"The Saint Louis Blues" (or "St. Louis Blues") is a popular American song composed by W. C. Handy in the

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the ...

style and published in September 1914. It was one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song and remains a fundamental part of

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

musicians' repertoire.

Benny Goodman Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader known as the "King of Swing". From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing big bands in the United States. His conc ...

Louis Armstrong Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and Singing, vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and se ...

Cab Calloway Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalis ...

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...

Bessie Smith Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the " Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock an ...

Count Basie William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...

Glenn Miller Alton Glen Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was an American big band founder, owner, conductor, composer, arranger, trombone player and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the US Army Air Forc ...

Guy Lombardo Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo (June 19, 1902 – November 5, 1977) was an Italian-Canadian-American bandleader, violinist, and hydroplane racer. Lombardo formed the Royal Canadians in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert and Victor, and oth ...

, Peanuts Hucko, and the

Boston Pops Orchestra The Boston Pops Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts, specializing in light classical and popular music. The orchestra's current music director is Keith Lockhart. Founded in 1885 as an offshoot of the Boston Symp ...

(under the directions of both

Arthur Fiedler Arthur Fiedler (December 17, 1894 – July 10, 1979) was an American conductor known for his association with both the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops orchestras. With a combination of musicianship and showmanship, he made the Boston Pops one ...

and

Keith Lockhart Keith Alan Lockhart (born November 7, 1959) is an American conductor. He is the Conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Chief Guest Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Artistic Director of the Brevard Music Center in North Caro ...

) are among the artists who have recorded it. The song has been called "the jazzman's ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

''". Composer William Grant Still arranged a version of the song in 1916 while working with Handy. The 1925 version sung by Bessie Smith, with Louis Armstrong on cornet, was inducted into the

Grammy Hall of Fame The Grammy Hall of Fame is a hall of fame to honor musical recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance. Inductees are selected annually by a special member committee of eminent and knowledgeable professionals from all branches of ...

in 1993. The 1929 version by Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra (with Red Allen) was inducted in 2008.

History

Handy said he had been inspired by a chance meeting with a woman on the streets of St. Louis,

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

, 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. Handy's autobiography recounts his hearing the tune in St. Louis in 1892: "It had numerous one-line verses and they would sing it all night." The song was a massive and enduring success. The original published sheet music is available online from the United States

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

in a searchable database of African-American music from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

Analysis

The form is unusual in that the verses are the now-familiar standard

twelve-bar blues The 12-bar blues (or blues changes) is one of the most prominent chord progressions in popular music. The blues progression has a distinctive form in lyrics, phrase, chord structure, and duration. In its basic form, it is predominantly based ...

common time The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note val ...

with three lines of lyrics, the first two lines repeated, but it also has a 16-bar

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually someth ...

written in the habanera rhythm, which

Jelly Roll Morton Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a gen ...

called the " Spanish tinge" and characterized by Handy as

tango Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...

. The tango-like rhythm is notated as a dotted quarter note followed by an eighth note and two quarter notes, with no slurs or ties. It is played in the introduction and in the sixteen-measure bridge. While blues often became simple and repetitive in form, "Saint Louis Blues" has multiple complementary and contrasting strains, similar to classic

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott J ...

compositions. Handy said his objective in writing the song was "to combine ragtime

syncopation In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "place ...

with a real melody in the spiritual tradition."

T-Bone Walker Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker (May 28, 1910 – March 16, 1975) was an American blues musician, composer, songwriter and bandleader, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues, West Coast blues, and electric blues sounds. In 2018 ''R ...

commented about the song, "You can't dress up the blues... I'm not saying that 'Saint Louis Blues' isn't fine music you understand. But it just isn't blues".

Performances

Writing about the first time "Saint Louis Blues" was played (1914), Handy noted that Singer and actress

Ethel Waters Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her no ...

was the first woman to sing "Saint Louis Blues" in public. She said she learned it from Charles Anderson and featured it herself during a 1917 engagement in Baltimore. Researcher Guy Marco, in his ''Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound in the United States'', stated that the first audio recording of "Saint Louis Blues" was by

Al Bernard Alfred Aloysous Bernard (November 23, 1888 – March 6, 1949) was an American vaudeville singer, known as "The Boy From Dixie", who was most popular during the 1910s through early 1930s. Life Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he became a blackface ...

in July 1918 for

Vocalion Records Vocalion Records is an American record company and label. History The label was founded in 1916 by the Aeolian Company, a maker of pianos and organs, as Aeolian-Vocalion; the company also sold phonographs under the Vocalion name. "Aeolian" was ...

. However, the house band at

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...

, directed by

Charles A. Prince Charles Adams Prince (1869 – October 10, 1937) was an American conductor, bandleader, pianist and organist known for conducting the Columbia Orchestra and, later, Prince's Band and Orchestra.''Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound'', p. 860. He m ...

, released an instrumental version in December 1915. The film ''

St. Louis Blues The St. Louis Blues are a professional ice hockey team based in St. Louis. The Blues compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference. The franchise was founded in 1967 as one of the ...

'', from 1929, featured

singing the song.

Other recorded versions

* Prince's Orchestra (1916) *

(1919) *

Marion Harris Marion Harris (born Mary Ellen Harrison; April 4, 1896 – April 23, 1944) was an American popular singer who was most successful in the late 1910s and the 1920s. She was the first widely known white singer to sing jazz and blues songs.Ward, Eli ...

(1920) *

Original Dixieland Jass Band The Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB) was a Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their " Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz record ever issued. The group composed and recorded many jazz standards, the ...

(1921) * W. C. Handy (1923) *

with Louis Armstrong (1925) *

Fats Waller Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, violinist, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid much of the basis for modern jazz pi ...

(1926) *

as "John Bennett" (Madison, 1928) *

(1929) *

(1930) *

Rudy Vallée Hubert Prior Vallée (July 28, 1901 – July 3, 1986), known professionally as Rudy Vallée, was an American singer, musician, actor, and radio host. He was one of the first modern pop stars of the teen idol type. Early life Hubert Prior Vall ...

(1930) *

The Mills Brothers The Mills Brothers, sometimes billed the Four Mills Brothers, and originally known as the Four Kings of Harmony, were an American jazz and traditional pop vocal quartet who made more than 2,000 recordings that sold more than 50 million copies an ...

(1932) *

(1936) *

Django Reinhardt Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953), known by his Romani nickname Django ( or ), was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most ...

(1937) *

(1939) *

Earl Hines Earl Kenneth Hines, also known as Earl "Fatha" Hines (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983), was an American jazz pianist and bandleader. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of jazz piano and, according to one source, " ...

(1940) *

Dizzy Gillespie John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy Eldridge but a ...

(1949) * Louis Armstrong – ''

Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy ''Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy'' is a 1954 studio release by Louis Armstrong and His All Stars, described by Allmusic as "Louis Armstrong's finest record of the 1950s" and "essential music for all serious jazz collections". Columbia CD re ...

'' (1954) *

Gil Evans Ian Ernest Gilmore Evans (né Green; May 13, 1912 – March 20, 1988) was a Canadian–American jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest orchestrators in jazz, playing an important role i ...

with Cannonball Adderley – '' New Bottle Old Wine'' (1958) * Dizzy Gillespie – ''Have Trumpet, Will Excite!'' (1959) *

Dave Brubeck David Warren Brubeck (; December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasti ...

– '' At Carnegie Hall''(1963) *

The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra was a jazz big band formed by trumpeter Thad Jones and drummer Mel Lewis in New York in 1965.Lisik/Allen. 50 Years at the Village Vanguard:Thad Jone, Mel Lewis and the Village Vanguard Orchestra. Sky Deck ...

– '' Monday Night'' (1968) *

Eumir Deodato Eumir Deodato de Almeida (; born 22 June 1942) is a Brazilian pianist, composer, arranger and record producer, primarily in jazz but who has been known for his eclectic melding of genres, such as pop, rock, disco, rhythm and blues, classical, ...

– ''Artistry'' (1974) *

George Wright George Wright may refer to: Politics, law and government * George Wright (MP) (died 1557), MP for Bedford and Wallingford * George Wright (governor) (1779–1842), Canadian politician, lieutenant governor of Prince Edward Island * George Wright ...

– ''Red Hot and Blue'' (1984) *

Herbie Hancock Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he hel ...

with Stevie Wonder – ''

Gershwin's World ''Gershwin's World'' is a studio album by the American jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. Prominent guests include Joni Mitchell, Kathleen Battle, Stevie Wonder, Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea. It contains songs written by George and Ira Gershwin. It f ...

'' (1998)

References

External links