W. C. Handy Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony.

W. C. Handy
Got de St. Louis Blues jes as blue as ah can be. Dat man got a heart lak a rock cast in the sea, Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me.

W. C. Handy
Tell me how long will I have to wait?
Oh, won't you tell me now, why do you hesitate?

W. C. Handy
You'll never miss the water till your well runs dry.

W. C. Handy
Love, oh loveless love
You set our hearts on goalless goals
With dreamless dreams and
Schemeless schemes,
We wreck our boats on the shoals.

W. C. Handy
Susan Johnson lost her Jockey, Lee
There has been much excitement, more to be
You can hear her moaning night and morn.
Wonder where my Easy Rider's gone?

W. C. Handy
I'd rather be here than any place I know,
It's going to take the Sergeant for to make me go,
Goin' to the river, maybe by and by
Goin' to the river and there's a reason why
Because the river's wet, and Beale Street's done gone dry.

W. C. Handy
You'll see pretty Browns in beautiful gowns
You'll see tailor-mades and hand-me-downs
You'll meet honest men and pickpockets skilled,
You'll find that business never closes till somebody gets killed.
... if Beale Street could talk.

W. C. Handy
The blues came from the man farthest down. The blues came from nothingness, from want, from desire. And when a man sang or played the blues, a small part of the want was satisfied.

W. C. Handy
In the south of long ago, whenever a new man appeared for work in any of the laborers' gangs, he would be asked if he could sing. If he could, he got the job. The singing of these working men set the rhythm for the work, the pounding of the hammers, the swinging of scythes; and the one who sang most lustily soon became straw boss.

W. C. Handy
In its origin, modern blues music is the expression of the emotional life of a race.

W. C. Handy
Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out.

W. C. Handy
I knew the whistle of each of the river boats on the Tennessee.

W. C. Handy
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.

W. C. Handy
I think America concedes that (true American music) has sprung from the negro. When we take these things that come from the art of the Negro and from the heart of the man farthest down.

W. C. Handy
Where the Tennessee River, like a silver snake, winds her way through the clay hills of Alabama, sits high on these hills, my home town, Florence.

W. C. Handy
If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain.

W. C. Handy
The name of my ailment was longing, and it was not cured till I finally went to the department store and counted out the money in small coins before the dismayed clerk. When I came to the house, I held up the instrument before the eyes of the astonished household.

W. C. Handy
A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. 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 effect was unforgettable.

W. C. Handy
With a guitar I would be able to express the things I felt in sounds.

W. C. Handy
Setting my mind on a musical instrument was like falling in love. All the world seemed bright and changed.

W. C. Handy