When was w.c. handy born and died

Composer, musician, businessman, W. Handy died wealthy and highly honored, after a long career throughout which he never stopped fighting for the dignity of African-Americans and - especially - for African-American musicians, who even within the black community, were often considered second-class citizens.

For over 18 years, Nager has written about music for the Cincinnati Enquirer and other national, regional and local productions. As a filmmaker, he wrote and co-produced the musical documentary Bill Monroe: Father of Bluegrass Music. Learn More. Great songs similar history to Scott Joplin I am so glad he was able to make some money at music. He must have had a lot of patience. This is a helpful page that I definitely plan on citing properly.

So thank you ahead of time! Your Name. Listen Now: The Memphis Blues. Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. Buy Online. Handy and his wife, The world of blues music is arguably incomplete without the works of William Christopher Handy W.

His family was religious conservatives that out-rightly shunned the complete idea of music, making it all the more difficult for Handy to buy his first guitar. He was, however to begin his musical journey by learning the organ and cornet first. In his early years, Chris Handy became so proficient with sheet notes and musical instruments that he began teaching and touring other music lovers on the road, before finally taking up a professorship in the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University.

His career is one of striking magnificence and uniqueness, in the way that it took shape and reached prominence not just in the local setting but as well as at the national and international stages. He grew up learning music, mostly by ear, as he travelled on tours with various minstrel groups, bands and quartets. His incredible capability to transcribe point-accurate music by ear gave him a significant advantage when it came to composing his own works. He sought a way to translate the blues into compositional form.

He set about codifying it: a three-line, bar pattern, with flat third or "blue" note. Though there is a recipe for the blues, its quality is elusive. The fine points of timing and the subtle vocal and pitch variations are essential.

It is generally regarded as a music that is deceivingly simple and too easily unappreciated by the untrained ear. Handy's parents and grandparents were among the four million slaves freed by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of One in a sea of liberated souls, his paternal grandfather, William Wise Handy, became a well-respected citizen of Florence and the Methodist minister of his own church.

Handy's father followed in those footsteps, and the same future was planned for the young Handy. It was the boy's maternal grandmother who hit upon his destiny by suggesting that her grandson's big ears symbolized a talent for music. The words thrilled him.

At the age of 12, he fell in love with a guitar in a shop window, and one day, after counting out the salvaged earnings from his string of odd jobs, he was finally able to take his prize home. According to Handy's autobiography, Father of the Blues, his parents were shocked and dismayed by his interest in the guitar.

His outraged father apparently demanded that he return the "devil's plaything" and exchange it for "something that'll do you some good.

Handy received his education in the rudiments of music during his 11 years at the Florence District School for Negroes. His teacher was a lover of vocal music and took time to give his students voice and music instructions that would enable them to sing religious material--without the accompaniment of instruments.

They learned to sing in all keys, measures, and movements. But Handy longed to play instruments, so on the sly he bought an old cornet and took lessons from its former owner. At age 15, Handy joined a minstrel show and began his musical career. But after touring only a few towns, the troupe fell apart, and the teenager found himself walking the railroad tracks back to Florence.

In , after graduating from the Huntsville Teachers Agricultural and Mechanical College and squeezing in a summer of teaching experience, he arrived in Birmingham to take the teachers' examination.

When wages there were cut, Handy returned to Birmingham, where he organized the Lauzette Quartet. At the announcement of the Chicago World's Fair, the quartet boarded a tank car and, with only 20 cents between them, headed for fame.

But once in Chicago they learned that the fair had been postponed for a year. The dejected band traveled south to St. Louis, Missouri, where they were soon forced to break up.

The country was experiencing an economy in panic. The St. Louis days would imprint themselves on W. Handy's mind and music. They would bring the educated son of a minister closer to the experience of the downtrodden negro.

Surrounded by misery and opulence alike, the young black man suffered from hunger and lice, slept in a vacant lot, slumped in a poolroom chair, in a horse's stall, and on the cobblestones of the levee of the Mississippi.

As he related in his autobiography, his inner voice said repeatedly, "Your father was right, your proper place is in the ministry," and his old schoolteacher's words rang through his head, "What can music do but bring you to the gutter?

The musician continued to eke out a living playing his cornet and later noted that these down-and-out days would lead to the birth of his "St.

Louis Blues. It was in Evansville, Kentucky, that Handy first gained popular attention. While playing with several local brass bands, word about his talent spread to Henderson, Kentucky, and he was soon hired by its Southern aristocracy. He angled a job as a janitor in a German singing society only to get close to its director, a professor who was an accomplished teacher, music director, and author of several successful operas. Handy pounced on his every word: "I obtained a post-graduate course in vocal music--and got paid for it," he proclaimed.

It was also in that town that Handy met and married his first wife, Elizabeth Virginia Price. In , Handy was invited to Chicago to join W. Mahara's Minstrels, a move he would look back at as "the big moment that was to shape my course in life.