Around September 28, 1542, the date given in some sources, Iberian explorers, sailing under the Spanish flag, arrived in San Diego Bay. While exploring the northwest shores of Mexico, they became the first Europeans to reach this part of California. Their observations may have informed Diego Gutierrez’s draft of the first map of America to include the name California (pictured below), which references Baja California, or Cape California, at the far southern part of Baja. This image is displayed in the Inventing America section of the Library of Congress online exhibition 1492: An Ongoing Voyage.

By 1888, Harriet Harper observed a more refined San Diego. In her Letters from California, she describes San Diego as:

…curled up in the arms of her beautiful bay…[with] long lines of yellow graveled streets…many wooden houses…[and] utter innocence of flower and foliage…. An electric railway runs past my windows; steam motors take you in any direction. The principal streets have electric lights and cement pavements, and there is an encouraging amount of building going on…all conditions are favorable for a future great city.

“VII: The Place of Ramona’s Marriage—A Trip into Mexico” in Letters from California by Harriet Harper. Portland, ME: Press of B. Thurston & co., 1888. [Image 37+]. “California as I Saw It:” First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849 to 1900. General Collections

This 1915 cityscape shows the continued growth and prosperity of San Diego in the early twentieth century.

On Saturday, September 28, 1912, William Christopher (W. C.) Handy’s Memphis Blues of Mister Crump, retitled The Memphis BluesExternal, went on sale at Bry’s Department Store in Memphis. Although the first 1,000 copies sold out in three days, Handy was told that the song had flopped. When the publisher offered to buy the rights for just fifty dollars, the composer agreed.

Born in Alabama in 1873, Handy attended Teachers Agricultural and Mechanical College in Huntsville. After a short stint teaching school, he began playing cornet with dance bands that traveled the Mississippi Delta. Handy transcribed and collected blues songs that he had heard on the road in the 1890s, but continued to play the ragtime dance tunes that audiences demanded. To identify recordings of W.C. Handy performing, search the American Folklife Center’s Traditional Music and Spoken Word Card Catalog.

By 1909, Handy had settled in Memphis, Tennessee, a Delta city with a cosmopolitan population and a limitless appetite for music. In Memphis, even mayoral races warranted musical accompaniment. As one of the top bandleaders in town, Handy was hired by aspiring mayor E. H. Crump. To attract attention to his candidate, Handy wrote an original tune entitled “Memphis Blues of Mister Crump” which merged the blues sound with popular ragtime style by slightly flattening the third tone of the scale. Overwhelmingly popular, the song contributed to electoral success for Crump and musical success for Handy.

A Lasting Impact

Swindled out of his first big hit, W.C. Handy went on to produce “St. Louis Blues”External in 1914, “Beale Street Blues”External in 1916, and other popular works. By the time of his death in 1958, W. C. Handy was recognized across the world as the “Father of the Blues.”

In the 1910s and 1920s, songs like “Memphis Blues” and “Beale Street Blues” were considered ragtime dance tunes. The emergence of  ragtime music changed popular dance. Search on ragtime in the Library’s digital collection An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490 to 1920. Five dance manuals in this collection were published in 1914, including Modern Dancing by the famous exhibition ballroom dancers, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle. One of the first dances developed for ragtime, the Cake Walk is demonstrated in short films available in Variety Stage Sound Recordings and Motion Pictures. See dancers doing the cake walk, as well as a comedy cake walk.