Born in Florence Alabama, Handy was the son of former slaves. His father Charles Barnard Handy was a preacher. He learned to play the organ at a young age so that he could accompany the choir during church services. By 19, William learned to play cornet, taught music, and leaded bands. He toured with Mahara’s Minstrels and performed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where the ragtime craze started, and toured all the way to Cuba, learning the Latin rhythms used in the tango section of “St. Louis Blues.”

In 1896, while performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married on July 19, 1896. She gave birth to Lucille, the first of their six children.
By 1902, Handy settled in Clarksdale, Mississippi. It was simply a wealthy cotton town, Clarksdale society requiring orchestras for cotillions and other festivities.

In a railroad station in nearby Tutwiler he heard man playing a blues song; “a lean, loose-jointed negro... plunking a guitar beside me... As he played he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in the manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The weirdest music I had ever heard. The tune did stay in my mind.”

At a dance, during his orchestra’s break, Handy heard a Mississippi stringband play a mix of country, ragtime and blues, making more from the crowd’s tossed coins than Handy’s group’s contract. Handy was soon arranging these tunes for his group, including “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor,” known among modern country blues fans through Mississippi John Hurt's version.

Note; Sam Chatmon: Make Me A Pallet On the Floor (live recording by Alan Lomax in 1978). Scroll down on the page.

A few years later, Handy moved to Memphis’ Greasy Plank section, and started playing at Beale Street. In 1912, he published "Memphis Blues", and because no music publisher wanted to publish his sheet music, he took the initiative to do so (Memphis Blues was more ragtime than blues). Later the printer of the sheet music added lyrics, and the song became a huge hit.

In 1914, Handy with business partner Harry Pace published “The St. Louis Blues.” The song became an even bigger hit. A quarter century later, Handy said it was still bringing him $25,000 in annual royalties.
That began the Handy-Pace firm’s (Pace & Handy Music Company) string of hit blues, including “Hesitation Blues,” “Joe Turner’s Blues,” “Yellow Dog Blues,” “Careless Love” and more.

Handy had learned how profitable buying songs could be and purchased material from other writers, like “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Eddie Green. By that time he was living in New York. Handy and Pace split up the partnership in 1921; Pace forming Black Swan record company.
In 1926, Handy published his classic songbook, Blues; An Anthology.
By then, Handy’s songs had helped create an entire blues industry. Every label was recording blues songs, not just by white vaudevillians like Al Jolson, Emmet Miller and Sophie Tucker, but by such African-American icons as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Papa Charlie Jackson, Blind Blake and more.

Description of the film
Will Handy grows up in Memphis with his preacher father and his Aunt Hagar. His father intends for him to use his musical gifts only in church, but he can't stay away from the music of the streets and workers. After he writes a theme song for a local politician, Gogo, a speakeasy singer, convinces Will to be her accompanist. Will is estranged from his father for many years while he writes and publishes many blues songs. At last the family is reunited when Gogo brings them to New York to see Will's music played by a symphony orchestra.

“If anyone owned a dozen cans and piled them on a couple of shelves behind a printed sign, he was a grocer and a businessman,” Handy wrote in Father of the Blues. “But anyone who contracted for musicians and played for parties over a dozen states was a good-timer and a rounder, if not worse.”

W.C. Handy - Blues: an anthology (1926, 1949)

W.C. Handy collection - 1942 - 1957 (The New York Public Library; Archives and Manuscripts)
Extensive catalog includes "St. Louis Blues," "Yellow Dog Blues," "Beale Street Blues," "Muscle Shoals Blues," "Livery Stable Blues," "Harlem Blues." Copyright on more than 150 pieces of music, both secular and religious.