🎂🎂🎂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.

It was a beautiful bright sunny day as we traveled to Tullahoma, Tennessee.

My grandson was wearing a smile on his face, a bright orange American eagle Tee Shirt, with below the knee denim shorts and brown tennis shoes.

Hannah and Jake 

My granddaughter was wearing a bright red tee shirt with “What would Jesus Do” printed on the front with 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, mint green pull over top with black sandals.

While my daughter-in-law was being interview Jake, Hannah and I walked over to the Gano/Bussell log cabin.

It is the oldest known structure in Tullahoma build 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.

A tin roof was added, steps to the back and front were added, and a covered front porch was added to the reassembled log cabin.

Placed on the front porch were a wooden rocker and bench for visitors to relax on.

The smell of fresh herbs came from the fenced in herb garden near by.

Here we took pictures and made videos.

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

1 mile SW is 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 that was 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 tour of the Jack Daniel Distillery.

We each took turns taking pictures beside the of the life size picture of Jasper Newton “Jack Daniel.”

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

Jake, Hannah and picture of Jack Daniels

At the visitors’ center was several displays explaining 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 then cool the resulting vapor to extract the alcohol. The liquor is now 70% alcohol (140 proof), and just a small whiff will hit you like a bag of rocks!

4. Slowly drip the liquor through 10 feet of maple charcoal to "mellow" the flavor. It is still 140 proofs as it is collected from the bottom of the charcoal tower, 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 pores in the oak barrel, extracting sugars and giving the whiskey its color.

Pull the barrels and bottle!

After visiting the museum, we watched a short film by Jack Daniel’s about some of the independent spirits who call Lynchburg home. 

Along with a group of others, we were taken on the tour of the distillery process.

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

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

Our guide a long time member of the Distillery looked very much like Jack Daniels but a much larger version.

Standing next to Jack Daniels 

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

We thanked him, walked back through the visitor’s center the front door to our car and road home.

OUR Guide, Hannah, Jake

Our Guide, Statue of Jack Daniels

Setting on Wall near flowers, vines at Jack Daniels