Saint Louis Blues (music)
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- This article is about the song. For other things of this name, see the disambiguation page Saint Louis Blues
"St. Louis Blues" is a piece of American music composed by William Christopher Handy in the blues style. It remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians' repertoire. It was also one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song; it has been performed by numerous musicians of all styles from Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith to Glenn Miller and the Boston Pops Orchestra. It has been called "the jazzman's Hamlet". Published in September of 1914 by Handy's own company, it later gained such popularity that it inspired the dance step the "Foxtrot".
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The song
Though the name of the song may imply that it is about events in the city of Saint Louis, Missouri, it instead refers to a sophisticated woman from that city who has stolen the affection of the singer's lover. The form is unusual in that the verses are the familiar standard twelve bar blues in common time with three lines of lyrics, the first two lines repeated, but it also has a 16-bar bridge written in the habanera rhythm.
The opening line, "I hate to see that evenin' sun go down" may be one of the more recognizable lyrics in pop music, and set the tone for many subsequent blues songs.
Handy said in writing St. Louis Blues his objective was "to combine ragtime syncopation with a real melody in the spiritual tradition." He had been inspired by a chance meeting with a black woman on the streets of New Orleans distraught over her husband's absence, who lamented: "Ma man's got a heart like a rock cast in de sea," a key line of the song.[1] (http://bluesnet.hub.org/readings/st.louis.blues.html) Details of the story vary but agree on the meeting and the phrase.
Performances
Researcher Guy Marco in his book "Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound in the United States," stated that the first audio recording of St. Louis Blues was by Al Bernard in July 1918 on the record company label Aeolian-Vocalion #12148.
Many of jazz's most well known artists in history have given renowned performances of the tune. The following is an incomplete list of musicians of renown who recorded St. Louis Blues, chosen as examples that are early in their careers and in the era of its greatest popularity.
- 1920 Marion Harris
- 1921 Original Dixieland Jazz Band
- 1925 Bessie Smith, backed by Louis Armstrong
- 1930 Rudy Vallee, Cab Calloway, the Mills Brothers, the Boswell Sisters
- 1939 Benny Goodman
- 1940 Earl Hines rendition "Boogie Woogie On The St. Louis Blues."
It was also recorded on piano rolls.
It also has been used in the Malcom McLaren song About Her from the soundtrack of the motion picture Kill Bill Vol II. The song covers both St. Louis Blues and a Santana song She's Not There.
Publication
At the time of his death in 1958 it was earning royalties upwards of $25,000 annually. The original published sheet music is available online at the United States Library of Congress in a searchable database of African American music from Brown University [2] (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/aasm:@field(TITLE+@od1(St++Louis+blues+))).
Films
A number of short and feature films have been entitled St. Louis Blues; see: Saint Louis Blues (movie).