Born: November 16, 1873, Florence, AL

Education: High school, Florence, AL, graduated 1893

Died: March 28, 1958, New York, NY

A son of ex-slaves and high school graduate, Handy began playing the guitar, organ, and trumpet in rural Alabama. He became a teacher and string quartet and band director and played the minstrel circuit, performing alongside blacks who sang “the weirdest music I'd ever heard.” Called the blues, it expressed the realities of their lives. It also afforded him rich material for arrangements and compositions.

Handy would become “Father of the Blues,” not because he was the creator but rather its great innovator. “Composer, orchestra leader, trumpeter, astute business entrepreneur, and articulate spokesman for his people–particularly in regard to music,” he catapulted the blues into mainstream popular culture. With his first published song, “Mr. Crump,” reissued as “The Memphis Blues,” he won popularity; then came “St. Louis Blues,” one of the most recorded songs of all time, earning him recognition with the best known composers. Moreover, his records on the Columbia label (1917) were among the earliest made by blacks, foreshadowing the blues–jazz craze of the 1920s and the rise of vocalists and instrumentalists such as Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong. NBC's all-Handy special (1940) was the first radio program to showcase the music of an African American composer.