HANDY WILLIAM CHRISTOPHER (1873-1958). Chanteur et compositeur, le père du Blues.

Lot 90
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3000 - 4000 EUR
HANDY WILLIAM CHRISTOPHER (1873-1958). Chanteur et compositeur, le père du Blues.
Signed typed note, signed « W.C. Handy », New York 20 May 1922; 1 page in-4 format, typed note on blue paper, on letterhead stationery “Handy Bros. Music Co., Inc Successors to Pace & Handy Music Co., Inc.; in English ; conservation box dark blue half-morocco. Contract for the recording of Saint Louis Blues. A contract between the Handy Brothers Music Co., as the publisher, and the Pace Phonograph Company, as the manufacturer, for the recording of Handy’s St. Louis Blues at two cents royalty per record. Handy has signed the document as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Handy Brothers Music Company. In his autobiography, Father of the Blues, Handy discusses the writing of St. Louis Blues: “While sleeping on the cobblestones in St. Louis (`92), I heard shabby guitarists picking out a tune called East St. Louis. It had numerous one-line verses and they would sing it all night. ‘I walked all the way from old East St. Louis, / And I didn’t have but one po’ measly dime’.... The impression made upon me by hearing this phrase and the tonality of these men’s singing may well have contributed to my writing the St. Louis Blues, but it should be clear by now that my blues are built around or suggested by, rather than constructed of, the snatches, phrases, cries and idioms such as I have illustrated.” In 1913, Handy and Harry H. Pace became partners in the Pace and Handy Music Company, Publishers, in Memphis, Tennessee which was the birthplace of the blues. In 1918, the firm moved to New York where Handy composed new blues works, auditioned new talent, and managed the business. Because they published blues, Southern songs, and Black vaudeville numbers, the Pace and Handy Music Company gained a reputation as publishers of solely Black music. As a result of the racial prejudice of the day, few Black singers were able to record their popular songs. Pace, realizing the potential market among Blacks for “Negro” music, withdrew from the firm [c
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