This is a look at how jazz and blues began, from the man who was instrumental in getting it started. W.C. Handy tells us how the transition was made from marches, classical music, dance music, Stephen Foster, vaudville tunes and folk blues to the arranged and orchestrated blues and jazz of the 20th Century. Not only did Handy help create the music, but he also helped preserve it through recordings and publications. In this book, he tells in detail how he came to compose his most famous pieces, including Memphis Blues, St. Louis Blues and Beale Street Blues. Handy is a superb storyteller who paints a vivid picture of life in the Reconstruction South, and the world of the African-American entertainer during the minstrel show days and the birth of the jazz era.

W.C. Handy is well known in Memphis, TN because of the blues, but his story begins in Florence, Alabama. I teach 8th graders a unit comparing and contrasting his life with his neighbor from Tuscumbia, Helen Keller. Handy's life was rich with music, travel, hard times, discrimination, and fame. The picture he paints of minstrel days and struggling to live on the road sticks in your mind. His words provide a rich setting for the birth of music that my students listen to today. The book is too long to require them to read, but I read them sections to give them a flavor of the South they do not comprehend. I highly recommend this book to lovers of jazz, Southern history and stories about people who overcome great adversity and succeed.