As Jas Obrecht concludes, “virtually every blues guitarist is the musical descendent of that nameless man W. C. Handy saw in the Mississippi train station a century ago.” [5]

Bibliography

      [1]  Handy, “Music of a Free People,” 207-8.       [2]  Ibid., 211.       <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[3]   Jas Obrecht, “A Century of Blues Guitar, in The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar, ed. Victor Coelho (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 87. <p class="MsoFootnoteText">      <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[4]  Ibid. <p class="MsoFootnoteText">      <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[5]  Ibid., 108.