WEBVTT - What was Tin Pan Alley? 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:03.400 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:12.520 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.320 I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.360 there's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff you Should Know, 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:25.320 the Superstar Edition, the old timey Superstoff Edition. Yeah. Man, 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:29.480 I thought this was super cool. Tin pan Alley. Yeah, 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:31.639 this is one of those things where I've sort of 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:34.960 knew what tin pan alley was, and you always have 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:38.400 heard that term thrown around, but I never really really 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:42.239 got it until this episode. Yeah. Same here. Uh, and 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:45.199 it's pretty cool, like the term tin pan alley, t 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:50.240 I n full stop p A n alle You forgot 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.199 a second full stop full stop. Um. I just want 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:54.880 to make sure people know it's not one word like 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:59.560 tin pan It's two words. But that is linguistically speaking, 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:04.080 that's a senecto key what it is? You know what 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:09.200 that is? Right? I've seen the movie Man, that movie 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:14.399 geez Um about the Charlie Kaufman thing, right, Yeah, yeah, um, 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:18.200 senecta senect to key New York. Yeah, So a senect 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:22.760 the key is, uh, it's when a specific place stands 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:26.199 in for a broader term like Wall Street, like wall 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:29.000 streets are real street, but Wall Street also means like 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:33.480 the finance industry or Hollywood. Hollywoods a real place. Okay, 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.440 this makes a lot more sense than the Charlie Kaufman movie. Yeah, 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:43.319 so so tin pan Alley is uh is a bunch 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:46.840 of things. It was a place and in New York City, 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:48.600 which what we'll get to in a second, like exactly 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:52.720 where um. And it was also referred to sort of 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:57.240 the beginnings of the music publishing industry and a genre 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:00.840 as well. There's kind of a lot of things, but 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.920 it stems from the root of a tin pan, like 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:07.680 a tin pan or a it was a cheap piano, 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:09.600 Like if he had a really cheap piano, you would 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:12.760 say it sounds tin panty, right, because like that's what 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.400 the hammer on the piano's hitting is tin pans rather 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:17.960 than strings. Yeah, it sounds just like a real tinny tone, 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:20.119 like you're beating on a tin pan. So that's where 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.280 the term originally came from. And depending on who you ask, 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.280 this area of New York um was called tin pan 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:30.000 Alley because perhaps a journalist first wrote about it. All 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.480 the sounds coming from the songwriters from these buildings on 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:37.000 this one block sounded like tin pan Alley. Right, it's 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:42.200 no exaggeration to say tin pan Alley. Specifically this little 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:45.760 stretch in New York like block or so maybe less 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.680 than a block. It's a it's a block, okay. Um 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:55.120 was the place where the American popular music industry was born. Yeah, 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:59.840 so it's specifically street between six and Broadway. Um, kind 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:02.920 of between Chelsea and Kipps Bay, a little northwest of 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:08.560 like the flat Iron building and Um. It's interesting to 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:12.320 think that, like the music, the beginnings of music distribution 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:17.200 wasn't like pre phonograph from pre records. There was still 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.720 music distribution, but it was it was sheet music right right, 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:22.480 So I think, Chuck, we should get back in the 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.880 way back and go to an indeterminate part of the 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:34.639 mid nineteenth century in the United States. Let's do it. So, 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:39.880 like you said, everywhere, there's a lot of it. Um. 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:42.200 It's like you said, if you wanted to hear music, 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.200 you had basically two choices. You could go here it 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:50.840 played live somewhere everywhere, from a barbershop quartet to maybe 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:56.560 an orchestra um or right, or you could have a 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.280 family member who knew how to play music and buy 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:01.800 a piano and of it in your home. Those were 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:06.000 your too, two ways to to hear music because, um, 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:10.880 everywhere there was no such thing as radio. Let's just 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.080 let's just say it everybody, Yeah, there was no radio. 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:17.040 There wasn't And if you think about it, radio was was. 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.400 You know, we we take it so much for granted today, 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:24.479 but it was a huge watershed change in the way 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:28.440 that Americans in the world heard their music. You could 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.560 just hear it at home being played by professionals like 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:34.400 the most the greatest musicians you've ever heard. You could 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:35.880 just sit around and listen to it at your home, 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.520 whereas just years before, a few years before, you had 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:41.400 to listen to your twelve year old try to bang 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:45.279 out some song on the piano that you just bought. Um, 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:47.760 and that was your option aside from going to hear 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:51.520 it live. And so this this whole idea of uh 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:54.560 the music industry being born, it was basically predicated on 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:58.720 two things, Chuck. One was the fact that pianos were 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:02.360 starting to become ubiquity in American houses and people were 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:06.320 learning how to play those pianos, so music instruction became 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:11.160 kind of widespread. And then Secondly, copy copyright law started 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.200 to really solidify in the United States in the nineteenth century, 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.080 and so that sheet music became much more valuable than 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:19.800 it was before. Yeah, like, if you can't, like I 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.640 can't read sheet music, I learned, Yeah, I learned to 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:27.159 play guitar by ear um and kind of I guess 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.000 every friend I know that it's a musician except for 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.680 a couple learned by ear um. If you came up 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:37.279 formally through high school band or something like that, um, 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.000 or maybe just private music instruction, then you may be 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:42.200 able to read music. But back in the day, if 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:44.560 you could not end still today, if you could not 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.280 play by ear the only way to do so was 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:51.880 through sheet music. And that was that was the first 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.479 commodity in the music business, was literally just selling sheet 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:57.920 music to people. Right, So it's hard to wrap your 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:00.240 head around now, but that was the commodity. It's hard 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:01.839 to wrap your head around. But if you think about 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:05.800 sheet music is basically the predecessor to the cassette or 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:11.120 the record or the CD or the MP three, it's 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:14.200 the exact same thing. It's just too to hear it, 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:16.080 Like that is what you went and bought at the 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:18.440 store and then you came home and played it rather 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.440 than listening to somebody else playing it. Yeah, and like 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.320 they sold a lot of them, like the very first 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:27.440 hit that Tin Panaley put out, And this was a period. 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:29.600 I mean, this was an eighty one when Wait Till 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:33.360 the Clouds Roll By was put out, So Tin Panaley 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:37.920 generally was early eighteen eighties till early nineteen twenties or 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:41.880 so I saw, like late nineteen twenties, was it really Yeah, yeah, 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:43.920 I guess you know, you can never say when it 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:48.240 was dead dead um. But in one month in eighteen 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:52.880 eighty one, they sold seventy five thousand copies of sheet 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:56.479 music to Wait Till the Clouds Roll By. Right, that's amazing, yeah, 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:59.599 because this was it was a good song, and people 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:02.159 wanted to hear the song, so they went and bought 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:04.840 the sheet music. So that was one thing, right, So 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:06.520 there was sheet music. That was how you got this 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.480 stuff out. And but even before Wait Till the Clouds 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.800 Roll By, which it seems like it was probably America's 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:17.920 first number one smash hit, prior to that, there was 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:21.240 plenty of sheet music to be sold. Um, but it 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:27.200 was a largely like church hymns. Um. It was it was. 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.120 There was a lot that were sold for schools um 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:35.000 and like I said, copyright law changed. It allowed tim 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:37.520 penalty to develop, and it did so in two ways. One, 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:42.680 it's like the courts started taking copyrights for music seriously 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:45.400 in the second half of the nineteenth century, so you 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:50.160 could actually enforce your copyright against people who were infringing 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:55.160 on it. And then secondly, the courts, the Supreme Court 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:58.239 and specifically said, hey, if you wrote a song outside 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:01.960 of America, when it comes to him Erica it enjoys 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:05.040 you can copyright it in America too, which means that 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.960 the music publishers source of free sheet music, which was 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:12.240 just basically stealing foreign music, printing it out in sheet 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.880 music form and then selling it and not paying any 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:19.400 royalties because it enjoyed no copyright protection, that source dried up, 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.760 and so all of a sudden, this American music that 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:25.320 they they had to pay for now seemed a lot 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.440 more attractive because now they had to pay for them. 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:32.800 The music generated overseas too, So this copyright law and 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:34.599 the fact that more and more people were learning to 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.080 play piano and so you had an actual market four 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:40.760 sheet music, those two things came together all right, let's 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.240 take a break. I feel like that's a pretty good 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:45.920 set up, okay, and we'll come back and talk a 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.840 little bit about who these music publishers were and how 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:52.400 they went about their work early on in the Tin 0:08:52.440 --> 0:09:06.600 penn Alley era right after this. All right, So we've 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:09.120 been throwing around the term music publishers a lot, and 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:11.000 that sort of means a different thing now than it 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:16.000 did back then. Um. But back then music publishers. Some 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.160 of them wrote songs, to be sure, but generally they 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.280 did not. UM. A lot of the early publishers out 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:27.560 of Tin pan Alley had backgrounds as salespeople. So there 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:30.520 was a guy named very successful publisher name is Ador 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:34.320 wit Mark. He started out selling water filters. Another one 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:38.760 named Leo Feist sold corsets, another one named Joe Stern 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:43.040 and Edward B. Mark sold neckties and buttons. Uh. And 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:45.200 a lot of these people, I guess we should point 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:50.160 out to uh came over from Europe. A lot were Jewish, UM. 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:57.160 Some African American songwriters like they were minorities. Um kind 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.760 of for the most part, early on, it feels like, right, 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:03.280 and they they saw a huge opportunity in this music 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.400 business that was starting to coalesce because prior to this, 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:09.040 I mean, there were there were music publishers, but it 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:13.960 was basically some guy who worked at a printer who 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:17.400 had a friend who could transpose music by ear and 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:19.920 they would just take some song that they heard and 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:22.400 turn it into sheet music and start selling it. Or 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:24.560 they worked at the music store, and the music store 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.920 basically did the exact same thing. And so everyone was 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.839 ripping off everyone else's songs, and anybody could be a 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:36.160 music publisher. But when those copyrights started to become enforced, um, 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:40.000 it became much more valuable to invest in original music 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:44.120 because you could make a lot more money off of it. So, um, 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:47.480 those those a lot of those Jewish immigrants and a 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:51.360 lot of the African American songwriters and composers kind of 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:56.559 coalesced into New York. They came from Boston and Detroit 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:59.800 and Atlanta and St. Louis and all over the country, 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:03.800 and all those towns lost their publishing houses, um, and 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:06.839 they all moved to New York, and they very specifically 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:11.720 moved to this one little stretch on street UM, and 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:16.040 it became tim Pan Alley. And it's really interesting, um 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:18.840 to look at, like how it worked back then, and 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:22.320 how it sort of mirrored how music like music grew 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:25.079 out of that model really and change in some ways, 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:26.520 but kind of stayed the same in a lot of 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:30.200 ways too. Um. Like you always hear about music contracts 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.239 and how terrible they are for rock musicians or pop musicians, 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:35.560 and it was kind of the same way back then. 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:40.040 These these publishers got together, they created this songwriting factory 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:44.760 on this block of buildings through different companies, and they 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:48.520 would get they would recruit songwriters to come in. They 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:52.240 had different arrangements. Sometimes they would just buy it outright 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:54.960 from you, including the rights to change the name of 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:58.760 who wrote it. Uh. Sometimes they would have the right 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:02.120 to throw one of the other more I guess once 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.760 they had you know, established themselves another co author's name 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.320 on there. But they would just you know, say, write 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:10.760 these songs. Write these songs, and we're gonna buy them 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:13.160 from you, and we're gonna try and make them pop. 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:15.360 Like you couldn't put them on the radio, so we're 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:19.240 gonna try and get them popular by getting them onto 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:23.160 vaudeville and on stage and sending not moles, I guess. 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.839 But it was almost like early Paola, uh, sending these 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:31.160 performers into vaudeville to sing these songs and perform these songs, 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.600 and people are like, wow, that's pretty catchy. I want that, right. 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:36.520 That's how they that's how they marketed it, and that 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.319 was like the whole thing, like if if you, It 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:43.280 was the first time that the music became an industry 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.320 because there was almost an assembly line field to it 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.400 where they would have feelers out to find out like 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:53.080 what people were into a music at the time. One 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:55.800 of the one of the early transitions that Tim Panali 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:59.000 underwent was when it started, Um it was a it 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:04.640 was a factory churning out like comedic, often deeply racist songs, 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:09.320 UM lots of ballads, uh, just what you think of 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:13.600 a super old timey songs, right, And then the public 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:15.839 started to get kind of bored with that and they 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:18.400 decided that they kind of like this ragtime thing that 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:21.960 the Scott Joplin fella has um has started to create. 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:25.920 And so Tim Panaley this is classic. Tim Panalty went 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:30.440 out figured out how to play ragtime, started co opting 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.320 the ragtime genre and created pop music. So they took 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:38.319 what was a really difficult um kind of music. It's 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:44.040 called syncopated rhythm where you've got a melody within a rhythm, right, So, um, 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:48.160 you know ragtime, right, Okay, So they figured out how 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:50.679 to take this very difficult thing and kind of popify 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:56.040 it to make it easy for uh, the audience to play. 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.280 Because again, here's the thing. They're not saying, Hey, you're 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:01.960 the best of the best studio musician. We've got this 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:04.480 really tough song over here that sounds great, but it's 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:06.320 really tough to play. We want to pay you to 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:08.480 come play it. We're going to record it and distribute 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.600 it onto the radio that didn't exist yet. They had 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:14.560 to figure out how to take difficult songs kind of 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:18.920 dumb them down into something catchy and memorable and importantly 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:21.240 easy to play, so that they could sell that sheet 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:25.280 music to local musicians or those barbershop cortets, or so 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:27.440 that the twelve year old at home could play it 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:29.680 for the rest of their family. And so that is 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:32.520 how they kind of started to take popular music and 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:36.320 make it even more popular. They decided what music was 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:40.200 popular based on what what the what America was starting 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.120 to get into at the time. Yeah, and they would, um, 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.960 there were these musicians called song pluggers. So how it 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:50.640 would work is a music publisher and Tin Panaley would 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.120 um buy a song or the rights to a song 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:57.520 off of them of a musician who wrote it, maybe 0:14:57.560 --> 0:14:59.720 put their own name on it, and then they would 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.040 give that song to a song plugger who was a 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:05.040 musician who would go and perform this at a music 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:08.200 shop that maybe sold pianos or something like that. And 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:10.840 this was pre radio. How they got the music out 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.800 in the public. Uh, and it was it was crazy. 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:16.760 These song pluggers got money. Irving Berlin started out as 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.560 a song plugger, right and so um, it's kind of 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:22.560 like if you you know how you go to a 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:24.840 grocery store on a Saturday and they'll be sitting there 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:27.920 giving out samples of something and you'll say, oh, this 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:30.560 this cheese with this cracker tastes really good. I'm gonna 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.040 go buy this cheese and these crackers. This is the 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:35.200 exact same thing, except you would say, oh, this song 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:37.680 sounds really good, I'm going to buy the sheet music. 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.280 That's what music pluggers were for. That's how they got 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:42.600 the word out. They that's how they advertised the music 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:44.760 was to play them. And then another way to do 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.120 it check is like you were saying, they would set 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:52.200 vaudeville shows up or musical reviews or Broadway shows whatever 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:58.280 with these popular songs and these songwriters to to help 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:00.840 get them out that way too, so that audiences would 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:02.600 go hear these things. So you could hear him in 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:04.920 the music shop, you could hear him at the theater. 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:10.120 Um you uh, you might hear them. Um well, it's 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.280 basically it is the theater in the music shop where 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:15.720 the two main venues less I'm forgetting what yeah, and 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:19.240 they would That was the plugging, But there was also booming. So, 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:21.800 like I said, you had Irving Berlin, and like George 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:25.560 Gershwin started out as a song plugger, Al Sherman started 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:27.680 out as a song plugger. But if you wanted to 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.240 be more aggressive than that, even you would do something 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:35.360 called booming, which is uh, you would buy like tickets 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.440 to a show. You would have the plugger up there 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:42.000 playing the song, and then those twenty five people were 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:45.080 plants basically that already knew the song, that would sing 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.280 along to it, and then everyone, you know, the only 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:50.800 thing better than hearing a great song for the first 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:53.800 time in you know, nineteen ten in New York City 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.160 is hearing people around you singing it and you're thinking, 0:16:57.280 --> 0:16:59.440 how have I been missing out on this thing? And 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.200 that may be the first time it was ever performed 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.560 in public, and it was all just a big, kind 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.280 of a big scam. It was. It's hilarious though that 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:10.560 that's how you just look around and suddenly be overcome 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:13.240 with fomo. So you'd be into this new song and 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.560 run out and buy the sheet music, I guess, um So, 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:19.919 so there's there was this process to all this, and 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:22.120 like you said, like you could be a like a 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:25.679 no name composer who would show up at Tim Panaley 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:27.840 with the song that you're trying to sell and if 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.760 it was good, the publisher might buy it, but like 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:33.560 you said, you would get some sort of terrible contractor 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:35.400 they would buy it out right, take your name off 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:37.560 of the composition and put their own name on there. 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:41.919 But they also um hired composers I think, like you 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.639 were saying to where they were they were they had 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:46.280 they had a few hits under their belts, so they 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:48.720 had a steady gig at the music publisher and their 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:52.080 contract was a little better, but they were not in 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:55.000 creative control for the most part, to where the music 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:57.879 publisher would say, hey, everybody's into this ragtime. Make me 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:01.560 some ragtime songs. Everybody's into jazz and this blues stuff. 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:03.760 Make me some bluesy kind of stuff that I can 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.080 turn around and sell. And the competition was really fierce 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:11.640 among the in house composers, because just because you composed 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:13.520 a song doesn't mean it was going to be turned 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:16.720 around and transcribed into sheet music and then people would 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.920 buy it. Like you, you you had to basically audition your 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.840 song to see whether it made it to the next level. 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:25.000 And so in tim Panaley, and this is where it 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:28.400 got its name, there would be you know, no name composers, 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:34.280 house composers, vaudeville acts um all running around playing music 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.560 from these open windows because there wasn't air conditioning back then. 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:39.800 And so at any given time you'd walk down tim 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.600 Panaley and there'd be a dozen or scores of different 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.679 songs all being played on these pianos, streaming out of 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:48.919 the windows onto the street at the same time. And 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:51.679 that's where that that reporter Monroe Rosenfeld came up with 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:54.000 the idea of tim Panale said when he was walking 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:56.000 down the street, he was kind of describing what that 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:57.919 was like. He said, it sounded like, you know, a 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.480 bunch of tim pants being struck at once. Yeah, and 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:02.840 this this whole area of New York, this one block 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:08.520 just really became like a creative well. There were uh, 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:12.520 vaudeville theaters, there were play theaters, like it was sort 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:15.560 of the earliest incarnation of the theater district before it 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.520 moved towards Times Square. Uh. And then other parts of 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.240 the entertainment industry obviously are drawn to that area. UM 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:24.960 Variety Magazine that's where it first popped up on that 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.919 block when it was called the Clipper. Uh. The William 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:30.919 Morris Talent Agency had an office on that block, and 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:33.359 it was just sort of the you know, after I 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:38.639 think Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and I think one other city 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.760 kind of where the early seats of the early music industry. 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.400 It all roundly landed in New York and just such 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:50.200 a creative area and era. It's so neat to think about, too, 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:53.720 because that's happened in places before. Where if you take 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.480 a bunch of creative people and jam them into a 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:01.080 small area, just amazing stuff of happens. Like you can 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:05.720 do something as big as birth a genre of music, 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.199 or like pop music, which is like an umbrella. It's 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:12.159 not even a genre. There's genres underneath pop music, you know, 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:14.720 where something that big can happen when you get that 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:18.280 many creative people together in one place. Should we take 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:21.680 another break? Sure? Alright, let's take another break, and we'll 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:26.040 talk about some of these songs of these composers. Uh 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:40.480 in the Great American Songbook right after this. Alright, So 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:45.119 there's money being made, yeah, dad, a lot of money, 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:47.280 even for early on. I mean, I can't imagine what 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:49.600 sheep music costs, but they were selling so much of it, 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:54.000 um it added up um. Irving Berlin, I mean he 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:56.320 went on to start his own music publishing business, but 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:59.240 early on, when he was just pumping out tunes and 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:03.359 nineteen seventeen, he made about a hundred thousand dollars a 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:08.560 year in royalties. Yeah, that's that's dollars too, right, Yeah, 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.040 And these songs like these are some standards. You know. 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:15.800 It's what's known as the Standard American Songbook. Um, just 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.959 like it's an unofficial designation, but they're considered to be 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:23.640 like the classics of the earlier early twentieth century. Like, 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:27.600 I mean, we all still know these songs, stuff like uh, 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:33.119 Ain't She Sweet? I don't know. Ain't she sweet? You're 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:37.320 mucking down the street? What you don't know? That song? No, 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.000 that one I've not heard. Oh boy, do you know 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:44.160 baby face? Yes, got the cutest little baby face. Yes. 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:47.280 I love that song. It makes me smiling by the 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:50.200 light of the silvery moon. Give my regards to Broadway. 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:54.560 Happy days are here again over there. A lot of 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:56.959 this had to do with like wartime, early wartime stuff. 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:00.360 Sweet Georgia Brown, Take Me out to the ball game? Yeah, 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:02.480 and that that in particular, we gotta say that was 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:06.280 written by two guys, um Jack Norworth and Albert von 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:09.920 tilser Um and they've never they've never seen a ball 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:13.880 game before. Well maybe that's what they were saying, but though, yeah, 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:16.760 take me out to the ball game because I've never 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:19.280 been exactly, And they changed that line. But that was 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:22.240 so tim panale, like where it's like everybody's into baseball 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:25.080 right now, so let's make a song about baseball. YouTube. 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:27.760 We've never seen a baseball game, it doesn't matter. Make 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:29.720 make me a song. And that's that's how to take 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:31.560 Me Out to the ball Game was formed. Yeah, and 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:33.600 I think under one of the like you said earlier, 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:36.080 some of the earliest work with like kind of humorous 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:40.800 comedy songs. One that still stands out today, I believe 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:44.360 from that genre is Yes, we Have No Bananas, which 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:45.960 always thought was kind of funny when I was a kid. 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:47.679 It's a little funny, and I guess I still do 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:52.400 if I'm being honest. Um. There was also uh yeah, 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:55.040 you can go down this line. And there's some pretty 0:22:55.080 --> 0:22:58.399