Here at the Culture District Headquarters, we will be celebrating the month of Febuary by spotlighting black musical artists whose voices and songs changed the world, throughout the decades and across genres. We’re also posting a series of essays delving into a deep, enduring and ever-evolving body of work. We trace a timeline of historic black musical events, with extended riffs on selected items, qoutes and new slang that shocked main stream culture and more.
On Febuary 1st, 2022 we begin with Trumpeter W.C. Handy, who earned the sobriquet “Father of the Blues” — publishes the sheet music for “Memphis Blues, ” which he called a “southern rag”; two years later he penned the classic “Saint Louis Blues.” In 1969, Handy was the first black performer to be honored on a United States postage stamp. W.C. Handy, in full William Christopher Handy, (born November 16, 1873, Florence, Alabama, U.S.—died March 28, 1958, New York, New York), American composer who changed the course of popular music by integrating the bluesidiom into then-fashionable ragtime music. Among his best-known works is the classic “St. Louis Blues.”
(Subsequent honorees include Duke Ellington (1986), Otis Redding (1993), Billie Holiday, Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf (1994), Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk (1995), Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, Josh White, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1998), “Hip-hop culture” (2000), Ella Fitzgerald (2007), Miles Davis (2012), Ray Charles (2013), and Sarah Vaughan (2016).
