Captain John Handy — Pass Christian Jazz

John Handy was born in Pass Christian in 1900. His father and brothers played music at Gulf Coast resort hotels, and Handy joined them as a child. By the 1920s, he was playing clarinet in New Orleans bands and leading the Louisiana Shakers. He switched to alto saxophone in 1928. The Mississippi Gulf Coast in those years was a frontier within the state — coastal population at statehood had been 2.5 percent of Mississippi's total, with cultural influences Mediterranean as much as Southern. By the early twentieth century, the region gained prominence as a gambling and tourist mecca, resorts drawing winter crowds. Handy came up in that world, playing for guests before he was grown. During the 1960s, he played with Kid Sheik Cola and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He recorded for GHB, RCA, and Jazz Crusade. He became one of the most respected jazz alto saxophonists of the New Orleans tradition. The Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University interviewed him multiple times. He died in New York in January 1971, at the age of seventy. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker in downtown Pass Christian honors the intertwined histories of blues and jazz on this shore. The Jazz in the Pass festival, first held in 1999, continues the tradition. The marker is free to visit.