Notes

The following originally appeared in the GRAND JUNCTION FREE PRESS:

Here’s a question you won’t find in Trivial Pursuits:  What was the the first American pop hit?

The answer, as Bill Clinton might tell you, depends on your definition of terms.  The earliest songs to sweep the nation were political ditties that date back to the nascent days of the United States.  For example, there was the “Liberty Song,” the lyrics of which were printed in 1768 in the BOSTON GAZETTE, and which became a rallying cry for colonists seeking to establish a new country.  Another example is the more familiar “Yankee Doodle,” which began its long life as a Dutch harvest song in the 15th century.  British army surgeon Richard Schuckburgh adapted the tune into an anti-American air during the French and Indian War, and it was originally sung by English troops until the very Yanks it ridiculed adopted it as the patriotic standard we know it as today.  In 1775, the first sentimental song to infiltrate the national psyche was “Banks of the Dee,” which told the tale of a Scottish soldier who leaves his lover to fight in America. 

But in its more modern sense of “music industry bestseller,” the first American pop hit was an 1892 sentimental tearjerker called “After the Ball.”  Written and self-published by an enterprising and self-taught Milwaukee song-scribe by the name of Charles Kassel Harris, the song’s story of lost love apparently spoke to many.  “After the Ball” became the first sheet music to sell several million copies, and was translated into many languages and published the world over.  The overwhelming success of “After the Ball” led Harris to move his songwriting company to New York City, and specifically the Union Square area where other music publishers, like M. Whitmark & Sons and F.B. Haviland, were also settling. 

Although its physical setting would eventually move uptown a few blocks to West 28th Street, it was this aggregation of music publishers that formed the nucleus of what was to become known as “Tin Pan Alley,” that New York neighborhood where America’s greatest songwriters churned out standards that are still well-known today.  Protected by then-new copyright laws, publishers began to see the moneymaking possibilities of popular music, and this formerly chaotic line started to stabilize into a rule-bound industry wherein songs were written to order by staff composers following the latest musical trends, and driven by market surveys and statistical analysis. 

 Songs like “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” originated in Tin Pan Alley (which was christened thusly by reporter Monroe Rosenfeld for the constant piano clatter that emanated from its storefronts).  Among the great American songsmiths who got their starts in Tin Pan Alley were Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin.

We’ll examine the history of Tin Pan Alley, as well as its best- and least-known songwriters (including the prolific Yankee Doodle Boy, George M. Cohan), in this space in the near future.  Join us then as we explore the era when the art of music morphed into an industry.