Handy--31

glistening affair with the same flawless skill. The drum major in a
minstrel show was a character to conjure with; not infrequently he stole
the show. Our company had two such virtuosos; in addition to twirling
their batons, they added the new wrinkle of tossing them back and forth
to each other as they marched.

Finally, distributed at intervals from one end of the parade to
the other, there were the boys with the banners. Each banner described
one outstanding feature of the colossal spectacle.

The band played marches as this procession moved up and down the
principal street of a town. Curiously, we made few concessions to low-
brow taste in our selection of music. We used the heaviest works of
W. P. Chambers, C. W. Dalbey and C. L. Barnhouse; even the stiff com-
positions of Pattee were not beyond us. It was only when we were lip-
weary that we eased off on the light, swingy things of R. B. Hall and
John Phillip Sousa.

The procession halted at the public square, and the band played
a program of classical music plus a medley of popular airs for the
throne that assembled there in the open. Special features like trom-
bone, piccolo or clarinet solos were interspersed among our numbers.
Usually too we included a comic act such as a trick bicyclist made up
as a tramp or an interlude by the lanky D. C. Scott, a 'natural-born
reacher', in his slap-stick get-up. And here, finally, was the place
for the oratorical gifts of the remarkable George L. Moxley whose bus-
iness it was to sell the show to the natives.

Another parade with music brought us back to the theatre. For
the remainder of the afternoon our time was our own, but at seven-
thirty we did our stuff again in front of the opera house. Here, in
all probability, we would pull the 'Musician's Strike' out of our bag
of tricks. During this well-rehearsed feature each musician would,

Handy--32

when his turn came, pretend to quarrel with someone else and quit the band in a huff. When, to the dismay of the innocent yokels, the band had dwindled to almost nothing, a policeman who had been 'fixed' and planted at a convenient spot would come up and ask questions. This would lead to a fight between some of the remaining musicians, and the officer would promptly arrest them.

The crowd could be depended on to express its disappointment in strong language. "Just like niggers," they'd groan. "They break up everything with a fight. Hell it all, they'd break up heaven." During these recriminations we would spring the old hokum. The band, having reassembled around the corner, would cut lose with one of the most sizzling tunes of the day, perhaps *A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight*, and presently the ticket seller would go to work. We hooked them in droves.

Inside the opera house the curtain rose on a conventional orchestra of fourteen players sitting high on an elevated platform. Before the orchestra sat the two brilliant semi-circles of performers. The first was occupied by the featured soloists. The second, by singers and others later to take part in the olio. Immediately upon the rise of the curtain this entire group burst into song. And what singing it was! Anyone who ever followed the old minstrel shows of the last century will bear witness to the quality of the ensemble singing of these amazingly well-trained groups.

Old timers will remember as well what followed. Following the curtain music, the interlocutor entered and introduced the Canadians. A thrill that the present generation may never know waited only for this individual's trite but magical words: "Ladies and Gentlemen, we've come out tonight to give you a pleasing entertainment. With bones on the right and tamborines on the left we'll proceed with the overture."

Handy--54

untold sums of money by his smooth talk at such times as the boys got in trouble. White in appearance, Moxley was by birth and at heart a Kentucky Negro.

More than once I have seen Moxley walk into a fine restaurant flat broke, order a two dollar meal and then borrow three dollars from the proprietor to make the bill an even five dollars.' Then there was the night at Billings, Montana. We had been traveling through the Black Hills by stagecoach and had seen cowboys occasionally ride up to a bar and recklessly buy drinks for the house. By the time we reached Billings, Moxley was ready to show the natives how that sort of thing was done by a man of the world. Money flowed in large dimensions in that part of the country. You saw no nickels or dimes and few quarters in circulation. This did not intimidate Moxley. Empty of pocket and on his wits as usual, he set up the house, and he set it up brown. His poise had never been more magnificent. The crowd responded gleefully, and presently everybody was royalty tight and blowing dollars by the thousand. Eventually the house made the mistake of presenting Moxley with a bill for his initial treat. Moxley showed surprise, but he was not too shocked to convince the bartender that instead of owing the house, the house owed him a substantial commission for the business he had stimulated. Of course, the bill was forgotten.

Moxley had gathered a great store of theatrical anecdote. He had been around and learned the ropes. I always enjoyed listening to him talk. Recently, in response to a letter of mine, he wrote me from Martinsburg, Virginia, giving some of the details of his career before and after the years we spent together in the Sahara Minstrels. Here is a part of his letter.

"I began singing to the public in my 15th year at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1976. Then, for two years, I was with Toney Pastor in the theatre he made famous in New York.

Handy--36

Young'. A darktown Beau Brummel of the first magnitude, Billy also qualified as a gentleman. Born in Kentucky, he claimed as well a gentleman's authority when Rye or Bourbon was in question. Billy had come to our company by way of the McCabe and Young Minstrels. W. A. Mahara had been an advance man for Young around '88, during the days of the Young-McCabe tie-up. The following year the cards were shuffled most interestingly. Dan McCabe headed his own show. Billy Young went to work for Mahara. Show business has always been the same in some of its aspects. The dog-eat-dog equation goes back even further than I can remember.

The word *clever* definitely belonged in Young's billing. He was an all-round man if there ever was one on the stage. Equally talented at dancing or singing, comedy or tragedy, Billy was, in my opinion, the daddy of them all in his line of work. Back in the McCabe & Young shows he had featured and popularized the dramatic song *I Belong To The Upper Ten; You Are The Lower Five*. In our company his long suit was *Elegant Barney*, a sure-fire number in which he imitated the well-known Broadway favorite, Barney Fagan. He was good in his own *Flower Song* at the beginning of the show, and he was better in his *Wine Song* at the close. In each of these Billy wound up on a high note which he held endlessly, it seemed, walking about the stage and back to his seat while the house came down with stormy approval. He brought out the best in our chorus too. I shall never forget the support we gave him when he sang Cheancy Cleott's *My Beautiful Irish Maid*. Yes, clever was the word for Billy Young. Give him his Bourbon and a spot on the minstrel stage, and he'd take up the curtain with the best of them.

When Billy appeared for his specialty in the olio there was always a moment of uncertainty in the orchestra. We never quite knew what he might say or do. A Dutch gag probably indicated a German song.

Handy--37

and we might usually expect the same sort of hint for an Irish, Scotch
or Negro number, but there was always Billy's liquor to be reckoned
with. He gave us the eternal jitters, but still the show never suffered.
We learned to keep stop with his quick changes.

Billy's saving grace was his gift as an improvisor, his inspired
ad libbing. There was a night in Helena, Montana, when this very nimble-
ness proved to be a two-edged sword, but nobody complained too much. Two
sheets in the wind and tottering visibly on the stage, Billy began--

When a Russian is smoking, he's thinking,
When a German gets drunk, he's drinking.

Several too realistic gulps and burps followed, and during the moment's
pause the people in the audience had to hold their sides to keep them
from splitting. Billy hesitated, his timing still a thing of beauty,
then repeated--

This time, however, the pause was slighter; Billy had found his thread
and was ready to sail ahead triumphantly--

But when a colored man gets warm in the summertime,
well--use your own judgment.

To all appearances this bit of spontaneous doggerel was a bull's
eye. It went over like a canon ball. But a local colored lawyer, sit-
ting in the audience with his white wife, failed to see the joke. The
eyes of the audience suddenly turned upon him. The couple was humiliated
and bitterly resentful. Before we left those parts, Mahara had to set-
tle a damage suit, deducting the amount from Billy's already over-worked
salary. But, as I've said, the management didn't mind. Crowds pay

Handy--38

good money for the unexpected. And they know, as we know in the
orchestra, that the unexpected is what they were sure to get when
Billy Young appeared.

Billy was also a mighty man with the ladies. His popularity ex-
tended from Avenue A to the Tenderloin. When carriages waited after
the show, we understood. When the harness was silver-trimmed and
flunkies sat on the front seat, we knew Billy was headed for the bright
lights. If soft eyes gleamed from the shadows of a cab that belched
forth rich perfumes when the door swung open, we took the hing; we
knew why the lights were then of a different shade. Billy was going
where he couldn't be followed. We heard it said that there were locks
on exclusive doors that admitted no hat, however high, while Billy
remained. Billy's mask exploits became a legend among minstrel men
of our day.

Another ace with our company was LeRoy Bland, a female impersonator whose real name was Johnny Stone. He had adopted Bland as a stage name because of his admiration for the composer of *Carry Me Back To Old Virginia*. LeRoy eventually introduced me to the tall, dark bandmaster-composer. It was in Louisville, and I remember still the thrill it gave me to shake the hand of a truly great composer. It was an experience I'd never had before, and I little suspected that I would live to see James Bland forgotten and buried in a pauper's grave while his *Carry Me Back To Old Virginia*, *In The Evening By The Moonlight* and other songs attained a place in American music second only to the work of Stephen Foster in the same field. As a minstrel man I was a contemporary of James Bland, but we belonged to different companies, and our paths crossed only at rare intervals. I wish it had been otherwise. He was one of our finest--one of America's finest. It seems almost incredible that just recently even the musical world

Handy--43

and pinned his arms to his sides. That was all I wanted. I rubbed
helpless
my fist in the/Hapless fellow's mouth and shouted savage threats.
"You just wait here till I come back," I concluded melodramatically.
Then I rushed away angrily.

Of course, I was bluffing. I had no intention of coming back,
but I must have acted my part well. The railroad man assumed that
I'd gone for a pistol, and when Will Garland released him, he broke
and ran to the station and hid. Meanwhile, I crawled into the 'get-
away' and waited for times to get better.

Sometime later I heard the sheriff and his posse searching out
car. Mahara was with them. He pretended to be angry enough to chew
nails. I could hear his voice trouble with rage as he told the Murfees-
boro sheriff and his men that I had better sense than to come on that
car again after what I'd done. He left no doubt that he would make
even shorter shift of me than the sheriff intended, once he got his
hands on me. This pleased the sheriff. He and his men gave up the
search of the car and went out to scour the countryside.

When we were safely on our way again, Mahara came to me with a
chuckle.

"You gotta have mother wit when you're knocking around in an
outfit like this," he said.

"I agreed. Either mother wit or a stamping good left hind rabbit's
foot."

Well, rabbit's foot or no rabbit's foot, it was not long before the
wrath of God was on us again, and we stood in pressing need of all the
mother wit we could muster. Cricket Smith was to blame, the same
Cricket Smith now remembered as the trumpeter of the Ford Dabney band
that played on the Big Big Ziegfeld roof. In Austin, Texas, Cricket was
stricken with an ailment that a local physician diagnosed as a

Handy--44

'slight skin infection'. Truth to tell, however, Cricket's ailment
was no skin infection and it was far from slight.

Mrs. Handy was with me at the time. She had joined me at Huston
for a short visit. When we left one of our two Pullman cars in that
city and proceeded to Austin and Tyler for one-day stands, I prevailed
upon her to remain, explaining that while the car would be crowded,
we could get comfortable lodging with good families in each city. She
agreed, against her better judgment, and we moved on to Tyler. The
train arrived late, and she remained in the car during the morning
parade. Cricket was excused in order to visit a doctor. Things seemed
to work out well enough for a while, but I can tell you now that the
witches' caldron was boiling even then.

We had reached the public square and commenced the noon concert
when an excited professional man arrived on the scene, waving his arms
wildly.

"Stop! Stop it!" he cried, "Stop this damn music." I turned
in alarm. The members of my band began to look foolish and unnecessary.
There was nothing to do but to obey. Presently, turning to the assembled
crowd, the man added, "Ladies and gentlemen, these niggers have got the
small-pox. If they don't get out of town--and that right quick--we'll
have to lynch the batch of them, by God."

The effect was electrical. Stunned for a moment, we quickly re-
gained our wits well enough to fall into a step with the rat-a-tat-tat
of George Reeves' enare drum and commence a double-quick to the car.
In another jiffy an engine was hitched to our car and we were taken to
a siding on the outskirts of the town. County officers came a short
while later to inform us that the appearance of other cases of small-
pox among us would be the signal for them to burn the car and carry
out the doctor's suggestion with regard to the rest of us, men and women.

Handy--46

John Brown. Less militant than the hero of Harper's Ferry, whose name he bore, Mr. Brown was nevertheless a solid sender where we were concerned. After we had been quarantined a few days, he secured orders from the county to supply us with sow belly, beans, cornmeal and molasses. In conformity with his orders he made out bills for this type of provision, but actually he was a sensitive man who understood that we were not accustomed to this sort of food. While this may have been the diet the townsfolk had been in the habit of supplying their field hands, it was certainly not the grade of food that Frank Mabara provided for his minstrels. Accordingly, while not offending local sensibilities, Mr. Brown used his own judgment in filling the orders.

One meets men like Mr. John Brown even in unfortunate communities. They help to shape in us a better opinion of mankind. In this case, as our acquaintance grew, we formed the habit of tossing money to our benefactor with the simple request that he bring the 'correct ingredients'. The guards blinked in puzzlement, but they did not guess that what we wanted was beer or whiskey. Mr. Brown understood. Sometimes he surprised us with unexpected delicacies. Our internment, thanks to him, became almost endurable.

Before it was over, small-pox claimed fourteen victims among our number. Meanwhile, the authorities gave us plenty of air. They never came close enough to the ear to check on the spread of the disease. I suppose they were just being smart and taking no chances, but this was where they outsmarted themselves.

During the afternoons I got the band together and played a concert behind our barrack. The townfolk, as usual, swarmed around like flies drawn to a molasses drip. In the midst of the musical program big Gordon Collins came on with a stunt left the folks limping from laughing. Two-hundred and eighty pounds of dark

Handy--47

meat, Gordon would leap high into the air, thrust his legs before him and come down with a whoosh on his mighty buttocks. He was well-cushioned by nature, and no calumny resulted for the big boy. Moreover, the spectators thought it was tremendous. His leaping act he would follow with humorous songs. These got the crowd too. But entertainment was not our underlying aim on these occasions. Gordon was not bruising his bottom just for fun.

This performance was repeated several times. Then one evening we decided that the time was ripe for action. While the guards were holding their sides as they laughed at Gordon, a number of our company repaired to the car. There the fourteen sick men were quickly dressed in women's clothes. Each was provided with sufficient money to get him out of Texas and to some city where the benefits of a hospital might be enjoyed. All of us knew what was going on--we had been plotting it for days--but all could not take a hand in the actual business.

The show had to continue. Still, out of the corner of my eye, I watched the queer would-be females make their way down the tracks while Gordon leaped higher and higher and bounced harder and harder. And through it all the band played in the gathering dusk. Finally the last of our friends disappeared in the woods. Will Garland was among them. After our reckless challenge to the guards who refused to let the women folks take their walk, he too had fallen a victim of the contagion.

This was, incidentally, the last I ever saw of Will. This little misadventure, together with others that went to make up like with Mahara's Minetroles, may have soured him. He went to England soon afterwards, produced shows that traveled throughout Europe, but he never returned to America. Perhaps he found it hard to cope from his mind the nightmare of those days in Texas. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with America.

Publicity has saved many a show, but it killed cure. He were

Handy--48

literally 'as welcome as the smallpox' in those parts, and nobody could excuse our managers of failing to catch a hint. We jumped all the way to the Atlantic coast. There, awaiting proposed bookings in Cuba, we passed the time wildcatting through Georgia and Florida...

The weather was diamond-bright during those months--December 1899 and January 1900--and our company tried to imagine what the real tropics might be like. Meanwhile, barnstorming in Georgia and Florida, going from one tank town to another, traveling jerk-water railroad lines, while an improvement over our last experience in Texas, was a poor substitute for the plush Pullmans to which we/ were accustomed. My wife, who was still with me, began to be fed up on the hardships of the road. When she learned that her steamer fare and hotel bills in Cuba would have to come out of my own pocket, she decided to return to Henderson. I had to argue mightily to change her mind.

Eventually, of course, I carried my point, insisting that two could live as cheaply as one and that, more important still, there might not be another chance to visit Cuba soon. So, having compromised, we set sail from Key West.

When we entered the harbor at Havana, the sun was just rising. Thousands of abolone shells glittered through the mist along the beach. The gray ramparts of El Moro Castle and Fort Principe rose magnificently in the foreground. Beyond the shimmering water an amber city seemed to emerge from a purple sea. Then the prado, boulevard of dreams, came into view. Sundry it seemed more like a garden than a thoroughfare.

Suddenly I discovered tears in Mrs. Handy's eyes as we stood at the rail. What if she had carried out her original intention and returned to Henderson? Just see what she would have missed! For once I was right, unmistakably right. This was much too marvellous to miss

Handy--50

Our parade paused before the American legation to serenade General Luke E. Wright. The Governor General was so pleased he took time to address a written note of thanks and congratulation to the band.

While in Havana I bought a copy of the Cuban *Bryuno Bayanes*, and arranged it for my band. Later, when we played it on the prado, one of the natives became so excited he took my cap and tossed it high into the air, a gesture which reminded me of the way Confederate soldiers had of tossing their own hats whenever we played *Dixie* for them. Surely, I began to think, music needs no interpreter when it speaks. For those who employ this language Bali and Broadway blend in world old ways.

The music of the island intrigued me. I never missed the concerts of the one hundred piece Havana Guards Band. More often still I sought out the small, shy bands that played behind closed shutters on dark, out of the way streets where the passion flower bloomed in the heart of the night. These fascinated me because they were playing a strange, native air new and interesting to me. More than thirty years later I heard that rhythms again. By then it had gained respectability in New York and had acquired a name--the mamá.

After the show in the evening, feeling very correct in suits of tropical drill, small groups of us sat for hours over tall drinks in a leaf-fringed establishment where ladies and gentlemen mingled and refreshments ranging from sodas and icees to wines and whiskies were served. We were astonished to see ladies of quality seated in boxes ordering hard drinks and smoking cigarettes. Eventually, of course, this custom reached Broadway and points West and South, proving, as the old folks would say, that the sun do move. But at the time of our visit Americans were just beginning to visit Havana in numbers.

Handy---51

It would be hard to say from this distance which country profited most
from the consequent interchange of ideas and customs.

We passed the golden days driving about the city and into the
country. We browsed in the curio shops buying odd fanes, old coins and
quaint jewelry. We visited the historic fortresses, drove out to the
coffee and coconut and banana plantations. We promised with the
gay throngs on the prado. But the daily expense of our carriage,
coachman and footman included, was only forty cents. Two could live
as cheaply as one.

The food was good, the price low. For some reason, however, Mrs.
Handy suddenly lost her taste for Cuban cuisine. Later, when we found
an American restaurant run by a Chinaman, she discovered that the food
there tasted no better. I began to lose my patience. It didn't seem
to me reasonable that anybody should turn up his nose at the sort of
fare we were enjoying. "Women, women, women," I complained. "Lord,
they won't never do." I became more tolerant, however, when I learned
that I was destined to become a father. All was forgiven.

I'd have excellent reason to remember the perfumed influence of
sultry Havana.

Handy--55

out to be a musician neither. Matter of fact, I'm kinda--kinda happy
glad, boy. I feel /righteous/ tonight."

The next day the show moved on to Florence and I made ready to
strew my poison for the home town folks. They, in turn, received us
with open arms. They were marvelous. Professor Wallace, the old tight-
pants Tartar himself, came around and acknowledged that I had done my-
self right proud in such a short time. Even more effusive was Mr.
Willie Brown, leader of Florence's white band. He sent our band a
huge bouquet and followed this with cases of beer, wine and assorted
liquors. To cap the climax, he brought me his gold cornet and request-
ed that I play my solo on it in the band concert. I was much too over-
joyed to observe at the moment that these kindnesses snacked of conscience
money on the part of the generous-hearted bandmaster. That thought
came later.

Years earlier, when I had just bought the old rotary valve
horn for a dollar and six bits, Mr. Brown had told me with cutting
frankness that I was wasting my time and money. I could never learn
to play the cornet, he argued. My lips were too thick. Negroes, in
his opinion, should stick to the banjo and guitar. His words made
only a slight impression on my mind, for I took the advice to be no
more than the usual smallness one meets all along the line. I had
ignored and almost forgotten it. After the return to Florence it
gradually dawned on me that there had never been any question of the
man's sincerity. He seemed more than glad to atone for his miscalcu-
lation.

It did me a peek of good to show up the doubters, but I'm
afraid it also put a fighting edge on my temper. I began to feel
tough enough to call the hand of a certain comedian in our company,

Handy--54

a two hundred and fifty pound brute who had been getting in my soup ever since the quarantine in Texas. During the smallpox lay-over this fellow had touched me for money. Later he had used the loan as a means of bulldozing me, daring me to ask for it and boasting to the others of his high-handed doings. At Florence the bully interrupted a band rehearsal to leap from the stage and threaten to lump my old friend, Jim Turner. I spoke up sharply in Jim's behalf. This infuriated the comedian, and he turned to swing on me. Mahara came up and caught him from behind, but I went directly for my gun. During the remainder of the rehearsal I kept it plainly exposed.

A legent promptly went abroad in minstrel circles, a legent to the effect that I _always_ laid my gun on the desk during Mahara's band rehearsals. This, obviously, was something of an exaggeration.

Well, at Florence I began to feel big and bad enough to take my tormentor's measure. When he moved my trunk out of a dressing room and substituted his own, I ordered him to put mine back. He obeyed, but the performance galled him. It helped matters none at all when fellows like Lewis McClure chimed in on my side. That night the big boy and his liquor came down Tennessee Street roaring like a lion. He passed my aunt's house swearing to the stars that he was going to kick my backside off the train when I came aboard. Suddenly devil-mont entered my head. I went to a window, shouted his name loudly and fired a shot into the air.

Old funnybones picked up his heels like a frightened deer. Police-men came to investigate the shooting. I told them how the fellow had imposed on me, and they arrested him. Very soon afterwards the comedian himself sent for me. When I reached the jail, I found a changed Negro behind the bars. Dead sober and humble as a lamb, he wanted

Handy--55

only to repay his debt and to request me not to appear in court
against him. I agreed readily, and we forgave and forgot.

Still that was about as much minstrel life as I could stomach
for a while, so I said good-by to the outfit as the season ended and
decided to settle down in Florence and raise myself a family. That
was the spring of 1900. On June 29th Lucille was born, our first
baby.

Florence was quiet, comfortable and just a trifle dull after
Mahara's minstrels. Jim Turner and I got together again, took a few
drinks to help revive old times and organized a small orchestra. A
week or two passed. Then we accepted an invitation to play for a
school closing in nearby Sheffield, and I contributed a comet solo.
The speaker of the day was W. H. Council, president of the Agricult-
ural and Mechanical College located at Normal on the outskirts of
Huntsville. Prof. Council had noted the furor created by our min-
strel band in Huntsville, and now, having heard with his own ears,
he engaged me to take charge of band, orchestra and vocal music at
the A. & H. College.

The following September I began the life of a faculty member on
the campus of a Negro Industrial school. They listed me as teacher
of rudimentary English--since the budget did not provide for a mus-
ical director--and my duties included in addition to band, orchestra
and the vocal instruction, such duties as conducting study hours,
holding Tuesday night prayers and teaching in the College Sunday
school. But I fell into the rhythm of things easily and might have
been there till now had it not been for an odd new vogue called
ragtime.

To understand what happened at A. & H. it is necessary to know

Handy--58

classics, classics, nothing but classics. And classics I gave him.
But how!

_Greetings to Toussaint L'Ouverture_ was a specimen. We played
this band number on a chapel program. The response was hearty. Compared to
_tika/_the polite applause accorded the honest-to-goodness classics, the
response to our _Greetings_ was astonishing. Not the least delighted
person in the audience was Council himself. He rose and requested that
the number be repeated. After the second rendition the applause was
even greater.

"Professor Handy," Council beamed, trotting down the aisle to bestow his blessing, "that piece is a credit to any band. I want to congratulate you upon your wide acquaintance with the classics."

I was forced to take it in silence, but later I confessed to him privately that _Greetings to Toussaint L'Ouverture_ was a hoax, a low-down fraud. It was just a dressed up title for a number we had recently used in the minstrel band. The piece had been written by a Detroit Negro named Fred Stone. Its real title was _My Ragtime Baby_. Council looked at me in despair. In quick succession he turned three or four different colors. But he stiffened his lip, took it like a good sport and never recanted his words of praise.

It's easy to see from this distance that from the time I became seriously interested in ragtime I was on my way out of A. & M. College as a musical director. I grew restless and dissatisfied, Council, on the other hand, must have sensed my trend and grown increasingly uneasy. Yet we never came to a complete break. Instead of making ragtime and the stuffy and absurd provincialism of the campus an issue, I complained of my salary.

Even this did not produce an immediate rupture. We worried along together till the end of my second year. Then one day I was assigned

Handy---G3

Where golden sunsets woo silv'ry twilights in a
sapphire sea,
My Pasadena is calling me.
All, eternal spring smiles on my California Queen;
The North winds bring her robes of orange and of
green.

Pregnance rare Zephyrs gently bring
To this daughter of sunlight and scene.
Through the night song birds sweetly sing
Pasadena, Pasadena, Ah!
To her my thoughts are turning
For her my heart is yearning
I seem to see her eyes
'Neath starlit skies
On my love divine!
Where silv'ry moonbeams play
And dancing fairies stray
I'll like a lover bold, in days of old,
Make fair Pasadena mine.

In the west too we crossed paths with Black Patti's Troubadours.
The star, Sisseretta Jones, was appearing in operatic roles supported
by a sensational chorus of Negro voices. Music critics liked to call
her the 'Black Patti'. When we played Portland, Oregon, the Georgia
Minstrels, best known of all the Negro companies, was still in town.
They came to our show. Back stage I met their peerless end men, Hell
Moore and Bobby Kemp, along with Jim Crosby the diamond studDED com-
median. Also in the group were Robert Leach of Mississippi and Lorenzo
Tio Sr. of New Orleans, first of the top-notch clarinetists of our
core.

Before the time of Leach and Tio foreigners (often Mexicans)
played the clarinets in Negro bands, where these instruments were used
at all. The only clarinet in the Mahara band at the time I joined
it was played by an Englishman named W. R. Rowe. The instrument was
a strange yellow affair with seven keys. By the time of my last year
with the band however, we carried a complete clarinet section. Among
our players was Wilbur C. Sweatman, later to become a figure in vande-

Handy--64

ville as a one-man trio. Sweatman had a stunt of playing three clarinets at the same time, each instrument following separate notes in a three-part harmony. Horace George, also a member of our outfit, followed in Sweatman's steps and picked up his tricks. But the ace of the reed players with me in the Mahara days was Fred Richardson. That boy was chain lightning on a clarinet.

My minstrel years, as I have indicated, were years of change. I saw the clarinet rise in popularity, and I came within an eyelash of making a scoop myself. I picked up a quartet of saxophone players and immediately got a hunch. I would add all four of them to our band. That idea was brand new. Saxes were well-liked however, and I could well imagine the effect of wailing complaint that these voice-like instruments might add to our band. I button-holed the four foot-loose musicians on a public square and told them to wait there for me while I went to call Frank Mahara from his ticket cage. I felt sure I had something that would bole him over. You can imagine my chagrin when I returned and found that the birds had flown. Twenty-five years later Happy Lee told me what had happened. The four Chicago boys, of whom he had been one, were less interested in joining a minstrel band than in getting back to home and mother. Things had not gone well with them. They were homesick. I caught them at the wrong moment.

Gone was my dream of scoring a sensation with a daring innovation, but I continued to encourage the use of the instruments. I bought a tenor sax for myself, but W. N. P. Spiller, our alto horn player, appropriated it mostly to his own use. This was the genesis of his 'The Musical Spillors', a headline vaudeville act of later years.

Credit is due the army bands for training early Negro clarinet-

Handy--72

did I even dream that the Mississippi delta would presently become
my stomping grounds, but that is exactly how it worked out, and I
know now that it was the best thing that could ever have happened to
me.

The year was 1903, and the outfit was in Michigan when the decision was made. A Michigan town had offered me an opportunity to direct its municipal band, and I was slowly making up my mind to accept. While this decision was pending, I received a letter which contained an offer to direct a local Knights of Pythias band in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There was little comparison between the two propositions, as I saw it. The Michigan thing was miles ahead, more money, more prestige, better opportunities for the future, better everything. Yet, for no good reason that I could express, I turned my face toward Clarksdale and started down the road that led inevitably to the blues.

Perhaps my friend Jim Jordan turned the trick. A former pupil of mine and a member of one of my first bands, Jim actually sold the delta city to me. Earlier, it seems, he had sold me to the town folks. I bowed to his persuasion and gave my word to the managers of the Southern band. A few days later a cashier's check, drawn on the Planters Bank and signed by an S. L. Manghan, came to cover my expenses to Clarksdale. I stuffed the check into my pocket, having no immediate need for it, and began packing my dums.

In Clarksdale a few days later I entered the Planters Bank. A guard directed me to the cage of the assistant cashier. There, as big as life and just as black, I saw something that all but took me off my feet. A Negro stood at the window of that Southern white bank handling foreign and domestic drafts, still blinking and wondering whether or not I was awake, I approached the window.

Handy--73

"I have no one to identify me," I apologized, slipping the check through the cage.

He gave me a suave smile. "My name is your endorsement," he said quietly. "You will find it on the other side."

He was S. L. Manghan, assistant cashier. More important still, he was a clarinet player in the band I had come south to direct. The local business men and bank officials called him Stack; they swore by him, coming and going. Whatever Stack promised, they said, he delivered. I found that he was held in equal favor by the band. Stack never left the platform when we played for stiffs. He never took a drink, and he never got excited. Nothing upset him. I cannot recall ever having seen his name or picture in a newspaper, yet Stack was a power in the town. Before he died, he developed a peculiar type of paralysis and had to wear an iron truss to keep his head from turning around backwards. Still he occupied a cashier's cage in the Planters Bank for thirty years and remained with the bank till it closed its doors.

The band which I found in Clarksdale and the nine-man orchestra which grew out of it did yeoman duty in the delta. We played for affairs of every description. I came to know by heart, as I've said, every foot of the Dog from Clarksdale to Lambert and Yazz City. I could call every flag stop, water tower and pig path on the Peavine with my eyes closed. It all became a familiar, monotonous round. Then one night at Tutwiler as I nodded in the railroad station while waiting for a train that had been delayed nine hours, Life suddenly took me by the shoulder and waked me with a start.

A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me. His clothes were ragged; his foot peeped out of his shoes,

Handy--74

His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner later popularized by Hawaiian musicians who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly.

Goin' where the Southern Cross the Dog.

The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest melody I had ever heard. The tune stayed in my mind. When the singer paused, I leaned over and asked him what the words meant. He rolled his eyes, showing a trace of mild amusement. Perhaps I should have known, but he didn't mind explaining. At Moorhead the eastbound and the westbound met and crossed the north and southbound trains four times a day. This fellow was going where the Southern Cross the Dog, and he didn't care who knew it. He was simply singing about his journey as he waited.

That was not unusual. Southern Negroes sing about everything. Trains, steamboats, steam whistles, sledge hammers, fast women, mean bosses, stubborn mules--all become subjects for their songs. They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect, anything from a harmonica to a washboard.

In this way, and from these materials, they make the songs that we now call blues. My own fondness for this sort of thing really began in Florence, back in the days when we were not above standing beneath the windows of our sweethearts and singing till we won a kiss in the shadows or perhaps a tumbler of good home-made wine. In the delta, however, I suddenly saw the songs with the eye of a budding composer.

Handy--75

The songs themselves, I now observed, consisted of simple declar-
ations expressed usually in three lines and set to a kind of earth-
born music that was familiar throughout the Southland half a century
ago. Mississippi with its large plantations and small cities prob-
ably had more colored field hands than any other state. Consequently
we heard many such songs as *Hurry Sundown, Let Tomorrow Come*, or

*Boll Weevil, where you been so long?
Boll Weevil, where you been so long?
You stole my cotton, now you want my corn.*

Clarkesdale was eighteen miles from the river, but that was no
distance for roustabouts. They came in droves in the evening and on
days when they were not loading boats. With them they brought the
legendary songs of the river.

*Oh the Kater's up the river, Stack o' Lee's in the bon',
Oh the Kater's up the river, Stack o' Lee's in the bon',
And I ain't seen ma baby since I can't tell when.*

At first folk melodies like these were kept in the back rooms of
my mind while the parlor was reserved for dressed-up music. Musical
books continued to get much of my attention. There was still an old
copy of Steiner's *First Lessons in Harmony*, purchased back in Hender-
son for fifty cents. While traveling with the minstrel I had bought
from Lyon and Healy a copy of Moore's *Encyclopedia of Music*. For a
time books had become a passion. I'm afraid I came to think that every-
thing worth while was to be found in books. But the blues did not come
from books. Suffering and hard luck were the midwives that birthed
these songs. The blues were conceived in aching hearts.

I hasten to confess that I took up with blues hesitantly. I
approached them with a certain fear and trembling. Like many of the

Wandy--76

other musicians who received them with cold shoulders at first, I began by raising my eyebrows and wondering if they were quite the thing. I had picked up a fair training in the music of the modern world and had assumed that the correct manner to compose was to develop simple into grandioses and not to repeat them monotonously. As a director of many respectable, conventional bands, it was not easy for me to conceive that a simple slow-drag and repeat could be rhythm itself. Neither was I ready to believe that this was just what the public wanted. But we live to learn, sweet people.

My own enlightenment came in Cleveland, Mississippi. I was conducting the orchestra in a dance program when someone sent up an odd request. Would we play some of 'our native music', the note asked. This baffled me. The men in this group could not 'fake' and 'sell it' like minstrel men. They were all musicians who bowed strictly to the authority of printed notes. So we played for our anonymous fan an old-time Southern melody, a melody more sophisticated than native, I reckon. A few moments later a second request came up. Would we object if a local colored band played a few dances?

Object! That was funny. Would a bear? What hornblower would object to a time-out and a smoke--on pay? We eased out gracefully as the newcomers entered. They were led by a long-legged chocolate boy called Prince McCoy, and their band consisted of just three pieces, a battered guitar, a mandolin and a bass. The musicians themselves were a sorry lot, too. Dressed in their Sunday best, they still managed to convey the impression that they had just slept in the cotton patch. The bass player had cut holes in his shoes to relieve the pressure on his little toes. The fellow with the mandoline wore a dirty, cream-colored vest with red roses embroidered on it. Prince

Handy--78

country black boys at Cleveland had taught me something that could
not possibly have been gained from books, something that would however
cause books to be written. Art, in the high-brow sense, was not in
my mind. Bury that stuff. My inspiration came from the sight of that
silver money cascading around the splay feet of a Mississippi jug band.
Money was first incentive.

Once the purpose was fixed I let no grass grow under my feet.
I returned to Clarkesdale and began immediately to work on this type
of music. Within a day or two I had orchestrated a number of local
tunes, among them *The Last Shot Got Him, Your Clock Ain't Right* and
the distinctly negroid *Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor*. My hunch was
promptly justified, for the popularity of our orchestra increased with
leaps and bounds. But there was also another consequence. Bits came
to us to play in less respectable places. We took these in stride on
the grounds that music, like joy, should be unconfined. Moreover there
was money to be made, and who were we to turn up our noses?

Across the tracks of the Y. & M. V. railroad in Clarkesdale there
was a section called the 'New World'. It was the local red-light
district. To the New World came lush octaroons and quadroons from
Louisiana, soft cream-colored fancy gale from Mississippi towns. Just
beyond this section lived some of the oldest and most respectable
Negro families. On their way to the Baptist or Methodist churches they
were required to pass before the latticed houses of prostitution. Occas-
ionally they caught glimpses of white men lounging with the pretty
near-white 'imports'. By using their imaginations they could assume
what whont on in the dim rooms beyond.

As musicians we didn't have to guess. As musicians too, hired
to play music rather than to discuss morals, we kept our mouths shut.

Handy--79

We know that big shot officials winked at the New World, but that was neither here nor there to the men with the horns and the fiddles. What was important was that these wine-tinted girls, wearing silk stockings and short skirts, bobbing their soft hair and smoking cigarets in that prim era, were among the best patrons the orchestra had. They employed us for big nights, occasions when social or political figures of importance were expected to dine and dance with their favorite creole belles. Contacts made in these shady precincts often led to engagements in chaste great houses of the rich and well-to-do.

The shuttered houses of the New World called for appropriate music. This led us to arrange and play tunes that had never been written down and seldom sung outside the environment of the oldest profession. Boogie-house music, it was called. Much of it has since been funigated and played in the best of society, but then Dopy McKnight thumped out the tunes on a rickety piano. We took them up, arranged orchestrations and played them to the wild approval of the richly scented yellow gals and their company. I have intimated that silver money had always been plentiful in the delta; now at last we began to come in for our share of it.

The delta had also its share of melodrama. Engagements in the New World plunged us into the tide. One evening a vivid octaroon, who had been winking at our violinist, shared a drink with him. Her ofay company turned and put a pistol to the musician's temple. He promised to pull the trigger if the little act was repeated. We'd just as soon do it immediately, he said, if the boy felt like giving any back talk. When it was over, I recalled a saying that is almost an axiom among Negroes of the South. The thought of it is that more black men are killed by whites for merely conversing with colored girls of this type

Handy--80

than for violating, as the orators liked to put it, the sanctity of
white womanhood. Ho-hum. The world is powerfully big, and a queer
place, if you ask me.

As a side line in Clarkesdale I did a kind of bootleg business in
Northern Negro newspapers and magazines. Not only did I supply the
colored folks of the town, but also got the trade of the farmers, the
croppers and the hands from the outlying country. They came to my
house on their weekly visits to the city, gave me the high sign and I
slipped them their copies of the _Chicago Defender_, the _Indianapolis
Freedman_ or the _Kansas City Star_. This may sound like a tame enough
enterprise to those whose memories are short, but oldsters of those
parts will not have to be told that I was venturing into risky business.
Negro newspapers were not plentiful in those days, and their circu-
lation in cities like Clarkesdale was looked upon with strong disfavor
by certain of the local powers. But because I was favorably known to
most of the white folks as the leader of the band that gave the weekly
concerts on the main street, they never suspected me of such dark
business as distributing newspapers to those Negrees of the community
who were fortunate enough to know how to read. In fact, Clarkesdale
and I remained on such good terms that when there came a time to call
upon the well-to-do townsfolk to help us foot the bill for new un-
iforms, instruments and other equipment for the men, the needed amount
was over subscribed before the bank closed on the day when the campaign
was begun.

when we blossomed forth in the glad rags, the town fable stuck
out its chest proudly. We were theirs, they had dressed us up and
everybody was pleased with the results, including ourselves. Senator
John Sharp Williams, a great favorite with the voters, came to town
and we stepped out for him in all our glory. The occasion, as much

Handy--83

low moaning indigo. When darktown puts on its new shoes and takes off
the brakes, jazz steps in. If it's the New Jerusalem and the River Jor-
dan we're studying, we make the spirituals. The rounders among us, those
whose aim in life/just to begone bigger rounders--well, they're the
ones we can thank for the Frankie and Johnny songs. In every case the
songs come from down deep. Soul music, soul rhythms--that's what you
would call them, isn't it?

Speaking of rhythm recalls an experience told by my friend J.
Rosanond Johnson. Johnson was teaching in a Southern school when one
day two of his boys squared off to battle. A alert and nimble-witted
as ever, the teacher rushed between the fighters and thrust a menacing
finger in the face of the guiltier-looking boy.

"Spell sugar, boy," he barked. "Spell sugar, I say."

Frightened out of his wits by the angry tone of the teacher's
words and trembling visibly, the boy answered rhythmically,
"S-h-ug-he-l-l."

Don't ask me what you're supposed to do with a kid like that.
I'm afraid I wouldn't know.

Between playing for dances in magnificent plantation mansions from
one end of the delta country to the other, striking up the band for
an occasional political candidate and conducting jam sessions in the
New World, I made more money in Clarksdale than I had ever earned be-
fore in my life. This was not strange. Everybody prospered in that
green Eden. Cotton stalks here were as tall as Alabama corn. Delta
land yielded three or four bales to one produced on the same amount
of hill land. The cotton rows that I had seen around Florence were
downright scrawny by comparison.

A number of years later, remembering this abundance, I wrote,

Handy--35

T. Washington wants them, he can't get my dogs unless I come along. On'erstand?" The story went on to conclude that the president accepted the services of the old man in the hunt and that--
P. S.--he got the hounds.

On the same hunt President Roosevelt was quoted by highly enthusiastic home town folks as saying, "I'm not here as the President, but as a bear hunter, and all hunters--black and white--will mess from the same pot."

Still another legend that followed that bear hunt had the president anaged at the number of bears rounded up/the hounds of the old black man from down the creek. The Negro thereupon assured his president that this was not exceptional. His hounds alwaysgave as good an account of themselves. As the bears came into sight, he made another observation. He had never shot a bear in his life.

"You haven't? Well how do you kill them?" the President asked.

"Well, sub, I'll tell you," the old fellow replied. "When the bears jumps on the hounds and starts to fight, I jus steps up quick and sticks 'em right hard with a knife."

He was said to have made a successful demonstration a few moments later.

Of course, bear stories are often very much like fish stories, but tough Negroes are something else again. In Mississippi we played for a country dance where the baddest of the bad were in command. They danced the old square dances with one of their own calling the figures. This quaint individual crooned all his calls in the key of G. Any other key upset his sense of rhythms and aroused his fighting blood. I can still hear his unusual voice, "giving yo' partners.... swing corners all.....first lady on de head lead off to de right."

Handy--86

The first lady on the head did lead off that night, and she laughed out gaily as she did so. But her key was wrong. The crooner's eyes narrowed angrily, and his next call shocked us, "Swing on de corners... swing, you bitch!"

A big husky black glowered down. Instantly all of us got a feeling of approaching menace.

"Look out there, nigger. That's my sister."

Rhythmically--and still in the key of G--the answer came, "Too late now. The bitch done swung... All promenade."

My son Bill was born in Clarksdale. We lived in a frame cottage between others of its kind. The third house away, however, was a shack and a fire-trap. Instead of a chimney it had only an elongated stove pipe that poured smoke and sometimes sparks onto the very gable of the house next door. I noticed this danger and cautioned my wife to be ready for a fire. She promptly began holding fire drills with a baby carriage and the three children.

Then one cold night in January a salvo of gun and pistol shots awakened us from our sleep. This was the way of announcing a fire in Clarksdale in those days. I ran to a window and saw the shack disappearing like a matchbox. The flames reached out in our direction now and again. I began considering what was most worth saving among our household effects. There was a collection of books that had a value. There was an upright piano and a guitar that I had bought in Mexico. Mrs. Handy ran for the baby buggy and gathered up the brood. I commenced to struggle with the piano. A few moments later neighbors rushed in and began tossing furniture and bedclothes and glassware through the windows.

In the excitement my wife called me to come and help her with the

Handy--87

babies, but I assured her that was not necessary. They could be easily
rolled to safety. The big problem was to get the piano out of danger.
I managed to save it, by dint of more muscle than I thought I had, but
the next day I had occasion to wonder whether or not the instrument
was worth the ridicule that fell upon me.

An old woman met me on the street, cackling in a high-pitched voice
about the news that was going around town.

"Oh, I heared all 'bout you, Fess Handy," she twittered. "I heared
what you done said at the fire."

"What'd I say at the fire?"

"Aw, you knows, Fess Handy. You said, 'chillun is easy, but it's
tough-titty trying to git another piano'. He-he! You who is a mees,
Fess Handy."

After the fire I missed my Mexican guitar. Someone told me that
it had been saved by a spry one-legged man. I hurried to his home and
asked about the instrument.

"Oh, you mean that box?" he replied oddly. "Hell, I out that
damn thing up for kindling."

More than once during the Clarkesdale days our band had occasion to
pass through towns with signs saying, *Higger don't let the sun go down
on you here*. And once, at least, we played in a town where the boot
was on the other foot. Though Mound Rayou had no such words addressed
to *peckerwoods* or *rednecks*, the sentiment among its all-Negro populat-
tion was perhaps in some ways similar. Yet salesmen and other white
visitors who found it necessary to spend the night there received all
possible hospitality.

This town, thirty miles south of Clarkesdale on the Y. M. V.
railroad, was founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery, former bodyguard and

Handy--88

slave of Jeff Davis, President of the Confederacy. The occasion for
our band's visit was the dedication of the Bank of Mound Bayou, and
we came largely through the instigation of Charles Banks the cashier.
A Clarkdale boy himself, Banks had gained his training in the same
Plantor's Bank that now employed our stack. We carried the band to
Mound Bayou to pay our respects to this home town boy, but we stayed on
to admire the new Carnegie Library and blink in amazement at colored
railroad ticket agents, colored telegraph operators and rouged brown
girls at telephone switchboards.

My personal entrepreneurship admiration for the enterprise of the
Negroes of Mound Bayou was so great that later, when they held the
grand opening of their oil mill, I brought a band from Memphis at my
own expense just to help them do the thing up brown. Booker T. Wash-
ington was the speaker for this occasion. After the address I dined
with him in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Banks and began to feel
that privilege of knowing the educator was ample recompense for my
small contribution to the event. Later, however, Banks and his assoc-
lates insisted on sending me a check in token of their gratitude for
my contribution.

A picture of Clarkdale during the years I spent there would be
incomplete without the blind singers and footloose bands that were
forever coming and going. Usually the fellows were destitute. Some
came sauntering down the railroad tracks, others dropped from freight
cars, while still others caught rides on the big road and entered
town on the top of cotton bales. A favorite hang-out with them was
the railroad station. There, surrounded by crowds of country folks,
they would pour out their hearts in song while the audience ate fish
and bread, chewed sugar cane, dipped anuff while waiting for trains

Handy--80

to carry them down the line.

They earned their living by selling their own songs--ballets, as they called them--and I'm ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination. Many and many a less gifted songsmith has plied his trade with passing success in Tin Pan Alley. Some of these country boys hustled on trains, others visited churches, buying I remembering/such a ballet (ballad) entitled I've Heard of a City Gal-led Heaven. It was printed on a slip of paper about the size of a postcard. Fifty years later, after I had published a choral arrangement of the piece, I heard the number sung with great success by the Hall Johnson Singers in The Green Pastures.

Mature years and a busy life have not enabled me to shake off a certain susceptibility to those dusky bards. Every time I put by enough money for a trip to Europe, I end up by purchasing a ticket to one of the more remote sections of the deep South. It's become a habit now, and I don't reckon the doctor could do me any good.

Handy--90

## Chapter VII

The saga of Beale street, as I knew it, goes back to a bright summer morning in the eighteen-eighties. A freight train slowed down and came to a stop in North Memphis. Presently a ragged immigrant boy, a dark-browed Italian kid called Pee Wee, crept out from under one of the box cars. He had come all the way from New York on the rods.

For a moment Pee Wee stood blinking in the sun. A vision of far away Naples swam before his eyes. When the train pulled off again, the young hobo took his bearings and headed directly for the nearest creek. On the banks of Wolf River he slipped off his miserable shirt and pants, plunged into the stream and set about to remove the dust and grime he had collected during the weeks spent in gutters, in ditches and on the rods of box cars. Wanting soap, he smeared himself with a handful of soft mud. When this was removed, he felt freshened and clean. It was a glorious feeling, even though he had no satisfactory way to dry himself and had to get back into his rags with water clinging to his skin. Pee Wee didn't mind too much. He was in a mood to be grateful for little things. Even the fact that he had no socks in his shoes mattered little now.

An hour or two later, wandering from street to street in the strange new city, Pee Wee hitched up his suspenders and began to think about food. Holding a thin dime between his teeth, he turned his pockets inside out to make sure that no other coin hid down there between the seams. Hope, that dime was all. Enough for rolls and coffee perhaps. After that--well, after that the great adventure, Pee Wee walked and

Handy--91

walked, passing dogs of grocery stores and beaneries at which he
might have spent his money. But something seemed to hold his feet
outside. Spending his last dime was not a thing he wished to get
in a hurry about. Pee Wee must shrank from the idea of being broke
in a strange city. Even walking about hungry was not so terribly bad
when you could flip a bright coin into the air. Like this.

Pee Wee flipped his high and caught it on the back of his left
hand, covering it with his right.

"Heads," he guessed aloud.

Yop, heads in what it was.

"Heck, I ain't so unlucky," he told himself. He flipped again, and again he called it plunk on the nose. Then he began to turn things over in his head. Wouldn't he be a chump to spend this last, sweet dime on coffee and rolls? Why, if he kept his hands on the coin long enough the patient little thing might hatch chicks. Who could tell? No use getting shed of it too soon. Anyhow, there was no danger of starving for at least a day or two.

By that time Pee Wee had reached Beale Street. Before he knew it
he was standing over a crap game where colored boys were down on their
knees begging the bones to roll them the moon and the stars. Pee Wee
watched, fascinated as much by the music and rhythm of the performance
as by the game itself. Then suddenly he got down with the others,
took out his dime and offered to fade the kid with the dice.

Beale Street has always known a good fellow when it sees one, and
Beale Street has always been hospitable and big-hearted. From the moment
he got down and put his money in sight, Pee Wee was in. It was just
as simple as that. Moreover, his luck was right that day. He came
out of the game with change enough to pay for a meal and a bed for

Handy--02

the night. The next day he blow himself to a haircut. By the end of the month, he was a well-dressed, smart-looking young Italian whose only peculiarities were a heavy accent, a fondness for dice and an understandable tendency to prefere Beale Street to other parts of Memphis.

When I first visited the city as a boy, Pee Wee was running a saloon on the corner of Hernando and Beale. Jim Turner introduced me to the place. By the time I returned, Pee Wee had moved to 317 Beale, and his place had become almost a landmark and a legend. He had brought relatives from Italy to join him in his enterprise. Each member of the family took a daily turn behind the bar during the four shifts. Often even Mrs. Pacini, wife of the proprietor, helped. Her presence might have crimped the style of patrons who were in the habit of talking in the broadest possible terms at the bar had it not been that Mrs. Pacini understood no English beyond the names of drinks. That solved, or rather prevented, what might otherwise have become an awkward problem.

Just inside Pee Wee's entrance door there was a cigar stand. A side room was given to billiards and pool, another to crap games and cards. In a back room there was space where violins, horns and other musical instruments were checked by free lance musicians who got their calls at the saloon. Sometimes you couldn't stop for the bull fiddles. Unfortunately I've seen a dozen or more of them in there at one time. Upstairs a policy was operated.

Through Pee Wee's swinging doors passed the heroic darktown figures of an age that is now becoming fabulous. They ranged from cooks and waiters to professional gamblers, jockeys and race track men of the period. Glittering young devils in silk toppers and Prince Alberts drifted in and out with insolent self-assurance. Chocolate candies

Handy--94

Dangerous Jim Ray from St. Louis and Patty Grimes, who carried the biggest diamond in Memphis, swung Pee Wee's doors upon occasion. When Jim Ray, great good friend of Hammitt, was killed in Patty Grimes' place in St. Louis, the repercussions shook the panes in Pee Wee's saloon on Beale Street. When Fatty came to Memphis again and was lured by a two-timing girl into the pay-back trap, piano thumpers made songs about it in the red-light dives of that wide-open city.

It was perfectly natural that Pee Wee's should become the headquarters for our band. It was perfectly natural, too, that I should stand at his cigar stand one quiet afternoon and jot down the following lyric:

Mr. Crump won't 'low no easy riders here
Mr. Crump won't 'low no easy riders here
We don't care what Mr. Crump don't 'low
We gon' to bar'l-house anyhow--
Mr. Crump can go and catch hisself some air!

The city was in the midst of a campaign to elect a mayor on a reform ticket, and our band was beating the drum for him. Lucky for us, he never heard us singing these words when his back was turned. But we were employed to help put over his campaign, and when I discovered that reform was about as palatable to Beale Street voters as castor oil, I thought it was time to put some words to our campaign song--words designed to ease the minds of barrelhouse citizens and easy riders as they prepared to go to the poles.

I suppose it can be modestly said of a song that elects the mayor of an important American city that it made history, but the song Mr. Crump makes a greater claim. Its musical setting became the first of the blues composition. Given new words in 1913 and christened *The Memphis Blues*, it set a fashion in music that has not yet waned. In later years it has been possible to say that of making blues there is

Handy--95

no end, but Memphis Blues was the first of the crop by several years.
And there is, incidentally, a story behind the piece, a story that be-
gan in the back room of Thornton's barber shop near the Poplar Street
Station.

While still doing the "Dog" and the "Peavine" out of Clarksdale,
I was engaged to instruct a K. of P. band in Memphis. Twice a week,
bent like a Santa Claus under cornet, saxophone, violin, typewriter
and suitcase, I made the seventy-six mile trip to hold rehearsals.
With this added work I soon found myself as busy as a hen with one
chick, bounding back and forth between the cities, plunking out letters
on the train and trying by every possible means to put the twenty-man
Memphis outfit on its feet.

At first the Thornton band played for no dances. This was a
pity and a shame, because Memphis has always been a grand dance town,
one of the hottest of the hot. But ours was a military band, and be-
sides, you don't get dances like talking about them. A build-up is
required, and prospects for such a build-up in Memphis seemed slight,
to say the least. They already had three established dance bands--
Turner and Bynum's, Bryant and Smiley's and Higgins and Echford's.
Failing to get the dances, however, we went to the opposite pole and
took on the funerals. For these engagements, which were not to be
sneezed at--paying, as they did, two or three dollars per man--we
were indebted to T. H. Hayes, successful Negro undertaker who became
my good friend and always spoke up for our aggregation when the occas-
ion called for a sad, slow-marching band.

But to tell what the good Lord loves, I never did have too much
time for funerals, and I immediately set about to improve things by
organizing an orchestra from the band. That was a little more promis-
ing. You could stomp your feet when you felt like it. Still my

Handy--97

that I needed another good clarinetist. It was easy to see that the
fellow had been having his downs. He reminded me of myself back on
the levee at St. Louis. He told me his name was J. Paul Wyer.

That was a familiar name. A noted Civil War bandman by that name
had since led an orchestra in Pensacola,

"Not any relation by any chance?"

"Yes," he nodded, "my father."

My interest sprang up anew.

"What kind of music do you play?"

"Anything. Anything that's written." It was not spoken boastfully, but with a quiet assurance that I well understood. "I played in my father's theatre orchestra. We had to play for musical comedy shows from New York--had to read the scores off at sight."

I took him on for the night and gave him a chance to play with
our large group at Buchannini's under rather trying circumstances.
He was asked to play second clarinet without a prepared part. But
the young musician improvised a part better than if one had been writ-
ten. I was deeply impressed and genuinely sorry when I had to tell
him that I couldn't see my way clear to hire a second clarinetist at
the moment.

"But I can play the violin too," he suggested.

He gave us a demonstration. To my surprise, he could play any
standard opera or violin solo from memory. He left us all agast,

"You must have been tops in your daddy's band," I said.

"Oh, no," he answered promptly. "Not quite tops. My brother Ed
has me beat."

Naturally, I kept young Paul and lost no time sending for his
brother Ed. From that time forward the boom was on where the Handy
dance orchestra was concerned. Calls came from the towns and great

Handy--93

houses down on the roads that crossed the "Dog". Both Jim Turner
and I know every pig path in Mississippi and Alabama. We had also
played the river recently and was favorably known in Louisiana and
Arkansas. All this territory we took under control and made it our
stamping ground. Money on a pig path? You'd be surprised. We were
almost swamped with work.

In those days they had a way of opening every new store in the
delta with a big free dance. And it was our fortune to come along at
a time when country stores were popping open like cotton blossoms.
Sometimes we were engaged by the proprietors before the merchandise
was shipped in.

We played for the colored folks too and opened up Dixie Park in
Memphis, a sort of sun-tanned Coney Island. This engagement carried
solid weight, stamping us as the dance band of those parts. We hit
the park in high gear. Our band of twenty men and our orchestra of
twelve held forth nightly and were received with loud approval.

The dance floor at Dixie Park was a spectacle. It accommodated a
thousand dancers at a time. On Monday nights and on week-ends the floor
was jammed. Everybody and his brother was there. The dances brought
out a great mass of color and rhythm. Sometimes it suggested a drill
corps in review before a grandstand. More often I saw it as a mon-
strous pin wheel, blazing with color and spinning magically. One or
the other of the two gaudy floor managers--Click Henderson and Edgar
Hodges--would signal with a whistle. My band would then play four
bars of the next dance and pause while the dancers took their places.
A moment later it would be under way. We played one-steps, polkas,
schottishes and waltzes. Many times I remember wishing that the
white folks for whom we played most of the time could have witnessed

Handy--103

for the kuz city that had been so good to me, a new title was decided
upon, and Mr. Crump became the Memphis Blues.

There were many hearty reactions to the song, but one of them
still amuses me. We were playing the number at a colored dance in
the old K. of P. Hall. During the playing I noticed periodic shouting
from the floor, and a great roar of voices broke out when we came to
a certain point in the song. I didn't know what to make of it.

If you know the Memphis Blues, you may recall that in the third
and fourth measures there is a sort of Italian climax with a tricky
rhythm. Well, it was at this point that the shouting broke.

"Set in it," I heard them say. "Set in it!"

George Williams, our trombone player, who happened to be a Creole
from Donaldsonville, Louisiana, saw me looking sheepish.

"Didn't you hear 'em?" he shouted. "Didn't you hear 'em?"

"Sure," I said. "I heard. But what in the nation do they mean?
Set in what?"

Out of patience, George tried to explain in his messed-up Creole
English.

"Mon, wat do de jigwalk do wen de preacher make ≠ 'em happy, eh?
Don't dey say 'hallelu' or 'glory be'? Wel, dot piece make dem hap-
py, too."

"You wouldn't fool me, would you?"

"Well, no, mon. Dey's crazy 'bout it."

Others told me of hearing little happy squeals among the Negro
dancers for whom they had played the piece. Still others told how
they had heard the folks yell in delight.

I have only their word for that, but there is no doubt that the
new piece was a hit from the word go. Unfortunately, however, it also

Handy--108
Handy--109

Every manufacturer of automatic rolls is cutting the number for its trade, and those people do not cut rolls until they get orders.

We have sold up to date over fifty thousand copies and when you stop to think that one hundred thousand copies is considered a big hi!, you will realize that you are about to land on the Honor Roll of hit writers.

Once I get you landed there, you will have a demand from all other big publishers for numbers. You will have to retire to the field of composition and work some more wonderful melodies like Memphis Blues. You may write some numbers just as good; but you will have to work to write some any better. Even at that I believe that you have the ability to do it.....

As a prophet Bennett did pretty well by himself. Not only did he guess right on the Memphis Blues, but Melancholy Baby, which he failed to put across, burst forth as an over-night sensation fifteen years later, justifying eventually the faith he had in it. In time Bennett left New York City, and the Joe Morris Music Company obtained control of his musical properties, including Memphis Blues.

In the year or two that followed my meeting with Bennett in Bry's music department, I saw the song that I had sold for fifty dollars become a tremendous hit and a gold mine to the new owners. The Victor Company released a recording by the Jim Europe band. That sent the ball rolling. Meanwhile, as others pocketed the royalties, I reaped some of the glory. Arrangements were made for me to appear before the white women's music clubs of Memphis. The Ol K. Rouck Piano Company not only displayed my song but also displayed me, a life-sized picture standing beside a Victor Talking Machine with our bent to hear the new Jim Europe recording of my song. And when a big traveling band was announced at the East End Gardens by a great banner, the Alaskan Roof, at which my band was already playing, flung a tremendous thing high across Madison Avenue with these words: Handy's Band--ALASKAN ROOF GARDEN--The Best Band In The South. It dwarfed the East

Tainly--111

the judge was influenced by the fact that things were much livelier
at the colored church, but he politely declined to make that qualifi-
cation,

A moment later, when the speaker returned to a portion of his pre-
pared speech to relate his experiences as a drummer boy of fourteen,
following the fortunes of the Confederacy, I began to think that he
had said his say and was through with us. But I guessed wrong. He
only wanted the real estate men soon all over the country to know
that when the cause was lost, he had pinned the stars and stripes on
the lapel of his coat above the southern Cross. His views, he wished
to show, were not based on sectional feeling. He had only commenced
to say what was on his mind concerning Negroes.

About that time he turned to C. P. J. Mooney, Editor of the
*Commercial Appeal* and said, "We have made a serious mistake in in-
viting men from all parts of America to make investments in a city ÷
where one third of its population is painted as vicious. No race
that can sing and play as these men have done can be vicious. Why,
the *Memphis Blues*," he shouted, "has done more to advertise Memphis
than all the publicity emanating from the Business Men's Association."
The business men gathered there seemed to approve. They applauded
heartily. I wanted to join them, but I refrained from using my hands.
Only my heart applauded. Curiously however it was less because of
what he said about my song than because of his kindly generalizations
about Negroes as a whole that I felt enraptured.

Judge Greer was followed by Editor Mooney. His theme was the
same, but he added statistics to show the Negro's contribution to the
wealth of that section of the Mississippi Valley. Nothing like this
had ever been spoken in my presence before. A Kentuckian, speaking
next, felt impressed to make a related point. Once, he explained,

Handy--112

the best horses came from Arabia. In his home state they educated
their Negroes, and now it could be said that the world's greatest
horses were raised in Kentucky.

Another man, while adding his amen to the judge's observations,
suggested that the *Memphis Blues* was all the more remarkable when one
remembered that Tennessee had probably never spent a dollar on the
musical education of a Negro.

My own reactions were confused. I took occasion to thank my
stars that I had settled upon music as a career, despite opposition.
Nothing made me glow so much as seeing the softening effect of music
on racial antagonisms. On the other hand there was a seed of bitterness in my heart. While I was getting the praise, another man owned the copyright to *Memphis Blues* and was getting the money. As a result of this evening's encouragement, however, I determined to swallow that resentment like a true philosopher, set my head to new things and see if I couldn't do better next time. In fact, a bee was already buzzing in my bonnet.

Up and down Beale Street, in Pee Wee's saloon, at home--everywhere I went I heard it. A new tune was taking shape, a new hit that I hoped would compensate for the royalties that I was not getting from my first successful song. The inspiration for the new composition was a humorous Negro custom that could be traced to the Gullahs and from them all the way back to Africa. I had first noticed it among the troupers of the minstrel company. Whenever these fellows wanted to say something to one another--something not intended for outside ears--they used words invented by themselves for this purpose. Sometimes they simply attached new meanings to familiar words. For example, a white person was always *ofay*, a Negro *jigwawk*. The terms, as pliable as silk, were also extended to cover fine distinctions. Thus if the

Handy--113

girl you were sparking at the moment was light colored, you might describe her as ofay jigwawk. If she was the stove-pipe variety, you might have to here her called a jig-war-k-jigwak. I recalled that back in the 90's Don Harney wrote a ragtime song entitled *The Cake Walk in the Sky*. But when the jigs sang it, the audience heard something like this: *The Kigingy Kikake Wygingwawk Begin The Skigy*.

Of course, in the theatrical profession one meets alert ears and sharp wits, and the public early became familiar with words like *ously* and *unbay*. To meet this cleverness, we used throw-offs to confuse them. *Siging sigwatney* were such throw-offs. Often heard, they meant nothing whatever. *Jogo* did have meaning, however. It meant colored and was a synonym for jigwawk. I decided to call my new composition the *Jogo Blues*.

Well, the *Jogo Blues* got a play. Michael Markels of New York was one Broadway band leader who featured it successfully. A St. Louis millionaire, Russel Gardiner, "The Banner Buggy Man", liked it so well he sent me a twenty-dollar note every time we played it--which was every night when he was present. But *Jogo Blues* never became a hit and never fulfilled the hope I had entertained for a success to compensate for the earlier song.

The trouble may have been partly because *Jogo* was an instrumental number. Then another disadvantage was that only Negro musicians understood the title and the music. On the other hand, while my men liked it a great deal, many bands couldn't play it well because it was considered over the head of the ordinary pianist and too difficult for the average orchestra. And profits in musical compositions come from widely repeated sales, not from an occasional yellow-back from a single rich enthusiast. In short, I was still looking for that second hit.

Handy--114

It occurred to me that I could perhaps make more headway in this direction without the questionable help of four lively and robust youngsters, all bend on using my legs for teterboards. The noisy rumpus warned the heart, but it put a crimp in my work. I could feel the blues coming on, and I didn't want to be distracted, so I packed my knuck grip and made my getaway.

"Lord, Lord," my heart sang, "wonder what the blues'll bring."

I rented a room in the Beale Street section and went to work. Outside the lights flickered. Chitterling joints were crowded. Long-legged chocolate boys thumped pianos in the saloons to attract customers. Scores of powerfully built routerbouts from river boats sauntered along the pavement. Pimps in box-back coats and undented Stetsons came out to get a breath of early evening air and to welcome the young night. The pool hall crowd grew livelier than they had been during the day. All that contributed to the color and spell of Beale Street mingled outside, but I neither saw nor heard it that night. I had a song to write.

My first decision was that my new song would be another blues, true to the soil and in the tradition of *Memphis Blues*. Ragtime, I had decided, was becoming passeé. But this number would go beyond its predecessor and break new ground. I would begin with a down-home ditty fit to go with twanging banjos and yellow shoes. Songs of this sort could become tremendous hits sometimes. I remembered Mae Irving's *The Bully*, first of the ragtime songs back in the 90's. On the levee at St. Louis I had seen the joy-spreaders raring to go when a band played this number on such excursion steamers as the *Gray Eagle* or the *Spread Eagle*. And I knew that New York had later taken the piece up just as eagerly. I wanted such a success, but I was determined that my song would have an important difference. There would be honest

Handy--115

emotion in my composition--genuine heart-break. Moreover, mine would
be cut to the native blues pattern,

A flood of memories filled my mind. First, there was the picture
I had of myself, broke, unshaven, wanting even a decent meal, and
standing before the lighted saloon in St. Louis without a shirt un-
der my frayed coat. There was also from that same period a curious
and dramatic little fragment that till now had seemed to have little
or no importance. While occupied with my own miseries during that
sojourn, I had seen a woman whose pain seemed even greater. She had
tried to take the edge off her grief by heavy drinking, but it hadn't
worked. Stumbling along the poorly lighted street, she muttered as
she walked, "Ma man's got a heart like a rock cast in de sea."

The expression interested me, and I had stopped her to ask what
it meant. She told me that her man had not only stopped loving her
but that he was also long-gone. Lost. Lost beyond recovery. Her
language was the same down-home medium that conveyed the laughable
woo of lamp-blacked lovers af in hundreds of frothy songs, but her
plight was much too real to provoke much laughter. My song was taking
shape. I had now settled upon the mood.

Another recollection pressed in upon me. It was the memory of
that odd gent who called figures for the country breakdown--the one
who everlastingly pitched his tones in the key of G and moaned the
calls like a presiding elder preaching at a chitterling switch re-
vival meeting. Ah, there was my key--I'd do the song in G.

Well, that was the beginning. I was definitely on my way. But
when I got started, I found that many other considerations also went
into the composition. Ragtime had usually sacrificed melody for an
exhilarating syncopation. My aim would be to combine ragtime syncop-

Handy--116

pation with a beautiful melody in the spiritual tradition. There was something from the tango that I wanted too. The darts at Dixie Park had convinced me that there was something racial in their response to this movement. Indeed, the very word *tango*, I now knew, was derived and from the African *tangana*,/signified the beat of the tom-tom. This would figure in my introduction, giving the approach as well as the middle portion a two-fold significance.

In the lyric I naturally decided upon Negro idioms. I felt then, as I feel now, that they often imply more than well-known English can briefly express. My plot centered around the wail of a love-sick woman for her lost man. In the telling of it I resorted to the wit and humor of the outlawed coon song. I used the folk blues' three-line stanza that created the twelve-measure strain.

The primitive Southern Negro exaggerated the minor third and seventh tones of the scale. I had noticed this tendency. With them it was universal. Whether in the cotton fields of the delta or on the love up at St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard it used by a more sophisticated Negro or by any white man. I introduced these two notes into my song that night, and I think I can say they proved effective. Widely employed now, they are known as "blue notes." Another first was chalked up when I struck upon the idea of using the seventh in the opening measure of the verse instead of by resolution. This was a distinct departure in composition, but it touched the spot like two fingers of rye.

In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like "oh, lawdy" or "oh, baby" and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits. In my composition I decided to embellish the piano and orchestra score at these points. This kind of business is now called

Handy--117

a break. In the chorus I used plagal chords to give spiritual effects
in the waits. Altogether, I aimed to use all that is characteristic
of the Negro from Africa to Alabama. By the time I had done all this
heavy thinking and rememboring, I figured it was time to get some thing
down on paper, so I wrote, "I hate to see the evenin' sun go down." And
if you ever slept on the cobbles down by the river in St. Louis, you'll
understand that complaint.

St. Louis had come into the composition in more ways than one, be-
fore the sun peoped through my window. So when the song was completed,
I dedicated the piece to Mr. Russel Gardiner, the St. Louis man who
liked Jogo Blues and proudly christoned it the St. Louis Blues. The
same day in Pee Wee's saloon I orchestrated the number and jotted down
scores for the men of my band.

"Lord, Lord! Wonder what the blues'll bring."

The song was off my chest, and secretly I was pleased with it,
but I could scarcely wait for the public verdict. Blurry-eyed from
loss of sleep, I went with the band to the evening's engagement on the
Alaskan Roof.

Handy--120

boots Serenade and finally Beale Street Blues, a hail and farewell to the old Beal, the street that was. At our home at 659 Jannett Street manuscripts were thrown on the floor for the ink to dry. Hour after hour I sat at the piano, elaborating new tunes, patting my foot and thumping the keys energetically. Meanwhile, the waves that had been yapping at Beale Street ever since I could remember finally caught up with their victim. Backed by excursion boat operators who wanted to draw the liquor trade and shade characters who hoped to enjoy bigger profits from illicit business, the reformers eventually prevailed, passing a local option law for Memphis.

That was a calamity. Imagine Pee Wee's closing at twelve o'clock at night! Imagine Beale street without liquor. The anticipation was almost too unpleasant to bear. I wrote,

Goin' to the river, maybe bye and bye--

Goin' to the river, and there's a reason why--

Because the river's wet, and Beale street's done gone dry.

Actually, I hollered before I was hit. Pee Wee's closed at twelve on the appointed night, but five minutes later the doors swung open again. The lights came up. It was another day. By this time all the whiskey and gin was out of sight, and the shelves were ornamented with coco-cola and ginger ale bottles. Since that one frightful scare the wolf of Beale Street has never returned, so far as I know. Pee Wee's has never again been closed for even five minutes. Still there's no denying that Beale Street changed. Even at that moment it was losing something essential to its former character. So my lamentation was not entirely without point.

The song itself kicked up a plenty dust, not to mention the following anecdote.

Handy--123

duties to give much thought to our fledgling enterprise. I went
shoad on my own initiative, however, and before the copies arrived
from the Otto Zimmerman Company, the Cincinnati printers, I had secured
enough orders from the Kress and Woolworth Music Departments to pay
the entire printing bill. Soon a profit of $400 accumulated. This
was immediately put back into the business. Then when Pace returned
to Memphis on business for the Insurance Company, he heard the song
for the first time. It had not only been printed, but was also on
piano rolls before he knew about it.

Our publishing efforts were to remain so tentative and tenuous
for long, however. My blues were fast gathering momentum. George
Evans of the old Honey Boy Minstrels, featured them with Capéro's
band on stage and street. The Victor catalogue listed the name of
Handy between Handel and Hayden. Irving Miller, having fallen for
<u>Memphis Blues</u> when he heard it sung by the Blanks sisters, came to
Baracco's Palace Theatre with a new road show and presently became
a <u>St. Louis Blues</u> fan. He bought a thousand copies to dispose of along
the road. Later he re-ordered many times. Then when <u>Yellow Dog</u> was
ready, he introduced the number through the jazzy singer Estelle
Harris and became an outlet for the number in the East.

With all this going on the little firm of Pace and Handy put a
carnation in its button-hole and began to hold up its head. What's
more, the originator of the blues threatened to become respectable.
Negroes who once called our aggregation a barrel-house band began
to prick up their ears. They seldom heard us play nowadays because
we/ were engaged by the "quality" on the Alaskan Roof, but when there
was no longer any doubt that our new brand of music was cutting a
figure, they made every effort to secure our services, offering as

Handy--124

check indicated that the stunt was meeting with favor.

Next day orders for 5,000 copies of the song were received. After that came the deluge. We placed a rush order for 10,000 copies. Before these had been filled, 100,000 more had been ordered. We were swamped for weeks. In one week we sold more orchestration of Yellow Dog than St. Louis Blues piled up in the first five years of its incredible life. The publishing of *A Good Man* was delayed.

With two full-fledged hits on our hands, the timid young publishing firm was now ready to slick its hair and replace the carnation with a gardenia. We took more space and employed more help. In one day we deposited $10,000 royalties on *Yellow Dog Blues*. In one year, from the phonograph record alone, we banked more than $25,000. *Yellow Dog Blues* was set in a frame-work of gold.

Once more it began to look like Easy Street for the daddy of the blues. But this was just half the story. Aside from the publishing business and the business of composing new hits I continued to carry the staggering responsibility of keeping busy a dozen bands, employing over sixty people, playing for dances, touring on the road and through the sticks and giving concerts. The fortunes of our bands and particularly of the main unit rose with the success of the blues.

In the midst of this boom my partner arranged a concert for us in the colored Auditorium in Atlanta, billing the thing like a circus. White folks of that city persuaded Pace to cancel this booking, however, and to place us instead in the Auditorium where the Metropolitan Opera gave its Atlanta performances. Pace agreed promptly, and the Auditoriums were switched. But when the *Atlanta Constitution* learned that we were to appear at the white Auditorium, it began

Handy--125

to stomp and fume. This did not discourage Pace. In fact, he took
advantage of the newspaper's hostility and increased his publicity
through the _Georgian_ and the _Journal_.

Back in Memphis I sweated blood to whip the show into shape.
We needed a powerful attraction to conquer Atlanta, and we felt
that we had it in our band, but just to make assurance doubly sure,
we added Clarence Williams and Armand J. Piron to the program. This
team did not belong in Memphis. They were New Orleans musicians and
music publishers and had come to Memphis in the interest of their
catalogue, plugging in particular _Brown Skin_ and _I can Beat you Bo-
ing What You're Doing To Me_. Williams cut capers with the piano
stool and sang superbly. Piron contributed his fancy fiddling. I
had been instrumental in helping them get a listing with the five
and ten cent stores, a difficult assignment at that time. They had
also made trips with our band through the Delta, winning many friends
by their clever work. To help their business along as well as ours
they agreed to make the trip with us.

An awe fell upon us as we took our places on the stage where
Caruso had sung in Atlanta. We faced the curtain like a flock of
dusky Daniels come to judgment before an audience of 7,000. Then
the barrier went up. Before us a sea of faces rose and a silence
that was oppressive. A moment later the band struck up _Hail to the
Spirit of Freedom_, an early composition of mine, a march written to
celebrate our Fiftieth Anniversary of Freedom. No one objected to
that, so we followed it up with _Semaramis_, a classical number which
the boys played with the heat turned on. The audience gave us a good
hand. Then the storm broke. We played the _Memphis Blues_ and had
to repeat it nine times. After that it was good-by to the printed
program. We played only requests, and these called for blues, blues

Handy--127

cied I detected, a box-office twinkle in my partner's eyes. We
were kept over and played Atlanta for a week,

Was it Easy Street I had reached, or was I ridig for a fall?
For some unaccountable reason my mind went back to my McGuffy's
Fifth Reader. "Mediocrity is the best state of fortune," one of the
axioms said. Another declared that there was "no excellency without
great labor." I had no mind to be dour while the cheers were still
ringing. Yet I returned to Memphis to find a foreclosure about to
be made on one of two cottages I had purchased there.

As odd as this may sound when you recall that my songs were going
well and that the bands were in constant demand, it was a fact, May-
be I put my money in a sock with a hole in it. Anyhow, Pace arranged
to pay off the indebtedness through the standard Life Insurance Co-
mpany, thinking that thereby he might relieve my mind. Of course,
handling a dozen bands and carrying on the publishing business and
working on new songs didn't count. I wasn't supposed to be a bus-
iness man.

After a dance engagement the colored bankers used to ask me if
I'd had a good time. As if playing from 8 P.M. until 3 A.M. for
other people's enjoyment was easier than counting and handling other
people's money from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M.

They had a strange way of rating artistic work and worth. If
anyone owned a dozen cans and piled them on a couple of shelves be-
hind a printed sign, he was a grocer and a business man, if you
please, but one who contracted for half a hundred musicians and
played for parties over a dozen states, he was a goodtimer and a
rounder, if not worse. But these men were no more intolerant than
others I had known. In earlier days I had gone into church choirs

Handy--129

He decided that that wasn't enough. He persuaded his wife to sign a mortgage on their farm in order to provide capital required in order to earn the wheelbarrow loads of money awaiting their efforts. Then came the chickens and the eggs. They came so fast the man and his wife had to stay up nights to count the profits. But there was a little difference in their calculations.

"My wife," he said, "figured the value of the eggs. I valued each egg as a chicken."

Then the world turned. Cholera came. The enterprising young man wheeled loads of dead profits away to be burned. Unable to pay the mortgage, he lost the poultry farm and their home as well. Then followed long, hard years in which he and his wife worked to earn money to buy just a dozen hens and one rooster. Slowly he mastered the secrets of the poultry business. Fortune showed her face. In time they bought back the old home and opened a bank account.

"But why the insurance business?"

"That is just a sideline to keep me busy," he said. "My chickens know how to lay eggs."

His story did me a lot of good. I decided that conditions had nothing to do with my own problems, that race and color did not matter, as I had suspected, and that possibly my blues would learn to lay eggs too. Why not let well enough alone?

That, however, was not possible in my case. I had not reached an age when I was content to let well enough alone. Moreover, Time and Chance were still conspiring. At that very moment Peace was in New York on business for his insurance company and making connections that eventually resulted in a contract for our band to make twelve records. The fee seemed to me a fabulous sum to pay twelve

Handy--150

men traveling to and from New York for three days' work. But the
offer was sound, and the records were made. The prosperity was
short-lived, however. Soon the stock was empty again. And to make
matters much worse, Pace gathered from one of my woeful letters that
I wanted him out of the business. As a result, he offered his in-
terest up for sale. It was not taken.

I tried to interest Mr. Lawrence Rosenfield in making an invest-
ment in us. He was a Jewish friend for whom I had arranged music
since first the publishing bug bit him. But the father of young
Rosenfeld thought that Lawrence should become president and that I
should work for $75 per month the first year with no withdrawals.
We didn't get together. Even going to New York and making records
for Columbia, it now developed, didn't necessarily mean Easy Street.

The outlook grew dismal. Then one Saturday night when I was
playing with the band at the Colonial Country Club, eagerly hoping
that our time would be extended so that we could earn an extra dol-
lar apiece, a telephone call came for me. My brother Charles E.
Handy was at the other end of the wire. Supervising the publishing
affairs, particularly when the orchestra took me away, he had form-
ed the habit of dropping by the post office at night to see what the
midnight mail from New York and Chicago had brought.

Tonight there had been news that took his breath. He was so
excited he could scarcely speak. He made me understand, however,
that the Victor people had sent a check for royalty on Earl Fuller's
recording of Beale Street.

"Guess how much!"

From his tone I judged that we had done better than the usual
two hundred.

Handy--131

"Three hundred," I suggested.

"Up."

"Four hundred."

"Higher."

"Five hundred."

Here I commenced to gulp.

"Aw, come on up. Way up," he urged.

"A thousand."

"Up again."

"Fifteen hundred."

"Up. Up."

"I give up."

"One thousand, eight hundred and fifty-seven," he told me.

And I had just been hoping the white folks would hire us for one more hour so that we might earn an extra dollar apiece. Well, I had just replaced the receiver when the manager came and informed me that the Club wanted us not for an extra hour, but an extra three hours. Lord! With all that money waiting at home, with my heart pounding for joy, I had to stay on the job and blow for another three hours. These were the longest, hardest and most miserable three hours I have ever played.

I don't think I could have stood up under the pressure had it not been for the bubbling good humor and the kidding of my musician.

"Ole Handy! Hot dog, he's out of the barrel!"

Then during the intermissions, of course, we had to celebrate this new-found wealth. Hip flasks came out, and I was toasted royalty. After the dance Beale Street seemed a thousand miles away, but eventually we reached Pee Wee's and found Charlie waiting with the check we were all dying to see.

Handy--132

We spent all day Sunday writing checks covering bills payable.

"You won't be satisfied," Charlie said with a grin, "till our account is over-drawn again."

This reminded me that on the previous Saturday the bank had re-fused to cash a Woolworth check for me for $40, and I had had to go across the street to Joe Rafonti's saloon to cash it. I couldn't help trying to imagine how they would feel when they saw this big check.

The band had to keep rolling, of course, and on Monday and Tuesday nights we were currently booked to play for a dance in a hick town in Arkansas. The hall was a hillbilly barn, and our meals while there were served in a local fish place where soap boxes doubled for chairs. But dollars were bucks, and every one counted. So Monday morning found me standing on the platform of the Union Station as usual, perfunctorily counting my men as they reported for the train. The conductor looked at his watch and raised his hand to call all aboard. But the words caught in his throat, and his mouth sprang open as he saw an automobile arriving in a cloud of dust.

My mouth sprang open too, wider than the conductor's, when I called a leap from the car waving a piece of paper and shouting, "the driver a dollar and look what came from Columbia repeating its mail--$3,827!"

"I'm five," I said.

"Our pocketed the fin and drove away, smiling mother and I made a race for the train."

"I managed to head us off. He

that a street car was out of

Handy--133

the question. It couldn't get him to the station before train time.
There were no cabs in sight when he reached the curb. Even if there
had been one, however, he would still have been standing there. The
taxicabs in Memphis didn't haul any coal, as they used to say, re-
fering to colored fares. But Charlie was determined to bring me the
news at any cost. Reckless with excitement, he watched a chauffeur
drive a limousine up to a curb, stop out and open the door for a white
lady who went directly into the Union and Planter's Bank. As soon
as the lady entered the bank, Charlie hopped into her limousine and
directed the fellow to drive like hell and to get him to the station.
The man objected at first, but Charlie convinced him promptly that
he was either dealing with a crazy Negro or a bank robber, so the
chauffeur not only agreed but brought him to the station in record
time.

And here I was again, trotting off to a six-dollar engagement
in a particularly backward part of Arkansas after a week-end which
had brought in nearly six thousand dollars. It wouldn't be easy to
take all the little digs that one suffered in that sort of element.
It would be hard to be tactful when commanded to play two extra hours
or to do this or that monkey business for the delight of our audience,
but even engagements like this had been welcome when the sock was
empty, and perhaps it wasn't right to scorn them now. I made up my
mind to endure it cheerfully. Every dime added to what you had made
the going easier and lessened the headaches,

We lived through this engagement, and Wednesday morning I re-
turned home to find another surprise waiting. The Emerson Company
had sent a check for an additional thousand dollars. What I did with
this check, together with the larger ones, can best be described as

Handy--134

wish fulfillment,

Every man who has had his downs knows only too well the petty
indignities the struggling suffer daily. The underdog catches it
on all sides. So often he meets those who delight to add insult to
injury. That is perhaps the reason why the secret dream of telling
the one who has done you dirt to go somewhere is so universal. And
that, subconsciously, may have been part of the reason why I had been
careful to tell Charlie to hold all remittances until my return.

Less than two weeks had passed since both of Memphis's colored
banks refused to cash my $40 check, and I could still remember with
embarrassment a lecture that one of their cashiers had read me about
a $4.50 check that I had presented at his window. The aim had been
to humiliate. Now I was loaded for them. I want to the window of
the first bank and showed the cashier the biggest check.

"Can you cash this?" I asked.

The cashier was so elated he ran through the bank showing it
to all the officers. When he returned from this jaunt, he was grin-
ning all over himself.

"How do you want it?" he asked, putting on his Sunday manners.

"I don't want it cashed," I told him coldly. "You couldn't
cash my Saturday's check for forty dollars. Why are you so willing
to handle this one? Hunh?"

Then I flashed before his amazed eyes the rest of the deposit,
explaining that I was on my way uptown to deposit all of it in a
white bank. With this I left him and went to the other colored
bank. I gave them a taste of the same medicine. It did me a peek
of good.

Both of the banks resonated with me daily for the next two
weeks. Both wanted to know—in more elegant words—just how come

Handy--135

I did them like I did. Hadn't we always been friends and hadn't they
befriended me in the past? This was all true to some extent, but
it was also true that they suffered from the old handkerchief-headed
conception of the musician. They had no respect for him except while
he was entertaining them. This experience was a lasting lesson to
them. From that time onward my relationship with all of the men in
these organizations has been most satisfactory. After I had driven
the point home, I returned and opened accounts of $1,000 with each
bank.

That done, I sent for Pace in Atlanta, relieved him of all
obligations bearing his endorsement, cleared off pressing obligat-
ions, put the business on a surer foundation and handed him $500.
This, I hoped, would make it clear to him that I wanted him in, not
out. But through all these operations, while the money came and went,
while we struggled and regained our feet, things were working out to
a change. My days in Memphis were numbered.

Handy--136

## Chapter X

The draft thinned the ranks of the old crowd at Pee Wee's. My own band was not exempted. Most of the best players were called to the colors. This certainly did not ease my burdens, but still the show had to go on. I recruited now musicians as best I could and set about the disagreeable task of integrating them into the organization.

The results were not too gratifying. Those were not the men of the old band. While most of them played their instruments well enough, they lacked, for the most part, the character of the outfit they replaced. And with them the fortunes of the Handy band went from bad to worse.

One day at Pee Wee's I began singing the blues to a music professor of the old school. Handling so many men and struggling to control the local entertainment field had been no fun. Sometimes I could have wished for an easier lot. My aim had been to gain a certain measure of security for my men, and doing that had given me satisfaction. But now I began to wonder just how much they appreciated my efforts. The revamped outfit was acting strange, whispering behind their hands.

Todd gave me an understanding glance.

"That's just the trouble," he said suddenly. "Funny fish, those backward spades. If you're so powerful you can tell them where they are to work, they figure you may become powerful enough to tell them where they can't work."

The truth of the old professor's remark was not long in dawning,

Handy--158

ings must be supervised by a man of their selection, one who would
tell me what to do and where to play. Telling me to dance to their
music in Memphis, my own bailiwick, mind you!

Well, I met them on their own terms and calmly invited them to
build their own organization, put in their own phones, rent their
own office, get their own advertising and go fish for themselves.

"When you do this, however," I added, "I will get *my* musicians
from out of town."

They backed water, every one of them. They wouldn't take me
up, and they were afraid to call my hand. Instead they continued
to grumble and work.

About that time Columbia Records sent from New York again asking
my twelve piece orchestra to come up there and make more records. In
view of what had gone before, it did not surprise me that I could
muster only four men who were able and willing to make the trip. I
still suspect that they doubted my ability to advance their fares
to and from the big town, pay their expenses while there and then
pay them a liberal salary.

"Why! Go way up yonder to Moo Yawk for three days work and
dream money! Humph, man, you ain't said yo'self nothing."

I didn't beg them. Instead, I took the next train for Chicago.

Chicagoans were sceptical too. Like the home-town boys in
Memphis they had never heard tell of a gig that took you all the way
to New York for three days' work. It sounded to them a good bit like
pie in the sky. Yet they were all familiar with outfit after outfit
that had gone out with the best of promises and come back in their
shirt tails. Their hesitation is understandable from this distance,
but it was exasperating then. Fortunately, however, a number of men

Handy--130

from my original Memphis band I had migrated to Chicago. And while
these were threatened with heavy fines by the local musician's union
if they left town with me, I added to the four I had brought from
Memphis seven old timers who were willing to take the risk. In New
York I picked up still another,

But there were hectic moments in Chicago before we got away.

Not being certain till the last minute that I could fill the
New York engagement, I had kept the unsigned contracts in my brief-
case. To complicate things further, a wire came from another company
offering to double Columbia's offer. This meant a conference with
Columbia's Chicago office. No-hum, did you ever get dizzy? In the
midst of this whirl I neglected to secure transportation for my men.
At the last minute I scrambled out of the conference, dashed to a
phone and arranged for tickets. Then, hopping into an auto, I made
a race to catch the New York Central Express.

I arrived at the station ten minutes late. To my amazement,
however, the train was still waiting. The men were bunched around
the gate when I came storming up to join them. I could see that they
were panicky, and there wasn't another minute to waste. We lit out
together toward the Pullman. Passing the observation car, I noticed
a crowd of people who had gathered there to see what was delaying
this fast train. Among them was a portly dowager with several chins.

"My God," she exclaimed. "A gang of niggers!"

In the car I learned that the train had been in motion when a
station master came running out, called to the conductor and had it
stopped. In the meantime it took toll talking and persuading by my
brother Charlie to keep one of our high strung Chicago fiddlers from
selling out and going back to the South Side. But Charlie assured
him that I was not above playing the *Hazards of Helen*, if need be,

Handy--140

taking an automobile and beating the express to the crossing--as they
were so fond of doing in the old flickers--before I'd leave the men
stranded. The musicians had waited to find out whether or not it
was true, I suppose.

In New York our troubles continued. The new men had not been
rehearsed. This would have been no problem with my old band, but
with the new men we were compelled to ask a postponement for the
purpose of rehearsing.

In the meantime I had occasion to recall my first experience
with a talking machine. That had been back in Helena, Montana, in
1897. I had made a record with my minstrel band on an old cylinder
machine. Funny contraption, that old affair. To hear the recording
you had to place two rubber tubes in your ears. Each record began
with a spoken announcement much like the radio announcer's lines
today. Before we played, the announcer spoke into a horn and said,
"You will now hear *Cotton Blossoms* as played by Mahara's Minstrel
Band on Edison records. After playing our number, each one of us
was permitted to put the rubber tubes in his ears and thus listen
to ourselves. Other music lovers who wished to hear the record had
to pay five cents for the privilege.

During the twenty years that had intervened since that experience
the art and science of recording had passed through a remarkable evol-
ution. Hardly greater, however, than the stages of change through
which it has passed in the twenty odd years that have elapsed since
Columbia brought us to New York to make records in their little air-
tight studios during my Beale Street days.

Our clarinetist sat in the corner on a six-foot stool and played
into a megaphone near the ceiling. There were stools of varying heights
for the other players. The three violinists stood directly in front

Handy--141

of the recording apparatus and played into megaphones there. The saxophonists were seated on the side and played into their own megaphones. Cornet and trombone played into one in the rear. The cellist occupied another corner and another megaphone. But the poor drummer was a dead goose where the record was concerned. While he played as hard as ever he did in life, he had no megaphone, and the sound was not recorded. It was the same with the string bass. All megaphones emptied into one recording horn.

In these quaint positions we did *Old Miss, Shakey Blues, Hooking Cow Blues, Livery Stable Blues, Preparedness Blues, The Old Town Pump, Jazz Dance, Moonlight Blues (waitz), It's a Mean Job, Drafting Blues, Fuzzy Fuzzy Rag, and Sweet Child, introducing Pallet on the Floor.*

To my way of thinking the records were not up to scratch. Our band was capable of better work, but the Columbia people seemed satisfied. They immediately paid us a good par of our money, not even waiting for test pressings to be made. To cap it off, they asked for a picture of our group. But, odd as it may seem, we had none.

Sitting for a picture had been one thing in which I'd never been able to interest the band back in Memphis. Only a few individual pictures of the members are now available. When the question of photographs arose, they always shrugged their shoulders and began to think of more immediately pressing problems. Thus a band that played the first published blues and thereby earned a little nich in the annals of American music never had its picture taken.

Columbia, however, made their own drawings of Handy's Band and launched an extensive campaign in all their shops throughout

Handy--142

the United States, displaying posters that featured the drawings.

A **Handy Week** was announced everywhere to stimulate the sale of these new records. At home my local stock soared on a bull market, but even this boom failed to down the discontent that had sprung up among the men of the band.

The Colored Fair Association contracted with me for a uniformed band and orchestra. Those men who favored the proposition stood for measurement. For those opposed I guessed their measurements, and some swelled heads settled for surprisingly small caps. When the uniforms were delivered, some of the men tore the name of Handy from their caps and inserted another name.

At that time our band was also playing twice a week on the **PATTONS, Sundays for whites, Mondays for colored folks.** The number 2 band went to Captain Young and told him that they had deserted me and that I would therefore be unable to fill the engagements. They had, they said, refused to work under my direction. The captain listened, but said nothing on his own part. As soon as they were gone, he phoned me.

"Keep this under your hat," he confided. Then he explained what had happened and added, "Just bring your cornet and a good piano player. I'll let the men come aboard with their instruments. Then I'll call them before me in your presence and tell them that if they would quit you like that, they would quit me. Then I'll order them off the boat."

That sort of thing continued, but the end was not yet. We worried along together and weathered a surprising number of tempests. Face planned and advertised a second concert in Atlanta. About the same time the University of North Carolina engaged us for three days

Handy--143

at Chapel Hill. Each of these came off well and proved to be finan-
cially successful. Other calls came, and while we were in North
Carolina, Atlanta wired for us to play at the Piedmont Exposition
for colored folks.

We accepted and returned to lead a gala parade of beautiful floats
down streets bright with golden sunshine. The air was perfumed with
roses. Spectators leaned out of windows. Others lined the streets.
But a bad spirit still prevailed in the band. It smouldered during
the early stages of the march, but by the time we reached the resid-
ential section the devil broke loose and got out of control.

Well, it had been a long time coming to a head, and I can't say
that it was a surprise, but it does seem odd that the cork had to be
popped during the parade. Yet that is exactly what happened. Two of
my men fought all the way to the Exposition grounds. The band divid-
ed into factions, attempting to keep one from cutting or shooting
the other. This rowdy spectacle put me in a most embarrassing posit-
ion. I endured it by the hardest, but when we reached the Exposition,
I called a policeman and kept him with the band throughout the remain-
der of the engagement.

The presence of the policeman made it possible for us to discharge our obligation, but nothing was settled. When we left the grounds, we walked up Auburn Avenue, and I stopped in front of the spacious offices of the Standard Life Insurance Company. Occupying several floors of a building, this was probably the biggest company of its kind operated for and by Negroes at the time. Its president was Herman Perry; its secretary-treasurer, my partner Harry H. Pace. Leaving the angry members of the band on the curb, I went up to Pace's office and gave him a fragment of the sad music.

From his window we could look down on Auburn Avenue and see the

Handy--144

boys still huffing and puffing.

"What's eating on them?" Pace asked.

"I signed for a return engagement at Chapel Hill. They want me to cancel it."

"Why are they so hot to get back to Memphis?"

"Jolly roll. Good times. I don't know of anything else."

Pace became thoughtful.

"Not like the members of the original band, are they?"

I shook my head ruefully.

"They play the same instruments, but they're not the same men."

There was another pause, then Pace said, "You know, W. C., I think I'd let them have it their way if I were you. I'd cancel the engagement."

His answer did not displease me, as sick and tired as I was of the wrangling, but it called up a mood of deepest indigo.

"Cancel the engagement? Then what?"

"Why, go to New York and open up our publishing business there?"

On the cobbstone below there was still no peace among the boys of the band. I stood at the window with bowed head, trying hard to reach a decision. Then suddenly I looked up and began to see shadows in the sun.