W.C. Handy Stamp

This post features the W.C. Handy stamp of 1969. Of course, Handy is known as the “Father of the Blues” and is one of the most influential of all American musicians. The stamp was the very first to feature an African-American musician. Indeed, it represents an important step in the acknowledgement of black artists for their contributions to the country.

The Musician

William Christopher Handy (1873-1959) was born in the small town of Florence, Albama. His father was a pastor and thought that musical instruments were “tools of the devil.” However, the young Handy saved up money by picking berries and making lye soap, and unbeknownst to his parents, purchased a guitar. Handy’s father was furious and took away the instrument, but allowed his son to study the much more pious organ. It did not take long for Handy to abandon the keyboard instrument and instead take up the cornet and join a local band.

As a young man, Handy held a number of odd jobs and teaching positions, but always played and taught music on the side. He eventually started the Lauzetta Quartet, which took him to Chicago before the group disbanded. Handy took a number of musical gigs playing cornet, trumpet, and singing. At the age of 23, he became the musical director for a minstrel troupe that toured the south and into Mexico and even Cuba. Giving up the life of a traveling musician, he decided to take a job teaching music at the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in 1900.

The Blues

Handy and his family later moved to Clarksdale and Cleveland, Mississippi, where he was surrounded by the sounds of the rural Delta blues. He began to pick up these influences and incorporate it into the music he was playing and writing. In 1909, Handy moved his band to Memphis, TN, where they started to play in the clubs on Beale Street. The song introduced Handy’s twelve-bar blues style based around a three-chord progression. Handy went on to write many other important blues songs including “St. Louis Blues,” and “Beale Street Blues.”

In 1917, Handy moved his publishing business to New York City. He used his own success and prominence to help publish the music of other African-American composers, and eventually built a music publishing empire. He died in 1959 in New York City.

The W.C. Handy Stamp

Issued on May 17, 1969, the W.C. Handy stamp was the first to feature an African-American musician. The six cent stamp features a monochromatic drawing of Handy playing a trumpet in a pink color on a field of purple. His name appears in light blue at the bottom of the frame.

There had not been that many musicians featured on American postage stamps. It was only in 1940 that a set of stamps depicting American composers was issued. This list was problematic for a number of reasons. The five musicians were all white and male. It did not include the famed black composer and pianist Scott Joplin, while celebrating rather mediocre classical composers Ethelbert Nevin and Edward MacDowell. The group also included Stephen Foster, whose songs had been used on minstrel stages since the middle of the 19th century and whose lyrics romanticized the antebellum South.

The first African American to appear on a postage stamp was also in 1940. That stamp features the educator, author, and intellectual Booker T. Washington. Yet the enormous contributions that African Americans have made to American music were still not celebrated on the country’s postage stamps. W.C. Handy would be followed in subsequent years by stamps that featured African Americans including Scott Joplin (1983), Duke Ellington (1986), and James Weldon Johnson (1988). Then in 1993 the postal service began the Legends in American Music series and it would prominently feature many African-American musicians.

Make sure to check out this performance of W.C. Handy playing his St. Louis Blues on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1949.