11 – TIN PAN ALLEY

POPULAR SONGWRITING AS A BUSINESS

Tin Pan AlleyBefore the formation of Tin Pan Alley at the turn of the century, composing as a business can be traced back to the overwhelming success of Stephen Foster whose charming, colourful plantation songs depicting an idealized "Gallant South" were all the rage in the mid 1800's. By 1879, the groundwork for what would evolve into the Tin Pan Alley songwriting district was being established when Frank Harding began publishing popular songs from his family's publishing firm in New York City. Other pioneer song publishers previous to the turn of the century included T. B. Harms and The Witmark Brothers.

By the beginning of the often romanticized Gay Nineties, sentimentality was at its peak and the patriotic music of "The March King," John Philip Sousa had taken the world by storm. In 1892, a man named Chas K. Harris toyed with the idea of composing "songs made to order," a concept which would later be expanded upon and defined by the writers of Tin Pan Alley.

POPULAR SONGWRITING PIONEERS

STEPHEN FOSTER

JOHN PHILIP SOUSA

CHAS K. HARRIS

PAUL DRESSER

HARRY VON TILZER

TIN PAN ALLEY

Between 1880 and 1910, Europeans flocked to America in droves. For many Jews, America, the so-called "Promised Land" offered few improvements. Often treated as harshly as blacks, they too formed their own tight communities and by the turn of the century, for those with talent, music was one of the few ways out.

Prior to 1900, a group of songwriters, the great majority being Jewish, formed a club situated at 28th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway in New York City. This clique was a way to unify established commercial composers, mainly as an avenue to help promote their songs. It later moved to 46th Street between Broadway and 6th Avenue where it came to be known as Tin Pan Alley. Soon after radio came into power in the 1920's, it moved to 52nd Street and Madison Avenue.

It was said that songwriter/journalist Monroe H. Rosenfield heard the sound of Harry Von Tilzer playing his upright piano, later writing in a 1903 article that it sounded like the clatter of kitchen pots and pans, hence the name Tin Pan Alley. Von Tilzer had wound strips of paper through his piano strings to produce a desired honky-tonk effect. The rollicking style caught on especially with the song pluggers. Another romantic notion stated that the neighbours complained because there were so many pianos tinkling at once on one block that the racket caused them to baptize the area Tin Pan Alley.

Songs were written, showcased, sold and popularized through assembly line songwriters and song pluggers. Many early composers were unable to read music nor were they accomplished enough vocalists to properly promote their songs, so singing pianists were hired to plug the best songs to established performers for the express purpose of getting exposure for the material. These song pluggers or demonstrators were often called boomers or alleymen. Competition and rivalry for hits was intense and plugging became big business. So fierce was the competition that arrangements were sometimes given away free to major artists so that pit orchestras could play the songs immediately. Pluggers would often wine and dine the big stars in order to sell their current songs.

The seeds of Tin Pan Alley had been sown with the founding of such publishing firms as T. B. Harms (1881) and Witmark Brothers (1886). These firms were pioneers in the idea of issuing sheet music as a business.

By 1910, money was flooding in and Tin Pan Alley had become the songwriting centre of North America. Between 1900 and 1910, more than 100 songs had sold more than one million copies of sheet music. Britain's equivalent of Tin Pan Alley was situated at Denmark St. in London's West End.

Quite often, the pluggers were almost as well known as the composers. Coney Island began presenting a weekly song pluggers night and many top entertainers would attend just to hear one plugger after another pitching his latest batch of tunes. The best songs were snapped up immediately. In 1914, the flashy getups worn by the song pluggers, consisting of bowler hats and obnoxiously loud, skimpy suits, triggered new fashion trends. One snappy plugger named Mickey Addey started the fad for turtleneck sweaters.

Alleymen would often play piano at movie theatres between silent films while the lyrics to the latest songs were projected on the screen for audiences to sing along. One such plugger was the young George Gershwin.

Any method of selling songs was utilized to its greatest extent. If the great Al Jolson introduced a new song, he demanded co-writer status or at least his photograph on the sheet music cover.

Song trends varied. If a song about dreams became popular, writers immediately jumped on the bandwagon, searching their catalogues for another dream song with hit potential. Some of the successful dream songs included "Meet Me Tonight In Dreamland" (1910) and "Dreams Of Long Ago"(1912). Other trends featured car songs such as "In My Merry Oldsmobile"(1905), baseball songs like "Take Me Out To The Ballgame"(1908) and "The Grand Old Game Of Baseball"(1912) and songs about the South like "Swanee"(1919) and "Is It True What They Say About Dixie?"(1936). Trends were often influenced by newsworthy events such as the 1912 hit, "The Sinking Of The Titanic." Still other fads were heart songs like "Peg O' My Heart"(1913) and songs featuring girls' names like "Sweet Adeline" (1904)and "Sweet Sue"(1928).

At the beginning of World War One, American president Woodrow Wilson requested that Tin Pan Alley composers create positive patriotic songs to boost morale. Some of the greatest hits in that particular vein were "Sister Susie Sewing Shirts For Soldiers" (1915) by R. P. Weston and Herman E. Darewski, "Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag"(1915) by F. Powell and G. Powell, "Keep The Home Fires Burning"(1916) by Lena Guilbert Ford and Ivor Novello and "Over There"(1917) by the inimitable George M. Cohan.

In the early part of the century, sheet music sales were the main criteria for a song's success. During 1917 alone, over two billion copies of sheet music were sold. Later in the 1920's, record sales meant bigger profits for songwriters. And after the release of "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, the first commercial moving picture to incorporate sound, it became evident that music especially written for films including theme songs, special material and film scores meant even greater rewards for composers (see The Musical - Stage And Film).

In 1914, Tin Pan Alley allied to form The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (A.S.C.A.P.), but it was not until the 1920's that it began operating a licensing agency for the works of its members. It served as a watchdog for royalties and plagiarism. A.S.C.A.P. was a monopoly of sophisticated composers only. Independent writers, country and black writers were fair game for exploitation and were for the most part ignorant of royalties.

In 1941, radio stations organized their own performing rights society to rival A.S.C.A.P. called Broadcast Music Incorporated (B.M.I.). Rivalry was fierce. A.S.C.A.P. collected royalties only on live performances but B.M.I. collected royalties on both live performances and recorded performances on radio. Consequently, other non mainstream music forms such as country and later R&B and Rock And Roll found more acceptance at the B.M.I. stable. B.M.I. swelled with new writers and the A.S.C.A.P. monopoly was broken. That very same year, Tin Pan Alley crumbled, no longer the all powerful element on the popular music scene. Thus, many other diverse music styles began to prosper, especially country and western and black oriented music. Song pluggers were no longer needed since many of the new artists were capable of writing and promoting their own product. In the late 1950's, writers of the famous Brill Building would go on to achieve almost as much notoriety as Tin Pan Alley, using much of the same format and promotional tactics for the new pop/rock market.

PLAGIARISM - Using melodies or lyrics from copyrighted sources.

TUNE LIFTING - Using melodies from public domain (usually classical) and adding more current lyrics.

THE OUTSTANDING WRITERS OF THE TIN PAN ALLEY ERA

GEORGE M. COHAN.

JEROME KERN

FRED FISHER

HARRY CARROLL

GUS KAHN

HARRY RUBY & BERT KALMAR

VINCENT YOUMANS

IRVING BERLIN

GEORGE GERSHWIN

CON CONRAD

COLE PORTER

DeSYLVA, BROWN & HENDERSON

YELLEN & AGER

HOAGY CARMICHAEL

E.Y. "YIP" HARBURG

JOHNNY MERCER

HAROLD ARLEN

SAMMY FAIN

FRED E. AHLERT

ALSO SEE

BIBLIOGRAPHY