KATHERINE HANDY LEWIS

 

Katherine Handy

Katherine Handy Lewis ( June 20, 1902 in Normal , Alabama ; July 15, 1982 in the Bronx , New York City ) was an American blues and jazz singer and pianist.

Handy, daughter of composer W. C. Handy , was the second of six children and spent her childhood in the southern United States. In 1919 her family came to New York and moved to 139th Street in Harlem . In the 1920s and 1930s she sang on the radio. Handy recorded two songs as a singer and pianist for the Paramount label , on December 9, 1932, "Underneath the Harlem Moon", on which she was accompanied by Fletcher Henderson and his orchestra. Despite her success - the song, written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel, reached #19 in the US charts - she initially did not record any more songs.  In the further course of her professional career she worked as a columnist for the Defender in Chicago and as a secretary for the music publisher Irving Mills . She married Homer D. Lewis and devoted herself primarily to raising her family, but continued to work for her father's company, the Handy Brothers Music Company , of which she was briefly the managing director.

  

In 1944 she recorded six blues songs for the Folkways Records label under her married name Katherine Handy Lewis with the pianist James P. Johnson  , including five of her father's songs (such as the "Yellow Dog Blues") and in 1953 together with her father the " St. Louis Blues ". In the field of jazz she was involved in six recording sessions between 1922 and 1953. Her last public appearance was in March 1981 at a concert in New York's Carnegie Hall , when the historic concert of April 27, 1928, at which African-American musicians were allowed to perform there for the first time, was reenacted.

Discographical information

Katherine Handy Lewis: WC Handy Blues Sung by His Daughter in Traditional Style (1958)

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