258 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II
An enterprising businessman as well as a musician, Handy was
his own publisher. He formed a sheet music company in Memphis
with Harry Pace, and in 1918 Handy and Pace moved their company to
New York, where their business became part of the thriving Tin Pan
Alley scene. Rather than restricting his publications solely to popular
songs in sheet music format, as most Tin Pan Alley publishers did,
Handy pursued more prestigious projects as well. His collection The
Blues: An Antholog y appeared in 1926, and a book of spiritual arrange-
ments came out in 1938. In the 1930s and 1940s he also wrote two
books on African American music and an autobiography, Father of the
Blues (1941). By the time of his death in 1958 W. C. Handy was one of
the most respected black musicians in the United States.
At the same time, some critics have disparaged Handy because of
his hyperbolic nickname, “Father of the Blues.” To be sure, Handy never
claimed to have created the blues. Instead, he played a crucial role in
bringing an obscure folk music into the commercial mainstream,
reaping considerable fi nancial reward in the process. In doing so, he
adapted the music he heard, dressing it up to meet the conventions of
published sheet music—another practice that added to his controver-
sial standing in American music. Compared to the blues recordings
to come, Handy’s notated blues songs have only a tenuous connection
to their folk roots; by later standards, they seem to lack authenticity. But as later
chapters will explore, the very concept of authenticity in folk and popular music is a
highly contested topic in the twenty-fi rst century. Still, Handy’s songs can be heard
on their own terms as songs that blend the qualities of the blues with the traits of
other popular idioms.
In its sheet music form, “Memphis Blues” fi ts the standard verse-and- chorus
format of the era’s popular songs, complete with four-bar piano introduction and
repeating vamp before the verse. Only in the chorus does “Memphis Blues” con-
form to conventions found in folk blues, such as the Delta blues of Robert John-
son (see chapter 14). Those conventions are more pervasive in “St. Louis Blues,”
where three of the song’s four stanzas fi t the pattern that came to be known as
the “standard” blues: a twelve-bar chorus, comprising three four-bar phrases.
Many blues songs follow longer or shorter patterns—eight-bar and sixteen-bar
choruses are not unusual—but the twelve-bar pattern is by far the most com-
mon, hence the familiar term twelve-bar blues.
A typical blues chorus can be identifi ed by its phrase structure, textual form,
and harmonic progression, all illustrated by “St. Louis Blues”; the style also
includes certain melodic features.measure: 1 2 3 4
Harmony: I(IV) II
Te x t : I hate to see de evenin’ sun go down.measure: 5 6 7 8
Harmony: IV IV I I
Te x t : Hate to see de evenin’ sun go down.twelve-bar bluesK W. C. Handy (1873–1958),
as a youth of nineteen, when
he played with a cornet band in
Evansville, Indiana.172028_11_254-279_r3_ko.indd 258 23/01/13 8:42 PM