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blackkudos · 4 years

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W. C. Handy

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues. Handy was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style (Delta blues) with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.

Handy was an educated musician who used elements of folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers.

Early life

Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, the son of Elizabeth Brewer and Charles Barnard Handy. His father was the pastor of a small church in Guntersville, a small town in northeast central Alabama. Handy wrote in his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, that he was born in a log cabin built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal minister after the Emancipation Proclamation. The log cabin of Handy's birth has been preserved near downtown Florence.

Handy's father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents' permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a local shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?" and ordered him to "take it back where it came from", but he also arranged for his son to take organ lessons. The organ lessons did not last long, but Handy moved on to learn to play the cornet. He joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.

While growing up, he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking, and plastering. He was deeply religious. His musical style was influenced by the church music he sang and played in his youth and by the sounds of nature. He cited as inspiration the "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art".

He worked on a "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace and described the music made by the workers as they beat shovels, altering the tone while thrusting and withdrawing the metal part against the iron buggies to pass the time while waiting for the overfilled furnace to digest its ore. He called the sound "better to us than the music of a martial drum corps, and our rhythms were far more complicated." He wrote, "Southern Negroes sang about everything...They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect." He would later reflect, "In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues".

Career

In September 1892, Handy travelled to Birmingham, Alabama, to take a teaching exam. He passed it easily and gained a teaching job at the Teachers Agriculture and Mechanical College (the current-day Alabama A&M University) in Normal, then an independent community near Huntsville. Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found employment at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer.

In his time off from his job, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read music. He later organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World's Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. To pay their way, they performed odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis, Missouri, but found no work.

After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Evansville, Indiana. He played the cornet in the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. In Evansville, he joined a successful band that performed throughout neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist, and trumpeter. At the age of 23, he became the bandmaster of Mahara's Colored Minstrels.

In a three-year tour they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma to Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and on to Cuba, Mexico and Canada. Handy was paid a salary of $6 per week. Returning from Cuba the band traveled north through Alabama, where they stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife, Elizabeth, stayed with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.

In 1896, while performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married on July 19, 1896. She gave birth to Lucille, the first of their six children, on June 29, 1900, after they had settled in Florence.

Around that time, William Hooper Councill, the president of what had become the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (the same college Handy had refused to teach at in 1892 due to low pay), hired Handy to teach music. He became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be "classical". He felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group.

In 1902 Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, listening to various styles of popular black music. The state was mostly rural and music was part of the culture, especially in cotton plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Musicians usually played guitar or banjo or, to a much lesser extent, piano. Handy's remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music he heard in his travels.

After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to return to the Mahara Minstrels and tour the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he became the director of a black band organized by the Knights of Pythias in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy and his family lived there for six years. In 1903, while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, in the Mississippi Delta, Handy had the following experience:

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.

About 1905, while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi, Handy was given a note asking for "our native music". He played an old-time Southern melody but was asked if a local colored band could play a few numbers. Three young men with a battered guitar, mandolin, and a worn-out bass walked onto the stage. Research by Elliott Hurwitt for the Mississippi Blues Trail identified the leader of the band in Cleveland as Prince McCoy.

They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps "haunting" is the better word.

Handy noted square dancing by Mississippi blacks with "one of their own calling the figures, and crooning all of his calls in the key of G." He remembered this when deciding on the key of "Saint 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. In describing "blind singers and footloose bards" around Clarksdale, Handy wrote, "surrounded by crowds of country folks, they would pour their hearts out in song...They earned their living by selling their own songs — "ballets," as they called them — and I'm ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination.

In 1909 Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they played in clubs on Beale Street. "The Memphis Blues" was a campaign song written for Edward Crump, a Democrat Memphis mayoral candidate in the 1909 election and political boss. The other candidates also employed Black musicians for their campaigns. Handy later rewrote the tune and changed its name from "Mr. Crump" to "Memphis Blues." The 1912 publication of the sheet music of "The Memphis Blues" introduced his style of 12-bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York dance team. Handy sold the rights to the song for $100. By 1914, when he was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity had greatly increased, and he was a prolific composer. Handy wrote about using folk songs:

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.

The three-line structure I employed in my lyric was suggested by a song I heard Phil Jones sing in Evansville ... While I took the three-line stanza as a model for my lyric, I found its repetition too monotonous...Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made.

Regarding the "three-chord basic harmonic structure" of the blues, Handy wrote that the "(tonic, subdominant, dominant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts, honky-tonk piano players, wanderers and others of the underprivileged but undaunted class from Missouri to the Gulf, and had become a common medium through which any such individual might express his personal feeling in a sort of musical soliloquy." He noted, "In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like 'Oh, lawdy' or 'Oh, baby' and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits."

Writing about the first time "Saint Louis Blues" was played, in 1914, Handy said,

The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues. ... When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.

His published musical works were groundbreaking because of his ethnicity. In 1912, he met Harry Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Atlanta University and a student of W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of business. He earned his reputation by saving failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became the manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.

While in New York City, Handy wrote:

I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn't...The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day...They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers. Negro vaudeville artists...wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers.

In 1917, he and his publishing business moved to New York City, where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. By the end of that year, his most successful songs had been published: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "Saint Louis Blues". That year the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first jazz record, introducing the style to a wide segment of the American public. Handy had little fondness for jazz, but bands dove into his repertoire with enthusiasm, making many of them jazz standards.

Handy encouraged performers such as Al Bernard, "a young white man" with a "soft Southern accent" who "could sing all my Blues". He sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in "an impressive series of successes for the young artist, successes in which we proudly shared." Handy also published "Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", both written by Bernard. "Two young white ladies from Selma, Alabama (Madelyn Sheppard and Annelu Burns) contributed the songs "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", with the music published by Handy's company. These numbers, plus our blues, gave us a reputation as publishers of Negro music."

Expecting to make only "another hundred or so" of "Yellow Dog Blues" (originally entitled "Yellow Dog Rag"), Handy signed a deal with the Victor company. The Joe Smith recording of this song in 1919 became the best-selling recording of Handy's music to date.

Handy tried to interest black women singers in his music but was unsuccessful. In 1920 Perry Bradford persuaded Mamie Smith to record two of his non-blues songs ("That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down") that were published by Handy and accompanied by a white band. When Bradford's "Crazy Blues" became a hit as recorded by Smith, black blues singers became popular. Handy's business began to decrease because of the competition.

In 1920 Pace amicably dissolved his partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as lyricist. Pace formed Pace Phonograph Company and Black Swan Records and many of the employees went with him. Handy continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. 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 60 blues compositions. In the 1920s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City; while this label released no records, Handy organized recording sessions with it, and some of those recordings were eventually released on Paramount Records and Black Swan Records. So successful was "Saint Louis Blues" that in 1929 he and director Dudley Murphy collaborated on a RCA motion picture of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Smith for the starring role because the song had made her popular. The movie was filmed in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.

In 1926 Handy wrote Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is an early attempt to record, analyze, and describe the blues as an integral part of the South and the history of the United States. To celebrate the publication of the book and to honor Handy, Small's Paradise in Harlem hosted a party, "Handy Night", on Tuesday October 5, which contained the best of jazz and blues selections provided by Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White, and Chic Collins.

In a 1938 radio episode of Ripley's Believe it or not! Handy was described as "the father of jazz as well as the blues." Fellow blues performer Jelly Roll Morton wrote an open letter to Downbeat magazine fuming that he had actually invented jazz.

After the publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians, Unsung Americans Sung (1944). He wrote three other books: Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs, Book of Negro Spirituals, and Negro Authors and Composers of the United States. He lived on Strivers' Row in Harlem. He became blind after an accidental fall from a subway platform in 1943. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1954 when he was 80. His bride was his secretary, Irma Louise Logan, who he frequently said had become his eyes. In 1955, he suffered a stroke, after which he began to use a wheelchair. More than eight hundred attended his 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

On March 28, 1958, Handy died of bronchial pneumonia at Sydenham Hospital in New York City Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Compositions

Handy's music does not always follow the classic 12-bar pattern, often having 8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.

"Memphis Blues", written 1909, published 1912. Although usually subtitled "Boss Crump", it is a distinct song from Handy's campaign satire, "Boss Crump don't 'low no easy riders around here", which was based on the good-time song "Mamma Don't Allow It."

"Yellow Dog Blues" (1912), "Your easy rider's gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." The reference is to the crossing at Moorhead, Mississippi, of the Southern Railway and the local Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog. By Handy's telling locals assigned the words "Yellow Dog" to the letters Y.D. (for Yazoo Delta) on the freight trains that they saw.

"Saint Louis Blues" (1914), "the jazzman's Hamlet."

"Loveless Love", based in part on the classic "Careless Love". Possibly the first song to complain of modern synthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're growing used to soulless soul."

"Aunt Hagar's Blues", the biblical Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was considered the "mother" of African Americans

"Beale Street Blues" (1916), written as a farewell to Beale Street of Memphis, which was named Beale Avenue until the song's popularity caused it to be changed

"Long Gone John (from Bowling Green)", about a famous bank robber

"Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", a tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans

"Atlanta Blues", which includes the song "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.

"Ole Miss Rag" (1917), a ragtime composition, recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis

Awards and honors

On May 17, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.

Handy was inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.

He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was a 1993 Inductee into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.

He received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1993.

Citing 2003 as "the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first blues music" the United States Senate in 2002 passed a resolution declaring the year beginning February 1, 2003 as the "Year of the Blues".

Handy was honored with two markers on the Mississippi Blues Trail, the "Enlightenment of W.C. Handy" in Clarksdale, Mississippi and a marker at his birthplace in Florence, Alabama.

Blues Music Award was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.

W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in Florence, Alabama.

In 2017, his autobiography Father of the Blues was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame in the category of Classics of Blues Literature.

Discography

Handy's Orchestra of Memphis

The Old Town Pump/Sweet Child Introducing Pallet on the Floor (Columbia #2417) (1917)

A Bunch of Blues/Moonlight Blues (Columbia #2418) (1917)

Livery Stable Blues/That Jazz Dance Everyone Is Crazy About (Columbia #2419) (1917)

The Hooking Cow Blues/Ole Miss Rag (Columbia #2420) (1917)

The Snaky Blues/Fuzzy Wuzzy Rag (Columbia #2421) (1917)

Preparedness Blues (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/21/1917)

The Coburn Blues (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/24/1917)

Those Draftin' Blues (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/24/1917)

The Storybook Ball (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/25/1917)

Sweet Cookie Mine (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/25/1917)

Handy's Memphis Blues Band

Beale Street Blues/Joe Turner Blues (Lyric #4211) (9/1919) (never released)

Hesitating Blues/Yellow Dog Blues (Lyric #4212) (9/1919) (never released)

Early Every Morn/Loveless Love (Paramount #12011) (1922)

St. Louis Blues/Yellow Dog Blues (Paramount #20098) (1922)

St. Louis Blues/Beale Street Blues (Banner #1036) (1922)

She's No Mean Job/Muscle Shoals Blues (Banner #1053) (1922)

She's A Mean Job/Muscle Shoals Blues (Puritan #11112) (1922)

Muscle Shoals Blues/She's a Mean Job (Regal #9313) (1922)

St. Louis Blues/Yellow Dog Blues (Black Swan #2053) (1922)

Muscle Shoals Blues/She's a Mean Job (Black Swan #2054) (1922)

Handy’s Orchestra

Yellow Dog Blues/St. Louis Blues (Puritan #11098) (1922)

Louisville Blues/Aunt Hagar's Blues (Okeh #8046) (1923)

Panama/Down Hearted Blues (Okeh #8059) (1923)

Mama's Got the Blues/My Pillow and Me (Okeh #8066) (1923)

Gulf Coast Blues/Farewell Blues (Okeh #4880) (1923)

Sundown Blues/Florida Blues (Okeh #4886) (1923)

Darktown Reveille/Ole Miss Blues (Okeh #8110) (1923)

I Walked All the Way From East St. Louis (Library of Congress) (1938)

Your Clothes Look Lonesome Hanging on the Line (Library of Congress) (1938)

Got No More Home Than a Dog (Library of Congress) (1938)

Joe Turner (Library of Congress) (1938)

Careless Love (Library of Congress) (1938)

Getting' Up Holler (Library of Congress) (1938)

Oh De Kate's Up De River, Stackerlee's in de Ben (Library of Congress) (1938)

Roll On, Buddy (Library of Congress) (1938)

Olius Brown (Library of Congress) (1938)

Sounding the Lead on the Ohio River (Library of Congress) (1938)

Handy's Sacred Singers

Aframerican Hymn/Let's Cheer the Weary Traveler (Paramount #12719) (1929)

W. C. Handy's Orchestra

Loveless Love/Way Down South Where the Blues Begin (Varsity #8162) (1939)

St. Louis Blues/Beale Street Blues (Varsity #8163) (1939)

#11/16 #03/28

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dijeh · 5 years

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Cypresses for String quartet, B. 152 - Thou only dear one, but for thee ...

#music #antonin dvorak

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discazo · 6 years

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Obras de cámara de Jennifer Higdon.

Más detalles en AllMusic.

#Alisa Weilerstein #Cypress String Quartet #Jennifer Higdon

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classicalclassroom · 7 years

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For starters, this episode was recorded on Groundhog’s Day. Which is pretty perfect considering that this is the second time we’ve had the Cypress String Quartet on the show to talk about a “final” recording. Cypress cellist Jennifer Kloetzel swears that this really is the quartet’s final final recording and assures us that this is not just a clever publicity gimmick. (Although for the record, if it was, we would gladly play along.) Kloetzel tells us why, for their final final recording, the group went with a composer they’d never recorded before (Brahms), why they recorded the album live in front of a studio audience, and why they played as a sextet rather than a quartet. Also discussed: whether or not one has to have Jedi training to record at Skywalker Sound, and whether Jennifer and Zuill Bailey had a cello battle in the studio.

All music in this episode from the Cypress String Quartet’s Brahms: String Sextets Op.18 and Op.36.

Audio production by Todd “Marmot” Hulslander with shadow-siting by Dacia Clay and assistance from Mark DiClaudio.

#jennifer kloetzel #classical #learn about classical music #music appreciation #classical classroom #Dacia Clay #Todd Hulslander #Mark DiClaudio #Cypress String Quartet #Brahms #Brahms sextets

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yogamusicdotme · 5 years

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SUCH a pleasure and honor to share the stage with my long-time dear colleague and friend Mr. Bruce Monical as he presented a FANTASTIC program tonight for his graduation recital featuring works for string quartet, viola/flute/piano trio, and jazz combo!!! BRAVO Bruce and congratulations👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 #csun #musicmakers #graduation (at Cypress Hall) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwBuoUnF7HC/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=9v0e9c90bo9

#csun #musicmakers #graduation

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todayclassical · 7 years

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April 04 in Music History

1716 Birth of composer John Evangelist Schreiber.

1717 FP of Ariosti’s “Tito Manlio” in London.

1731 Birth of composer Francisco Morera.

1737 Death of soprano Letitia Cross.

1739 FP of Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt. Runs for only three performances at King’s Theater in London. It fails possibly because of the use of biblical texts in a theater setting.

1740 Birth of composer Wolfgang Nicolaus Haueisen.

1752 Birth of Italian composer Niccolo Zingarelli. 1755 Birth of composer Vincenc Masek.

1760 Birth of composer Juan Manuel Olivares.

1762 Birth of composer Stephen Storace.

1785 Birth of composer Bettina Brentano.

1804 Birth of composer Joseph Fischhof.

1836 Birth of composer Jerome Hopkins.

1843 Birth of Hungarian conductor Hans Richter in Raab, Hungary. 1863 Birth of French soprano Blanche Marchesi in Paris.

1867 FP of Saint-Saens first violin concerto, with P. Sarasate soloist at Salle Pleyel in Paris.

1872 Birth of Dutch mezzo-soprano Pauline De Haan-Manifarges in Rotterdam.

1872 Birth of German tenor Georg Maikl.

1872 Birth of composer Nikolai Amani.

1875 Birth of composer Jozef Szulc.

1875 Birth of French conductor Pierre Monteux.

1878 Birth of composer Rudolf Nelson. 1879 Birth of French composer Gabriel Grovlez in Lille.

1880 Birth of mezzo-soprano Lila Robeson.

1882 Birth of composer Mary Howe.

1890 Death of Italian baritone Giovanni Corsi.

1895 Birth of Spanish tenor Isidoro Fagoaga in Navarre Spain.

1897 FP of Ernest Chausson’s Poème for violin and orchestra at a Colonne Concert with Eugene Ysäye as soloist in Paris.

1905 Birth of French conductor and composer Eugene Bozza in Nice.

1922 Birth in NYC of American composer Elmer Berstein.

1931 Death of American composer George Whitefield Chadwick. 1933 Birth of Swedish tenor Sven-Olaf Eliasson in Boliden Sweden.

1933 Birth of composer Seoirse Bodley.

1935 Birth of composer Francois-Bernard Mache.

1937 Birth of mezzo-soprano Laura Zannini in Trieste.

1940 Birth of bass Fernand Dumont in Creteil.

1946 Birth of Russian baritone Sergei Leiferkus.

1947 Birth of Italian composer Salvatore Scrirorino in Palermo.

1951 Birth of American baritone Patrick J. Raferty in Washington, D.C.

1954 In NYC Arturo Toscanini conducts his last concert with the NBC Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall ten days after his 87th birthday. 1955 FP of Igor Stravinsky’s Greeting Prelude. Performed to honor the 80th birthday of conductor Pierre Monteux. Boston Symphony conducted by Charles Munch.

1957 Birth of English organist Thomas Trotter. 1960 Birth of English soprano Jane Eaglin in Lincoln. 1964 Death of American mezzo-soprano Cyrena Van Gordon.

1968 Death of Mexican mezzo-soprano Fanny Anitua.

1972 Death of German-born American composer Stefan Wolpe.

1975 Death of American tenor Joseph Bentonelli.

1975 FP of George Rochberg’s Violin Concerto. Pittsburgh Symphony, Isaac Stern was soloist.

2000 Death of bass Marian Nowakowski.

2002 FP of Daniel Asia’s String Quartet No.2 by the Cypress Quartet at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

#classicalmusic #musichistory #todayclassical #today in music history #onthisday

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discovercreate · 7 years

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A Garden Party Wedding Like You’ve Never Seen

Thanks to Margaret and Darius we’re kicking off 2017 in a serious way and it has everything to do with their garden wedding set in the bride’s hometown of Pasadena. It’s classic pretty in every sense of the word, and the pin-worthy blooms by Enchanted Garden Floral Design are only the beginning. See the entire day photographed by Steve Steinhardt in the gallery.

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From the Bride… My husband and I wanted to make sure the wedding truly represented us as a couple — so it was very important that the wedding wasn’t distinctly my vision, nor simply his. After all, marriage is not only about compromise, but the idea that you are better together. Our venue was born out of this idea — as I really wanted a garden ceremony, and my husband wanted nothing more than an indoor reception.

When our planner took us to the historical Ambassador Mansion and Gardens in Pasadena, we both feel in love with the expansive and well-manicured grounds which included many smaller gardens and lawns. It was perfect for the progressive evening event that we envisioned. Plus, it was an off-the-beaten-path estate in my hometown of Pasadena, which made our hidden gem feel even more personal.

We loved the idea of getting married in the round, so we planned our ceremony for Merritt Garden where guests were seated around two fountains and an overlooking bridge. Leading up to the bridge was the most stunning backdrop for a garden ceremony — a four-story staircase, which made my walk down the aisle both a breathtaking and dramatic moment. The staircase leading up to the mansion and was lined on both sides by Italian cypress trees, so we were able to leverage the natural beauty of the environment, and added florals to the fountain as well as the bridge. For an added touch of glam, guests were welcomed to sit in ghost chairs while sipping on passed champagne upon their arrival.

Instead of a guest book, we requested that attendees at our wedding send us a message in a bottle, a DIY project I took on. Using 5 champagne bottles, we assigned labels for different anniversaries — 1 year, 5-year, 10-year, etc — and allowed guests to write us words of advice that we would read on our anniversary for those particular years.

Cocktail hour was a short walk to Fowler Garden. Guests were guided by sequined gold arrows and custom wood directional signs built by my father, with calligraphy that matched our romantic garden invitation. My husband and I really tried to surprise our guests at every turn, so guests were met by a 60-foot custom gold sign that was created in partnership by two of our vendors. It really was my favorite piece we created for the wedding. It was installed on a 90-foot natural hedge that bordered Fowler Garden, and was a lyric from our first dance song — How Will I Know by Whitney Houston. Instead of the original, we chose a Sam Smith cover of the timeless classic, which is a more romantic ballad and fitting for our first slow dance as husband and wife.

For cocktail hour, guests got to enjoy a traditional garden party complete with a string quartet, passed hors d’oeuvres and a choice of our signature cocktails — “the southern gentleman” or “la rosette.” Our escort cards were hung on a floral chandelier by silk ribbons at one end of the garden, with a vintage lounge set on the other. I was inspired to bring one of my favorite childhood games to cocktail hour, given that my cousins and I often played croquet on my aunt’s lawn in Pasadena. This made our garden party feel even more family focused — particularly due to the DIY projects which included a hand-painted pastel croquet set and a custom-built bean-bag toss built by my father.

Our reception was held in the Terrace Villa which held two historical ballrooms. We greeted guests after cocktail hour one by one as they entered the villa, surrounded by a floral-lined staircase and candles which made for warm and inviting lighting. Servers passed rosé in gold sugar rimmed glasses, with cocktail napkins that contained advice from loved ones we received during our engagement and other fun facts. We created an indoor/outdoor space on the villa terrace with white trussing, chandeliers, and warm lighting and provided ivory pashminas for guests in case the weather became chilly.

We considered having a sweetheart table but knew that more than anything we wanted our reception to feel like a large family dinner. We choose long rectangular tables inside and out, and filled them with the most glamorous details we could imagine — Chantilly lace runners, gold flatware, and vintage crystal glasses. For a personal touch, we added tiny gold horses for place settings — in remembrance of my grandfather who raised horses as a young man in Illinois. It was a DIY project of mine, and a way to honor family members who were present in spirit. Vintage family wedding photos from my parents, grandparents, and others sat on the mantle in the Great Room as another tribute.

Since we sat with our guests instead of at a sweetheart table, we adorned the back of our chairs with roses and custom gold-mirrored signs with the words “Better Together” — another nod to our garden chic style for the evening. Our cake was created one of my favorite bakeries — and as a compromise, my husband picked the flavors, and I picked the design. We actually made the mistake of forgetting to eat a slice during our reception and didn’t freeze any for our one year anniversary. As a surprise to my husband, for our first anniversary, I had a mini replica cake created and read words of advice from our “message in a bottle” guest book. We’ve also started the tradition of reading our vows each year — so I saved our toasting flutes and vow booklets as keepsakes.

Every time I look at my wedding photos — they inspire the same breathtaking emotion I felt on my wedding day. This is not only because of how incredible our love is, but because of my closest friends and family who celebrated with me — and all of the magical vendors who made my dream day possible.

© Style Me Pretty, 2017. | Permalink | Comments | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Bridge, Garden Wedding, Real Wedding, real weddings, Staircase Post categories: Real Weddings, Romantic, The Blog, Traditional Elegance

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rolflovesclassicalmusic · 2 years

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Concert review, ★★★★, Aris Quartett (Anna Katharina Wildermuth, Noémi Zipperling, Caspar Vinzens, Lukas Sieber) @ Kirche St.Peter, Zurich, 2022-05-15 (Neue Konzertreihe Zürich / Hochuli Konzert AG) — Haydn: String Quartet in B♭ major, op.76/4, "Sunrise"; Schubert: String Quartet No.15 in G major, D.887 (op.161); Encore by Dvořák: No.11 from “Cypresses” (Cypřiše) for String Quartet, B.152

#rolfsmblog #Antonín Dvořák #franz schubert #Joseph Haydn #String Quartet #aris quartett #sunrise #cypresses #Cypřiše #concert review #review

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/crazy-funny-asians-bloody-mary-festival-and-sf-music-day-3-sf-events-for-the-weekend/

Crazy Funny Asians, Bloody Mary Festival and SF Music Day: 3 SF events for the weekend

Here are our top picks for entertainment options in town this weekend: local comedy, brunch-inspired drinks, and a free all-day concert at a historic venue.

Friday

Crazy Funny Asians (406 Clement St.)

If you’re looking to kick the weekend off with a laugh, head on over to Neck of the Woods in the Inner Richmond for the Crazy Funny Asians comedy festival.

Inspired by the blockbuster movie Crazy Rich Asians, the weekend-long comedy fest features all-new sets from an array of Asian-American local comics.

The laugh fest starts with two Friday shows at 8 and 10 p.m., starring Janesh Rahlan (Cobbs Comedy Club) and PX Floro (San Jose Improv and opener for Aries Spears). Additional comics are reportedly joining the lineup, too.

Photo: Andrew D./Yelp

The event continues on Saturday with comics Jeen Yee (Cobbs Comedy Club), Vincent Chuang (Punchline), Kevin Wong (Cobbs Comedy Club) and Tessie Chua (SF Comedy Day).

“Let’s celebrate the Bay’s Asian-American culture and heritage with laughs,” write the organizers.

Tickets are free with an Eventbrite RSVP, but cash donations are appreciated and there’s a two-drink minimum. Without reservations, it’s $10 at the door.

Saturday

The Bloody Mary Festival (934 Brannan St.)

A bloody mary with brunch is as American as apple pie. So, why not spend part of your weekend sampling ten different, innovated bloodies sourced from around the Bay at the Bloody Mary Festival?

Photo: The Bloody Mary Festival/Facebook

This event at SOMArts Cultural Center will feature concoctions from local establishments like St. Mary’s Pub, Kitchen Story, Finnegans Wake, Cliff House, Pablito’s Micheladas and more. The 21+ festival is sponsored by Crater Lake Spirits.

Also on hand: snacks and drink samples from Marlo’s Bakeshop, Cypress Grove Cheese, Polar Seltzer, Kind Snacks, and Fusion Jerky, among others.

There’s two sessions to choose from, morning and afternoon. In the morning session, VIP “Bloody Ballers” ($55) have access from 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m., with general admission ($45) from 11:15 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Prefer to come later on? Afternoon Bloody Ballers get in from 3-6 p.m., with general admission from 3:45-6 p.m.

More information and tickets are available on the festival website and Facebook event page.

Sunday

SF Music Day (401 Van Ness Ave.)

On Sunday, wind down from the weekend at the 11th annual SF Music Day festival. This year’s theme is Colors of the Keyboard, “highlighting the wide range of expression possible on that instrument, from tango accordion, to improvised music, classical repertoire and electric organ.”

Photo: Mandy D./Yelp

The War Memorial Auditorium will offer more than eight hours of music from 37 ensembles, including string quartets, jazz combos, chamber groups and more.

Admission is free, and the doors are open 8 a.m – 8 p.m. You can find more information about the performances, including a full schedule, here.

Source: https://abc7news.com/entertainment/crazy-funny-asians-bloody-mary-festival-and-sf-music-day-3-sf-events-for-the-weekend/4362549/

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blackkudos · 7 years

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W. C. Handy

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was an American composer and musician, known as the "Father of the Blues".

W. C. Handy was one of the most influential American songwriters. He was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, and he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. Handy did not create the blues genre and was not the first to publish music in the blues form, but he took the blues from a regional music style (Delta blues) with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music.

Early life

Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, the son of Elizabeth Brewer and Charles Barnard Handy. His father was the pastor of a small church in Guntersville, a small town in northeast central Alabama. Handy wrote in his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, that he was born in the log cabin built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal minister after emancipation. The log cabin of Handy's birth has been preserved near downtown Florence.

Growing up he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking and plastering.

Handy was deeply religious, and his musical style was influenced by the church music he sang and played as a youth. It was also influenced by the sounds of the natural world. He cited as inspiration the sounds of "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", the sound of Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art".

Musical development

He worked on a "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace and described the music made by the workers as they beat shovels, altering the tone while thrusting and withdrawing the metal part against the iron buggies to pass the time while waiting for the overfilled furnace to digest its ore. "With a dozen men participating, the effect was sometimes remarkable...It was better to us than the music of a martial drum corps, and our rhythms were far more complicated." He wrote, "Southern Negroes sang about everything....They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect..." He would later reflect that "In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues".

In September 1892, Handy travelled to Birmingham, Alabama, to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily, and gained a teaching job in the city. Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found employment at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer.

After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Evansville, Indiana. He played the cornet in the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. In Evansville, Handy joined a successful band that performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist and trumpeter.

At the age of 23, Handy became the bandmaster of Mahara's Colored Minstrels. In a three-year tour, they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma, to Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, and on to Cuba. Handy was paid a salary of $6 per week. Returning from Cuba, the band traveled north through Alabama, where they stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife, Elizabeth, decided to stay with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.

Marriage and family

Teaching music

Around that time, William Hooper Councill, the president of the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (AAMC) (now Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University), in Normal, Alabama, recruited Handy to teach music at the college. Handy became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902.

His enthusiasm for the distinctive style of uniquely American music, then often considered inferior to European classical music, was part of his development. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be "classical". Handy felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group.

Studying the blues

In 1902 Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, listening to various styles of black popular music. The state was mostly rural, and music was part of the culture, especially in cotton plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Musicians usually played the guitar or banjo or, to a much lesser extent, piano. Handy's remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music heard in his travels.

After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to rejoin the Mahara Minstrels and tour the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he became the director of a black band organized by the Knights of Pythias, located in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy and his family lived there for six years. In 1903, while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, in the Mississippi Delta, Handy had the following experience:

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.

About 1905, while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi, Handy was given a note asking for "our native music". He played an old-time Southern melody, but was asked if a local colored band could play a few numbers. Three young men with a battered guitar, mandolin, and a worn-out bass took the stage.

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.

In describing "blind singers and footloose bards" around Clarksdale, Handy wrote, "surrounded by crowds of country folks, they would pour their hearts out in song ... They earned their living by selling their own songs—'ballets,' as they called them—and I'm ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination."

Popularity, fame and business

In 1909 Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they played in clubs on Beale Street. The genesis of his "Memphis Blues" was a campaign song written for Edward Crump, a successful Memphis mayoral candidate in 1909 (and future political boss). Handy later rewrote the tune and changed its name from "Mr. Crump" to "Memphis Blues."

The 1912 publication of the sheet music of his "Memphis Blues" introduced his style of 12-bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot dance step by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York dance team. Some consider it to be the first blues song. Handy sold the rights to the song for US$100. By 1914, when he was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity had greatly increased, and he was a prolific composer.

Handy wrote about using folk songs:

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.

The three-line structure I employed in my lyric was suggested by a song I heard Phil Jones sing in Evansville ... While I took the three-line stanza as a model for my lyric, I found its repetition too monotonous ... Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made.

In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like 'Oh, lawdy' or 'Oh, baby' and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits.

Writing about the first time "Saint Louis Blues" was played, in 1914, Handy said,

The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues.... When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.

His published musical works were groundbreaking because of his ethnicity, and he was among the first blacks to achieve economic success from publishing. In 1912, Handy met Harry H. Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Atlanta University and a student of W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of business. He earned his reputation by recreating failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became the manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.

While in New York City, Handy wrote:

I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn't... The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day...They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers. [But] Negro vaudeville artists...wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers.

In 1917, he and his publishing business moved to New York City, where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. By the end of that year, his most successful songs had been published: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "Saint Louis Blues". That year the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first jazz record, introducing the style to a wide segment of the American public. Handy initially had little fondness for this new form, jazz, but bands dove into his repertoire with enthusiasm, making many of them jazz standards.

Handy encouraged performers such as Al Bernard, "a young white man" with a "soft Southern accent" who "could sing all my Blues". Handy sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in "an impressive series of successes for the young artist, successes in which we proudly shared." Handy also published the original "Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", both written by Bernard. "Two young white ladies from Selma, Alabama (Madelyn Sheppard and Annelu Burns) contributed the songs "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", with the music published by Handy's company. These numbers, plus our blues, gave us a reputation as publishers of Negro music."

Expecting to make only "another hundred or so" on a third recording of his, "Yellow Dog Blues" (originally entitled "Yellow Dog Rag" ), Handy signed a deal with the Victor company. The Joe Smith recording of this song in 1919 became the best-selling recording of Handy's music to date.

Handy tried to interest black women singers in his music but was initially unsuccessful. In 1920 Perry Bradford persuaded Mamie Smith to record two of his non-blues songs, published by Handy, accompanied by a white band: "That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down". When Bradford's "Crazy Blues" became a hit as recorded by Smith, African-American blues singers became increasingly popular. Handy's business began to decrease because of the competition.

In 1920 Pace amicably dissolved his long-standing partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as lyricist. As Handy wrote, "To add to my woes, my partner withdrew from the business. He disagreed with some of my business methods, but no harsh words were involved. He simply chose this time to sever connection with our firm in order that he might organize Pace Phonograph Company, issuing Black Swan Records and making a serious bid for the Negro market. . . . With Pace went a large number of our employees. . . . Still more confusion and anguish grew out of the fact that people did not generally know that I had no stake in the Black Swan Record Company."

Although Handy's partnership with Pace was dissolved, he continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. 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 60 blues compositions. In the 1920s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City. Bessie Smith's January 14, 1925, Columbia Records recording of "Saint Louis Blues" with Louis Armstrong is considered by many to be one of the finest recordings of the 1920s. So successful was Handy's "Saint Louis Blues" that in 1929, he and director [Dudley Murphy] collaborated on a RCA motion picture of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested the blues singer Bessie Smith for the starring role, since she had gained widespread popularity with her recording of the song. The picture was filmed in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.

In 1926 Handy wrote and edited a work entitled Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is probably the first work to attempt to record, analyze and describe the blues as an integral part of the South and the history of the United States. To celebrate the publication of the book and to honor Handy, Small's Paradise in Harlem hosted a party, "Handy Night", on Tuesday October 5, which contained the best of jazz and blues selections provided by the entertainers Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White and Chic Collins.

The genre of the blues was a hallmark of American society and culture in the 1920s and 1930s. So great was its influence, and so much was it recognized as Handy's hallmark, that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his novel The Great Gatsby that "All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the 'Beale Street Blues' while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor."

Later life

Following the publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians, Unsung Americans Sung(1944). He wrote three other books: Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs, Book of Negro Spirituals and Negro Authors and Composers of the United States,

During this time, he lived on Strivers' Row in Harlem. He became blind following an accidental fall from a subway platform in 1943. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1954, when he was 80. His new bride was his secretary, the former Irma Louise Logan, whom he frequently said had become his eyes.

In 1955, Handy suffered a stroke, after which he began to use a wheelchair. More than eight hundred attended his 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Death

On March 28, 1958, Handy died of bronchial pneumonia at Sydenham Hospital in New York City. Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx.

Compositions

Handy's songs do not always follow the classic 12-bar pattern, often having 8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.

"Saint Louis Blues" (1914), "the jazzman's Hamlet."

"Loveless Love", based in part on the classic "Careless Love". Possibly the first song to complain of modern synthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're growing used to soulless soul."

"Aunt Hagar's Blues", the biblical Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was considered the "mother" of African Americans.

"Beale Street Blues" (1916), written as a farewell to the old Beale Street of Memphis (actually called Beale Avenue until the song changed the name); but Beale Street did not go away and is considered the "home of the blues" to this day. B.B. King was known as the "Beale Street Blues Boy", and Elvis Presley watched and learned from Ike Turner there. In 2004 the tune was included as a track on the Memphis Jazz Box compilation as a tribute to Handy and his music.

"Long Gone John (From Bowling Green)", about a famous bank robber.

"Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", a tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans.

"Atlanta Blues", which includes the song "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.

"Ole Miss Rag" (1917), a ragtime composition, recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis.

Performances and honors

On April 27, 1928, he performed a program of jazz, blues, plantation songs, work songs, piano solos, spirituals and a Negro rhapsody at Carnegie Hall.

In 1938 he performed at the National Folk Festival in Washington, D.C., his first national performance on an unsegregated stage.

He performed at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 and 1934 and the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940.

In 1940, NBC broadcast an all-Handy program as part of its weekly series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. His songs were performed by Dinah Shore and by the composer himself.

On September 1, 1951, Handy and Dizzy Dean were among the guest stars on the CBS live variety series, Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town.

Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954)

He is referenced in Prof. Harold Hill's lead-in to the song Seventy-Six Trombones in Meredith Willson's 1957 musical The Music Man.

In 1958, a movie about his life – appropriately entitled St. Louis Blues – was released starring legendary African-Americans Nat "King" Cole (in the main role), Pearl Bailey, Mahalia Jackson, Ruby Dee, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. It was released in the year of Handy's death.

On May 17, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.

Inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.

He is referenced in Joni Mitchell's 1975 song Furry Sings the Blues.

He is referenced in Marc Cohn's 1991 song Walking in Memphis: "...Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues, in the middle of the pouring rain. W.C. Handy, won't you look down over me?"

He received a Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in 1993.

He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was a 1993 Inductee into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.

Citing 2003 as "the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first Blues music..." the United States Senate in 2002 passed a resolution declaring the year beginning February 1, 2003 as the "Year of the Blues."

Each November 16, Handy's birthday is celebrated with free music, birthday cake and free admission to the W.C. Handy Museum in Florence, Alabama. The hand-hewn log cabin made by his grandfather is his birthplace and museum.

An autographed 1937 photo from W. C. Handy to Anton Lada of Lada's Louisiana Orchestra sold for $850 in 2006.

William Faulkner attended dances at the University of Mississippi where Handy's band sometimes played. Faulkner got the title for his 1931 short story, "That Evening Sun", from the first line of Handy's St. Louis Blues: "I hate to see that evening sun go down".

Awards, festivals and memorials

The Blues Music Award, widely recognized as the most prestigious award for blues artists was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.

The W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in Florence, Alabama and the greater Shoals area. The festival has evolved into a 10-day-long celebration that includes a parade, various artists at restaurants and venues around town, and larger music events at Wilson Park in downtown Florence. The park features a statue of Handy and is close to his birthplace and museum. Previous festivals have featured jazz and blues legends including Jimmy Smith, Ramsey Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Blue Bland, Diane Schuur, Billy Taylor, Dianne Reeves and Charlie Byrd, Ellis Marsalis and Take 6. The festival also features a roster of annual regulars, called the W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars.

W. C. Handy Park is a city park located on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The park contains a life-sized bronze statue of Handy.

The W.C. Handy Blues & Barbeque Festival is a week-long musical event that features blues and Zydeco bands from across the U.S and is held every June on the banks of the Ohio River in downtown Henderson, Kentucky.

In 1979, New York City joined the list of institutions and municipalities to honor Handy by naming one block of West 52nd Street in Manhattan "W.C. Handy Place".

Wikipedia

#W. C. Handy #11-16 #03-28

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fijapaw · 7 years

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Just hangin' out with the Jacksonville String Quartet, today, after their concert at Cypress Village assisted living. I met long time twitter friend, Dana Brown, who treated me to Middle Eastern food and seeing this wonderful group of musicians. #FiJaPAW #jacksonville #violin #quartet (at Jacksonville, Florida)

#violin #fijapaw #jacksonville #quartet

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mialipsky-blog · 7 years

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A Garden Party Wedding Like You’ve Never Seen

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A Garden Party Wedding Like You’ve Never Seen published first on their blog to my feed

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samboine123 · 7 years

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A Garden Party Wedding Like You’ve Never Seen

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