He made the first commercially recorded blues track and called himself the “Father of the Blues”. WC Handy was a well-trained musician who early in his career performed in minstrel shows. WC Handy also performed ragtime, helping to pioneer jazz which WC Handy was later also a composer of jazz. Considering his music catalog WC Handy musically may have contributed more so to jazz (check out the album Louis Armstrong Plays WC Handy (1954) but is included in this timeline because of his early impact on the blues. His two primary musical disciplines ragtime, and the blues are also the main components of what became jazz.