St Louis Blues 1914

Saint Louis Blues (song) " The Saint Louis Blues " (or " St. Louis Blues ") is a popular American song composed by W. C.

Handy in the jazz style and published in September 1914. It was one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song and remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians' repertoire. African American Heritage in Old Town Decatur Historical Marker W.

C. Handy American Musician Father Of The Blues @WhiteRedBlackNico. "St.

Louis Blues" was so successful that Handy and Pace relocated their publishing business to New York City in 1918. That year also witnessed the first recording of "St. Louis Blues," although the most famous recording, featuring Bessie Smith singing and Louis Armstrong accompanying, was made in 1925.

ST. LOUIS BLUES Music and lyrics: W.C. Handy Year: 1914 Origin of the song In 1912, William Christopher Handy wanted a hit that would make up for his disappointment with 'Memphis Blues'.

Unscrupulous publishers had deceived him by buying his copyrights for only fifty dollars, which barely covered the expenses. The song St. Louis Blues was written by W.C.

Handy and was first recorded and released by Prince's Band in 1916. It was covered by Arvell Shaw and the Louis Armstrong Legacy Band, Charlie Barnet, Alice Gerrard & Mike Seeger, Russell "Big Chief" Moore's Pow Wow Jazz Band and other artists. Although "St.

Louis Blues" is regarded as a milestone of 20th-century American music, the best-known composition of William Christopher Handy (lauded as "Father of the Blues"), the song was far from an immediate success. In this it can be said to reflect the career of W.C. Handy himself, who was already 40 by the time he wrote "St.

Louis Blues," in 1914, and whose first success. In 1914, Handy's most famous piece, "St. Louis Blues," became the first published Blues song.

The song quickly gained international attention and put St. Louis and Missouri on a global map. William Christopher Handy (1873-1958) Although William Christopher Handy spent relatively little of his long life in Missouri, his "St.

Louis Blues" (1914) secured a place for him in the state's musical history. But in 1914, when "St. Louis Blues" was published, race records had not yet emerged.

The song was frequently recorded by white artists, as in the 1921 version by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band with vocalist Al Bernard, presented to the right. We could hardly begin a week of W.C. Handy songs without zeroing in on his biggest hit, "St.

Louis Blues," a song that has been so-often recorded that no full accounting of the recordings is possible, to be counted in thousands, not hundreds, starting in 1914. Handy wrote the song on a single night at the end of that summer, the year after he founded the Pace and Handy Music Company.