Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, 1930-03-01
BLAZED 4 PATH FROM
BEAIE STREET TO
BROADWAY We Hand. sui
Trh in the
Clifford McGuinness Reviews
the Life of VIC. Handy

glimpse of the Handy of today.
The minister thought music
waste of time.
But the boy was stubborn. IF it
hadn't been for that boys OBJ
stinacy, America would have had
only another politician, as the
teacher wished, or another bishop,
as the father wished
Instead Of being cowed by his
fathers disapproval, Handy stole
the minister's jim-swinger for his
stage debut, in a minstrel. They
went on a grand tour, but in south
ern Alabama the manager suddenly
vanished and, with him, the trea-
Sury. The quartette walked back
to Florence, singing for their meals.
When they sang, Take Me Back
Home, Let Me See 1t Once More"
their real hunger feeling must have
added a tremolo.
Birmingham was city. Bigger
bands were there, and more
schools to teach in. Handy, ar
irving there, found that what he
could get as a teacher was even
less than half of what he could get
as a laborer in the pipe works at
Bessemer, twelve miles outside.
Naturally he became a laborer.
Life itself, not academic study
alone, taught him many work songs
that, using him as medium, were
to achieve a great place in Ameri-
can music.
However, the election of Grover
Cleveland had bad effect on la
bor.- Less work and less pay pre-
vailed.
Back at Birmingham, Handy
came across a quartette in sa-
loon. With twenty cents in his
pockets, he took hold of these
four older men, and started out for
the Worlds Fair at Chicago, first
announced for 1892. En- route,
they travelled by freight. At Gull
man, a brakeman ordered them off.
The quartette began to Groom,
someone strummed a guitar and
Handy muted his cornet. The
brakeman relented. Thereafter
they rode in the caboose. Before
the troubadours reached
Chicago, the fair was post
poned for year.
So they found themselves
1 ! !: Z. : !
in st. Louis instead. Hard
- times. Hundreds slept on
the cobblestones on the
levee, Handy among them.
He hoboed out of it, to
ii Evansville. Indiana. There
he did street. bricking at a
'-a dollar fifty day. He play
ed in the Hampton Band
there until he met one,
Taylor of Henderson, Ken
,,rxsszmd lucky. Taylor took him to
j Kentucky where he made
twelve dollars for one days
work in the Henderson band
Those were golden days
~ all around; his future wife
was then Henderson girl.
Henderson, being on the
Ohio river, was a steamboat
s landing and there he learn
sI ed the levee songs of the
roustabouts or Stevedores-
81 quite an acquisition.
The fourth of August,
1896, saw him in Chicago.
|x The famous Mahara Min
strels wanted him.. With
them his technical ability
aX came into something like
Il MM full play. His band played
everything from ballads to
~ Beethoven.
In Oakland, California,
Handy, who, as his musical
education progressed, neg
lected all other music for
Is the sake of the academic
and classical, gave a cornet
solo, playing Hartman's
mia" 1t was a technical
feat, but the gallery Missed.
The music was foreign.
There is no national feel
@ ing for the music Of COM
posers long since dead, like
Beethoven and Palestrina,
; because none of it was
written by Americans.
The next night, Handy
||3 tried something with a Dixie
warmth to it, something
not unfamiliar to the
the gallery. He played it
With q sway of the shoulders
and tap of his foot
Ia nv magister1al sentiments Of