Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's me Josh and for this week's select,
Speaker 1: I've chosen our tinpan Alley episode from May twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: It's one of those topics I knew nothing about but
Speaker 1: was pleasantly surprised to find that it's super interesting. It's
Speaker 1: about the birth of the music industry and the place
Speaker 1: where a lot of great songs that are still really
Speaker 1: great today were produced. Hope you enjoy this episode.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there.
Speaker 3: And this is stuff you shnow The Superstar Edition, the
Speaker 3: old time he Superstar Adition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I thought this was super cool.
Speaker 3: It tinpan Alley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those things where I've I
Speaker 2: sort of knew what tinpan alley was. You always have
Speaker 2: heard that term thrown around, but I never really really
Speaker 2: got it until this episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Same here, and it's pretty cool. Like the term tin
Speaker 2: pan alley t I N full stop p A n Ali.
Speaker 3: You forgot a second full stop there.
Speaker 2: Full stop. I just want to make sure people know
Speaker 2: it's not one word like ten pan. Right, it's two words, right,
Speaker 2: but that is linguistically speaking, that's a synectic key. What
Speaker 2: it is?
Speaker 3: You know what that is, right, I've seen the movie.
Speaker 2: Man, that movie. Geez talking about the Charlie Cofflin thing.
Speaker 1: Right, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, senectady, senectic key New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So a senectic key is it's when a specific
Speaker 2: place stands in for a broader term, like Wall Street,
Speaker 2: like Wall Street's a real street, but wall Street also
Speaker 2: means like the finance industry, right, or Hollywood, Hollywood's a
Speaker 2: real place.
Speaker 1: Okay, this makes a lot more since then the Charlie
Speaker 1: Coffman movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so ten pan Alley is a bunch of things.
Speaker 2: It was a place right in New York City, which
Speaker 2: we'll get to in a second, like exactly where, and
Speaker 2: it was also referred to sort of the beginnings of
Speaker 2: the music publishing industry and a genre as well.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of a lot of things, but it
Speaker 2: stems from the root of a ten pan, like a
Speaker 2: ten pan or a was a cheap piano. Like if
Speaker 2: you had a really cheap piano, you would say it
Speaker 2: sounds ten panny.
Speaker 1: Right, because like that's what the hammer on the piano's
Speaker 1: hitting is ten pans rather than strings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds just like a real tenny tone, like
Speaker 2: you're beating on a tenpan. So that's where the term
Speaker 2: originally came from. And depending on who you ask, this
Speaker 2: area of New York was called tinpan Alley because perhaps
Speaker 2: a journalist first wrote about it. All the sounds coming
Speaker 2: from the songwriters from these buildings on this one block
Speaker 2: sounded like tinpan Alley.
Speaker 1: Right, it's no exaggeration to say tinpan Alley. Specifically this
Speaker 1: little stretch in New York like a block or so,
Speaker 1: maybe less than a block.
Speaker 2: Again, it's a block, okay.
Speaker 1: Was the place where the American popular music industry was born?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's specifically twenty eighth Street between six and Broadway,
Speaker 2: kind of between Chelsea and kIPS Bay, a little northwest
Speaker 2: of like the flat Iron building.
Speaker 3: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting to think that, like the music, the
Speaker 2: beginnings of music distribution wasn't like pre phonograph from pre records.
Speaker 2: There was still music distribution, but it was it was sheet.
Speaker 1: Music right right, So I think choke, we should get
Speaker 1: back in the way back the ooh and go to
Speaker 1: an indeterminate part of the mid nineteenth century in the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. So, like you said, there's everywhere, there's.
Speaker 1: A lot of it. It's like you said, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to hear music, you had basically two choices. You
Speaker 1: could go hear it played live somewhere everywhere, from a
Speaker 1: barbershop quartet to maybe an orchestra or board right or
Speaker 1: you could have a family member who knew how to
Speaker 1: play music and buy a piano and have it in
Speaker 1: your home. Those were your two ways to hear music
Speaker 1: because everywhere there was no such thing as radio.
Speaker 2: Let's just let's just say it everybody. Yeah, there was
Speaker 2: no radio.
Speaker 1: There wasn't and if you think about it, radio was was.
Speaker 1: You know, we take it so much for granted today,
Speaker 1: but it was a huge watershed change in the way
Speaker 1: that Americans in the world heard their music. You could
Speaker 1: just hear it at home being played by professionals like
Speaker 1: the most the greatest musicians you've ever heard, just sit
Speaker 1: around and listen to it at your home, whereas just
Speaker 1: years before, a few years before, you had to listen
Speaker 1: to your twelve year old try to bang out some
Speaker 1: song on the piano that you just bought and that
Speaker 1: was your option, aside from going to hear it live.
Speaker 1: And so this whole idea of the music industry being born,
Speaker 1: it was basically predicated on two things, Chuck. One was
Speaker 1: the fact that pianos were starting to become ubiquitous in
Speaker 1: American houses and people were learning how to play those pianos,
Speaker 1: so music instruction became kind of widespread. And then secondly,
Speaker 1: copyright law started to really solidify in the United States
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, and so that sheet music became
Speaker 1: much more valuable than it was before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, if you can't, like I can't read sheet music,
Speaker 2: I learned I can't either. Yeah, I learned to play
Speaker 2: guitar by ear, and kind of I guess every friend
Speaker 2: I know that's a musician except for a couple learned
Speaker 2: by ear. If you came up formally through through high
Speaker 2: school band or something like that, or maybe just private
Speaker 2: music instruction, then you may be able to read music.
Speaker 2: But back in the day, if you could not end
Speaker 2: still today, if you could not play by ear, the
Speaker 2: only way to do so was through sheet music. And
Speaker 2: that was the first commodity in the music business, was
Speaker 2: literally just selling sheet music to people, right so it's
Speaker 2: hard to wrap your head around now, but that was
Speaker 2: the commodity.
Speaker 3: It is hard to wrap your head around.
Speaker 1: But if you think about sheet music is basically the
Speaker 1: predecessor to the cassette or the record or the CD
Speaker 1: or the MP three, it's the exact same thing. It's
Speaker 1: just to hear it, like that is what you went
Speaker 1: and bought at the store and then you came home
Speaker 1: and played it rather than listening to somebody else playing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like they sold a lot of them, like
Speaker 2: the very first hit that tin Panale put out, and
Speaker 2: this was a period. I mean, this was an eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty one when Wait Till the Clouds Roll By was
Speaker 2: put out, So tin Panale generally was or early eighteen
Speaker 2: eighties till early nineteen twenties or so I saw.
Speaker 3: Like late nineteen twenties, was it really Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess you know, you can never say when
Speaker 2: it was dead dead, But in one month in eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty one, they sold seventy five thousand copies of sheet
Speaker 2: music to Wait Till the Clouds Roll By.
Speaker 1: Right, that's amazing, yeah, because this was it was a
Speaker 1: good song and people wanted to hear the song, so
Speaker 1: they went and bought the sheet music. Yea, So that
Speaker 1: was one thing, right, So there was sheet music. That
Speaker 1: was how you got this stuff out. But even before
Speaker 1: Wait Till the Clouds Rolled By, which it seems like
Speaker 1: was probably America's first number one smash.
Speaker 2: Hit yeah pop music.
Speaker 1: Prior to that, there was plenty of sheet music to
Speaker 1: be sold, but it was a largely like church hymns storing.
Speaker 1: It was. There was a lot that were sold for schools.
Speaker 1: And like I said, copyright law changed. It allowed tim
Speaker 1: panale to develop, and it did so in two ways.
Speaker 1: One it like the court started taking copyrights for music
Speaker 1: seriously in the second half of the nineteenth century, so
Speaker 1: you could actually enforce your copyright against people who were
Speaker 1: infringing on it. And then secondly, the courts, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court and specifically said, hey, if you wrote a song
Speaker 1: outside of America, when it comes to America it enjoys
Speaker 1: you can copyright it in America too, which means that
Speaker 1: the music publisher's source of free sheet music, which was
Speaker 1: just basically stealing foreign music, printing it out in sheet
Speaker 1: music form, and then selling it and not paying any
Speaker 1: royalties because it enjoyed no copyright protection, that source dried up,
Speaker 1: and so all of a sudden, this American music that
Speaker 1: they had to pay for now seemed a lot more
Speaker 1: attractive because now they had to pay for the music
Speaker 1: generated overseas too. So this is copyright law and the
Speaker 1: fact that more and more people were learn need to
Speaker 1: play piano, and so you had an actual market four
Speaker 1: sheet music. Those two things came together.
Speaker 2: All right, let's take a break. I feel like that's
Speaker 2: pretty good setup, okay, and we'll come back and talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about who these music publishers were and
Speaker 2: how they went about their work early on in the
Speaker 2: Tenpen Alley era right after this. All right, So we've
Speaker 2: been throwing around the term music publishers a lot, and
Speaker 2: that sort of means a different thing now than it
Speaker 2: did back then. But back then music publishers some of
Speaker 2: them wrote songs, to be sure, but generally they did
Speaker 2: not a lot of the early publishers out of Tinpan
Speaker 2: Alley had backgrounds as salespeople. So there was a guy
Speaker 2: named very successful publisher, name Isidore Witmark. He started out
Speaker 2: selling water filters. Another one name Leo Feist, sold corsets.
Speaker 2: Another one named Joe Stern and Edward B. Mark sold
Speaker 2: neckties and buttons, and a lot of these people, I
Speaker 2: guess we should point out too, came over from Europe.
Speaker 2: A lot were Jewish, some African American songwriters like they
Speaker 2: were minorities kind of for the most part. Early on,
Speaker 2: it feels.
Speaker 1: Like right, and they saw a huge opportunity in this
Speaker 1: music business that was starting to coalesce, because prior to this,
Speaker 1: I mean, there were music publishers, but it was basically
Speaker 1: some guy who worked at a printer who had a
Speaker 1: friend who could transpose music by ear and they would
Speaker 1: just take some song that they heard and turn it
Speaker 1: into sheet music and start selling it. Or they worked
Speaker 1: at the music store, and the music store basically did
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. And so everyone was ripping off
Speaker 1: everyone else's songs, and anybody could be a music publisher.
Speaker 1: But when those copyrights started to be come and forced,
Speaker 1: it became much more valuable to invest in original music
Speaker 1: because you could make a lot more money off of it.
Speaker 1: So those a lot of those Jewish immigrants and a
Speaker 1: lot of the African American songwriters and composers kind of
Speaker 1: coalesced into New York. They came from Boston and Detroit
Speaker 1: and Atlanta, and Saint Louis and all over the country,
Speaker 1: and all those towns lost their publishing houses and they
Speaker 1: all moved to New York and they very specifically moved
Speaker 1: to this one little stretch on twenty eighth Street and
Speaker 1: it became Timpan Alley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's really interesting to look at like how
Speaker 2: it worked back then and how it sort of mirrored
Speaker 2: how like music grew out of that model really and
Speaker 2: changed in some ways, but kind of stayed the same
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways too. Like you always hear
Speaker 2: about music contracts and how terrible they are for rock
Speaker 2: musicians or pop musicians, and it was kind kind of
Speaker 2: the same way back then. These these publishers got together.
Speaker 2: They created this songwriting factory on this block of buildings
Speaker 2: through different companies, and they would get they would recruit
Speaker 2: songwriters to come in. They had different arrangements. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: would just buy it outright from you, including the rights
Speaker 2: to change the name of who wrote it. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: would have the right to throw one of the other more,
Speaker 2: I guess once they had, you know, established themselves another
Speaker 2: co author's name on there. But they would just you know, say,
Speaker 2: write these songs, write these songs, and we're going to
Speaker 2: buy them from you, and we're going to try and
Speaker 2: make them pop. Like you couldn't put them on the radio,
Speaker 2: so we're going to try and get them popular by
Speaker 2: getting them onto vaudeville and on stage and sending not moles,
Speaker 2: I guess, but it was almost like early Payola, sending
Speaker 2: these performers into vaudeville to sing these songs, to perform
Speaker 2: these songs, and people are like, well, that's pretty catchy,
Speaker 2: I want that, right.
Speaker 1: That's how they that's how they marketed it, and that
Speaker 1: was like the whole thing, Like if you it was
Speaker 1: the first time that that music became an industry because
Speaker 1: there was almost an assembly line feel to it where
Speaker 1: they would have feelers out to find out, like what
Speaker 1: people were into as music at the time. One of
Speaker 1: the one of the early transitions that tim Panale underwent
Speaker 1: was when it started, it was a it was a
Speaker 1: factory for churning out like comedic, often deeply racist songs,
Speaker 1: lots of ballads, just what you think of as super
Speaker 1: old timey songs, right, and then the public started to
Speaker 1: get kind of bored with that and they decided that
Speaker 1: they kind of liked this ragtime thing that the Scott
Speaker 1: Joplin Fella has has started to create and so Tim Panale,
Speaker 1: this is classic. Tim Panale went out figured out how
Speaker 1: to play rag time, started co opting the ragtime genre
Speaker 1: and created pop music. So they took what was a
Speaker 1: really difficult kind of music. It's called syncopated rhythm, where
Speaker 1: you've got a melody within a rhythm, right, so you
Speaker 1: know rag time, right?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: Okay, So they figured out how to take this very
Speaker 1: difficult thing and kind of popify it to make it
Speaker 1: easy for the audience to play. Because again, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: They're not saying, Hey, you're the best of the best
Speaker 1: studio musician. We've got this really tough song over here
Speaker 1: that sounds great, but it's really tough to play. We
Speaker 1: want to pay you to come play it. We're going
Speaker 1: to record it and distribute it onto the radio that
Speaker 1: didn't exist yet. They had to figure out how to
Speaker 1: take difficult songs kind of dumb them down into something
Speaker 1: catchy and memorable and importantly easy to play, so that
Speaker 1: they could sell that sheet music to local musicians or
Speaker 1: those barber shop cortets, or so that the twelve year
Speaker 1: old at home could play it for the rest of
Speaker 1: their family, and so that is how they kind of
Speaker 1: started to take popular music and make it even more popular.
Speaker 1: They decided what music was popular based on what what
Speaker 1: the what America was starting to get into at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they would there were these musicians called song pluggers.
Speaker 2: So how it would work is a music publisher in
Speaker 2: ten Panelle would buy a song or the rights to
Speaker 2: a song off of a musician who wrote it, maybe
Speaker 2: put their own name on it, and then they would
Speaker 2: give that song to a song plugger, who is a
Speaker 2: musician who would go and perform this at a music
Speaker 2: shop that maybe sold pianos or something like that. And
Speaker 2: this was pre radio. How they got the music out
Speaker 2: in the public and it was and it was crazy.
Speaker 2: These song pluggers got money. Irving Berlin started out as
Speaker 2: a song plugger.
Speaker 1: Right, And so it's kind of like if you you know,
Speaker 1: how you go to a grocery store on a Saturday
Speaker 1: and they'll be sitting there giving out samples of something sure,
Speaker 1: and you'll say, oh, this this cheese with this cracker
Speaker 1: tastes really good. I'm going to go buy this cheese
Speaker 1: and these crackers. This is the exact same thing, except
Speaker 1: you say, oh, this song sounds really good, I'm going
Speaker 1: to buy the sheet music. That's what music pluggers were for.
Speaker 1: That's how they got the word up, that's how they
Speaker 1: advertised the music was to play them. And then another
Speaker 1: way to do it, Chuck, is like you were saying,
Speaker 1: they would set vaudeville shows up or musical reviews or
Speaker 1: Broadway shows whatever with these popular songs and these songwriters
Speaker 1: to help get them out that way too, so the
Speaker 1: audiences would go hear these things. So you could hear
Speaker 1: them in the music shop, you could hear them at
Speaker 1: the theater, you might hear them. Well, it's basically it
Speaker 1: is the theater and the music shop where the two
Speaker 1: main venues. Unless I'm forgetting one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they would. That was the plugging. But there
Speaker 2: was also booming. So, like I said, you had Irving Berlin,
Speaker 2: and like George Gershwin started out as a song plugger,
Speaker 2: Al Sherman started out as a song plugger. But if
Speaker 2: you wanted to be more aggressive than that, even you
Speaker 2: would do something called booming, which is you would buy
Speaker 2: like twenty five tickets to a show. You would have
Speaker 2: the plugger up there playing the song, and then those
Speaker 2: twenty five people were plants basically that already knew the song,
Speaker 2: that would sing along to it and then everyone, you know,
Speaker 2: the only thing better than hearing a great song for
Speaker 2: the first time, And you know, nineteen ten in New
Speaker 2: York City is hearing twenty five people around you singing
Speaker 2: it and you're thinking, how have I been missing out
Speaker 2: on this thing?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And that may be the first time it was ever
Speaker 2: performed in public. And it was all just a big,
Speaker 2: kind of a big scam.
Speaker 1: It was. It's hilarious though, that that's how you just
Speaker 1: look around and suddenly be overcome with fomo. So you'd
Speaker 1: be into this new song and run out and buy.
Speaker 2: The sheet music I guess early fomo.
Speaker 3: So there was this process.
Speaker 1: To all this, and like you said, like you could
Speaker 1: be like a no name composer who would show up
Speaker 1: at tim Panlley with the song that you're trying to sell,
Speaker 1: and if it was good, the publisher might buy it,
Speaker 1: but like you said, you would get some sort of
Speaker 1: terrible contractor they would buy it out right, take your
Speaker 1: name off of the composition and put their own name
Speaker 1: on there. But they also hired composers I think like
Speaker 1: you were saying too, where they were they were they
Speaker 1: had they had a few hits under their belts, so
Speaker 1: they had a steady gig at the music publisher and
Speaker 1: their contract was a little better, but they were not
Speaker 1: in creative control for the most part, to where the
Speaker 1: music publisher would say, Hey, everybody's into this ragtime, make
Speaker 1: me some ragtime songs. Everybody's into this jazz and this
Speaker 1: blues stuff. Make me some bluesy kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: I can turn around and sell. And the competition was
Speaker 1: really fierce among the the in house composers, because just
Speaker 1: because you composed a song doesn't mean it was going
Speaker 1: to be turned around and transcribed into sheet music and
Speaker 1: then people would buy it. Like you, you had to
Speaker 1: basically audition your song to see whether it made it
Speaker 1: to the next level. And so in tim Panelle, and
Speaker 1: this is where it got its name, there would be
Speaker 1: you know, no name composers, house composers, vaudeville acts, all
Speaker 1: running around playing music from these open windows because there
Speaker 1: wasn't air conditioning back then, and so at any given
Speaker 1: time you'd walk down Timpanaley and there'd be a dozen
Speaker 1: or scores of different songs all being played on these
Speaker 1: pianos streaming out of the windows onto the street at
Speaker 1: the same time, and that's where that reporter Monroe Rosenfeld,
Speaker 1: came up with the idea timpanale. He said, when he
Speaker 1: was walking down the street, he was kind of describing.
Speaker 3: What that was like.
Speaker 1: He said, it sounded like, you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: tim pans being struck at once.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this whole area of New York, this one
Speaker 2: block just really became like a creative well. There were
Speaker 2: vaudeville theaters, there were play theaters, like it was sort
Speaker 2: of the earliest incarnation of the theater district before it
Speaker 2: moved toward Times Square. And then other parts of the
Speaker 2: entertainment industry obviously are drawn to that area. Variety Magazine
Speaker 2: that's where it first popped up on that block when
Speaker 2: it was called The Clipper. The William Morris Tallon Agency
Speaker 2: had an office on that block, and it was just
Speaker 2: sort of the you know, after I think Austin, Chicago, Cincinnati,
Speaker 2: and I think one other city kind of where the
Speaker 2: early seats of the early music industry. It all roundly
Speaker 2: landed in New York and just such a creative area
Speaker 2: and era.
Speaker 1: It's so neat to think about it too, because that's
Speaker 1: happened in places before where if you take a bunch
Speaker 1: of creative people and jam them into a small area,
Speaker 1: just amazing stuff happens. Like you can do something as
Speaker 1: big as birth a genre of music, or like pop music,
Speaker 1: which is like an umbrella. It's not even a genre.
Speaker 1: There's genres underneath pop music, you know, where something that
Speaker 1: big can happen when you get that many creative people
Speaker 1: together in one place.
Speaker 2: Should we take another break?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: All right, we'll take another break and we'll talk about
Speaker 2: some of these songs these composers in the Great American
Speaker 2: Songbook right after this. All right, So there's money being made. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Tad a lot of money, even for early on. I mean,
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what sheet music costs, but they were
Speaker 2: selling so much of it it added up. Irving Berlin,
Speaker 2: I mean, he went on to start his own music
Speaker 2: publishing business, but early on, when he was just pumping
Speaker 2: out tunes. In nineteen seventeen, he made about one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year in royalties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's nineteen seventeen dollars too, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And these songs like these are some standards, you know,
Speaker 2: it's what's known as the standard American Songbook just like
Speaker 2: it's an unofficial designation, but they're considered to be like
Speaker 2: the classics of the early early twentieth century. Like, I mean,
Speaker 2: we all still know these songs, stuff like Ain't She Sweet?
Speaker 3: I don't know that's Ain't She Sweet?
Speaker 2: You're mucking down the street. What you don't know that song? No?
Speaker 3: That one I've not heard?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, do you know babyface? Yes, got the cutest
Speaker 2: little baby face.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love that song. It makes me smile.
Speaker 2: By the light of the silvery moon. Give my regards
Speaker 2: to Broadway. Sure, happy days are here again over there.
Speaker 2: A lot of this had to do with like wartime,
Speaker 2: early wartime stuff, right, Sweet Georgia Brown, Take Me out
Speaker 2: to the ballgame?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that in particular, we got to say that
Speaker 1: was written by two guys, Jack Norworth and Albert von Tilzer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they never they'd never seen a ball game before.
Speaker 2: Well maybe that's what they were saying.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the original take me.
Speaker 2: Out to the ballgame because I've never been right exactly,
Speaker 2: And they changed that line.
Speaker 1: But that was so tim Panaley like where it's like
Speaker 1: everybody's into baseball right now, so let's make a song
Speaker 1: about baseball. You two, we've never seen a baseball game.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Make it, make me a song, and
Speaker 1: that's that's how it Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Speaker 1: was formed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think under one of the like you
Speaker 2: said earlier, some of the early work with like kind
Speaker 2: of humorous comedy songs. One that still stands out today,
Speaker 2: I believe from that genre is Yes, we Have No Bananas,
Speaker 2: which I always thought was kind of funny when I
Speaker 2: was a kid.
Speaker 3: It's a little funny, and I guess I still do
Speaker 3: if I'm being honest.
Speaker 1: There was also Yeah, you can go down this line.
Speaker 1: And there's some pretty substantial songs that were written during
Speaker 1: this time, and not all of them were standalone. A
Speaker 1: lot of them, like I said earlier, were created for
Speaker 1: musical reviews. America the Beautiful was written by Irving Berlin
Speaker 1: for a musical review called Yep, Yep, Yep Hank, which
Speaker 1: no one.
Speaker 3: Has heard of.
Speaker 2: No one knows that anymore, but.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be performed and produced by Soldiers.
Speaker 1: I had an eight show run, but the song, obviously,
Speaker 1: America the Beautiful has survived long beyond that because it
Speaker 1: became an American standard.
Speaker 3: So like these these vas.
Speaker 1: That were built around to kind of get the song
Speaker 1: out there to the public faded away, But the songs
Speaker 1: themselves have stood the test of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I think he pulled it from that production.
Speaker 2: Or was it in the original production or did he
Speaker 2: pull it?
Speaker 3: I think it was in the original one.
Speaker 2: Well, he eventually pulled it out of the production then
Speaker 2: because he thought it was too sentimental. And then that
Speaker 2: song went on to be the one that everyone remembers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, You're right. I'm sorry it didn't show
Speaker 1: up in there. But you also said so. You mentioned
Speaker 1: Irving Berlin forming his own publishing house. He was a
Speaker 1: quintessential Rags to Rich's story for Tim Panaley, where he
Speaker 1: was like a waiter in a cafe, became a song plugger,
Speaker 1: one of those guys who plays songs to basically his marketing,
Speaker 1: couldn't reacheat music, knew everything by ear, had a friend
Speaker 1: transposed the songs he came up with into actual written music.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty get a little facto it that Irving
Speaker 2: Berlin couldn't read or write music right.
Speaker 1: And then he became a well known composer. And then
Speaker 1: he became such a well known composer. He opened his
Speaker 1: own publishing house and then started making one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year in royalties.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: There was another guy named Charles K. Harris who was
Speaker 1: one of the earlier success stories. I think in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety three or two, he had a song called After
Speaker 1: the Ball and he just knew it was a gem
Speaker 1: because he offered it to a publisher and they offered
Speaker 1: him a price for it that he was like, that's
Speaker 1: way too low. I'm going to set up my own
Speaker 1: publishing house. And he did, and he started selling it
Speaker 1: and was making something like twenty five thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: week in eighteen nineties money, which is like seven hundred
Speaker 1: grand a week. This guy just went from nobody to
Speaker 1: seven hundred grand a week. Ended up selling five million
Speaker 1: copies of his song After the Ball. And if you
Speaker 1: listen to it now, it's not that good. Frankly, it's not,
Speaker 1: but bully for him.
Speaker 2: You know, it's no ancient suite. No, Yeah, it's amazing, man.
Speaker 2: People like popular music hit the world like, you know,
Speaker 2: like a lightning bolt from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yes, because it was so ultra tailored for the American public.
Speaker 1: Like again, they would take Ragtime, which was a Scott
Speaker 1: Joplin creation, And Scott Joplin was the son of a slave.
Speaker 3: He was an African American.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people thought he was white.
Speaker 1: Still to this day, a lot of people think he
Speaker 1: was white. I think because of his name, Frankly, and
Speaker 1: it was the predecessor. Ragtime was the predecessor to jazz.
Speaker 1: And it had like a real like feel to a
Speaker 1: real soul. Everybody's heard like some of the original ragtime music,
Speaker 1: like The Entertainer and Maple Leaf rag And if you
Speaker 1: can't immediately bring those to mind, just go to YouTube
Speaker 1: and you'll be like, oh, okay, of course I get that.
Speaker 1: But the idea that Tim Panlley could just kind of
Speaker 1: come along and take this cool, deep soul for music
Speaker 1: and opify it basically to make it palatable to audiences,
Speaker 1: in particular white audiences who had the most money at
Speaker 1: the time. That was why it would why it became
Speaker 1: so successful. It was almost dumbed down. It was music
Speaker 1: that was dumbed down in a way to make it
Speaker 1: appeal to as many people as possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or even worse, co opted by white publishers and
Speaker 2: producers to be used in minstrel shows. Yeah, this version
Speaker 2: of music, this new genre of music that was so
Speaker 2: unique in the Harlem Renaissance by Scott Joplin, was co
Speaker 2: opted for minstrel shows. So shameful.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's a real debate going on now about the
Speaker 1: legacy of Timpanalei in some ways, and some people point
Speaker 1: to it and say, look, these guys were churning out
Speaker 1: the most eye poppingly racist songs that that America has
Speaker 1: ever come up with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were some, to be sure.
Speaker 1: They were, they were coming, they were selling them to
Speaker 1: the masses. And in doing this, because this was the
Speaker 1: origin of popular music, they were really effectively perpetuating racial
Speaker 1: stereotypes and embedding them more than they ever had been
Speaker 1: before because people were not being mass audiences were being
Speaker 1: reached like they were with this early sheet music. And
Speaker 1: so in this respect, tim panale doesn't deserve to be
Speaker 1: revered or respected.
Speaker 2: Or designated as a historical landmark. Is the real fight?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I guess.
Speaker 1: Recently, as like late last month, I believe, Chuck, there
Speaker 1: was a Landmark Commission City Landmark Commission meeting where this
Speaker 1: was being debated, right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and so like you said, some people were
Speaker 2: saying that. On one hand, other people are saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: but so many of these were Jewish immigrants, an ethnic minority,
Speaker 2: so many of them were African American songwriters, and tin
Speaker 2: Panale was also the home to the first black owned
Speaker 2: and operated music publishing business in the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some people are saying, look like, yes, it was
Speaker 1: taken in co opted to be popular, but so were
Speaker 1: operettas and ballots, like that's just what they did. It
Speaker 1: wasn't meant to be offensive to African Americans. And as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, it was basically these Jewish immigrants saying,
Speaker 1: I kind of identify with your plight. I want to
Speaker 1: preserve and celebrate this and expose this music to as
Speaker 1: many people as possible. And that some people pointed this
Speaker 1: process in Tinpanaley as the way that the African American
Speaker 1: arts became exposed to the larger the larger population of America.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that debate's going on.
Speaker 1: That's where the idea of whether or not this area
Speaker 1: should be designated as an historic landmark is falling, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you said, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 2: pinpoint an actual death date of tinpan Alley, because these
Speaker 2: things like that happened gradually over time. But technology, like
Speaker 2: it has so many other times, kind of killed the
Speaker 2: notion of Tin Panaley, didn't it.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point, right, So the radio, it
Speaker 1: was the radio radio killed the old timey sheet music star.
Speaker 2: And then video killed the radio star.
Speaker 3: Right exactly.
Speaker 1: So again, you didn't need to make sheet music any longer,
Speaker 1: or you certainly didn't have to learn to play sheet
Speaker 1: music at home if you wanted to enjoy music, if
Speaker 1: you could just buy a radio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people quit buying pianos, and yeah, it's kind of sad,
Speaker 2: it is said.
Speaker 1: It would be nice if everybody was walking around and
Speaker 1: knew how to play a piano, like hotel lounges would
Speaker 1: be a lot more interesting, right, Yeah, But that's I mean,
Speaker 1: once the radio came along, everybody said, so long sheet music.
Speaker 1: I hated you all along, but you were my only option.
Speaker 1: Now I can listen to like Benny Goodman and all
Speaker 1: of these other cats who are super hip and really
Speaker 1: good at what they're doing, and I want to listen
Speaker 1: to their music. And not only did technology kill Timpanale
Speaker 1: in this sheet music publishing industry, but It also changed
Speaker 1: the the genre a little bit. It kind of skewed
Speaker 1: it more into swing and some of this yeah big band,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that came out of the thirties
Speaker 1: onward or that was really kind of where that transition went.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Have you ever been somewhere where they have a
Speaker 2: public piano and seen someone just walk by and sit
Speaker 2: down and blow minds?
Speaker 3: Didn't you see Greg Almond do that?
Speaker 2: Oh my god?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: If you know someone who saw that, please try and
Speaker 2: remember who it was, because I need to hear that story.
Speaker 3: I'll try to remember. I can't remember who it was.
Speaker 2: That's pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't think I'm making this up.
Speaker 1: Let me let me go back through my specific mental
Speaker 1: role of DEECKX.
Speaker 3: But have you ever seen that?
Speaker 2: Sure, just like you're I mean, not Greg Almond, but
Speaker 2: I've just seen your regular average person sit down at
Speaker 2: a piano and like, wow, Someone New York does this
Speaker 2: from time to time. They'll have them on a sidewalk
Speaker 2: or in a park or something. And in Atlanta they
Speaker 2: have one over in Atlantic Station. I've seen people to
Speaker 2: it there and it's always just really cool. And that
Speaker 2: makes me miss the fact that piano like a lot
Speaker 2: more people used to learn piano than they do now.
Speaker 1: I think I would love to know how to play
Speaker 1: the piano me too, for that time, for that very reason,
Speaker 1: because I'd love to be able to sit down and
Speaker 1: just want to play that guy so bad right someday
Speaker 1: it's not too late.
Speaker 2: I remember the first time I saw it was at
Speaker 2: a student council retreat in high school. There was this one.
Speaker 2: You know, all the student councils from the county get
Speaker 2: together over the course of a weekend or a week
Speaker 2: and do stupid stuff and learn about leadership. But there
Speaker 2: was there's always like this one guy on student council
Speaker 2: at another school where you're like, man, he didn't seem
Speaker 2: like a student council type.
Speaker 3: He seems like he's thirty.
Speaker 2: This guy did, and he was on student council at
Speaker 2: some other school. But he was like, you know, had
Speaker 2: like the rat T shirt and it was just sort
Speaker 2: of a like a dirty metal head.
Speaker 3: The bad boy of student counsel.
Speaker 2: He totally was. And there was a piano and one
Speaker 2: of the lobbies of the dormitory is where we stayed
Speaker 2: at Barry College in Rome, Georgia, and on the very
Speaker 2: last day there were a bunch of people hanging out
Speaker 2: in there, and this dude goes over and sits down
Speaker 2: and just crushes it. And I remember seeing the girls
Speaker 2: in the room and thinking that guy has got it
Speaker 2: all going on, right, Like that's the key man.
Speaker 1: And that boy and the rat T shirt grew up
Speaker 1: to be Greg allman.
Speaker 3: Have you have you ever been.
Speaker 1: To Siggold's Request Room now or that you and me's
Speaker 1: friend Joe McGuinty owns it. He's a co owner of it,
Speaker 1: and he plays piano there. It's just like sing along
Speaker 1: piano karaoke. Oh wow, and it is amazing.
Speaker 3: I cannot believe you haven't been there yet. You have?
Speaker 2: So does one person play the piano and everyone sings along?
Speaker 1: Joe McGuinty plays and then no, there like like people
Speaker 1: can sing along if you want, but it's really one
Speaker 1: person going out there and doing karaoke with Joe accompanying
Speaker 1: you on the piano.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well I've done I've done the rock and
Speaker 2: roll live band karaoke before. Oh yeah, here in Atlanta,
Speaker 2: which is a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you where do you do that?
Speaker 2: Uh? Somewhere in the Highlands. I think the dark Horse.
Speaker 3: Maybe Okay, yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I went for my birthday a couple of years
Speaker 2: ago and did Cheap Tricks Surrender and did a pretty
Speaker 2: good job, if I may say so.
Speaker 1: Is that Surrender Parentheses? Dream Police?
Speaker 2: Those are two different songs.
Speaker 3: Okay? Is it surrender Parentheses? I Want You to Want Me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the one. Okay, I've heard that song, but
Speaker 2: it's funny at the one in Atlanta, there's you know,
Speaker 2: the DJ English Nick.
Speaker 3: No, wait, was he on like the radio like radio DJ?
Speaker 2: Yeah? He still is sure English Nick in Atlanta. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he hosts it and he is the the the emergency
Speaker 2: backup if you're no good, because being bad at karaoke
Speaker 2: is no fun, but being bad at live being karaoke
Speaker 2: is really no fun for anyone. So he stands back
Speaker 2: there and if you're not very good, he's singing along
Speaker 2: with you, and he will just give the signal to
Speaker 2: sort of do a little upping of his vocals and
Speaker 2: lowering of the other vocals.
Speaker 3: Is it like the slice across your neck like that?
Speaker 2: Nah? I mean I think it's just like an eye signal.
Speaker 2: I got it, and I remember being nervous. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: man if they bring up English Nick during surrendering and
Speaker 2: be mortified. But they didn't, and afterward he gave me
Speaker 2: a nod like a good job, buddy.
Speaker 1: Oh oh you got the nod from English Nick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it means a lot.
Speaker 3: I have the opposite story.
Speaker 2: Oh what happened?
Speaker 1: I went to Claremont Lounge to do karaoke years back,
Speaker 1: chose to do Darling Nicky.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
Speaker 1: In the middle, the karaoke DJ breaks in and goes,
Speaker 1: It's like William Shatner singing, isn't.
Speaker 2: It a Oh my god?
Speaker 1: You mean was there supporting dancing but really just hanging
Speaker 1: on by your fingernails? You know?
Speaker 2: You got it? Stopped and insulted mid.
Speaker 3: Song, mid song, but I finished buddy good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would literally pay one hundred dollars to have seen that.
Speaker 3: I wager it would have been worth two fifty. Okay,
Speaker 3: it was pretty pretty bad.
Speaker 2: Do we have anything else on Tinpan Alley?
Speaker 3: I forgot what we were talking about? Shuck, Well we should.
Speaker 2: We're not going to get into it here. We should
Speaker 2: do a full show on as CAP though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because yet another thing that Irving Berlin did was
Speaker 1: create as CAP the American Society of composers and performers.
Speaker 3: Right, I think producers producers.
Speaker 1: Okay, man, I didn't even have it in front of me,
Speaker 1: but they basically protect and register copyrights for artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's kind of so convoluted to these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it definitely deserves its own thing.
Speaker 1: But that was another thing that was born out of
Speaker 1: timpan Alley.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know what, I am living in the
Speaker 2: future now because I have a turntable now, finally again
Speaker 2: after many many years of not having one that I
Speaker 2: can play wirelessly throughout all the speakers in my home. Oh,
Speaker 2: isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3: That is the future for sure, that you can.
Speaker 2: Actually do that, and it sounds great. And now I
Speaker 2: just went to the record store for the first time
Speaker 2: in a long time yesterday and bought thirteen records. I
Speaker 2: traded in probably five hundred CDs to get thirteen records.
Speaker 2: He was like, I'll give you one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: bucks for the lot, and I was like, fine.
Speaker 1: Fine, just get these stupid ninety CDs away from me.
Speaker 2: Now. They were great, but it was just I felt
Speaker 2: like I should pay him to take all these off
Speaker 2: my hands.
Speaker 3: Did you still have the jewel cases?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they were all there, something jeweled up and
Speaker 2: so yeah, I bought records for the first time. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to make that a when we go on
Speaker 2: tour now and when I travel, I'm going to make
Speaker 2: it a point to go into local record stores again.
Speaker 3: I think that's great.
Speaker 2: I really really had a good time thumbing through records.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: I'll go with you, text me, yeah, let's do it. Okay.
Speaker 1: I think that's it for timpan Alley, rip Timpanelle. Depending
Speaker 1: on your viewpoint, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 2: There needs to be a great I know there was
Speaker 2: a movie in the forties called ten pan Alley, but
Speaker 2: someone should do a really good look at the early
Speaker 2: burgeoning film I'm sorry, movie into almost oh boy, music
Speaker 2: industry about ten Penalty.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that would be great. There's so many characters involved.
Speaker 2: Just put Hugh Jackman in a Sharknado in it.
Speaker 3: Yep, we're all good.
Speaker 2: And by the way, you got called out for bringing
Speaker 2: back bread.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: I said in some episode that I think the Diving
Speaker 1: Bell episode, that we should bring Bread back, and I
Speaker 1: guess that's what the kids all say.
Speaker 2: Now. I didn't realize that, but like at least ten
Speaker 2: people emailed and said, yeah, millennials are talking about getting
Speaker 2: that bread. Yep, it's like they are.
Speaker 1: I guess so I like to think that I had
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing to do with that.
Speaker 2: No, I bet, I bet you were the seed?
Speaker 3: Do you think so? You never know? Man, that'd be cool.
Speaker 1: Before we go to the chuck, I do have one
Speaker 1: more thing, well, I have to give a shout out
Speaker 1: to what I considered the greatest song to come out
Speaker 1: of Timpanaley, and I believe it was an Irving Berlin song.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was Let's have another cup of Have.
Speaker 2: You heard this soul? We use that for something, didn't we?
Speaker 1: I don't remember. We probably did because it's prominent in
Speaker 1: one of my favorite movies of all time, Paper Moon.
Speaker 1: That was a great song. I love that song so much.
Speaker 1: If you haven't ever heard that song, go listen to
Speaker 1: it because it's one of the most just blindly optimistic
Speaker 1: songs of all time and it's about coffee yep and pi. Okay,
Speaker 1: now that's it. Now I've got nothing else. If you
Speaker 1: want to know more about Tim pan Alley, you can
Speaker 1: go read up on it and maybe follow whether it's
Speaker 1: going to get designated as in a story.
Speaker 3: Clan mark or not, we'll find out. In the meantime,
Speaker 3: it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: So this is just a very sweet email from someone. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: I'm sure you received emails like this all the time,
Speaker 2: but I would be remiss if I didn't thank you
Speaker 2: for all the wonderful work you do. I've had a
Speaker 2: really tough time with mental illness, and there have been
Speaker 2: a lot of nights your wonderful podcast staved off panic
Speaker 2: attacks or worse. Wow, thank you for keeping me calm
Speaker 2: and educated, and thank you for making me feel safe
Speaker 2: even in periless circumstances. Thank you for giving me something
Speaker 2: to talk about when my depression has kept me in
Speaker 2: a fog. Without your massive backlog and seemingly endless supply
Speaker 2: of fresh, fascinating subjects, I surely would be lost. Spend
Speaker 2: some time researching, and I can truly appreciate just how
Speaker 2: much time and energy go into becoming familiar enough with
Speaker 2: something to explain it as succinctly as you guys do
Speaker 2: your superheroes and rock stars. From the bottom of my heart,
Speaker 2: thank you for the wonderful work you do. You have
Speaker 2: truly saved me. Kindest and warmest regards Georgia. That is
Speaker 2: really lovely, Georgia. If we're ever in a town near you,
Speaker 2: you are guests listed.
Speaker 1: Yes, Wow, Chuck, I think that was a really good,
Speaker 1: good idea. Thanks a lot, Georgia. That was a very
Speaker 1: sweet email. We appreciate it. We're glad we could help
Speaker 1: in some small measure. Thank you very much for the kudos.
Speaker 1: If you want to send us kudos, we love that.
Speaker 2: Kind of thing, including kudos.
Speaker 3: The candy bar Yeah, I remember those, send us a kudos.
Speaker 3: They were great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if somebody send us one if it
Speaker 1: would still be so great.
Speaker 2: Are they not around?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I think like they would have been manufactured in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six or something like that.
Speaker 2: I don't keep up with the candy bar scene.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. They're not around anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So wow, that was a little sidetrack on kudos,
Speaker 1: wasn't that.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this, you
Speaker 1: can go on to stuff youshould know dot com and
Speaker 1: find all of our social links there, and you can
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