Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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A departure from his usual blues-centric output, here is an obscure hymn from the 'Father of the Blues.' In 1919, it was dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in North America.

#blues #78rpm #blackhistory

They didn't call him Father of the Blues for nothing. William Christopher Handy's contributions to the blues genre singlehandedly crafted it into what it is today. His 'Memphis Blues', 'Saint Louis Blues', 'Beale Street Blues', 'Ole Miss Rag', and 'Yellow Dog Rag' are jazz standards and in the case of 'St. Louis', it has come to name a National Hockey League team and became the second most popular song of the first half of the 20th century (the first being White Christmas).

Handy's music also has sentimental value for myself. When I was 12 years old, the coronavirus syndemic broke out and isolated me to the void of online schooling for 3 months. I made ragtime playlists to pass the time, and one of the composers I discovered was Handy. As my first exposure to 12 bar blues, I instantly found relatability- the dismal sympathy was common at the time.

Further information on the beginning of the slave trade in North America in 1619, courtesy of Colonial National Historical Park: nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/african-americans-at-jamestown.htm

More W. C. Handy:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLMkuz4vEFoOO4o3aIp_47P3ok4f61FEW&si=-sr8JqfjELd4ueWz