As a boy, Handy would sneak down to the river bank and listen while the dirt-poor Negro laborers sang their songs of toil. Their songs left feelings that would become the Blues.

Handy ran away from home when he 18 years old because his father was against his becoming a musician. Times were hard and Handy more than once found himself trying to survive through a cold night on the street. On one of these occasions he heard a man say how he hated to see the sun go down. The words stuck with him and were added to his Blues later on.

Handy acknowledged that there were different Blues, but it all comes from way down. Years later he would describe his music as "the sound of a sinner on revival day." Handy�s blues came from sleeping in the street and hunger during hard times. He said that "true American music sprang from the Negro." He was most famous for writing down the Blues that had long been around. He was an important scholar and historian of Negro American culture.