And his being 12 years older than Jelly Roll Morton (in fact 17 years), 20 years older than Broonzy (in fact 30 years), and about 40 years older than Memphis Slim, seems to have somehow made him a less exciting informant to A. Lomax than said others, instead of more.

Handy’s being articulate, well-spoken, consistent, and making reasonable claims 99% of the time seems to have bored A. Lomax to death, when the latter would avidly listen to, and quote, and broadcast, and release the recordings of Morton and Broonzy’s stories, some of which he knew to be utter nonsense, regardless.

In his first letter to John Hammond in June 1938, A. Lomax writes: “[Morton], himself, is extremely bitter because of the neglect he suffered for a number of years and tends to run down other musicians and boast of his own achievements more than is fair to either, I suspect.” Morton had indeed fiercely “ran down” Handy in the press, soon before.

A BBC listener in 1951 would have first heard a recording of Big Bill Broonzy telling an insane story, and then A. Lomax commenting: “What is there to do but laugh, for Bill has now passed beyond the region of fact into the tall story, onto the big lie (…), onto the satire (…).” A record buyer in the late 1950’s would have heard the same story, listening to Blues in the Mississippi Night, and seen it transcribed in the liner notes, but without AL’s comments in either case.

He was a storyteller.

One could argue that he did not make that very clear (at all), that he used the authority (and funds) of a historian to make the claims of a novelist, and yet I fail to dislike him completely, even for doing that.

And I think it is partly because he does not write like a historian. My thought would broadly be: “How could one not see that these are the words of a poet, a lover, an advocate?”

But then, it would be easy for me to think that, now that we know so much more.

Also, due to my not being an American citizen in the 1940’s, he did not use my funds to do that.