'St. Louis Blues'
NPR 100 Fact Sheet
Title: The St. Loius Blues
Artist: Words/music W.C. Handy
As performed by Bessie Smith
Reporter: Margaret Howze
Producer:
Editor:
Length: 15:30
Interviewees: Elliot Hurwitt, musicologist
Edwina Handy Da Costa, great granddaughter
Odetta, Singer
Recordings Used: St. Louis Blues
American singer Bessie Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues, circa 1935. Three Lions/Getty Images hide caption
American singer Bessie Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues, circa 1935.
Three Lions/Getty ImagesIn 1914, W.C. Handy, a middle-class African American, wrote "St. Louis Blues." It came at a time when Tin Pan Alley's popular songs began to fuse with folklore to explore the blues, the form that led to the full-fledged birth of American jazz.
NPR's Margaret Howze reports on the song's background and its definitive 1925 recording by Bessie Smith, with cornet accompaniment by Louis Armstrong.