Ask Vance: The W.C. Handy Statue

Our history expert solves local mysteries: who, what, when, where, why, and why not. Well, sometimes.

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Dear Vance: What’s the story of the W.C. Handy statue on Beale Street? Was that made locally? — T.W., Memphis.

Dear T.W.: Born in 1873, William Christopher Handy came to Memphis in 1909 from Florence, Alabama. Decades later, an eight-foot sculpture of the “Father of the Blues” came to our city from Florence, Italy.

Before I start talking about the statue in my rambling way, it’s important to note that Handy didn’t singlehandedly “invent” the blues — maybe the best word is “adapt.” He remembered the mournful chants of the field hands he heard growing up, recalled the rhythm of the pounding hammers when he worked in a steelworks in Alabama, watched a man play slide guitar using a knife blade, and recalled the gospels sung in church. After he formed his own band, he added instruments — horns, strings, a rhythm section — and blended all these sounds into music people had never heard before.

And they liked what they were hearing. In his twenties he formed the Handy Orchestra, touring in almost every state between Mexico and Canada, venturing as far as the Pacific Northwest, and even performing at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. He was his band’s director, singer, songwriter, and cornet and trumpet player, while occasionally playing piano and guitar. He settled down, just briefly, in Huntsville, Alabama, teaching music at the Alabama State Agricultural and Mechanical College, where he also directed the school’s band.

In 1909, he and his first wife, Elizabeth, moved to the Bluff City. Living in a shotgun bungalow on Jeanette Place in the “Greasy Plank” area of south Memphis, he began playing the clubs up and down Beale Street. That same year, he wrote a song about E.H. Crump, then running for mayor, which included the famous lines: “Mister Crump don’t ’low no easy riders here / We don’t care what Mister Crump don’t ’low / We gonna bar’l house anyhow.” Some historians credit the popularity of Handy’s song for Crump’s election, and the resulting control of Memphis politics for the next four decades. Meanwhile, Handy produced more work — even rewriting “Mr. Crump’s Blues” and retitling it “Memphis Blues,” which became one of his first hits. Others quickly followed — “St. Louis Blues,” “Yellow Dog Rag,” “Hesitation Blues,” and more.

In 1917, Handy, who had teamed up with a Memphis lyricist, Harry Pace, moved to New York City and became a national sensation. It was a far cry from the humble bungalow in Memphis; within just a few years, he moved into a Tudor estate in Yonkers, where he would live for the rest of his life.

“With his golden trumpet he gave everlasting voice to the folk songs of his people in the Southland. W.C. Handy’s music is known and beloved throughout the world as an inspiration to youth and as an enduring gift to America’s treasure of songs.”

— Lt. George W. Lee

Despite almost constant touring, Handy considered Memphis home and came back often. He had already been honored here in the 1930s, when city leaders changed the name of a vacant lot at Beale and Hernando — formerly the site of a public market — to Handy Park. But when he passed away in 1957, we searched for a more impressive memorial.

The Commercial Appeal, suggested an imposing statue of the famous composer and started a public fundraising drive to pay for it. He managed to raise $15,000 that night alone. Credit should also go to Lt. George W. Lee, a truly remarkable gentleman. That rank wasn’t honorary; he earned it as a World War I hero, wrote novels and essays, became the unofficial historian of Beale Street, and served as president of one of this city’s largest Black-owned insurance companies. A lifelong friend of Handy (whom he called “Bill”), with all of his connections Lt. Lee persuaded local and national celebrities, musicians, school bands, and others to take part in a day-long celebration when the statue was unveiled.

Ahlgren’s fundraising met its goal within a few months, and the commission went to Leone Tomassi, an acclaimed water colorist and sculptor in Pietrasanta, Italy. Once the clay model was finished, it was transported to the Marinelli Bell Foundry in Florence, a family-owned firm established in 1339. Yes, you read that date correctly; for more than 600 years, the foundry enjoyed a worldwide reputation for casting cathedral bells, while taking on other civic projects.

Once finished, the two-ton likeness of Handy, holding a trumpet, was shipped to the McNeel Marble Company in Marietta, Georgia, which carved the four-foot base of red Missouri granite, with a pair of matching benches. Lee provided the lengthy inscription on the base, including this observation: “Enshrined forever in the hearts of the nation are his immortal songs, ‘Memphis Blues,’ ‘Beale Street Blues,’ and ‘They That Sow in Tears Shall Reap in Joy.’ With his golden trumpet he gave everlasting voice to these and folk songs of his people in the Southland. His music is known and beloved throughout the world as an inspiration to youth and as an enduring gift to America’s treasure of songs.”

May 1, 1960, became W.C. Handy Day in Memphis, and news organizations around the country covered the event. Ed Sullivan, “the newspaper columnist and television showman,” mentioned the Handy celebration in his popular New York Daily News column. Movietone News (the company that produced those short broadcasts during movie intermissions) filmed the events, and national publications — Variety, Ebony, Newsweek, and Time — sent reporters. The president of ASCAP flew from New York to attend, joining other stars of stage and screen who would perform at Handy Park that day. Among them were Juanita Hall, acclaimed star of the Broadway touring production of South Pacific; Eubie Blake, the famed composer, singer, and pianist; and Damita Jo, hailed as “a dynamic singing personality and the nation’s newest singing sensation.”

Perhaps the biggest star that day was Mahalia Jackson, traveling here from New Orleans. Described by the newspaper as “the world’s greatest gospel singer, whose unusual talent has baffled musicologists, while her gospel singing has stirred millions around the world,” Jackson had been involved with the Handy statue project from the beginning, as one of the stars of the “Pageant of the Blues” show that kickstarted the funding for it.

WMC-TV covered the events live, and WLOK broadcast everything over the radio. The Commercial Appeal reported, “Ceremonies will open with the 65-member Handy Memorial Choir, representing a cross-section of the Mid-South’s best voices, rendering Handy’s favorite spiritual, ‘They That Sow in Tears Shall Reap in Joy.’” Other local groups adding to the festivities were the WDIA Teen Town Singers and the marching bands from Booker T. Washington, Hamilton, Manassas, and Douglass high schools.

“Professor Handy’s immortal songs — his blues and spirituals — will resound again over the park that bears his name,” reported The Commercial Appeal. “And the program, built mainly of melody with only a framework of speeches, will blend the best talent of Broadway, where Handy’s genius lifted him, and Beale Street, where it all began.”

The crowds had to wait for the dramatic moment when the white cloth covering the statue (“giving the impression that Handy’s ghost was here for his own tribute,” according to one reporter) was finally lifted by the composer’s widow and son, Louise and Bill Handy, who had traveled here from their home in Tuckahoe, New York.

Another family member declared the statue “a very good likeness” of his brother. Charles E. Handy of New York said the event “stirred old memories. W.C. knew what he was doing when he birthed the blues. He knew it was something new in American music, and it might not catch on. But he was going to do it anyway.” Louise Handy later told reporters that her husband “never changed a note in his songs.” Other composers were always rearranging their compositions, but Handy “played it as he wrote it.” The song he liked the most, she said, was “St. Louis Blues.” “‘Memphis Blues’ was the first hit,” she said, “but ‘St. Louis’ was the money-maker. Still is today.”

As the keynote speaker, Lt. Lee said this about his old friend: “Today Handy returns to the street that God gave him, never to leave again. He will stand here against the resistless stroke of time holding watch over his beloved Beale, as it rambles for a crooked mile through the busy heart of Memphis.”

When the festivities finally came to a close, that didn’t mark the end of our city’s remembrances for W.C. Handy. After his death in 1958, the old Domino Lounge on Beale Street was renamed Club Handy. In 1961, the annual Blues Bowl Game, a matchup pitting two of the city’s top Black high-school football teams, was dedicated to Handy, with his music featured in the halftime show. In 1969, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled a commemorative stamp featuring the “Father of the Blues.” In 1985, the Blues Foundation moved his old house from Jeanette Place to 352 Beale Street and restored it; Heritage Tours now operates it as a museum.

Over the years, Handy Park has been reimagined as a “performance center,” but though Beale Street has seen many changes, the composer’s statue still gazes over the historic district just as when it was unveiled more than 65 years ago. Handy is buried in the family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in Brooklyn, and it’s a lovely place, I’m sure, but it’s too bad he didn’t express a desire to be laid to rest in Memphis. In 1917, in his classic “Beale Street Blues,” Handy wrote, “I’d rather be there than any place I know.” I wonder if he ever dreamed he’d be so fondly remembered by the hometown he adopted.

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Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis Magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101

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