1958 newspaper with news of the DEATH of famed NEGR0 musician W C HANDY,  "father of the blues" - He wrote the "ST LOUIS BLUES" and many other blues music songs  - inv # 6i-317

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SEE PHOTO(s) - COMPLETE ORIGINAL NEWSPAPER, the York Dispatch (PA) dated Mar 28, 1958. This original newspaper contains front page "stacked" headings: "BLUES COMPOSER DIES / W C Handy, 84, Leaves Musical Legacy."

Hard to find a front page heading and report of the death of W C HANDY, the "father of the blues". 

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues. Handy was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style (Delta blues) with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.

Handy was an educated musician who used elements of folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers.

Compositions by W C Handy:

"Memphis Blues", written 1909, published 1912. Although usually subtitled "Boss Crump", it is a distinct song from Handy's campaign satire, "Boss Crump don't 'low no easy riders around here", which was based on the good-time song "Mamma Don't Allow It."

"Yellow Dog Blues" (1912), "Your easy rider's gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." The reference is to the crossing at Moorhead, Mississippi, of the Southern Railway and the local Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog. By Handy's telling locals assigned the words "Yellow Dog" to the letters Y.D. (for Yazoo Delta) on the freight trains that they saw.

"Saint Louis Blues" (1914), "the jazzman's Hamlet."

"Loveless Love", based in part on the classic "Careless Love". Possibly the first song to complain of modern synthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're growing used to soulless soul."

"Aunt Hagar's Blues", the biblical Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was considered the "mother" of African Americans

"Beale Street Blues" (1916), written as a farewell to Beale Street of Memphis, which was named Beale Avenue until the song's popularity caused it to be changed

"Long Gone John (from Bowling Green)", about a famous bank robber

"Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", a tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans

"Atlanta Blues", which includes the song "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.

"Ole Miss Rag" (1917), a ragtime composition, recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis

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