WEBVTT - Selects: What was Tin Pan Alley? 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:03.360 Hi everyone, It's me Josh and for this week's select, 0:00:03.400 --> 0:00:07.440 I've chosen our tinpan Alley episode from May twenty nineteen. 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:10.399 It's one of those topics I knew nothing about but 0:00:10.600 --> 0:00:13.920 was pleasantly surprised to find that it's super interesting. It's 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:16.439 about the birth of the music industry and the place 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:18.680 where a lot of great songs that are still really 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.240 great today were produced. Hope you enjoy this episode. 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:34.840 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:38.120 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:40.960 I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:42.440 there's Jerry over there. 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:47.800 And this is stuff you shnow The Superstar Edition, the 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:49.400 old time he Superstar Adition. 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:52.360 Yeah, man, I thought this was super cool. 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:54.680 It tinpan Alley. 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:56.800 Yeah, this is one of those things where I've I 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.600 sort of knew what tinpan alley was. You always have 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:04.039 heard that term thrown around, but I never really really 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:06.400 got it until this episode. 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:06.840 Yeah. 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:09.759 Same here, and it's pretty cool. Like the term tin 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:14.720 pan alley t I N full stop p A n Ali. 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:17.200 You forgot a second full stop there. 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:19.600 Full stop. I just want to make sure people know 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.880 it's not one word like ten pan. Right, it's two words, right, 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:27.720 but that is linguistically speaking, that's a synectic key. What 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:29.280 it is? 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.080 You know what that is, right, I've seen the movie. 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:38.240 Man, that movie. Geez talking about the Charlie Cofflin thing. 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:42.399 Right, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, senectady, senectic key New York. 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:46.480 Yeah. So a senectic key is it's when a specific 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:51.240 place stands in for a broader term, like Wall Street, 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:54.080 like Wall Street's a real street, but wall Street also 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:57.920 means like the finance industry, right, or Hollywood, Hollywood's a 0:01:57.960 --> 0:01:58.400 real place. 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:00.920 Okay, this makes a lot more since then the Charlie 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:01.720 Coffman movie. 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:09.400 Yeah, so ten pan Alley is a bunch of things. 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.639 It was a place right in New York City, which 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.560 we'll get to in a second, like exactly where, and 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:19.360 it was also referred to sort of the beginnings of 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:23.639 the music publishing industry and a genre as well. 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:24.360 Yep. 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:26.600 So it's kind of a lot of things, but it 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:30.720 stems from the root of a ten pan, like a 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:33.800 ten pan or a was a cheap piano. Like if 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:35.480 you had a really cheap piano, you would say it 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:37.440 sounds ten panny. 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:39.760 Right, because like that's what the hammer on the piano's 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:41.680 hitting is ten pans rather than strings. 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:43.760 Yeah, it sounds just like a real tenny tone, like 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:46.040 you're beating on a tenpan. So that's where the term 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:49.160 originally came from. And depending on who you ask, this 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:53.600 area of New York was called tinpan Alley because perhaps 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:56.480 a journalist first wrote about it. All the sounds coming 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.799 from the songwriters from these buildings on this one block 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:01.800 sounded like tinpan Alley. 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:07.320 Right, it's no exaggeration to say tinpan Alley. Specifically this 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:10.720 little stretch in New York like a block or so, 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:11.840 maybe less than a block. 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:13.880 Again, it's a block, okay. 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:19.560 Was the place where the American popular music industry was born? 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:24.200 Yeah, so it's specifically twenty eighth Street between six and Broadway, 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:28.360 kind of between Chelsea and kIPS Bay, a little northwest 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:29.919 of like the flat Iron building. 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:30.560 Gotcha. 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:35.560 And it's interesting to think that, like the music, the 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:41.839 beginnings of music distribution wasn't like pre phonograph from pre records. 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:45.520 There was still music distribution, but it was it was sheet. 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:47.800 Music right right, So I think choke, we should get 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:49.760 back in the way back the ooh and go to 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.960 an indeterminate part of the mid nineteenth century in the 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:53.680 United States. 0:03:53.720 --> 0:04:03.880 Let's do it. So, like you said, there's everywhere, there's. 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:06.720 A lot of it. It's like you said, if you 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:11.080 wanted to hear music, you had basically two choices. You 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:14.640 could go hear it played live somewhere everywhere, from a 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:20.800 barbershop quartet to maybe an orchestra or board right or 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.919 you could have a family member who knew how to 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:26.200 play music and buy a piano and have it in 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:30.120 your home. Those were your two ways to hear music 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.559 because everywhere there was no such thing as radio. 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.120 Let's just let's just say it everybody. Yeah, there was 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:39.720 no radio. 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.680 There wasn't and if you think about it, radio was was. 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:45.080 You know, we take it so much for granted today, 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:50.080 but it was a huge watershed change in the way 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:54.080 that Americans in the world heard their music. You could 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:57.200 just hear it at home being played by professionals like 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:00.320 the most the greatest musicians you've ever heard, just sit 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:02.359 around and listen to it at your home, whereas just 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:05.559 years before, a few years before, you had to listen 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:07.440 to your twelve year old try to bang out some 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:11.240 song on the piano that you just bought and that 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:13.800 was your option, aside from going to hear it live. 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:18.839 And so this whole idea of the music industry being born, 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:22.440 it was basically predicated on two things, Chuck. One was 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.839 the fact that pianos were starting to become ubiquitous in 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:30.360 American houses and people were learning how to play those pianos, 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:34.240 so music instruction became kind of widespread. And then secondly, 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:38.800 copyright law started to really solidify in the United States 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.279 in the nineteenth century, and so that sheet music became 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:43.440 much more valuable than it was before. 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.680 Yeah, Like, if you can't, like I can't read sheet music, 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:48.440 I learned I can't either. Yeah, I learned to play 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:53.320 guitar by ear, and kind of I guess every friend 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:57.279 I know that's a musician except for a couple learned 0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:00.480 by ear. If you came up formally through through high 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.880 school band or something like that, or maybe just private 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.560 music instruction, then you may be able to read music. 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:08.560 But back in the day, if you could not end 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.200 still today, if you could not play by ear, the 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:16.640 only way to do so was through sheet music. And 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.520 that was the first commodity in the music business, was 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:22.960 literally just selling sheet music to people, right so it's 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:24.440 hard to wrap your head around now, but that was 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:25.400 the commodity. 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:26.640 It is hard to wrap your head around. 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:28.839 But if you think about sheet music is basically the 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:34.479 predecessor to the cassette or the record or the CD 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:38.040 or the MP three, it's the exact same thing. It's 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.960 just to hear it, like that is what you went 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:43.320 and bought at the store and then you came home 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.000 and played it rather than listening to somebody else playing it. 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:48.960 Yeah, and like they sold a lot of them, like 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.200 the very first hit that tin Panale put out, and 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:54.080 this was a period. I mean, this was an eighteen 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.960 eighty one when Wait Till the Clouds Roll By was 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:01.280 put out, So tin Panale generally was or early eighteen 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:04.760 eighties till early nineteen twenties or so I saw. 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.320 Like late nineteen twenties, was it really Yeah. 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:09.360 Yeah, I guess you know, you can never say when 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:13.880 it was dead dead, But in one month in eighteen 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:18.520 eighty one, they sold seventy five thousand copies of sheet 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:20.160 music to Wait Till the Clouds Roll By. 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:23.240 Right, that's amazing, yeah, because this was it was a 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.880 good song and people wanted to hear the song, so 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:29.560 they went and bought the sheet music. Yea, So that 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:31.360 was one thing, right, So there was sheet music. That 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:33.960 was how you got this stuff out. But even before 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.640 Wait Till the Clouds Rolled By, which it seems like 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:40.280 was probably America's first number one smash. 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:41.559 Hit yeah pop music. 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:44.680 Prior to that, there was plenty of sheet music to 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:50.240 be sold, but it was a largely like church hymns storing. 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:54.960 It was. There was a lot that were sold for schools. 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.640 And like I said, copyright law changed. It allowed tim 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:02.880 panale to develop, and it did so in two ways. 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:07.640 One it like the court started taking copyrights for music 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:10.840 seriously in the second half of the nineteenth century, so 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:15.040 you could actually enforce your copyright against people who were 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:20.480 infringing on it. And then secondly, the courts, the Supreme 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.480 Court and specifically said, hey, if you wrote a song 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:27.640 outside of America, when it comes to America it enjoys 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.680 you can copyright it in America too, which means that 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:34.600 the music publisher's source of free sheet music, which was 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.880 just basically stealing foreign music, printing it out in sheet 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:40.520 music form, and then selling it and not paying any 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:45.040 royalties because it enjoyed no copyright protection, that source dried up, 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.480 and so all of a sudden, this American music that 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:51.160 they had to pay for now seemed a lot more 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:55.000 attractive because now they had to pay for the music 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.560 generated overseas too. So this is copyright law and the 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:00.280 fact that more and more people were learn need to 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:02.680 play piano, and so you had an actual market four 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:05.120 sheet music. Those two things came together. 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.440 All right, let's take a break. I feel like that's 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.520 pretty good setup, okay, and we'll come back and talk 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.320 a little bit about who these music publishers were and 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:17.800 how they went about their work early on in the 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:32.240 Tenpen Alley era right after this. All right, So we've 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:34.760 been throwing around the term music publishers a lot, and 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:36.640 that sort of means a different thing now than it 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:41.800 did back then. But back then music publishers some of 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:45.000 them wrote songs, to be sure, but generally they did 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.439 not a lot of the early publishers out of Tinpan 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:53.600 Alley had backgrounds as salespeople. So there was a guy 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:57.840 named very successful publisher, name Isidore Witmark. He started out 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:02.280 selling water filters. Another one name Leo Feist, sold corsets. 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.880 Another one named Joe Stern and Edward B. Mark sold 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:10.120 neckties and buttons, and a lot of these people, I 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:13.120 guess we should point out too, came over from Europe. 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:19.360 A lot were Jewish, some African American songwriters like they 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:24.120 were minorities kind of for the most part. Early on, 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:24.920 it feels. 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.440 Like right, and they saw a huge opportunity in this 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.040 music business that was starting to coalesce, because prior to this, 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:35.360 I mean, there were music publishers, but it was basically 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.080 some guy who worked at a printer who had a 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.480 friend who could transpose music by ear and they would 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:46.080 just take some song that they heard and turn it 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.480 into sheet music and start selling it. Or they worked 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:50.800 at the music store, and the music store basically did 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.160 the exact same thing. And so everyone was ripping off 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:58.400 everyone else's songs, and anybody could be a music publisher. 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:00.720 But when those copyrights started to be come and forced, 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:05.640 it became much more valuable to invest in original music 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.400 because you could make a lot more money off of it. 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:13.120 So those a lot of those Jewish immigrants and a 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:16.960 lot of the African American songwriters and composers kind of 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:22.239 coalesced into New York. They came from Boston and Detroit 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.480 and Atlanta, and Saint Louis and all over the country, 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.640 and all those towns lost their publishing houses and they 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:32.760 all moved to New York and they very specifically moved 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:37.360 to this one little stretch on twenty eighth Street and 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:39.120 it became Timpan Alley. 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:43.400 Yeah, And it's really interesting to look at like how 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.160 it worked back then and how it sort of mirrored 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.800 how like music grew out of that model really and 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:51.760 changed in some ways, but kind of stayed the same 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.640 in a lot of ways too. Like you always hear 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:56.959 about music contracts and how terrible they are for rock 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:00.280 musicians or pop musicians, and it was kind kind of 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:03.000 the same way back then. These these publishers got together. 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:08.400 They created this songwriting factory on this block of buildings 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:11.920 through different companies, and they would get they would recruit 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:16.560 songwriters to come in. They had different arrangements. Sometimes they 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:19.360 would just buy it outright from you, including the rights 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.880 to change the name of who wrote it. Sometimes they 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:26.760 would have the right to throw one of the other more, 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:30.440 I guess once they had, you know, established themselves another 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:33.720 co author's name on there. But they would just you know, say, 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.000 write these songs, write these songs, and we're going to 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:38.120 buy them from you, and we're going to try and 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.120 make them pop. Like you couldn't put them on the radio, 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.040 so we're going to try and get them popular by 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:48.360 getting them onto vaudeville and on stage and sending not moles, 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:52.120 I guess, but it was almost like early Payola, sending 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:56.280 these performers into vaudeville to sing these songs, to perform 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.520 these songs, and people are like, well, that's pretty catchy, 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:00.240 I want that, right. 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.120 That's how they that's how they marketed it, and that 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.080 was like the whole thing, Like if you it was 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:09.240 the first time that that music became an industry because 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:12.280 there was almost an assembly line feel to it where 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:15.280 they would have feelers out to find out, like what 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.800 people were into as music at the time. One of 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:21.920 the one of the early transitions that tim Panale underwent 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:24.960 was when it started, it was a it was a 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:30.280 factory for churning out like comedic, often deeply racist songs, 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:35.559 lots of ballads, just what you think of as super 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:39.800 old timey songs, right, and then the public started to 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.120 get kind of bored with that and they decided that 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.520 they kind of liked this ragtime thing that the Scott 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:49.560 Joplin Fella has has started to create and so Tim Panale, 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:53.480 this is classic. Tim Panale went out figured out how 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:57.520 to play rag time, started co opting the ragtime genre 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.000 and created pop music. So they took what was a 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:05.720 really difficult kind of music. It's called syncopated rhythm, where 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.800 you've got a melody within a rhythm, right, so you 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:10.679 know rag time, right? 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:11.160 Sure? 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.520 Okay, So they figured out how to take this very 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:18.240 difficult thing and kind of popify it to make it 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:22.960 easy for the audience to play. Because again, here's the thing. 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.840 They're not saying, Hey, you're the best of the best 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:29.040 studio musician. We've got this really tough song over here 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:31.240 that sounds great, but it's really tough to play. We 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:32.720 want to pay you to come play it. We're going 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:35.640 to record it and distribute it onto the radio that 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:38.040 didn't exist yet. They had to figure out how to 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:42.120 take difficult songs kind of dumb them down into something 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.760 catchy and memorable and importantly easy to play, so that 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.880 they could sell that sheet music to local musicians or 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:51.680 those barber shop cortets, or so that the twelve year 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:53.680 old at home could play it for the rest of 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:56.000 their family, and so that is how they kind of 0:14:56.040 --> 0:15:00.480 started to take popular music and make it even more popular. 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.640 They decided what music was popular based on what what 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:07.040 the what America was starting to get into at the time. 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:11.520 Yeah, and they would there were these musicians called song pluggers. 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:15.240 So how it would work is a music publisher in 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:19.360 ten Panelle would buy a song or the rights to 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:23.200 a song off of a musician who wrote it, maybe 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:25.320 put their own name on it, and then they would 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:27.680 give that song to a song plugger, who is a 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.680 musician who would go and perform this at a music 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:33.840 shop that maybe sold pianos or something like that. And 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.480 this was pre radio. How they got the music out 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:39.440 in the public and it was and it was crazy. 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.440 These song pluggers got money. Irving Berlin started out as 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:43.560 a song plugger. 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:47.560 Right, And so it's kind of like if you you know, 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:49.600 how you go to a grocery store on a Saturday 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:52.280 and they'll be sitting there giving out samples of something sure, 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.840 and you'll say, oh, this this cheese with this cracker 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.160 tastes really good. I'm going to go buy this cheese 0:15:57.200 --> 0:15:59.720 and these crackers. This is the exact same thing, except 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.200 you say, oh, this song sounds really good, I'm going 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.040 to buy the sheet music. That's what music pluggers were for. 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:07.160 That's how they got the word up, that's how they 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.040 advertised the music was to play them. And then another 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:11.680 way to do it, Chuck, is like you were saying, 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.080 they would set vaudeville shows up or musical reviews or 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:22.400 Broadway shows whatever with these popular songs and these songwriters 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:25.560 to help get them out that way too, so the 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.000 audiences would go hear these things. So you could hear 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:30.120 them in the music shop, you could hear them at 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:37.320 the theater, you might hear them. Well, it's basically it 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:39.200 is the theater and the music shop where the two 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:40.800 main venues. Unless I'm forgetting one. 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:43.720 Yeah, and they would. That was the plugging. But there 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.880 was also booming. So, like I said, you had Irving Berlin, 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.280 and like George Gershwin started out as a song plugger, 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:53.000 Al Sherman started out as a song plugger. But if 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:55.160 you wanted to be more aggressive than that, even you 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.840 would do something called booming, which is you would buy 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.720 like twenty five tickets to a show. You would have 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.880 the plugger up there playing the song, and then those 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:10.200 twenty five people were plants basically that already knew the song, 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:13.560 that would sing along to it and then everyone, you know, 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:16.000 the only thing better than hearing a great song for 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:18.840 the first time, And you know, nineteen ten in New 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.800 York City is hearing twenty five people around you singing 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:24.000 it and you're thinking, how have I been missing out 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:24.480 on this thing? 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:24.960 Right? 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:26.440 And that may be the first time it was ever 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.399 performed in public. And it was all just a big, 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:31.480 kind of a big scam. 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.040 It was. It's hilarious though, that that's how you just 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.720 look around and suddenly be overcome with fomo. So you'd 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:39.840 be into this new song and run out and buy. 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:41.520 The sheet music I guess early fomo. 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:45.520 So there was this process. 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:46.480 To all this, and like you said, like you could 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:50.439 be like a no name composer who would show up 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:52.919 at tim Panlley with the song that you're trying to sell, 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:55.600 and if it was good, the publisher might buy it, 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.280 but like you said, you would get some sort of 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:00.479 terrible contractor they would buy it out right, take your 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:02.680 name off of the composition and put their own name 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:07.439 on there. But they also hired composers I think like 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.880 you were saying too, where they were they were they 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:11.760 had they had a few hits under their belts, so 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.159 they had a steady gig at the music publisher and 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:17.399 their contract was a little better, but they were not 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:20.359 in creative control for the most part, to where the 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:23.440 music publisher would say, Hey, everybody's into this ragtime, make 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:26.320 me some ragtime songs. Everybody's into this jazz and this 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.159 blues stuff. Make me some bluesy kind of stuff that 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:31.840 I can turn around and sell. And the competition was 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:36.359 really fierce among the the in house composers, because just 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:38.720 because you composed a song doesn't mean it was going 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:41.399 to be turned around and transcribed into sheet music and 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.320 then people would buy it. Like you, you had to 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:47.560 basically audition your song to see whether it made it 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:50.119 to the next level. And so in tim Panelle, and 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:52.040 this is where it got its name, there would be 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:57.760 you know, no name composers, house composers, vaudeville acts, all 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:01.760 running around playing music from these open windows because there 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.320 wasn't air conditioning back then, and so at any given 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.840 time you'd walk down Timpanaley and there'd be a dozen 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:10.720 or scores of different songs all being played on these 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:13.600 pianos streaming out of the windows onto the street at 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.879 the same time, and that's where that reporter Monroe Rosenfeld, 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.240 came up with the idea timpanale. He said, when he 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.800 was walking down the street, he was kind of describing. 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:22.000 What that was like. 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:23.879 He said, it sounded like, you know, a bunch of 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:25.359 tim pans being struck at once. 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:28.120 Yeah, And this whole area of New York, this one 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:33.200 block just really became like a creative well. There were 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:38.200 vaudeville theaters, there were play theaters, like it was sort 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:41.199 of the earliest incarnation of the theater district before it 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:44.200 moved toward Times Square. And then other parts of the 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:49.080 entertainment industry obviously are drawn to that area. Variety Magazine 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:51.359 that's where it first popped up on that block when 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:54.640 it was called The Clipper. The William Morris Tallon Agency 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.000 had an office on that block, and it was just 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:02.200 sort of the you know, after I think Austin, Chicago, Cincinnati, 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:05.800 and I think one other city kind of where the 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.840 early seats of the early music industry. It all roundly 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.119 landed in New York and just such a creative area 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:13.720 and era. 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:16.360 It's so neat to think about it too, because that's 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.879 happened in places before where if you take a bunch 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:24.080 of creative people and jam them into a small area, 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:27.720 just amazing stuff happens. Like you can do something as 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:32.520 big as birth a genre of music, or like pop music, 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:35.679 which is like an umbrella. It's not even a genre. 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:38.960 There's genres underneath pop music, you know, where something that 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:41.359 big can happen when you get that many creative people 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:42.719 together in one place. 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:44.520 Should we take another break? 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:45.800 Sure? 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:47.800 All right, we'll take another break and we'll talk about 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:52.760 some of these songs these composers in the Great American 0:20:52.760 --> 0:21:09.440 Songbook right after this. All right, So there's money being made. Yeah, 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:12.199 Tad a lot of money, even for early on. I mean, 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:14.199 I can't imagine what sheet music costs, but they were 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.320 selling so much of it it added up. Irving Berlin, 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:21.080 I mean, he went on to start his own music 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:23.639 publishing business, but early on, when he was just pumping 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:28.160 out tunes. In nineteen seventeen, he made about one hundred 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:29.919 thousand dollars a year in royalties. 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:33.639 Yeah, that's nineteen seventeen dollars too, right. 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:36.679 Yeah, And these songs like these are some standards, you know, 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:41.719 it's what's known as the standard American Songbook just like 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:45.800 it's an unofficial designation, but they're considered to be like 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:50.080