Vegas Voice 10-18
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Tin Pan Alley<br />
By: Yvonne Cloutier / Musical Moments<br />
Before the <strong>18</strong>90s, popular songs were written<br />
but composers hired solely for sales profits<br />
did not exist. This all changed when the Tin Pan<br />
Alley era developed.<br />
Tin Pan Alley was an area on West 28 th Street between Broadway and<br />
6 th Avenue in Manhattan, New York. Fledgling publishers and composers<br />
who had a vision of being able to have their music published pursued<br />
this business of getting their music out to the public on a big scale.<br />
They congregated here. The Tin Pan Alley name was eventually given<br />
to these thriving businesses.<br />
They began in simple brownstone flats. The office usually consisted<br />
of a broken-down, out-of-tune piano, a second-hand desk and chair<br />
and wooden racks holding the stock of sheet music.<br />
Musicians, usually piano players called pluggers (some good, some<br />
bad), were hired to play the songs for singers and night club owners<br />
looking for new material.<br />
This music business began to thrive as publishers then hired<br />
composers and lyricists on a permanent basis to create popular songs.<br />
These composers became popular because some of their songs became<br />
hits - either because they were songs that people liked, or because<br />
of the sales pitches that the publishers used. Publishers would then<br />
market these songs in sheet music form. Covers were colorful and very<br />
attractive, often with the singer’s picture on them.<br />
If an unknown composer brought a song to one of these businesses,<br />
the publishers would put one of the popular composer’s names on the<br />
music as co-writer in order to create sales. Sometimes, singers of the<br />
songs, as with Al Jolson, would require that their names be on the music<br />
as co-writers so as to get monetary credit.<br />
It became a time when a song’s popularity was determined by the<br />
number of copies of sheet music the song sold. They were not always<br />
the best songs, and most of them did not become standard songs that<br />
we hear today.<br />
How did Tin Pan Alley get its name? It is reported that a newspaper<br />
reporter said that the din of competing pianists plugging the songs<br />
sounded like a bunch of tin pans clanging. Also, the shabby area looked<br />
like an alley. Thus the name: Tin Pan Alley.<br />
Yvonne Cloutier, a former teacher/principal, with a music<br />
background, specializes in ragtime piano. She reports about<br />
music on SCA-TV.com/Anthem Alive! You can contact her<br />
at www.mytimeisragtime.com.<br />
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