"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."
Thus, the remarkable W.C. Handy (who was born on this day in 1873) described his discovery of a new musical sound - one which he would transcribe and popularise in the early part of the 20th Century, and so earn himself the nickname the "Father of the Blues".
In recognition of the genius of the man, here are some of his most memorable (and continually re-worked) compositions...
A rare gem! The incomparable Bessie Smith, providing a suitably melodramatic version of his classic
St Louis Blues:
In complete contrast, the ultra-smooth tonsils of Ella Fitzgerald (here with Nat King Cole in the
film of WC Handy's life, made in 1958 - the year the great man died) turn Handy's
Beale Street Blues into a refined "late night cocktail song":
Miss Billie Holiday here performs (beautifully) a medley including his
Loveless Love (itself based upon the traditional song
Careless Love). Handy changed the lyrics to:
Oh love oh love oh loveless love
Has set our heart on goal-less goals
From milkless milk and silkless silk
We are growing used to soul-less souls
Such grafting times we never saw
That’s why we have a pure food law
In everything we find a flaw
Even love oh love oh loveless love
And to conclude this tribute, from Madame Arcati's own collection, here is one of Dolores Delargo Towers' patron saints Miss Mae West (here with Duke Ellington) crooning
Memphis Blues with a sassy twist:
Enjoy!