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