Contents

• A view of Mr. Handy : one afternoon in Memphis, 1918
• Slavery, the AME Church, and emancipation : the Handy family of Alabama, 1811-1873
• W.C. Handy and the music of black and white America, 1873-1896
• Jumping Jim Crow : Handy as a traveling minstrel musician, 1896-1900
• Aunt Hagar’s ragtime son comes home to Alabama, 1900- 1903
• Where the southern crosses the Yellow Dog : Handy and the Mississippi Delta, 1903-1905
• Mr. Crump don’t ‘low : the birth of the commercial blues, 1905-1909
• Handy’s Memphis copyright blues, 1910-1913
• Tempo à blues : Pace & Handy, Beale Avenue music publishers,1913- 1917
• New York City : national success, the "St. Louis blues," and Blues: an anthology, 1918-1926
• Symphonies and movies, spirituals and politics, and W.C. Handy as perennial performer, 1927-1941
• "St. Louis blues" : the final performance, 1958