Handy, W.C. - history and theory texts Baraka, Amiri. "Black Music: Its Roots, Its Popularity, Its Commercial Prostitution." In Folk Music and Modern Sound, edited by William Ferris and Mary L. Hart, 177-93. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1982. Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) is representative of those critics who view Handy as a "whitener" of the Blues. Cook, below, provides a good rejoinder to this sort of dismissal. Barlow, William. "Looking Up and Down"--The Emergence of Blues Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. Vaudeville Blues, Urban Blues and Memphis Blues are discussed, with colorful descriptions of the Beale Street environment and of Handy. Bontemps, Arna and Jack Conroy. Anyplace But Here. New York: Hill and Wang, 1966. Deals with Black Migration in the South in the early part of 20th Century in terms of selected individual lives. Chapter on Memphis deals with Handy, Jelly Roll Morton. Cook, Bruce. Listen to the Blues. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973. Mixture of oral and straightforward history. Chapter 7, "T for Tennessee," which deals briefly with Handy, succintly defends him from other Blues historians, who, says Cook, tend to ignore him in their histories. Ewen, David. Men of Popular Music. Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1944. Chapter on Handy. Not very useful. Fletcher, Tom. 100 Years of the Negro in Show Business: the Tom Fletcher Story. New York: Burdge, 1954. Born in 1873, Fletcher became a minstrel and musician at age 15. Personal reminiscence of W. C. Handy. Horn, David. The Literature of American Music in Books and Folk Music Collections: a Fully Annotated Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1977. Useful bibliography; index a good starting point. Lee, George W. Beale Street: Where the Blues Began. College Park, MD: McGrath, 1934. Introduction by Handy. Chapter IX describes Handy's life and career in the context of Beale Street. McKee, Margaret and Fred Chisenhall. Beale Black and Blue: Life and Music on Black America's Main Street. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1981. A memory and oral history of Beale Street and its Blues and Jazz heritage. Oakley, Giles. The Devils' Music: A History of the Blues. New York: Tapling Publishing Company. New York, 1976. Deals only briefly with Handy, but a good general history, extremely well illustrated. Oliver, Paul. Conversation with the Blues. New York: Horizon Press, 1965. Robert Henry, Memphis native who lived on Beale Street since 1913, is interviewed; provides anecdotes of Handy, pp. 87-8. Oliver, Paul. The Story of the Blues. Hamondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Sampson, Henry T. Blacks in Blackface: A Source Book on Early Black Musical Shows. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1980. Valuable source for Handy's early background in minstrel shows. Section on Pace and Handy Music Co. Sanjek, Russell & David Sanjek. American Popular Music Business in the 20th Century. NEW YORK: Oxford University Press, 1991. Useful for putting Handy's commercial success in context. Scarborough, Dorothy. On the Trial of Negro Folk-Songs. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925 Her chapter on The Blues largely consists of what is perhaps the earliest substantial interview with Handy, conducted c. 1924. Shaw, Arnold. Black Popular Music in America. New York: Schirmer, 1986. Chapters on the development of the Blues, Handy's career and contribution, and the "white synthesis." Extensive notes and bibliography. Small, Christopher. Music of the Common Tongue. New York: Riverrun Press, Inc. 1987. The chapter entitled "Styles of Encounter II: Adjusting to White Culture" stresses the fact that though Handy's Blues are not folk Blues, but a crystalized form of this improvised music, he was instrumental in bringing this form of music into the American mainstream. This chapter also contains an extensive description of Latin American influence on the Blues and also Ragtime. Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971. 2nd Ed. The chapter entitled "Blow Ye Trumpet: Precursors of Jazz" discusses the Blues and Handy. Southern, Eileen. Readings in Black American Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. Selected readings trace the history of Black Music from the Seventeenth Century of the present. Emphasis on first person accounts by composers and musicians, and by eyewitnesses to their careers. Handy's "The Heart of the Blues" is included, as are selections from his autobiography. A brief biographical note on Handy is provided. 4/92