History
Handy said he had been inspired by a chance meeting with a woman on the streets of St. Louis 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. Details of the story vary. Robert Palmer states that Handy encountered the melody in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1892, when he was an out of work. It had numerous one-line verses "and they would sing it all night."
At the time of his death in 1958, Handy was earning royalties upwards of US$25,000 annually for the song. 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.
Read more about this topic: Saint Louis Blues (song)
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