W. C. Handy - Performances and Honors

Performances and Honors

• On April 27, 1928, he performed a program of jazz, blues, plantation songs, work songs, piano solos, spirituals and a Negro rhapsody in Carnegie Hall.
• In 1938 he performed at the National Folk Festival in Washington, DC, his first national performance on a desegregated stage.
• He performed at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 and 1934 and the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940.
• In 1940, NBC broadcast an all-Handy program as part of its weekly series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. His songs were performed by Dinah Shore and by the composer himself.
• Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954)
• He is referenced in Prof. Harold Hill's lead-in to the song Seventy-Six Trombones in Meredith Willson's 1957 musical The Music Man.
• In 1958, a movie about his life - appropriately entitled St. Louis Blues - was released starring legendary African-American musicians Nat "King" Cole (in the main role), Pearl Bailey, Mahalia Jackson, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. It was released the year of Handy's death.

• On May 17, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.
• Inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
• He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.
• He is referenced in Joni Mitchell's 1975 song Furry Sings the Blues.
• He is referenced in Marc Cohn's 1991 song Walking in Memphis, covered by Lonestar, Cher, and other artists. "...Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues, in the middle of the pouring rain. W.C. Handy, won't you look down over me?"
• He received a Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in 1993.
• He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was a 1993 Inductee into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.
• Citing 2003 as "the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first Blues music..." the United States Senate in 2002 passed a resolution declaring the year beginning February 1, 2003 as the "Year of the Blues."
• Each November 16, Handy's birthday is celebrated with free music, birthday cake and free admission to the W.C. Handy Museum in Florence, Alabama. The hand-hewn log cabin made by his grandfather is his birthplace and museum.
• An autographed 1937 photo from W.C. Handy to Anton Lada of Lada's Louisiana Orchestra sold for $850 in 2006.