Co-founder (with Michael Barrett) and Artistic Director of the New York Festival of Song Steven Blier theorizes that it was in part the rumored enmity of Creole crooner Jelly Roll Morton that caused the enormously talented Alabama born “Father of the Blues,” W.C. Handy, to not be as renowned as perhaps he should be.
“Jelly Roll Morton took quite a swipe at Handy and it hurt him,” Blier explained. “He said that all of Handy’s music was basically stolen from folk sources, street sources, itinerant musicians and that it wasn’t really original. Then Alan Lomax, the folk historian, promulgated the Jelly Roll Morton smear, and it started to harden and became a way of thinking about Handy as opposed to one guy’s who was jealous of Handy. It became some sort of received wisdom.”
Blier, celebrating the 31st year of the New York Festival of Song, will kick off the 2018-2019 season with W.C. Handy and the Birth of the Blues. An evening of Handy’s music, it will include two premieres. One is the Latin-tinged “Negrita,” which was written by Al D’Arteaga but published by Handy, and the other is “Checkin’ on the Freedom Train,” co-written by the great poet Langston Hughes. The New York Festival of Song presents an annual series of concerts in New York City dedicated to the art of song, classical, modern and popular.
Soprano Shereen Pimentel, mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford, tenor Joshua Blue and baritoneJustin Austin will all perform. Steven Blier himself, along with Joseph Li, will accompany on piano.
Blier recalled, “I saw the name Langston Hughes and I thought, ‘I have to do this!’ It’s hard to believe no one ever sang it, but it was a Handy publication. It’s a long-ish song, but I felt we have to do the whole thing. It really tells a story.”
Hughes’ composition critiques the seeming hypocrisy of the Freedom Train, which Blier explained, “Traveled across the United States and was dedicated to telling the story of our democracy.” Although it celebrated freedom, riders were segregated by race.
A musician born in 1873, Handy published “Memphis Blues” in 1912. It is said to be the inspiration for the social dance the foxtrot. “Memphis Blues” was also the first blues song to achieve great popularity. Handy also wrote “Saint Louis Blues.” Long well-known, it became a huge hit after it was recorded by Bessie Smith in 1925.
Interestingly, Handy’s “Memphis Blues” was originally titled “Mr. Crump,” after the enormously powerful Memphis politician (with the help of the influential African-American businessman N.J. Ford, father Harold Ford Sr.) whose popularity increased after the song’s release. Crump was a vocal proponent of keeping the Freedom Train segregated and not allowing integrated Memphis crowds to view it as it came through the state. His stance cost him a great deal of crucial support from African-American constituents and led to a loss of much of his political clout locally.
Handy, who eventually established Pace and Handy Sheet Music, was a pioneer of the Black music industry, being one of the first to make a living publishing music. He was also a prolific author and documentarian of Blues music. He wrote his autobiography and four other books: “Unsung Americans Sung” (1944), “Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs,” “Book of Negro Spirituals” and “Negro Authors and Composers of the United States.”
Handy died at the age of 80, and more than 25,000 people attended his funeral at Abyssinian Baptist Church. More than 150,000 people gathered in the streets outside the church to pay their respects.
The concert is Blier’s attempt to both increase the visibility of Handy and combat the precipitous turn the country seems to have taken in terms of race relations. He said, “Just the state of the country. You just think, ‘What country are we in right now?’ I need to do something that shows America, that includes everybody.”
Like many others, he believes music has the power to at least bring people together and, hopefully, “remind some of those people of their essential truth and their heart.”
“Handy’s music is so guileless,” he said. “You can hear the kindness and generosity of who he was as a human being.”
Blier, who laments the increasing difficulty of getting the public to come out to live events, admits he has “wanted for years to do something on the American blues and the American South, but it was all amorphous.” With this rich and comprehensive program of, and tribute to, W.C. Handy’s music, he gives many more New Yorkers great reason to do just that!
The W.C. Handy and the Birth of the Blues program will take place Nov 14 at 8 p.m. at Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center.
