HANDY, W.C. (1873-1958). Jogo Blues. Moscow, c.1920.

Rare Russian edition of the printed piano score, with graphic cover illustration and introduction by U. Bainkop in Russian.

According to jazz historian Frank Tirro, W.C. Handy was the ‘man largely responsible for the spread and popularity of the blues as we know it today’. One of Handy’s compositions, The Memphis Blues, was the first blues tune ever published in 1912. In 1913, Handy wrote Jogo Blues, using an old blues melody that his boyhood preacher would hum while passing the collection plate. The melody would eventually become the main theme of his more famous St. Louis Blues. Tirro, 133.

Folio (341 x 262 mm). Original self wrapper separating along the fold. Provenance: Swann Auction Galleries, New York, 19 April 2007, lot 100.

[With:] The Negro Operetta: USSR Tour [Negritianskaia Operetta: Gastroli v SSSR]. Moscow & Leningrad: T’Sentral’noe Upravlenie Gostsirkami, 1926. Rare programme for the performance of Shokoladnye Rebiata at the State Circus Buildings in Moscow, 16 March - 5 May 1926, and Leningrad, 8-23 May 1926, published by the Central Administration for the State Circus as a special number of the journal Tsirk [Circus]. Cover design and photomontages throughout by Konstantin Vialov. Wire-stitched in the original black and red printed self-wraps, 264 x 223 mm.

The unsympathetic depiction of African American musicians on both cover illustrations here is complicated and very much represents, despite the rise in jazz’s popularity as a fashionable pastime, that there were still strong racial undertones to the ‘unknown’ of this new musical phenomenon.

Please note that this is an historical artefact. Some of its language and terminology, which reflects the context and culture of the time of its creation, is now considered outdated and culturally offensive; its contents may be at odds with contemporary views