W. C. HANDY DEAD

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28549, 31 March 1958, Page 9

W. C. HANDY DEAD

NEW YORK, March 29. “The Father of the Blues,’* W. C. Handy, died in Sydenham Hospital, New York, yesterday. He was 84. The famous negro song writer, who composed scores of blues songs, including the “St. Louis Blues,” and was named the “Beethoven of Beale street,’’ was taken to hospital a week ago with pneumonia. He was the composer also of “Memphis Blues,” which began as an election campaign song, and “Beale Street Blues.” Earlier in his life he was a band leader and music publisher. Handy had been blind for many years before his death, but even in old age had others write down tunes that came to him.

Handy was the first to write down and collect blues folk music, songs that were played and sung by negro bar-room pianists, nomadic workers and the watchers of trains and steamboats from Missouri and Kentucky to the Mississippi Delta.

He was born in Alabama, and the influences on his musical growth ranged from Wagner and Bizet to barber shop bands and the spirituals he heard in his minister father’s African Methodist Church.

Handy’s evolution of the blues began a change in United States popular music comparable to that of ragtime, and in 1925 his own band and chorus appeared in a Carnegie Hall concert.

British Lifeboat Record.— British lifeboats were launched 716 times last year, rescued 609 people of many nations and helped 318 ships in trouble. It was only the second year in peace-time that launchings passed the 700 mark.—London, March 25