Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally, it referred to a specific location on West 28th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower DistrictDickerson, Aitlin (March 12, 2013) "'Bowery Boys' Are Amateur But Beloved New York Historians" NPR of Manhattan, as commemorated by a plaque on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth.Mooney Jake (October 17, 2008) "City Room: Tin Pan Alley, Not So Pretty" The New York TimesGray, Christopher (July 13, 2003) "Streetscapes: West 28th Street, Broadway to Sixth; A Tin Pan Alley, Chockablock With Life, if Not Song" The New York TimesSpencer, Luke J. (ndg) "The Remnants of Tin Pan Alley" Atlas ObscuraMiller, Tom (April 8, 2016) "A Tin Pan Alley Survivor – No. 38 West 28th Street " Daytonian in Manhattan Several buildings on Tin Pan Alley are protected as New York City designated landmarks, and the section of 28th Street from Fifth to Sixth Avenue is also officially co-named Tin Pan Alley.
The start of Tin Pan Alley is usually dated to about 1885, when a number of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. The end of Tin Pan Alley is less clear cut. Some date it to the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s when the phonograph, radio, and motion pictures supplanted sheet music as the driving force of American popular music, while others consider Tin Pan Alley to have continued into the 1950s when earlier styles of music were upstaged by the rise of rock and roll, which was centered on the Brill Building. Brill Building songwriter Neil Sedaka described his employer as being a natural outgrowth of Tin Pan Alley, in that the older songwriters were still employed in Tin Pan Alley firms while younger songwriters such as Sedaka found work at the Brill Building.Today's Mini-Concert – 4/14/2021
Origin of the name
There are conflicting explanations regarding the origins of the term "Tin Pan Alley". The most popular account holds that it was originally a derogatory reference made by Monroe H. Rosenfeld in the New York Herald to the collective sound made by many "cheap upright pianos" all playing different tunes being reminiscent of the banging of tin pans in an alleyway.Charlton (2011), p. 3 Quote: the "term Tin Pan Alley referred to the thin, tinny tone quality of cheap upright pianos used in music publisher's offices." The Grove Dictionary of American Music also cites Rosenfeld as originator of the term, dating its first use from 1903. However, while an article on Tin Pan Alley can be found in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from May of that year, this is unattributed and no piece by Rosenfeld that employs the phrase has been discovered.
Simon Napier-Bell quotes an account of the origin of the name published in a 1930 book about the music business. In this version, popular songwriter Harry von Tilzer was being interviewed about the area around 28th Street and Fifth Avenue, where many music publishers had offices. Von Tilzer had modified his expensive Kindler & Collins piano by placing strips of paper down the strings to give the instrument a more percussive sound. The journalist told von Tilzer, "Your Kindler & Collins sounds exactly like a tin can. I'll call the article 'Tin Pan Alley'." In any case, the name was firmly attached by the fall of 1905, when The Evening World published an article titled "The Song Claque Nuisance" about 28th Street.The Song Claque Nuisance, by Charles Darnton, in The Evening World; published November 11, 1905; via Chronicling America
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "tin pan" was slang for "a decrepit piano" (1882), and the term came to mean a "hit song writing business" by 1907."tin pan alley" etyomonline.com, January 14, 2020
With time, the nickname came to describe the American music publishing industry in general. The term then spread to the United Kingdom, where "Tin Pan Alley" was also used to describe Denmark Street in London's West End. In the 1920s the street became known as "Britain's Tin Pan Alley" because of its large number of music shops."Tin Pan Alley (London)", musicpilgrimages.com, November 7, 2009Peter Watts. Denmark Street: London's Street of Sounds (2023)
Origin of song publishing in New York City In the mid-19th century, copyright control of melodies was not as strict, and publishers would often print their own versions of the songs popular at the time. With stronger copyright protection laws late in the century, songwriters, composers, lyricists, and publishers started working together for their mutual financial benefit.
The commercial center of the popular music publishing industry changed during the course of the 19th century, starting in Boston and moving to Philadelphia, Chicago and Cincinnati before settling in New York City under the influence of new and vigorous publishers which concentrated on vocal music. The two most enterprising New York publishers were Willis Woodard and T.B. Harms, the first companies to specialize in popular songs rather than hymns or classical music. These firms were located in the entertainment district, which, at the time, was centered on Union Square. Witmark was the first publishing house to move to West 28th Street as the entertainment district gradually shifted uptown, and by the late 1890s most publishers had followed their lead.
The biggest music houses established themselves in New York City, but small local publishers – often connected with commercial printers or music stores – continued to flourish throughout the country, and there were important regional music publishing centers in Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Boston. When a tune became a significant local hit, rights to it were usually purchased from the local publisher by one of the big New York firms.
New York City before Tin Pan Alley
The American music publishing industry before Tin Pan Alley was largely based on European "art" songs in an effort to get around copyright royalty fees. American music was expensive to produce in the 19th century which meant only about 10–30% of the music printed in the United States, including New York, was written by American composers. This industry, however, laid the groundwork for the publishing industry that would be built upon to create Tin Pan Alley.
Beginning in the early 1860s, the pianist and composer J.N. Pattison (active 1862-1890) published sheet music out of a piano and organ salesroom in Union Square in downtown Manhattan.John C. Schmidt, "Pattison, John Nelson", Grove Music Online. He was one of the few musicians or composers to publish his own sheet music, capitalizing on the boom in that medium as America emerged out of the Civil War, and urban middle classes grew. Piano ownership was widespread in middle-class families, and if one wanted to hear a popular new song or melody, one would buy the sheet music and then perform the piece at home. The home-based practice contributed to the circulation of popular songs through domestic music-making and sheet-music sales.
In its prime
The song publishers who created Tin Pan Alley frequently had backgrounds as salesmen. Isadore Witmark previously sold water filters and Leo Feist had sold corsets. Joe Stern and Edward B. Marks had sold neckties and buttons, respectively. The music houses in lower Manhattan were lively places, with a steady stream of songwriters, vaudeville and Broadway performers, musicians, and "song pluggers" coming and going.
Aspiring songwriters came to demonstrate tunes they hoped to sell. When tunes were purchased from unknowns with no previous hits, the name of someone with the firm was often added as co-composer (in order to keep a higher percentage of royalties within the firm), or all rights to the song were purchased outright for a flat fee (including rights to put someone else's name on the sheet music as the composer). Many Jewish immigrants became music publishers and songwriters on Tin Pan Alley. Among the songwriters who frequented Tin Pan Alley were Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, Dorothy Fields, Scott Joplin, and Fats Waller. Songwriters who became established producers of successful songs were hired to be on the staff of the music houses.
"Song pluggers" were pianists and singers who represented the music publishers, making their living demonstrating songs to promote sales of sheet music. Most music stores had song pluggers on staff. Other pluggers were employed by the publishers to travel and familiarize the public with their new publications. Among the ranks of song pluggers were George Gershwin, Harry Warren, Vincent Youmans and Al Sherman. A more aggressive form of song plugging was known as "booming": it meant buying dozens of tickets for shows, infiltrating the audience and then singing the song to be plugged. At Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Louis Bernstein recalled taking his plugging crew to cycle races at Madison Square Garden: "They had 20,000 people there, we had a pianist and a singer with a large horn. We'd sing a song to them thirty times a night. They'd cheer and yell, and we kept pounding away at them. When people walked out, they'd be singing the song. They couldn't help it."
When vaudeville performers played New York City, they would often visit various Tin Pan Alley firms to find new songs for their acts. Second- and third-rate performers often paid for rights to use a new song, while famous stars were given free copies of publisher's new numbers or were paid to perform them, the publishers knowing this was valuable advertising.
Initially Tin Pan Alley specialized in melodramatic ballads and comic novelty songs, but it embraced the newly popular styles of the cakewalk and ragtime music. Later, jazz and blues were incorporated, although less completely, as Tin Pan Alley was oriented towards producing songs that amateur singers or small town bands could perform from printed music. In the 1910s and 1920s Tin Pan Alley published pop songs and dance numbers created in newly popular jazz and blues styles.
Tin Pan Alley also acted as another approach to modernism. This can be seen in the use of certain influences such as, "a vernacular African-American impact coming from ragtime, 'coon' songs, the blues and jazz", as well as "input from high and middlebrow white culture". Many of these new styles were used to help fuel the economy of Tin Pan Alley, allowing composers to be more creative, as well as have a continuous influx of innovative music.
Influence on law and business
A group of Tin Pan Alley music houses formed the Music Publishers Association of the United States on June 11, 1895, and unsuccessfully lobbied the federal government in favor of the Treloar Copyright Bill, which would have changed the term of copyright for published music from 24 to 40 years, renewable for an additional 20 instead of 14 years. The bill, if enacted, would also have included music among the subject matter covered by the Manufacturing clause of the International Copyright Act of 1891.
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) was founded in 1914 to aid and protect the interests of established publishers and composers. New members were only admitted with sponsorship of existing members.
The term and established business methodologies associated with Tin Pan Alley persisted into the 1960s when artists like Bob Dylan helped establish new norms. Referring to the dominant conventions of music publishers of the early 20th century, "Tin Pan Alley is gone", Dylan proclaimed in 1985, "I put an end to it. People can record their own songs now."
Contributions to World War II