Fifty Dollars for the Blues
Melbourne's jazz festival gives its Sunday to ABC Jazz, where Eugene Ball premieres a new work for fifty years of Jazztrack. Then five rooms, a 2008 session with Hank Jones that came out on Friday, and the fifty dollars W. C. Handy took for "The Memphis Blues."
LioraToday Melbourne premieres a new piece for a radio show turning fifty. Today's record was cut in 2008 and came out Friday. Later, five rooms, and fifty dollars in cash for "The Memphis Blues." It's Sunday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Sunday, October 18th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: The Melbourne International Jazz Festival gives its Sunday afternoon to ABC Jazz Live
LioraToday in Melbourne, the jazz festival hands its afternoon to a radio show.
Four o'clock at The JazzLab in Brunswick. The bill is ABC Jazz Live, Eugene Ball's "Continuum," with Hyperbaroq. The subtitle: celebrating fifty years of Jazztrack, which the festival calls Australia's longest running national jazz radio program.
Ball premieres "Continuum: Jazztrack at 50," a new work ABC Jazz commissioned. The festival names eight players. Thirty to fifty four dollars, and tickets on door only.
Same room at seven, Resonance, and the festival prints its own late change. Due to unforeseen circumstances, it says, Kristin Berardi is no longer able to travel to Australia. Michelle Nicolle will take her place.
Across town, Shai Maestro plays twice at Chapel Off Chapel, six and half past eight.
LioraAnd at 170 Russell, the Rebirth Brass Band. Doors seven, Horns of Leroy with Thndo at seven thirty, Rebirth at a quarter to nine. Eighty nine dollars, eighteen and over.
One honest note. The festival's own two pages do not agree on that band, seven players on one, eight on the other.
Two. Listen to This: Smoke Sessions puts out "Steve Davis Meets Hank Jones
LioraToday's record is "Steve Davis Meets Hank Jones, Volume 2," on Smoke Sessions. The label says it came out Friday.
Nine tracks. Davis on trombone, Hank Jones on piano, Peter Washington on bass. The label dates the session to June of 2008, a month before Jones turned ninety, a year and a half after quadruple bypass surgery. He died less than two years later.
Volume 1 came out in 2023, largely ballads. This one the label calls a more celebratory, uptempo affair. Davis says it was such a special day.
Here is the tip. The record carries two alternate takes, "Nardis" and "I Could Write a Book." Play each tune, then its alternate.
One more date. Blue Note puts out a Julian Lage LP on November twenty seventh, a Black Friday Record Store Day release, "The Reservoir Sessions."
LioraAnd one for tonight. The University of South Florida libraries hold two editions of "The Memphis Blues." The 1912 one carries Handy's name alone. The 1913 one adds a lyricist, George A. Norton.
Now Memphis, 1912. W. C. Handy sells "The Memphis Blues" for fifty dollars in cash. Later he learns the printing he paid for was twice the size he agreed to. Tonight on The Bridge. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: In 1912 W. C. Handy sells "The Memphis Blues" for fifty dollars in cash
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasMemphis, Tennessee. Late summer, 1912. W. C. Handy is one of the leading bandleaders in the Memphis area. Back in 1909, he was hired to draw crowds for Edward Crump, who was running for mayor. Handy's tune for that campaign was called "Mr. Crump." After Crump won, Handy says, the tune got a new name: "The Memphis Blues."
LioraSo in 1912, why isn't it in print?
SilasThe big publishers turned it down. In Handy's words, "Every reputable American publisher of popular music gave the Memphis Blues the go-by." So that late summer, he decides to publish it himself. He goes to a man he calls only "X," who works for Bry's department store. The deal: Otto Zimmerman and Son of Cincinnati will engrave and print it, at Handy's expense. One thousand copies. Handy's book adds, "that figure is important as will be seen."
LioraWhy does that figure matter?
SilasHold that. The copies come in. Handy can't get other stores to take them, so he has to take his copies back to Bry's. Then a second man appears. Handy calls him "Z," a man with a publishing company and a store in a Western city. Handy keeps asking how sales are going. His biographer, David Robertson, says the answer was that it would not sell. So Handy sells. A bill of sale for his plates and the tune. His name stays on as author, with no royalties. In his words, "For this I received fifty dollars cash," plus nearly one thousand unsold copies.
LioraFifty. I've always heard a hundred.
SilasHandy called it that too. Someone told him the leftover copies were worth five cents apiece wholesale, so it was really a hundred. "And for years I accepted this theory myself because a hundred dollars sounded better." Then: "Of course the flaw in this comforting theory was that I had paid for the whole edition." Now, that figure. Handy later learned the printing he paid for "had consisted of not one thousand but two thousand copies." Shipped September 25, 1912.
LioraSo was it a con?
SilasRobertson says yes. In his view, two song sharks conned Handy. Handy hints at it, but stops short of saying so. He never even names the buyer. Historians name the publisher Theron Bennett, and the 1912 sheet music carries the Theron C. Bennett Company imprint. Bennett took the song to New York, where the white minstrel star George "Honey Boy" Evans added it to his act. A 1913 vocal edition added words by George A. Norton praising Handy and his band. By the fall of 1913, fifty thousand copies had sold. Handy wrote, "I saw the song that I had sold for fifty dollars become a tremendous hit and a gold mine for the new owner."
SilasRobertson says the loss taught Handy that the money was in owning copyrights. In 1914 he finished "St. Louis Blues," copyrighted in his own name. Later his own firm, Pace and Handy, had a hit called "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." New York firms tried to buy it. The offers rose to ten thousand dollars. Handy turned them down. As he put it, "Why sell?" And the Memphis Blues? Copyright then ran two terms of twenty-eight years, and the second went to the author. Handy just had to live that long. He did. The music reads, "Copyright renewed, 1940, by W. C. Handy."
LioraFifty dollars in cash, and twenty-eight years to get the song back. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Five rooms tonight, from the Thaddeus Tukes Quartet's two houses at the Jazz Showcase in
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Chicago.
The Jazz Showcase has the Thaddeus Tukes Quartet. Tukes on vibes, Henry Johnson guitar, Justin Dillard organ, Sam Jewell drums. Two houses, four and eight, though the club's event page prints only the eight. Thirty five dollars, fifty for VIP seating.
Now the sweep.
In New Orleans, Snug Harbor runs three. The Jamil Sharif New Orleans Extravaganza at three, free. Then Desert Nudes at seven thirty and nine thirty, thirty five sixty five.
In Los Angeles, Catalina has a night of jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms. A flute summit, the club calls it: Fay Roberts, Sheila Del Bosque, Gil Tower. Show at seven thirty.
LioraIn New York, Birdland runs five sets in two rooms. The Adi Yeshaya Jazz Orchestra with Jennifer Grimm at five thirty. The Birdland Latin Jazz Orchestra at eight thirty and ten thirty. In the theater, Carole J. Bufford at seven and nine thirty.
And Dizzy's Club has Ekep Nkwelle, five and seven thirty, the club's Sunday clock. Sixty dollars early, fifty five late.
Five. One More Note: Anita O'Day was born on this date in 1919
LioraAnita O'Day was born on this date in 1919. The National Endowment for the Arts, which made her a Jazz Master in 1997, keeps the page.
It dates her to Gene Krupa's big band in 1941 and names the record. "Let Me Off Uptown," a duet with Roy Eldridge. One of the first interracial vocal duets on record, the page says.
Then this. She may have been the first feminist big band singer, refusing to appear in the standard gown and gloves, choosing a band jacket and a short skirt instead.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Sunday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.