A Sign of Rain

Success may well have many fathers (and failure's an orphan), but songwriter/ cornet-player W.C. Handy surely makes the short list of Blues' big daddies. His “St. Louis Blues” became one of the genre's first national hits (1914), and by the 1920s Blues was rockin' retail. It wasn't a guys-only shop. The decade saw the arrival of Ida Cox and Mamie Smith, whose laments (“Bone Orchard Blues” and “Crazy Blues” respectively) link their lovers' exits to their own looming departures. More cosmic than carnal, “Countin' the Blues” namechecks all the songs Ma Rainey, deeply bummed and sleepless, tries to sing, “my face turned to the wall.”