W.C. Handy was already being hailed as ‘The Father of the Blues’ when the blues recording industry was still in its infancy. Handy’s compositions and adaptations of blues he had heard in his travels began to be published in 1912 in an era when sheet music was the primary medium of musical dissemination. Various orchestras, military bands, and vaudeville singers began recording ‘St. Louis Blues,’ ‘Memphis Blues,’ and other Handy pieces before the record companies launched ‘race record’ series in the 1920s to cater to a newly discovered market for African American blues, jazz and gospel music. Handy never became a prolific recording artist himself but retained a prominent position as a music publisher and as a nationally recognized spokesman for the music he did so much to popularize. Handy, who was born in Florence, Alabama, on Nov. 16, 1873, was well educated in music, and though he had heard early versions of blues songs in Alabama, Indiana, and Kentucky, he wrote in his autobiography Father of the Blues that it was his encounters with blues in the Mississippi Delta that enlightened him to the potential in the music. Historical markers have been placed in his honor in the Delta, and a statue of Handy was erected in 1960 on Beale Street, near the site where Handy first worked as a music publisher. Handy died in New York on March 28, 1958, just ten days before the premiere of the Hollywood film dramatization of his life story, ‘St. Louis Blues,’ starring Nat ‘King’ Cole in the role of Handy.
