William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was an American composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues.

His father was the pastor of a small church in Guntersville, a town in northern Alabama's Marshall County.

[5] Without his parents' permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a local shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap.

He cited as inspiration the "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art".

The workers would beat their shovels against hard surfaces in complex rhythms that Handy said were "better to us than the music of a martial drum corps.

He passed it easily and gained a teaching job at the Teachers Agriculture and Mechanical College (the current-day Alabama A&M University) in Normal, then an independent community near Huntsville.

[9] Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found employment at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer.

In his time off from his job, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read music.

In a three-year tour they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma to Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and on to Cuba, Mexico and Canada.

Weary of life on the road, he and his wife, Elizabeth, stayed with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.

Around that time, William Hooper Councill, the president of State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in Huntsville (which became Alabama A&M University), the same college Handy had refused to teach at in 1892 due to low pay, hired Handy to teach music.

After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to return to the Mahara Minstrels and tour the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

[12][13] Research by Elliott Hurwitt for the Mississippi Blues Trail identified the leader of the band in Cleveland as Prince McCoy.

The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps.

[12][16]Handy also took influence from the square dances held by Mississippi blacks, which typically had music in the G major key.

"[22] He also made sure to leave gaps in the lyrics for the singer to provide improvisational filler, which was common in folk blues.

Handy encouraged performers such as Al Bernard, a soft-spoken white man who nonetheless was a powerful blues singer.

Handy also published music written by other writers, such as Bernard's "Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", and "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", two black traditional tunes contributed by a pair of white women from Selma, Alabama.

Publication of these hits, along with Handy's blues songs, gave his business a reputation as a publisher of black music.

[27] In 1919, Handy signed a contract with Victor Talking Machine Company for a third recording of his unsuccessful 1915 song "Yellow Dog Blues".

[28] The resulting Joe Smith recording of the song was a strong seller, with orders numbering in the hundreds of thousands of copies.

"[31] Handy also had little success selling his songs to black women singers, but in 1920, Perry Bradford convinced Mamie Smith to record two non-blues songs ("That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down") that were published by Handy and accompanied by a white band.

[34] So successful was "Saint Louis Blues" that, in 1929, he and director Dudley Murphy collaborated on a RCA motion picture of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction.

Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Smith for the starring role because the song had made her popular.

The importance of Handy's work as a musician and musicologist crossed the boundaries of genre, coming to influence European composers such as Maurice Ravel, who was inspired during a stay in Paris of Handy and his orchestra for the composition of the famous sonata nr 2 for violin and piano known not by chance as the Blues sonata.

It is an early attempt to record, analyze, and describe the blues as an integral part of the South and the history of the United States.

To celebrate the publication of the book and to honor Handy, Small's Paradise in Harlem hosted a party, "Handy Night", on Tuesday October 5, which contained the best of jazz and blues selections provided by Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White, and Chic Collins.

Fellow blues performer Jelly Roll Morton wrote an open letter to Downbeat magazine fuming that he had invented jazz.

[36] After the publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians, titled Unsung Americans Sung (1944).