Saint Louis Blues (song)
"Saint Louis Blues" is a popular American song composed by W. C. 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 Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, and the Boston Pops Orchestra. It has been called "the jazzman's Hamlet". Published in September 1914 by Handy's own company, it later gained such popularity that it inspired the dance step the "Foxtrot".
The version with Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong on cornet was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993. The 1929 version by Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra (with Henry "Red" Allen) was inducted there in 2008.
Read more about Saint Louis Blues (song): History, Analysis, Performances
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“Upon Saint Crispin’s day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry.
On when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
“St. Louis woman, wid her diamon’ rings,
Pulls dat man ‘roun’ by her apron strings.”
—W.C. Handy (1873–1958)
“As one delves deeper and deeper into Etiquette, disquieting thoughts come. That old Is- It-Worth-It Blues starts up again softly, perhaps, but plainly. Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness. The letters and the conversations of the correct, as quoted by Mrs. Post, seem scarcely worth the striving for. The rules for finding topics of conversation fall damply on the spirit.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)