W.C. Handy

@ National Portrait Gallery

Description

With its African American origins reaching back to the days of slavery, the "blues" had been around for a long time when W. C. Handy began using it as the basis for his own musical compositions in the early 1900s. But Handy gave the blues a twist that substantially broadened its appeal, and the publication in 1914 of his "St. Louis Blues" marked a watershed in the transformation of blues into one of American music's most important strands. A musician and music publisher as well as a composer, Handy continued to broaden popular appreciation for African American music traditions, and by the 1920s he was widely known as "Father of the Blues." Among the many testimonials paid to him on his sixty-fifth birthday in 1938 was a Hollywood concert featuring fifteen renditions of "St. Louis Blues" by fifteen different bands.

Type:

Image

Format:

Gelatin Silver Print

Rights:

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

View Original At:

http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=record_ID=npg_NPG.83.196&repo=DPLA