#03-28

Nem értettem én ezt a dolgot, hogy emberek hogyan tudnak barátságban lenni az exükkel, aki az agyukra ment vagy bántotta őket. Az olyan kapcsolatokra gondolok, amikor valóban rongálták egymást, már nem is tudtak úgy kommunikálni, hogy ne baszódtak volna fel, vagy ne az jutott volna eszükbe, hogy szar, fáj, semmi se jó vagy amiben konkrét abúzus volt, fizikai vagy verbális bántalmazás. Azt sem tudom, hogy létezik-e olyan szakítás, válás, amit az unalom diktál. Figyelj, nem érdekel... nem érdekel amit mondasz és látom, hogy téged sem érdekel amit mondok, hát mondjuk ki, hogy ennek a kapcsolatnak vége, nem tudunk újat mondani, mutatni egymásnak, nem inspiráljuk, hanem kioltjuk egymást. És akkor szépen békésen unalombafulladtan vége, és néha esetleg megkérdezik egymástól, hogy él-e a másik. Vagy az sem érdekli már egyiket se. De nem is ez a lényeg, hanem olvasom egy cikkben, hogy tényleg mint a gyászmunka, a szakításnak is megvannak a lépései amikor egy bántalmazó kapcsolatból szakad ki az ember. 1. Kétségbeesés Az ember elveszítette az összes hitét magában, az ítélőképességében, a jó és rossz mérlegelésének képességét, és az önszeretetet. itt jelen van minden hazugság amit az ember megélt a kapcsolatban, az összes miért és minek és bizonytalanságok és teljes kilátástalanság érzés, hogy ebben nem lehet rendet tenni, mert csak a fájdalom van és akárhova nézek, csak az értetlenség, hogy mi a fasz ez. És az önhibáztatást se felejtsük el, az a bántalmazó kapcsolat stabil és tartós eredménye.

2. Ismeretszerzés Az ember rájön, hogy van neve annak, ami történt vele, hogy szabad és kell is nevén nevezni a gonoszt. És egyre biztosabb benne, hogy ha van is baj ővele, az nem az amit a másik mondott.

3. Felébredés Néha az ember úgy érzi, hogy végig tudja csinálni, le tud számolni a múlttal, néha kétségbeesik, hogy mi lesz vele "egyedül", jönnek a jó emlékek, de tömegével jönnek a rosszak, és felüti a fejét a düh, mert kezd megvilágosodni az ember, hogy méltatlanul bántak vele. Kiábrándulások, rémületek, harag és fájdalom hullámvasútja. De itt a harag a legerősebb, az ember megijed a saját érzéseitől, hogy mennyi indulat van benne. Hogy gyűlölhetem ennyire azt, akit annyira szerettem?

4. elhatárolódás És itt jön az, ami miatt a mai poszt íródott, ami ráébresztett érdekes dolgokra. Ez a pont minden szakításban amikor az ember eldönti, hogy meddig engedi a másikat. Teljesen megszakítja vele a kapcsolatot vagy az élete egy részéből kitolja de más részeiben megtartja (mert pl a gyerekek miatt). Amikor az ember már képes alakítani a dolgokat és nem csak sodródik az érzelmeivel. Amikor egy kapcsolatban rossz benne lenni, akkor az ember nem igazán tud mérlegelni, amíg benne van csak a pillanatnyi dolgokat éli meg és értelmezi és csak torzított dolgokat lát. Amikor eltávolodik, a pillanatnyi hatások megszűnnek és létrejön az az illúzió, hogy kézben tudjuk tartani a kapcsolatot. És megszületik az is, hogy innen már valódi szakítás van, tényleg vége a kapcsolatnak. Miközben, ahogy valahol olvastam is, sokszor nem a kapcsolatok hiányától, hanem attól érezzük magunkat magányosnak, hogy nem kapcsolódunk senkihez erős érzelmekkel. Hát, egy szar kapcsolathoz ugyanolyan erős érzelmekkel lehet kapcsolódni, mint egy jóhoz. Egy szar kapcsolat az érzelemkavalkád. Ragaszkodunk a szerelemhez, de ragaszkodunk minden intenzív érzelemhez is és az elhatárolódás szakaszban mintha kevesebb probléma lenne. És sokan itt meg is rekednek, nem lépnek tovább, nem akarják elveszíteni a kapcsolatot a másikkal, akár a bántalmazójukkal sem, félve a magánytól. Hiszen a bántalmazójukat jól ismerik, és ütéstávolon kívül már nem is olyan rossz ember.

5. helyreállítás. Az összes veszteséget rendbe kell tenni. Mindet. Anyagi, érzelmi, emlékek, fizikális vagy mentális dolog. Mindent stabilizálni kell. Ez már egy épülés, egy új élet kezdete, de ez a rész is borzasztó melós. Amikor azt gondolod, hogy jól vagy, akkor egyszercsak előugranak szituációk, amiket jó mélyre elástál, összeomlás, elkeseredés, mintha először látnád a valóságot, és azzal is kezdeni kell valamit, aztán megint nyugi, aztán megint jön valami. Rohadt hosszú idő, de itt már vannak pozitívumok, több energia, szabadabb gondolkodás, a gyógyulás érzése.

6. fenntartás. Itt már lehet új kapcsolatokat építeni, új párkapcsolatot keresni, és állítólag az ember itt már nem csúszik bele, hogy egy újabb bántalmazót fogjon ki.

Bár a leírás a bántalmazó kapcsolatok túlélési útmutatója, de szerintem bármilyen szakításra alkalmazható, ahogy a gyász fázisai is bármilyen veszteségre. tagadás, düh, alkudozás, bánat/lehangoltság és elfogadás Ami érdekes, hogy én nem nagyon ismerek senkit, aki ne a 2. vagy 3. pontnál kezdett volna új kapcsolatba. Lehet, hogy e miatt sem stabilak a kapcsolatok sokszor, mert az előzővel még van meló, az újra nem jut elég energia vagy csak mankónak használta az ember. És tucatnyi olyan embert ismerek, aki kapcsolatban maradt a bántalmazójával valami olyan indokkal, hogy barátságnak azért jó ez. És nekem mondják, hogy beszéltek az exükkel és ezért meg azért felbaszódtak, elszomorodtak, felzaklatódtak. Én meg nem nagyon értem, mert barátságban vagy az enyémekben ezek nem igazán jellemzőek. Pláne nem olyan, hogy úgy felbasznak, hogy utána annyi feszültség marad bennem, hogy még beszélnem is kell róla, hogy mennyire feldühített egy "barátom". (olyan persze van, hogy "ez hülye... hát ez hülye... de persze szeretem, de ez hülye..." :D)

Korábban arra koncentráltam, hogy a narcisztikus és a borderline között van egy mágneses kapcsolat, amiben mindkettőnek a betegsége-sérülése pont összeillik. Mint két kicsi lego :DDD De ez valami új gondolatot hozott, hogy a narcisztikus bárkivel fenn tudja tartani a kapcsolatot, aki megelégszik azzal, hogy kicsit távolabb megy és így csak annyi ütés éri, ami „ébrentartja”. Nem akarja végigcsinálni a veszteséggel való munkát és továbbra is használja a paneleket amivel idealizálta/felmentette a narcisztikust.

Nah, a pszichológia bonyolult, az emberek sokfélék, az érzelmeink és viselkedésünk labirintusa nem egyszerű. Kicsit azért legyen a másik oldalból is. Ne diagnosztizáljuk a partnert, mert nem vagyunk szakemberek. Sok minden sok mindenre hasonlít, ami vagy normális vagy átmeneti. Tényleg senki sem tökéletes, és nagyon pozitív, ha valaki szeretne épülni. Vannak kikerülhetetlen dolgok, hogy például tiszteletet akkor is várhatunk valakitől, ha nem baráti, szerelmi, párkapcsolati viszonyban vagyunk. A tisztelet alap. Az együttérzés is az tulajdonképpen, egy egységnyi mindenkinek jár, aztán a kapcsolat milyenségétől függ, hogy mennyi még. De szoros kapcsolatban az egy egységnyi empátia kibaszott kevés. Nem a szereteten buknak meg a kapcsolatok, hanem az elemi tisztelet hiányán.

Arthur William "Big Boy" Crudup (August 24, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known outside blues circles for his songs "That's All Right" (1946), "My Baby Left Me" and "So Glad You're Mine", later covered by Elvis Presley and other artists.

Career

Crudup was born in Forest, Mississippi, to a family of migrant workers traveling through the South and Midwest. The family returned to Mississippi in 1926, where he sang gospel music. He began his career as a blues singer around Clarksdale, Mississippi. As a member of the Harmonizing Four, he visited Chicago in 1939. He stayed in Chicago to work as a solo musician but barely made a living as a street singer. The record producer Lester Melrose allegedly found him while Crudup was living in a packing crate, introduced him to Tampa Red and signed him to a recording contract with RCA Victor's Bluebird label.

He recorded with RCA in the late 1940s and with Ace Records, Checker Records and Trumpet Records in the early 1950s. He toured black clubs in the South, sometimes playing with Sonny Boy Williamson II and Elmore James. He also recorded under the names Elmer James and Percy Lee Crudup. His songs "Mean Old 'Frisco Blues", "Who's Been Foolin' You" and "That's All Right" were popular in the South. These and his other songs "Rock Me Mama", "So Glad You're Mine", and "My Baby Left Me" have been covered by many artists, including Elvis Presley, Elton John and Rod Stewart.

Crudup stopped recording in the 1950s, because of disputes over royalties. He said, "I realised I was making everybody rich, and here I was poor". His last Chicago session was in 1951. His 1952–54 recording sessions for Victor were held at radio station WGST, in Atlanta, Georgia. He returned to recording, for Fire Records and Delmark Records, and touring in 1965. Sometimes labeled "The Father of Rock and Roll", he accepted this title with some bemusement. During this time Crudup worked as a laborer to augment the low wages he received as a singer (he was not receiving royalties). After a dispute with Melrose over royalties, he returned to Mississippi and took up bootlegging. He later moved to Virginia, where he lived with his family, including three sons and several of his siblings, and worked as a field laborer. He occasionally sang in and supplied moonshine to drinking establishments, including one called the Dew-Drop Inn, in Northampton County.

In 1968, the blues promoter Dick Waterman began fighting for Crudup's royalties and reached an agreement in which Crudup would be paid $60,000. However, Hill and Range Songs, from which he was supposed to get the royalties, refused to sign the legal papers at the last minute, because the company thought it could not lose more money in legal action. In the early 1970s, two Virginia activists, Celia Santiago and Margaret Carter, assisted him in an attempt to gain royalties he felt he was due, with little success.

On a 1970 trip to the United Kingdom, Crudup recorded "Roebuck Man" with local musicians. His last professional engagements were with Bonnie Raitt.

Crudup died in 1974, four years after the failed royalty settlement. There was some confusion about the date of death because of his use of several names, including those of his siblings. He died of complications of heart disease and diabetes in the Nassawadox hospital in Northampton County, Virginia, in March 1974.

Crudup has been honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail, placed at Forest. Elvis Presley acknowledged Crudup's importance to rock and roll when he said, "If I had any ambition, it was to be as good as Arthur Crudup".

Discography

Solo albums

Mean Ol' Frisco (1962)

Crudup's Mood (Delmark, 1969)

Look on Yonder's Wall (Delmark, 1969)

Roebuck Man (Sequel, 1974)

Collaborative albums

Sunny Road, with Jimmy Dawkins and Willie Smith (Delmark, 1969)

Arthur "BigBoy" Crudup Meets the Master Blues Bassists, with Willie Dixon and Ransom Knowling (Delmark, 1994)

Compilation albums

The Father of Rock and Roll (RCA, 1971)

Give Me a 32-30 (Crown Prince, 1982)

Star Bootlegger (Krazy Kat, 1982)

I'm in the Mood (Krazy Kat, 1983)

Crudup's Rockin' Blues (RCA, 1985)

Shout Sister Shout! (Bullwhip, 1987)

That's All Right Mama (Matchbox, 1989)

The Father of Rock and Roll (Blues Encore, 1992)

That's All Right Mama (BMG, 1992)

Complete Recorded Works, vols. 1–4 (Document, 1993)

Rock Me Mama (Orbis, 1993)

That's Alright Mama (Laserlight, 1995)

Crudup's After Hours (History, 1996)

The Complete Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, vols. 1 and 2 (Jazz Tribune, 1997)

After Hours (Camden, 1997)

Cool Disposition (Catfish, 1999)

Dirt Road Blues (Past Perfect Silver Line, 2000)

The Essential Arthur Crudup (Document, 2001)

Blues Legends (Rainbow, 2002)

Everything's Alright (Our World, 2002)

Crudup's After Hours (Past Perfect Silver Line, 2002)

Rock Me Mama (Tomato, 2003)

The Father of Rock 'n' Roll (Wolf, 2003)

Rock Me Mamma: When the Sun Goes Down, vol. 7 (RCA, 2003)

The Story of the Blues (Archive Blues, 2004)

Too Much Competition (Passport, 2006)

Gonna Be Some Change (Rev-Ola, 2008)

My Baby Left Me: The Definitive Collection (Fantastic Voyage, 2011)

The Blues (Fuel, 2012)

Sunny Road (Delmar, 2013)

A cinkék amúgy nem azt mondják, hogy nyitnyikék, hanem idegesítően nyikorognak, mintha valakik egy ócska napozóágyon pettingelnének. Persze szeretem őket, meg örülök nagyon, hogy jönnek, mert mindennek örülök, ami nem repülő patkány. Megpróbálok leszállni a hullámvasútról. Tanultam egy zümmögő légzéstechnikát, ami állítólag relaxál. Zavaros idők vannak most, úgyhogy előfordulhat, hogy folyamatosan zümmögni fogok. Érdekes cikket olvastam az OCD-ről. A legérdekesebb az volt benne, hogy az OCDsek tudják, hogy valami nincs rendben velük és próbálják leplezni a kényszerüket, hogy mások ne tartsák őket bolondnak. Ettől jobban szenvednek, mint a kényszereiktől, bár attól is eléggé. Illetve, hogy az OCD-t nem szabad összetéveszteni a „pontossággal”, a munkában és a magánéletben való tökéletességre törekvéssel. A „perfekcionista”, a tökélyre törekvő azt gondolja, hogy mindenkinek ehhez a mércéhez kell igazodnia, míg az OCD-ben szenvedő tudatában van annak, hogy kényszergondolatai és cselekvései értelmetlenek és eltúlzottak, és ha rajta múlna, legszívesebben szabadulna is tőlük. A tökéletesre való törekvés tehát nagyon különbözik az életet megnehezítő vagy éppenséggel ellehetetlenítő kényszerektől és a rituálisan ismétlődő cselekvésektől. Annyira sokan vannak, hogy 50 emberből 1 kényszeres. Van 800 ismerősöm, akkor 10-16 biztos kényszerbeteg. :o 8-10 pszichopata, 160 depressziós vagy volt élete során jelentősen depressziós, kb 8 skizofrén, kb 10 narcisztikus. Még mindig meg kellene írnom a novellát, amiben a pszichés zavarokat a közösség szolgálatába állítják. Mennyi kiaknázatlan definiált működés az amúgy definiálatlan, egészségesnek mondotthoz képest! :D Egészen sokféle dolog tartozik az OCD körébe, én korábban csak a kényszeres tisztogatásról, a szimmetriáról tudtam, de itt egy lista a cikkből:

KÉNYSZERGONDOLATOK •  Fertőzéstől való félelem: 45% •  Beteges kételkedés/bizonytalanság: 42% •  Testi funkciókkal kapcsolatos undor: 36% •  Szimmetria/rend igénye: 31% •  Agresszív gondolatok: 28% •  Szexuális gondolatok: 26%

Többféle kényszergondolat: 60% KÉNYSZERCSELEKEDETEK •  Ellenőrzés: 63% •  Tisztogatás: 50% •  Megszámlálás: 36% •  Kérdezgetés, meggyőződés: 31% •  Szimmetria/”precízkedés”28% •  Gyűjtögetés: 118%

Többféle kényszercselekvés:48% érdekes lehet, hogy hol vannak a határok a valamin rugózás és a kényszeres gondolat/cselekvés között. És vajon a szenvedélybetegségnek és az OCDnek van-e közös pszichés gyökere. Tudom, ez másnak nem annyira érdekes, mint nekem, de minden érdekel amit fellengzősen vagy felületesen, minden valós tudás nélkül kjelentünk valakiről vagy magunkról. Ő kényszeres, ő ilyen, olyan. Ha minden igaz lenne, nekem egyetlen épeszű, egészséges pszichéjű ismerősöm sincs, engem is beleértve, én minimum hatféle zavarral élek, bár a pszichológusom szerint csak „nem nőttem fel” (amibe nem valamiféle gyerekes viselkedés tartozik, hanem a határok meghúzása, a helyes önértékelés, az önérvényesítés megfelelő módja és a felelősségvállalás a saját egészségünkért és jóllétünkért). Bárcsak tanulhatnék úgy pszichológiát, hogy azonnal kapok válaszokat a kérdéseimre, de mindig csak azt magyarázza el egy professzor, ami érdekel. :D

Az elültetett gránátalmamagok virgoncan kihajtottak és már 5 kis levele van mindegyiknek! :) Cukorfalatkák! Ádáz küzdelmem a leanderek tetvei ellen tovább folyik. Most épp úgy tűnik, hogy pár csatát megnyertem, de a háború még nem dőlt el. Majd talán, amikor kikerülnek a teraszra. A citromfám vagy meghalt vagy téli álmot alszik. Hasonlóképpen a pálmám is. :( Van egy ilyen szkillem, hogy ráolvasással és elszánt locsolással fel tudok éleszteni teljesen megdöglött növényeket is. Ez legutóbb akkor volt félelmetes amikor egy mag hónapokig nem akart kicsírázni. Már mindegyik társa kihajtott, de az... látszott, hogy halott. Kicsit szét is esett. Eh, mindegy, dédelgettem, mert ha már úgyis üöntözöm, a többit, neki is juthat pár jó szó. Erre kihajtott. Kihajtott, aztán egy hét múlva elpusztult. Fura dolog volt, mert az a mag valami nagy nehézság árán próbált meg élni, de nem bírt szegény kis növény.  na, az ilyet magamban meg tudom siratni.  (lécci, ne mondjátok el senkinek, hogy hibbant vagyok) Amúgy én nem vagyok növénybuzi kicsit sem. Nem tudom megjegyezni, hogy melyik mit szeret, mikor mit kell csinálni vele.  Idén a muskátlik egy része bent telelt. Nos, ők most virágozni kezdtek :D Megérkeztek az egzotikus magok, amikert rendeltem. nem ültetem el, csak akkor, amikor tudok rájuk figyelni. Sajnos meggyőződésem, hogy lelki energiát kell rakni a dologba, ha már hozzáértést nem tudok. :D A futó, amit az egyik Mucikától kaptam szülinapomra, az egyik kedvencem. Nagyon boldog kis növény! A másik boldog növényem, egy flamingóvirág, amelyik folyamatosan virágzik amióta velem él. Három éve. A többiek jól vannak, héha meg nem, és akkor próbálom helyrehozni, hogy kicsit nem figyeltem rájuk. Szóval az életemnek ez az a része, ami kurvára senkit nem érdekel. Senkinek nem tudom elmondani, hogy kibújt, kihajtott, se azt,. hogy meghalt, se azt, mit szeretnék csinálni, mert vagy igazi nehézbombázó kertész, mint Logan, akit azért nem érdekel, mert neki ebben nincs semmi új, másoknak meg nem túl izgi téma mert leszarják. Szóval a pasim majd... nem kell, hogy cipőkről meg táskákról beszélgessen velem, de hallgassa meg a zöld sztorikat! És mosolyogjon közben, bassza meg, mint akit érdekel, különben nincs szex! :D :D :D

akik nyitott szájjal falják a fröcsögő ondót. (másról akartam írni, csak amikor beléptem ide, hopp elém ugrott) Nos, én nem hiszem, hogy szeretitek az ízét, állagát, annyira, hogy ezt vacsoráznátok, ha választani lehetne mondjuk egy adag tiramisu meg az ondó között. Csak eljátszátok, mert az izgató a férfiaknak, hogy a szaros seggüket is kinyalnátok (az már szerelem) és ebből úgy tűnik, minden nő imádja, ha ragad a haja meg az arca a gecitől és nincs szebb kérdés, mint a “hova kéred”, ha nem a pinámba legalább ne a hajamba. Sosem volt bajom a testnedvekkel. Szex közben sem és úgy általában se. Hidegen hagy a dolog, létünk velejárója, hogy mindenhol eresztünk valamit. Az meg, hogy csak olyannal dugok, akinek a sprrmáját lenyelném az alap, mert csak olyannal dugok, akinek a farkát a számba venném. Ha meg már ott van, egyszerűbb is lenyelni, mint megakasztani a hangulatot némi köpködéssel. Nem látok különbséget érzelmileg a között, hogy hova élvez a testemben. Jah, hát tudom én, hogy maradi, kispolgári dolog, ha nem hoz lázba amikor az arcomra veri a farkát... hát nem hoz lázba, mert valahol mélyen az motoz bennem, hogy az okoz neki élvezetet, ha megalázhat. Persze, gondolhatnám azt, hogy mekkora ajándék és milyen mély kapcsolat amiben én MEGENGEDEM neki, hogy megalázzon és ezt élvezze, és akkor nem kell elmennie más nőhöz, aki esetleg tényleg élvezi, ha megalázzák. Szopás oké, dugás oké, csak a francért kellene engem összekenni meg összeragacsozni? Nincs semmi baj! Én nagyon elfogadó vagyok azzal, hogy mindenki szabadon kúrjon, ahogy jólesik neki, találjon hozzá partnert és adios. Olvasgatok egy blogot, ami csak a szexuális fejlődésről szól. És szép lassan kitisztul, hogy én ilyen kis konzervatív lettem vénségemre, amikor már végre be merem vallani, hogy mi tetszik nekem és mi nem, és kevés dolog tetszett, és van ami tetszett, de már többet nem fog megtörténni. Mondjuk úgy, nem valószínű. Mert a hozzá kapcsolódó gondolat már nem annyira tetszik. Meg van egy olyan is, hogy hasonlóan ahhoz, ahogy nem illik elvárni, hogy az emberek érezzék a saját felelősségüket a saját testükért vagy lelki egészségükért, divat úgy tenni, mintha minden csak úgy történne mindenki szegényővel, a szexuális perverziók is kikerültek már rég a dobozukból, és nem merjük kimondani, hogy milyen lelki okok állnak a hátterükben. Inkább kicsit irigyeljük azt, aki ki meri élni a késztetéseit. Adott esetben azért mert ő nyiltan ki meri mondani, hogy mit szeretne. Sokan meg azt se merik kimondani, hogy mit nem szeretnének. Amúgy engem tényleg csak az érdekel az egészből, hogy azt a férfit foglalkoztatja-e, hogy a csaja tényleg odáig van érte, ha az arcára élvez vagy valójában leszarja, hogy a nője az ő kedvéért olyasmit csinál, ami nem jó neki. - kibaszottul remélem, hogy ez a bejegyzés nem kerül XY elé, akinek a magamutogató szexuális devianciáitól már korábban is agyfaszt kaptam. - Ja, hát frusztrál vagyok némileg, nem tagadom, de nincs bennem düh vagy ilyesmi. - tényleg bajom van azzal, hogy a kurvanagy elfogadásban kezd a dolog kényszeressé válni, nem szabad kimondani, ha máshogy gondolod az elfogadást. - az érzelemmentes szexben is van érzelem, csak nem annyi és nem úgy. Ha semennyi sincs, akkor csak két tárgy ütődik egymáshoz. - Eh, tudom, hogy ebből a bejegyzésből csak a baj lesz, de talán nem követnek annyian. :/ - A szex nagyon fontos téma, de többnyire csak bénán beszélünk róla mert fontos, de érzékeny dolog, könnyen sérülünk általa. - A kutyád, amikor megdugja a lábadat, nem szeret, hanem ledominál. - Tényleg csak azoknak a kapcsolatoknak van jövője, ahol a szex is harmonikus. - Sajnálom :(

Benjamin Elijah Mays (August 1, 1894 – March 28, 1984) was an American Baptist minister, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights, and the progression of political rights of African Americans in America. He was active working with world leaders, such as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and John D. Rockefeller, in improving the social standing of minorities in politics, education, and business.

Originally enrolling in Virginia Union University, he moved north to attend Bates College in Maine, where he obtained his B.A. in 1920, as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate. He began his activist career as a pastor in the Shiloh Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He then entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in 1925, and a Ph.D. in Religion in 1935. After he attained his Doctorate he went on to teach at Morehouse College, where he taught mathematics and was their debate coach. In 1934, he was appointed dean of the School of Religion at Howard University.

He served as the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia from 1940 to 1967. He revived the college from serious financial burden and by the end of his term more than quadrupled the endowment. As president, he served as a trusted adviser to U.S. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. He was appointed by President Truman to the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth.

Mays was also a significant mentor to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and King considered him, his "spiritual mentor" and "intellectual father." Mays became a civil rights activist early in his career, by publishing a dissertation entitled The Negro's Church, the first sociological study of the black church in the United States. He is widely credited as the most influential figure in the desegregation of Atlanta.

Early life and family history

Childhood and youth

Benjamin Elijah Mays was born in August 1, 1894 in Epworth, South Carolina, in the small town of Ninety Six, South Carolina, the youngest of eight children; his parents were tenant farmers and former slaves. His mother, Louvenia Mays, was born one year after the Emancipation Proclamation, and given this history and its impact on the development of his parents, Mays’ childhood was instrumental in creating the political endeavors that he would later pursue. May's older sister, Susie, began to teach him how to read before his formal schooling commenced, which have him a year's growth in reading compared to the other students in his primary schools prompting school officials to cite him as "destined for greatness."

When he was little, a white mob approached his home on horseback with guns drawn, and forced his father to remove his hat and bow before them repeatedly. These group of men were associated with the Phoenix Election Riot which began four years after his birth. He grew up in an area where lynching was commonplace and was forced into segregated areas around his community. When he was a child, he excelled in his studies and had "an insatiable desire to get an education." During his childhood, he was often in conflict with his father, who thought his time would be better utilized working on the family's farm. His mother, was a constant support mechanism in his life but could not read or write.

He attended the Brick House School in Epworth, a Baptist-sponsored school, Mays left Epworth to attend the High School Department at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He graduated as Valedictorian at the age of 22, in 1916, in three years.

Bates College years

After spending a year at Virginia Union University, Mays grew weary of the segregated south and needed a place that ensured physical and emotional safety for him to pursue his studies. Professors at his university spoke highly of a small liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine called Bates College, saying it provided "the best education available for an ambitious man like him." Mays' personal attraction to the college was tied to the college's debate team, which at the time was considered the best in the country, and his ability to have the "same opportunity to excel as an equal with other students."

He moved north to attend Bates in 1917. He was one of few black students at Bates, but he encountered little racial prejudice at the college and felt as through he was an equal. He said, of his time at Bates, "For the first time...I felt at home in the universe." While at Bates, he was captain of the debate team and played on the football team. In his sophomore year he became captain of the Bates Forum and served as the Class Day Speaker. He graduated from the college in 1920, with a B.A., as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate. Shortly after graduating from Bates, he married his first wife, Ellen Harvin, who died in 1923, following an operation. Approximately seventeen years later, the college extended an honorary degree, Doctor of Laws, and gave him the first-ever "Alumnus of Merit Award", subsequently renamed the "Benjamin E. Mays Medal", the college's highest honor.

Career

Early career

Mays began his teaching career at Morehouse College, as an instructor of Mathematics, in September 1929. He was the first person to teach Calculus at the college, and after one year of instruction was promoted to instruct in religious studies.

He then entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in 1925 and a Ph.D. in the School of Religion in 1935. His education at Chicago was interrupted several times: he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1922 and accepted a pastorate at the Shiloh Baptist Church of Atlanta, then later taught at Morehouse and at South Carolina State College. While teaching at South Carolina State College, he met his second wife, Sadie Mays and married in 1926. After their marriage, they moved to Tampa, Florida to serve with the Tampa Urban League.

While in graduate school, Mays worked as a Pullman Porter. He also worked as a student assistant to Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams, pastor of Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago and President of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.

Howard University

Mays first came into contact with Howard University in Washington, D.C, in 1926, when the first African American president of the college was elected, and Mays was appointed the second African American to serve as dean. He was appointed Dean of the School of Religion, in 1934, and promptly began to expand the endowment and national standing of the institution. He went on to increase enrollment, develop regular tin program for students and faculty, expanded faculty, and establish an endowment.

During his six years as dean, Mays traveled to India, where, at the urging of Howard Thurman, a fellow professor at Howard, he spoke at some length with Mahatma Gandhi. Numerous publications Mays has produced reference this experience as a contributing factor to his civil rights ideology and practice. Mays left Howard in 1940, and was honored with the renaming of the newly constructed home of the divinity school to "Benjamin Mays Hall"

Early publications

In 1928, he served as National Student Secretary of the YMCA in Atlanta but took a leave to conduct a national study of African-American churches from 1928 to 1930. In 1933, he wrote his first book was published, The Negro's Church with Joseph Nicholson. This was the first sociological study of the black church in the United States. Four years later in 1938, he published The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature. He went on to write numerous articles on race, religion, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Morehouse College

As President

On July 1, 1940, Mays was appointed the sixth president of Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia. After accepting the position, he was faced with a reality of low faculty and student morale, and was considered the "weakest link in the Atlanta University System." When he took over as president, the school was in terrible financial straits, and they had not had sound leadership since Dr. John Hope was president in the early 1900s. For those reasons, Mays accepted the job offer, and he took it as his duty to revive Morehouse. Soon after primary advancements were made with the college, World War II broke out and many students were drafted for military service. The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Morehouse approached Mays and requested the school be shut down for the remainder of the war, which prompted Mays to lash out and reject his proposition publicly. Mays counter-proposal was to open the school to younger students who were ineligible to be drafted. He moved to improve the academic quality of the students by lowering admissions, and reforming the academic platform. College faculty often were encouraged to befriend students and provided them with guidance in a tumultuous social scene at the time.

Financial growth

In 1933, Morehouse was doing so poorly financially that it had allowed Atlanta University to take over its financial direction and budget. Within two years of his presidency, Mays was so successful that he was able to regain control of Morehouse's finances. Dr. Mays had a few goals going into his presidency that he believed he must accomplish. At the top of his list was the need to hire more teachers, and to pay those teachers a better salary. To do that, Mays sought to be more strict in the collection of student fees, and he wanted to increase Morehouse's endowment from $1,114,000. Mays' fee collecting earned him the nickname "Buck Benny", and he more than quadrupled the endowment that he inherited by the end of his 27-year tenure.

All of Mays' achievements and goals for Morehouse College went hand in hand with one another. To manufacture the graduates he so desired, he needed financial security and a good faculty. Thus, while maintaining financial security at Morehouse, he also desired and succeeded at continuing the esteemed tradition of producing Morehouse Men. He asserted that a Morehouse Man was a highly educated and dedicated to service black professional. Specifically, Mays wanted his Morehouse Men to be physicians, lawyers, and ministers.

In his first speech to an incoming freshman class in 1940, he said, "If Morehouse is to continue to be great; it must continue to produce outstanding personalities." However, it was not enough for his students to be successful professionals. In addition to their success, he believed that they must be Christians who gave back to the black community.

White House ties

As president, he met hundreds of national and international leaders and served as a trusted advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. He was appointed by President Truman to the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth. When Pope Paul 23rd died in 1963, President Kennedy sent Mays and his Vice President to represent the United States at the funeral in Rome, Italy.

Martin Luther King Jr.

His most famous student at Morehouse was someone who benefitted deeply from his educational and religious philosophies - Martin Luther King Jr. The two developed a close relationship that continued until King's death in 1968. Dr. King referred to Mays as his "Spiritual Mentor", and he saw in Mays "the ideal of what I [King] wanted a minister to be." Mays delivered the eulogy for King at his funeral.

Mays, in his eulogy for Martin Luther King Jr. at Morehouse College in 1968 noted King's time in history by stating:

He was not ahead of his time. No man is ahead of his time. Every man is within his star, each in his time. Each man must respond to the call from God in his life time and not in somebody else's' time.

Mays emphasized two themes throughout his life: the dignity of all human beings and the gap between American democratic ideals and American social practices. Those became key elements of the message of King and the American civil rights movement. Mays explored these themes at length in his book Seeking to Be a Christian in Race Relations, published in 1957.

Mays gave the benediction at the close of the official program of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Over Mays' twenty-seven years leading Morehouse, the enrollment increased 169%, from 238 to almost a thousand students, furthered the motivation for graduates to pursue graduate studies, and increased the endowment. Many associated with the college referenced him as a "builder of men."

After Morehouse

Teaching and writing

Mays began teaching again, and served as a private advisor to the president of Michigan State University and went on to publish Disturbed About Man, a collection of his sermons at Morehouse College. His publications described his early life in South Carolina and the racial tensions he had to overcome. He began to receive honorary degrees by the dozens from colleges such as Middlebury College, Columbia University, and Dartmouth College.

Works

Mays wrote numerous articles on race, religion, and the Civil Rights Movement. His sermons frequently spoke on the topics of stewardship, responsibility and engagement.

The Negro's Church (with Joseph Nicholson)

The Negro's God

Seeking to Be Christian in Race Relations

A Gospel for Social Awakening

The Christian in Race Relations

Lord, The People Have Driven Me

Disturbed About Men (a collection of his Morehouse sermons)

Atlanta Board of Education

At age seventy-five, Mays was elected president of the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education, where he supervised the peaceful desegregation of Atlanta's public schools. He was the first African American to serve as president of the board. He was faced with court mandated desegregation orders, which caused a large outflow of whites from the area in 1970. His "commanding and demanding personality" was largely credited for the exponential levels of desegregations in Atlanta. He is widely credited as the most influential figure in the desegregation of Atlanta, Georgia. Mays went on to appoint Dr. Alonzo Crim as the superintendent of schools, and expand the jurisdiction of the board. Near the end of his tenure, the board voted to name a newly constructed school after Mays. Mays High School was constructed on February 10, 1985, and was open to students of all race. He went on to retire in 1981.

He published two autobiographies, Born to Rebel (1971), and Lord, the People Have Driven Me On (1981). In 1982, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.

Death and legacy

Mays died in Atlanta on March 28, 1984. He was entombed on the campus of Morehouse College. His wife Sadie is entombed beside him. He has received 56 honorary degrees,and has published nearly 2000 articles and nine books. He was inducted in the South Carolina Hall of Fame in January 1983.

Benjamin E. Mays High School in Atlanta, The Mays Hall of Howard University (where the School of Divinity is housed), and the Benjamin Mays Center at Bates College are named in Mays' honor, as well as Benjamin E. Mays International Magnet School in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Benjamin Mays Hall of Howard University is named in his honor.

Mays was a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Benjamin Mays on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

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

W. C. Handy was one of the most influential American songwriters. He was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, and he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. Handy did not create the blues genre and was not the first to publish music in the blues form, but he took the blues from a regional music style (Delta blues) with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music.

Handy was an educated musician who used elements of folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers.

Early life

Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, the son of Elizabeth Brewer and Charles Barnard Handy. His father was the pastor of a small church in Guntersville, a small town in northeast central Alabama. Handy wrote in his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, that he was born in the log cabin built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal minister after emancipation. The log cabin of Handy's birth has been preserved near downtown Florence.

Growing up he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking and plastering.

Handy was deeply religious, and his musical style was influenced by the church music he sang and played as a youth. It was also influenced by the sounds of the natural world. He cited as inspiration the sounds of "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", the sound of Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art".

Handy's father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. 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. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?" and ordered him to "take it back where it came from", but he also arranged for his son to take organ lessons. The organ lessons did not last long, but Handy moved on to learn to play the cornet. He joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.

Musical development

He worked on a "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace and described the music made by the workers as they beat shovels, altering the tone while thrusting and withdrawing the metal part against the iron buggies to pass the time while waiting for the overfilled furnace to digest its ore. "With a dozen men participating, the effect was sometimes remarkable...It was better to us than the music of a martial drum corps, and our rhythms were far more complicated." He wrote, "Southern Negroes sang about everything....They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect..." He would later reflect that "In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues".

In September 1892, Handy travelled to Birmingham, Alabama, to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily, and gained a teaching job in the city. 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. He later organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World's Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. To pay their way, they performed odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis, Missouri, but found working conditions were bad.

After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Evansville, Indiana. He played the cornet in the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. In Evansville, Handy joined a successful band that performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist and trumpeter.

At the age of 23, Handy became the bandmaster of Mahara's Colored Minstrels. In a three-year tour, they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma, to Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, and on to Cuba. Handy was paid a salary of $6 per week. Returning from Cuba, the band traveled north through Alabama, where they stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife, Elizabeth, decided to stay with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.

Marriage and family

In 1896, while performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married on July 19, 1896. She gave birth to Lucille, the first of their six children, on June 29, 1900, after they had settled in Florence.

Teaching music

Around that time, William Hooper Councill, the president of the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (AAMC) (now Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University), in Normal, Alabama, recruited Handy to teach music at the college. Handy became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902.

His enthusiasm for the distinctive style of uniquely American music, then often considered inferior to European classical music, was part of his development. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be "classical". Handy felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group.

Studying the blues

In 1902 Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, listening to various styles of black popular music. The state was mostly rural, and music was part of the culture, especially in cotton plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Musicians usually played the guitar or banjo or, to a much lesser extent, piano. Handy's remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music heard in his travels.

After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to rejoin the Mahara Minstrels and tour the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he became the director of a black band organized by the Knights of Pythias, located in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy and his family lived there for six years. In 1903, while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, in the Mississippi Delta, Handy had the following experience:

A lean loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept... As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars....The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.

About 1905, while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi, Handy was given a note asking for "our native music". He played an old-time Southern melody, but was asked if a local colored band could play a few numbers. Three young men with a battered guitar, mandolin, and a worn-out bass took the stage.

They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps "haunting" is the better word.

Handy noted square dancing by Mississippi blacks with "one of their own calling the figures, and crooning all of his calls in the key of G." He remembered this when deciding on the key of "Saint Louis Blues".

It was the memory of that old gent who called figures for the Kentucky breakdown—the one who everlastingly pitched his tones in the key of G and moaned the calls like a presiding elder preaching at a revival meeting. Ah, there was my key – I'd do the song in G.

In describing "blind singers and footloose bards" around Clarksdale, Handy wrote, "surrounded by crowds of country folks, they would pour their hearts out in song ... They earned their living by selling their own songs—'ballets,' as they called them—and I'm ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination."

Popularity, fame and business

In 1909 Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they played in clubs on Beale Street. The genesis of his "Memphis Blues" was a campaign song written for Edward Crump, a successful Memphis mayoral candidate in 1909 (and future political boss). Handy later rewrote the tune and changed its name from "Mr. Crump" to "Memphis Blues."

The 1912 publication of the sheet music of his "Memphis Blues" introduced his style of 12-bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot dance step by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York dance team. Some consider it to be the first blues song. Handy sold the rights to the song for US$100. By 1914, when he was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity had greatly increased, and he was a prolific composer.

Handy wrote about using folk songs:

The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major..., and I carried this device into my melody as well... This was a distinct departure, but as it turned out, it touched the spot.

The three-line structure I employed in my lyric was suggested by a song I heard Phil Jones sing in Evansville ... While I took the three-line stanza as a model for my lyric, I found its repetition too monotonous ... Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made.

Regarding the "three-chord basic harmonic structure" of the blues, Handy wrote that the "(tonic, subdominant, dominant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts, honky-tonk piano players, wanderers and others of the underprivileged but undaunted class from Missouri to the Gulf, and had become a common medium through which any such individual might express his personal feeling in a sort of musical soliloquy." He noted,

In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like 'Oh, lawdy' or 'Oh, baby' and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits.

Writing about the first time "Saint Louis Blues" was played, in 1914, Handy said,

The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues.... When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.

His published musical works were groundbreaking because of his ethnicity, and he was among the first blacks to achieve economic success from publishing. In 1912, Handy met Harry H. Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Atlanta University and a student of W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of business. He earned his reputation by recreating failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became the manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.

While in New York City, Handy wrote:

I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn't... The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day...They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers. [But] Negro vaudeville artists...wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers.

In 1917, he and his publishing business moved to New York City, where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. By the end of that year, his most successful songs had been published: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "Saint Louis Blues". That year the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first jazz record, introducing the style to a wide segment of the American public. Handy initially had little fondness for this new form, jazz, but bands dove into his repertoire with enthusiasm, making many of them jazz standards.

Handy encouraged performers such as Al Bernard, "a young white man" with a "soft Southern accent" who "could sing all my Blues". Handy sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in "an impressive series of successes for the young artist, successes in which we proudly shared." Handy also published the original "Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", both written by Bernard. "Two young white ladies from Selma, Alabama (Madelyn Sheppard and Annelu Burns) contributed the songs "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", with the music published by Handy's company. These numbers, plus our blues, gave us a reputation as publishers of Negro music."

Expecting to make only "another hundred or so" on a third recording of his, "Yellow Dog Blues" (originally entitled "Yellow Dog Rag" ), Handy signed a deal with the Victor company. The Joe Smith recording of this song in 1919 became the best-selling recording of Handy's music to date.

Handy tried to interest black women singers in his music but was initially unsuccessful. In 1920 Perry Bradford persuaded Mamie Smith to record two of his non-blues songs, published by Handy, accompanied by a white band: "That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down". When Bradford's "Crazy Blues" became a hit as recorded by Smith, African-American blues singers became increasingly popular. Handy's business began to decrease because of the competition.

In 1920 Pace amicably dissolved his long-standing partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as lyricist. As Handy wrote, "To add to my woes, my partner withdrew from the business. He disagreed with some of my business methods, but no harsh words were involved. He simply chose this time to sever connection with our firm in order that he might organize Pace Phonograph Company, issuing Black Swan Records and making a serious bid for the Negro market. . . . With Pace went a large number of our employees. . . . Still more confusion and anguish grew out of the fact that people did not generally know that I had no stake in the Black Swan Record Company."

Although Handy's partnership with Pace was dissolved, he continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. He published works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150 sacred compositions and folk song arrangements and about 60 blues compositions. In the 1920s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City. Bessie Smith's January 14, 1925, Columbia Records recording of "Saint Louis Blues" with Louis Armstrong is considered by many to be one of the finest recordings of the 1920s. So successful was Handy's "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 the blues singer Bessie Smith for the starring role, since she had gained widespread popularity with her recording of the song. The picture was filmed in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.

In 1926 Handy wrote and edited a work entitled Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is probably the first work to 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 the entertainers Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White and Chic Collins.

The genre of the blues was a hallmark of American society and culture in the 1920s and 1930s. So great was its influence, and so much was it recognized as Handy's hallmark, that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his novel The Great Gatsby that "All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the 'Beale Street Blues' while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor."

Later life

Following the publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians, Unsung Americans Sung(1944). He wrote three other books: Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs, Book of Negro Spirituals and Negro Authors and Composers of the United States,

During this time, he lived on Strivers' Row in Harlem. He became blind following an accidental fall from a subway platform in 1943. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1954, when he was 80. His new bride was his secretary, the former Irma Louise Logan, whom he frequently said had become his eyes.

In 1955, Handy suffered a stroke, after which he began to use a wheelchair. More than eight hundred attended his 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Death

On March 28, 1958, Handy died of bronchial pneumonia at Sydenham Hospital in New York City. Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx.

Compositions

Handy's songs do not always follow the classic 12-bar pattern, often having 8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.

"Memphis Blues", written 1909, published 1912. Although usually subtitled "Boss Crump", it is a distinct song from Handy's campaign satire, "Boss Crump don't 'low no easy riders around here", which was based on the good-time song "Mamma Don't Allow It."

"Yellow Dog Blues" (1912), "Your easy rider's gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." The reference is to the crossing at Moorhead, Mississippi, of the Southern Railway and the local Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog. By Handy's telling locals assigned the words "Yellow Dog" to the letters Y.D. (for Yazoo Delta) on the freight trains that they saw.

"Saint Louis Blues" (1914), "the jazzman's Hamlet."

"Loveless Love", based in part on the classic "Careless Love". Possibly the first song to complain of modern synthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're growing used to soulless soul."

"Aunt Hagar's Blues", the biblical Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was considered the "mother" of African Americans.

"Beale Street Blues" (1916), written as a farewell to the old Beale Street of Memphis (actually called Beale Avenue until the song changed the name); but Beale Street did not go away and is considered the "home of the blues" to this day. B.B. King was known as the "Beale Street Blues Boy", and Elvis Presley watched and learned from Ike Turner there. In 2004 the tune was included as a track on the Memphis Jazz Box compilation as a tribute to Handy and his music.

"Long Gone John (From Bowling Green)", about a famous bank robber.

"Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", a tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans.

"Atlanta Blues", which includes the song "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.

"Ole Miss Rag" (1917), a ragtime composition, recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis.

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 at Carnegie Hall.

In 1938 he performed at the National Folk Festival in Washington, D.C., his first national performance on an unsegregated 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.

On September 1, 1951, Handy and Dizzy Dean were among the guest stars on the CBS live variety series, Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town.

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-Americans Nat "King" Cole (in the main role), Pearl Bailey, Mahalia Jackson, Ruby Dee, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. It was released in 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: "...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.

William Faulkner attended dances at the University of Mississippi where Handy's band sometimes played. Faulkner got the title for his 1931 short story, "That Evening Sun", from the first line of Handy's St. Louis Blues: "I hate to see that evening sun go down".

Awards, festivals and memorials

The Blues Music Award, widely recognized as the most prestigious award for blues artists was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.

The W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in Florence, Alabama and the greater Shoals area. The festival has evolved into a 10-day-long celebration that includes a parade, various artists at restaurants and venues around town, and larger music events at Wilson Park in downtown Florence. The park features a statue of Handy and is close to his birthplace and museum. Previous festivals have featured jazz and blues legends including Jimmy Smith, Ramsey Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Blue Bland, Diane Schuur, Billy Taylor, Dianne Reeves and Charlie Byrd, Ellis Marsalis and Take 6. The festival also features a roster of annual regulars, called the W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars.

W. C. Handy Park is a city park located on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The park contains a life-sized bronze statue of Handy.

The W.C. Handy Blues & Barbeque Festival is a week-long musical event that features blues and Zydeco bands from across the U.S and is held every June on the banks of the Ohio River in downtown Henderson, Kentucky.

In 1979, New York City joined the list of institutions and municipalities to honor Handy by naming one block of West 52nd Street in Manhattan "W.C. Handy Place".