112 years ago yesterday (9-11-1914) WC Handy published a song that would become a pop and jazz standard – St. Louis Blues. It was one of the first blues songs to “succeed as a pop song and remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians’ repertoire.”
Handy said he had been inspired by a chance meeting with a woman on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri, distraught over her husband’s absence, who lamented, “Ma man’s got a heart like a rock cast in de sea”, a key line of the song. Handy’s autobiography recounts his hearing the tune in St. Louis in 1892: “It had numerous one-line verses and they would sing it all night.”
He wrote about the first time the song was played (In 1914):
The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of “Memphis Blues” … When “St Louis Blues” was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.
It was composer William Grant Still who arranged the version made popular by WC Handy.
The 1925 version sung by Bessie Smith, with Louis Armstrong on cornet, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993.
The 1929 version by Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra (with Red Allen) was inducted in 2008.
Glenn Miller recorded it as a march with his band…
Another band leader, Benny Goodman slows it down a bit
Here’s ole Bing Crosby
Here is Eartha Kitt from the 1958 film …
And Nat King Cole, too
From 1941 – the angelic Billie Holliday
Etta James from 1974 (ish)
I have to include Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band
The song has been called “the jazzman’s “Hamlet.” In June of this years, CBS News included the song in its list of the 250 essential American songs of the past 250 years.
In an NPR article dated August 10, 2011 titled “Evolution Of A Song: ‘St. Louis Blues'” by Simon Rentner, the Gershwin – W.C. Handy connection is explained. “Composer George Gershwin borrowed W.C. Handy’s themes for his own music, including for “Rhapsody in Blue,” Gershwin’s landmark work. Although the two musicians didn’t know each other, Gershwin gave Handy a signed copy of his famous score with a note thanking Handy and acknowledging that his “early ‘blues’ songs are the forefathers of this work.”
Fast or slow – it’s a great song!
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 