🎂🎂🎂Father of the Blues "W.C. Handy" Museum 🏛

William Christoper Handy was born November 16, 1873, in Florence, Alabama.  

Come celebrate the birthday of W.C. Handy on November 16 at the Handy Home, Museum, and Library on 620 West College Street in Florence. 

From 11:00AM to 1:00PM you can tour the museum and listen to music on the front lawn of the museum. 

It is free to the public with a birthday cake and other refreshments.

In 2009, my daughter, granddaughter, and I joined in the celebration and toured the Museum, Home, and Library. 

Happy Birthday Father of the Blues "The chocolate cake was  delicious"

Bust of Handy

Picture of Handy 

Library 

Handy and the St Louis Blues

Inside the Cabin

Handy's Piano

Kitchen of Cabin 

The W. C. Handy Birthplace, Museum, and Library, in Florence, Lauderdale County, was established to celebrate the life of musician and composer William "W. C." Handy (1873-1958), known as the "Father of the Blues." Handy himself donated the seed money to set up the museum, which now includes several buildings and houses a large collection of memorabilia, personal items, and objects relating to Handy's musical career. 

Handy gave to the city the $29,000 he was paid for the land on which the cabin stood to be used for the future restoration of his childhood home as a museum. The cabin was carefully dismantled and the logs were numbered and stored for later reassembly. Handy also bequeathed a large number of his personal possessions to the city to be used in the cabin after a suitable new location was found.

A site was selected at 620 West College Street, in the southwest corner of town. Work began early in 1970 on reassembling the log cabin and on constructing a museum next to the cabin to properly house and display the artifacts and tell the story of Handy's life and career. The completed structure was filled with the artifacts that the Handy family sent to Florence from their home in New York, including the upright piano on which Handy composed the "St. Louis Blues," his brass trumpet, furniture, and numerous boxes of his letters, pictures, musical compositions, personal mementos, and datebooks.

Local citizens donated furnishings and other items that represented the period during which Handy lived there as a child. The W. C. Handy Museum opened to the public on June 7, 1970. 

A separate building was added in 1980 to house the Black Heritage Library, which was filled with books donated to or purchased for the museum under the direction of the Cabin Committee. 

In 2002, an addition was constructed that included a new area for the Black Heritage Library, office space, a kitchen, and a restroom as well as a community meeting room.

Article from the Encyclopedia of Alabama 

🚗~2002 Wednesday, July 22, Day Trip to Tullahoma, Tennessee

My daughter-in-law had an interview with the Board of Education in Tullahoma.

We traveled to Tullahoma, Tennessee, on a beautiful, bright, sunny day.

My grandson was wearing a bright orange American Eagle T-shirt, below-the-knee denim shorts, and brown tennis shoes, and he had a smile on his face.

Hannah and Jake 

My granddaughter wore a bright red t-shirt with "What Would Jesus Do" printed on the front, denim shorts, and gray tennis shoes.

I was wearing a white tee shirt with a Harley Davison motorcycle printed on the front (that I had purchased at the Harley Davidson Store in Gulf Shores, Alabama), with denim shorts, white tennis shoes, and white socks with American flag and USA on the neck of the socks.

My daughter-in-law was wearing a long black skirt, a mint green pullover top, and black sandals.

While Jake, Hannah, and I were interviewing my daughter-in-law, we walked over to the Gano/Bussell log cabin.

It is the oldest known structure in Tullahoma, built about 1850. 

Gano/Bussell Log Cabin

Standing on the porch of Gano/Bussell Log Cabin

The log cabin once stood at 607 Atlantic Street, where it was dismantled and later reassembled at its current location, 404 South Jackson Street, at the Public Square.

The reassembled log cabin received a tin roof, steps to the back and front, and a covered front porch.

A wooden rocker and bench are placed on the front porch for visitors to relax.

The smell of fresh herbs came from the fenced-in herb garden nearby.

Here, we took pictures and made videos.

Besides the Board of Education building, we saw the Tullahoma Public School (now Civic Center) school buses, the Red Cross building, and a Confederate Cemetery Historical Marker that read:

1 mile SW has buried 407 unknown Confederates. Many of these died in one of the hospitals established here when Tullahoma was headquarters for the Army of Tennessee during the first six months of 1863, following the Battle of Murfreesboro and preceding the withdrawal of the Army of Chattanooga.

Tullahoma Public School 

Red Cross building 

CONFEDERATE CEMETERY

The kids posed for a picture at the South Jackson Civic Center, built in 1886 as the first public school.

We ate lunch after my daughter-in-law finished her interview. 

We then rode to Lynchburg, Tennessee, where we toured the Jack Daniel Distillery.

We each took turns taking pictures beside the life-size image of Jasper Newton, "Jack Daniel."

Jake tried to poke his finger up Jack's nose.

Jake, Hannah, and a picture of Jack Daniels

Several displays at the visitors' center explained the basic steps to making Tennessee whiskey.  

1. Mix the mash (corn, barley, malt, and yeast) with iron-free spring water.  

2. Ferment the mash for 6 days. No heat is applied, but the 2-story towers of mash bubbled f furiously from the generated carbon dioxide as the sugars are converted to alcohol. Fermentation results in the mash having about a 24% alcohol level.

3. Boil the mash and cool the resulting vapor to extract the alcohol. The liquor is now 70% alcohol (140 proof), and just a tiny whiff will hit you like a bag of rocks!

4. Slowly drip the liquor through 10 feet of maple charcoal to "mellow" the flavor. As it is collected from the bottom of the charcoal tower, it is still 140 proofs, but the sharpness is gone. As I understand it, only after this mellowing stage can the liquor be declared "Tennessee whiskey."

5. Add spring water to cut the whisky to 80 proof (40% alcohol).  

6. Place in a charred oak barrel and age for at least 4 years in an unheated/uncooled warehouse. The changing temperatures push the whisky in and out of the barrel's pores, extracting sugars and giving it its color.

Pull the barrels and bottle!

After visiting the museum, we watched a short film by Jack Daniel about some independent spirits calling Lynchburg home. 

We were taken on a tour of the distillery process along with a group of others.

We visited the barrel warehouses, stills, and spring and bottle plants.

We saw the iron safe that killed Jack. 

One morning, Jack could not remember the combination to his safe, kicked it, got gangue green, and later died.

Several whiskey labels are distilled here: Old No. 7, Gentleman Jack, Tennessee Honey, Tennessee Fire, Green Label, Silver Select, Winter Jack, and No. 27 Gold.

Our guide, a long-time Distillery member, looked much like Jack Daniels but in a much larger version.

Standing next to Jack Daniels 

After our tour, I photographed the grandkids next to our much larger version of Jack Daniels.

We thanked him and walked back through the visitor's center, through the front door of our car, and down the road home.

OUR Guide, Hannah, Jake

Our Guide, Statue of Jack Daniels

Setting on the Wall near flower vines at Jack Daniels