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- [00:00]
Josh Clark
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Malcolm Gladwell
Hello.
- [00:05]
Josh Clark
Hello.
- [00:05]
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Glabel here from Revisionist History. Did you know T Mobile for Business has an awards show specifically for their customers? It's happening October 20th in sunny Orlando, Florida, and I'm encouraging you. Yes, you. To enter. This event honors outside the box thinking that changes industries, communities, and even the world. And if that doesn't sound great already, I'll be there as the keynote speaker. If your company did something next level using T Mobile for business, you're eligible. Entries close July 31, so head to t mobile.com enter to learn more and nominate your team.
- [00:44]
Josh Clark
Hi, everyone, it's me, Josh. And for this week's Select, I've chosen our Tin Pan alley episode from May 2019. It's one of those topics I knew nothing about, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it's super interesting. It's about the birth of the music industry and the place where a lot of great songs that are still really great today were produced. Hope you enjoy this episode.
- [01:10]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [01:20]
Josh Clark
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. The Superstar edition. The old timey superstar edition.
- [01:34]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Man, I thought this was super cool.
- [01:37]
Josh Clark
Tin Pan Alley.
- [01:38]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. This is one of those things where I've. I sort of knew what Tin Pan Alley was. And you always have heard that term thrown around, but I never really, really got it until this episode.
- [01:50]
Josh Clark
Yeah, same here.
- [01:51]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And it's pretty cool. Like the term ten pants. Tin Pan Alley. T I N. Full stop. P A N Alley.
- [01:58]
Josh Clark
You forgot a second Full stop there.
- [02:00]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Full stop. I just want to make sure people know it's not one word like Tin pan.
- [02:05]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [02:05]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
It's two words. But that is, linguistically speaking, that's a synecdoche. What it is. You know what that is, right?
- [02:14]
Josh Clark
I've seen the movie.
- [02:17]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Man. That movie. Geez. Talking about the Charlie Kaufman thing, right?
- [02:21]
Josh Clark
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Synecdoche, New York.
- [02:26]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. So a synecdoche is. It's when a specific place stands in for a broader term, like Wall Street. Like, Wall Street's a real street, but Wall street also means, like, the finance industry.
- [02:39]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [02:40]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Or Hollywood. Hollywood's a real place.
- [02:42]
Josh Clark
Okay. This makes a lot more sense than the Charlie Kaufman movie.
- [02:45]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. So Tin Pan Alley is a bunch of things. It was a place in New York City, which we'll get to in a second, like, exactly where and it was also referred to sort of the beginnings of the music publishing industry and genre as well.
- [03:07]
Josh Clark
Yep.
- [03:07]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
There's kind of a lot of things, but it stems from the root of a tin pan. Like a tin pan or a. Was a cheap piano. Like if you had a really cheap piano, you would say it sounds tin pan y.
- [03:20]
Josh Clark
Right. Because that's what the hammer on the piano's hitting is. Tin pans rather than strings.
- [03:25]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it sounds just like a real tinny tone, like you're beating on a tin pan. So that's where the term originally came from. And depending on who you ask, this area of New York was called Tin Pan Alley because perhaps a journalist first wrote about it. All the sounds coming from the songwriters from these buildings. Buildings on this one block sounded like Tin Pan Alley.
- [03:45]
Josh Clark
Right. It's no exaggeration to say Tin Pan Alley specifically this little stretch in New York. Like a block or so. Maybe less than a block.
- [03:55]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I think it's a block.
- [03:56]
Josh Clark
Okay. Was the place where the American popular music industry was born.
- [04:03]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. So it's specifically 28th street between 6 and Broadway, kind of between Chelsea and Kips Bay, a little northwest of like the Flatiron Building.
- [04:13]
Josh Clark
Gotcha.
- [04:14]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And it's interesting to think that like, the beginnings of music distribution wasn't like pre phonograph and pre records. There was still music distribution, but it was sheet music.
- [04:29]
Josh Clark
Right, Right. So I think, Chuck, we should get back in the Wayback Machine and go to an indeterminate part of the mid 19th century in the United States.
- [04:37]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Let's do.
- [04:43]
Josh Clark
So. Like you said, there's horse poop everywhere. There's a lot of it. It's like you said, if you wanted to hear music, you had basically two choices. You could go hear it played live somewhere everywhere, from a barbershop quartet to maybe an orchestra. Or you could have a family member who knew how to play music and buy a piano and have it in your home. Those were your two ways to hear music. Because everywhere there was no such thing as radio.
- [05:20]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Let's just say it, everybody.
- [05:21]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [05:22]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
There was no radio.
- [05:23]
Josh Clark
There wasn't. And if you think about it, radio was, you know, we take it so much for granted today, but it was a huge watershed change in the way that Americans in the world heard their music. You could just hear it at home being played by professionals, like the most. The greatest musicians you've ever heard. You could just sit around and listen to it at your home. Whereas just years before, a few years before, you had to listen to your 12 year old try to bang out some song on the piano that you just bought. And that was your option, aside from going to hear it live. And so this whole idea of the music industry being born, it was basically predicated on two things, Chuck. One was the fact that pianos were starting to become ubiquitous in American houses, and people were learning how to play those pianos. So music instruction became kind of widespread. And then secondly, copyright law started to really solidify in the United states in the 19th century. And so that sheet music became much more valuable than it was before.
- [06:27]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, like, if you can't. Like I can't read sheet music.
- [06:30]
Josh Clark
I can't either.
- [06:31]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. I learned to play guitar by ear and kind of. I guess every friend I know that's a musician, except for a couple learned by ear. If you came up formally through high school band or something like that, or maybe just private music instruction, then you may be able to read music. But back in the day, if you could not, and still today, if you could not play by ear, the only way to do so was through sheet music. And that was the first commodity in the music business, was literally just selling sheet music to people.
- [07:05]
Josh Clark
Right. So before, it's hard to wrap your.
- [07:07]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Head around now, but that was the commodity.
- [07:08]
Josh Clark
It is hard to wrap your head around. But if you think about sheet music is basically the predecessor to the cassette or the Record or the CD or the MP3, it's the exact same thing. It's just to hear it like that is what you went and bought at the store, and then you came home and played it rather than listening to somebody else playing it.
- [07:29]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And they sold a lot of them, like the very first hit that Tin Pan Alley put out. And this was a period, I mean, this was in 1881, when wait till the Clouds Roll by was put out. So Tin Pan Alley generally was early 1880s till early 1920s or so I saw.
- [07:48]
Josh Clark
Like, late 1920s. Was it early? Yeah, yeah.
- [07:51]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I guess. You know, you can never say when it was dead dead.
- [07:54]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [07:55]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
But in one month in 1881, they sold 75,000 copies of sheet music to Wait Till the Clouds Roll By.
- [08:03]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [08:04]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
That's amazing.
- [08:05]
Josh Clark
Yeah, because it was a good song and people wanted to hear the song, so they went and bought the sheet music.
- [08:12]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [08:12]
Josh Clark
So that was one thing. Right. So there was sheet music. That was how you got this stuff out. But even before Wait Till the Clouds Roll by, which it seems like was probably America's first number one smash hit.
- [08:23]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [08:24]
Josh Clark
Pop music prior to that, there was plenty of sheet music to be Sold. But it was largely like church hymns.
- [08:33]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Boring.
- [08:34]
Josh Clark
It was. There was a lot that were sold for schools. And like I said, copyright law changed. It allowed Tin Pan Alley to develop. And it did so in two ways. One, the court started taking copyrights for music seriously in the second half of the 19th century, so you could actually enforce your copyright against people who were infringing on it. And then secondly, the courts, the Supreme Court specifically said, hey, if you wrote a song outside of America, when it comes to America, it enjoys, you can copyright it in America too. Which means that the music publisher's source of free sheet music, which was just basically stealing foreign music, printing it out in sheet music form, and then selling it and not paying any royalties because it enjoyed no copyright protection, that source dried up. And so all of a sudden this American music that they, they had to pay for now seemed a lot more attractive because now they had to pay for the. The music generated overseas too. So this copyright law and the fact that more and more people were learning to play piano, and so you had an actual market for sheet music, those two things came together.
- [09:49]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
All right, let's take a break. I feel like that's a pretty good setup.
- [09:52]
Josh Clark
Okay.
- [09:53]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And we'll come back and talk a little bit about who these music publishers were and how they went about their work early on in the Tin Pan Alley era. Right after this.
- [10:09]
Unknown
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- [11:15]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
All right, so we've been throwing around the term music publishers a lot and that sort of Means a different thing now than it did back then. But back then, music publishers, some of them wrote songs, to be sure, but generally they did not. A lot of the early publishers out of Tin Pan Alley had backgrounds as salespeople.
- [11:35]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [11:36]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
So there was a guy named. Very successful publisher named Isadore Witmark. He started out selling water filters. Another one named Leo Feist sold corsets. Another one named Joe Stern, and Edward B. Mark sold neckties and buttons. And a lot of these people, I guess we should point out, too, came over from Europe. A lot were Jewish. Some African American songwriters, they were minorities, kind of, for the most part, early on, it feels like.
- [12:08]
Josh Clark
Right. And they saw a huge opportunity in this music business that was starting to coalesce, because prior to this, I mean, there were music publishers, but it was basically some guy who worked at a printer, who had a friend who could transpose music by ear, and they would just take some song that they heard and turn it into sheet music and start selling it. Or they worked at the music store, and the music store basically did the exact same thing. And so everyone was ripping off everyone else's songs. And anybody could be a music publisher. But when those copyrights started to become enforced, it became much more valuable to invest in original music because you could make a lot more money off of it. So those. A lot of those Jewish immigrants and a lot of the African American songwriters and composers kind of coalesced into New York. They came from Boston and Detroit and Atlanta and St. Louis and all over the country. And all those towns lost their publishing houses, and they all moved to New York. And they very specifically moved to this one little stretch on 28th street, and it became Tin Pan Alley.
- [13:23]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And it's really interesting to look at, like, how it worked back then and how it sort of mirrored how music grew out of that model, really, and changed in some ways, but kind of stayed the same in a lot of ways too. Like, you always hear about music contracts and how terrible they are for rock musicians or pop musicians. And it was kind of the same way back then. These publishers got together, they created this songwriting factory on this block of buildings through different companies. And they would get. They would recruit songwriters to come in. They had different arrangements. Sometimes they would just buy it outright from you, including the rights to change the name of who wrote it.
- [14:05]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [14:05]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Sometimes they would have the right to throw one of the other more I guess, once they had, you know, established themselves another co author's name on there. But they would just, you know, say, write these songs Write these songs and we're going to buy them from you and we're going to try and make them pop. Like you couldn't put them on the radio. So we're going to try and get them popular by getting them onto vaudeville and on stage and sending. Not moles, I guess, but it was almost like early payola, sending these performers into vaudeville to sing these songs and perform these songs. And people are like, well, that's pretty catchy. I want that.
- [14:43]
Josh Clark
Right. That's how they marketed it. And that was like the whole thing. Like if you. It was the first time that music became an industry because there was almost an assembly line feel to it where they would have feelers out to find out like what people were into as music at the time. One of the early transitions that Tin Pan Alley underwent was when it started it was a factory for churning out like comedic, often deeply racist songs. Lots of ballads, just what you think of as super old timey songs. Right. And then the public started to get kind of bored with that and they decided that they kind of like this ragtime thing that this Scott Joplin fella has started to create. And so Tim Pan Alley, this is classic. Tim Panale went out, figured out how to play ragtime, started co opting the ragtime gen and created pop music. So they took what was a really difficult kind of music. It's called syncopated rhythm, where you've got a melody within a rhythm. Right. So you know ragtime, Right?
- [15:54]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Sure.
- [15:54]
Josh Clark
Okay. So they figured out how to take this very difficult thing and kind of popify it to make it easy for the audience to play. Because again, here's the thing, they're not saying, hey, you're the best of the best studio musician. We've got this really tough song over here that sounds great, but it's really tough to play. We want to pay you to come play it. We're going to record it and distribute it onto the radio. That didn't exist yet. They had to figure out how to take difficult songs, kind of dumb them down into something catchy and memorable and importantly, easy to play so that they could sell that sheet music to local musicians or those barbershop quartets or so that the 12 year old at home could play it for the rest of their family. And so that is how they kind of started to take popular music and make it even more popular. They decided what music was popular based on what America was starting to get into at the time.
- [16:51]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And there were these musicians called song pluggers. So how it Would work is a music publisher in Tin Pan Alley would buy a song or the rights to a song off of a musician who wrote it, maybe put their own name on it, and then they would give that song to a song plugger, who is a musician, who would go and perform this at a music shop that maybe sold pianos or something like that. And this was pre radio, how they got the music out in the public. And it was crazy. These song pluggers got money. Irving Berlin started out as a song plugger.
- [17:27]
Josh Clark
Right. And so it's kind of like if you. You know how you go to a grocery store on a Saturday and they'll be sitting there giving out samples of something, and you'll say, oh, this cheese with this cracker tastes really good. I'm gonna go buy this cheese. And these crackers. This is the same thing, except you would say, oh, this song sounds really good. I'm going to buy the sheet music. That's what music pluggers were for. That's how they got the word out. That's how they advertised the music, was to play them. And then another way to do it, Chuck, is like you were saying, they would set vaudeville shows up or musical reviews or Broadway shows, whatever, with these popular songs and these songwriters to help get them out that way, too, so that audiences would go hear these things. So you could hear them in the music shop, you could hear them at the. The. You might hear them. Well, that's basically it. It's. The theater and the music shop were the two main venues, unless I'm forgetting one.
- [18:24]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And they would. That was the plugging, but there was also booming. So like I said, you had Irving Berlin and like, George Gershwin started out as a song plugger. Al Sherman started out as a song plugger. But if you wanted to be more aggressive than that, even you would do something called booming, which is you would buy, like, 25 tickets to a show. You would have the plugger up there playing the song, and then those 25 people were plants, basically, that already knew the song that would sing along to it. And then everyone. You know, the only thing better than hearing a great song for the first time in, you know, 1910 in New York City is hearing 25 people around you singing it and going, and you're thinking, how have I been missing out on this thing?
- [19:08]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [19:08]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And that may be the first time it was ever performed in public.
- [19:11]
Josh Clark
That's awesome.
- [19:11]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And it was all just a big. Kind of a big scam.
- [19:14]
Josh Clark
It was. It's hilarious, though, that that's how you Just look around and suddenly be overcome with fomo. So you'd be into this new song and run out and buy the sheet.
- [19:23]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Music, I guess, early fomo.
- [19:26]
Josh Clark
So there was this process to all this. And like you said, like you could be a, like a no name composer who would show up at Tin Pan Alley with the song that you're trying to sell. And if it was good, the publisher might buy it. But like you said, you would get some sort of terrible contract or they would buy it outright, take your name off of the composition and put their own name on there. But they also hired composers, I think, like you were saying too, where they were, they had a few hits under their belt. So they had a steady gig at the music publisher and their contract was a little better. But they were not in creative control for the most part. To where the music publisher would say, hey, everybody's into this ragtime. Make me some ragtime songs. Everybody's into this jazz and this blues stuff. Make me some blues, bluesy kind of stuff that I can turn around and sell. And the competition was really fierce among the in house composers. Because just because you composed a song doesn't mean it was going to be turned around and transcribed into sheet music. And then people would buy it like you. You had to basically audition your song to see whether it made it to the next level. And so in Tympan Alley and this is where it got its name, there would be, you know, no name composers, house composers, vaudeville acts, all running around playing music from these open windows because there wasn't air conditioning back then. And so at any given time, you'd walk down Tin Pan Alley and there'd be a dozen or scores of different songs all being played on these pianos streaming out of the windows onto the street at the same time. And that's where that reporter, Monroe Rosenfeld, came up with the idea of Tin Pan Alley. He said when he was walking down the street, he was kind of describing what that was like. He said it sounded like, you know, a bunch of tin pans being struck at once.
- [21:09]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And this whole area of New York, this one block, just really became like a creative. Well, there were vaudeville theaters, there were play theaters. Like it was sort of the earliest incarnation of the theater district before it moved toward Times Square. And then other parts of the entertainment industry obviously are drawn to that area. Variety magazine, that's where it first popped up on that block when it was called the Clipper. The William Morris Talent Agency had an office on that block. And it was just sort of the you know, after I think Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and I think one other city kind of were the early seats of the early music industry, it all roundly landed in New York in just such a creative area and era.
- [21:57]
Josh Clark
It's so neat to think about too, because that's happened in places before where if you take a bunch of creative people and jam them into a small area, just amazing stuff happens. Like you can do something as big as birth a genre of music or like pop music, which is like an umbrella. It's not even a genre. There's genres underneath pop music. You know, where something that big can happen when you get that many creative people together in one place.
- [22:27]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Should we take another break?
- [22:29]
Josh Clark
Sure.
- [22:29]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
All right, let's take another break and we'll talk about some of these songs, some of these composers, and the great American songbook right after this.
- [22:43]
Unknown
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- [23:49]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
All right, so there's money being made. Yeah, Tad, a lot of money even for early on. I mean I can't imagine what sheet music costs, but they were selling so much of added up Irving Berlin. I mean he went on to start his own music publishing business. But early on, when he was just pumping out tunes in 1917, he made about $100,000 a year in royalties.
- [24:14]
Josh Clark
Yeah, that's $1917 too, right?
- [24:17]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And these songs, like these are some standards, you know, it's what's known as the standard American songbook. Just like it's an unofficial designation, but they're Considered to be like the classics of the early 20th century. Like, I mean, we all still know these songs. Stuff like Ain't She Sweet.
- [24:39]
Josh Clark
I don't know that one.
- [24:40]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Ain't she Sweet? You got Walking down the Street. What, you don't know that song?
- [24:46]
Josh Clark
No, that one I've not heard.
- [24:48]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, boy. Do you know Babyface?
- [24:51]
Josh Clark
Yes.
- [24:52]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Got the cutest little baby face.
- [24:53]
Josh Clark
Yes. I love that song. It makes me smile every time.
- [24:56]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
By the light of the silvery moon Give my regards to Broadway.
- [24:59]
Josh Clark
Sure.
- [25:00]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Happy days are here again over there. A lot of this had to do with early wartime stuff, right? Sweet Georgia Brown. Take Me out to the Ball Game.
- [25:09]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And that in particular, we gotta say, that was written by two guys, Jack Norworth and Albert Von Till.
- [25:16]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [25:17]
Josh Clark
And they'd never seen a ball game before.
- [25:20]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Well, maybe that's what they were saying.
- [25:22]
Josh Clark
But yeah, the original Eric, was Take.
- [25:24]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Me out to the Ball Game. Because I've never been.
- [25:26]
Josh Clark
Exactly.
- [25:27]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And they changed that line.
- [25:28]
Josh Clark
But that was so Tim Pan Alley, like, where it's like, everybody's into baseball right now. So let's make a song about baseball. You too. We've never seen a baseball game. Doesn't matter. Make me a song. And that's how Take Me out to the Ball Game was formed.
- [25:40]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And I think under one of the. Like you said earlier, some of the earliest work were like kind of humorous comedy songs. One that still stands out today, I believe, from that genre is yes, we have no Bananas, which I always thought was kind of funny when I was a kid.
- [25:55]
Josh Clark
It's a little funny and I guess.
- [25:56]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I still do, if I'm being honest.
- [25:59]
Josh Clark
There was also. Yeah, you can go down this line. And there's some pretty substantial songs that were written during this time. And not all of them were standalone. A lot of them, like I said earlier, were created for musical reviews.
- [26:14]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [26:15]
Josh Clark
America the Beautiful was written by Irving Berlin for a musical review called Yip Yip Yap Hank, which no one has.
- [26:25]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Heard of, no one knows that anymore.
- [26:27]
Josh Clark
But it was meant to be performed and produced by soldiers. It had an eight show run. But the song, obviously, America the Beautiful, has survived long beyond that because it became an American standard. So these vehicles that were built around to kind of get the song out there to the public faded away. But the songs themselves have stood the test of time.
- [26:52]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, absolutely. I think he pulled it from that production. Or was it in the original production or did he pull it?
- [27:00]
Josh Clark
I think it was in the original one.
- [27:02]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Well, he eventually pulled it out of the production then, because he thought it was too sentimental. And then that song went on to be the one that everyone remembers.
- [27:09]
Josh Clark
Yeah, you're right. You're right. I'm sorry it didn't show up in there. But you also said so. You mentioned Irving Berlin forming his own publishing house. He was a quintessential rags to riches story for Tin Pan Alley, where he was like a waiter in a cafe, became a song plugger. One of those guys who plays songs to basically his marketing. Couldn't read sheet music, knew everything by ear, Had a friend transpose the songs he came up with into actual written music.
- [27:42]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
That's a pretty good little factoid there. The Irving Bird. Lynn couldn't read or write music.
- [27:46]
Josh Clark
Right. And then he became a well known composer. And then he became such a well known composer, he opened his own publishing house and then started making $100,000 a year in royalties.
- [27:56]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Amazing.
- [27:56]
Josh Clark
There was another guy named Charles K. Harris who was one of the earlier success stories, I think in 1893 or two, he had a song called after the Ball. And he just knew it was a gem because he offered it to a publisher and they offered him a price for it that he was like, that's way too low. I'm gonna set up my own publishing house. And he did, and he started selling it and was making something like $25,000 a week in 1890s money, which is like 700 grand a week.
- [28:26]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Holy cow.
- [28:27]
Josh Clark
This guy just went from nobody to 700 grand a week. Ended up selling 5 million copies of his song after the Ball. And if you listen to it now, it's not that good, frankly. It's not. But bully for him.
- [28:40]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
It's no Ain't She Sweet?
- [28:42]
Josh Clark
No.
- [28:43]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it's amazing, man. People, like popular music hit the world like, you know, like a lightning bolt from the beginning.
- [28:52]
Josh Clark
Yes. Because it was so ultra tailored for the American public. Like again, they would take Ragtime, which was a Scott Joplin creation. And Scott Joplin was the son of a slave. He was an African American.
- [29:07]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. A lot of people thought he was white.
- [29:09]
Josh Clark
Still to this day, a lot of people think he was white, I think because of his name, frankly. And it was the predecessor. Ragtime was the predecessor to jazz. And it had like a real, like, feel to a real soul. Everybody's heard, like, some of the original ragtime music, like the entertainer, the Maple Leaf Rag. And if you can't immediately bring those to mind, just go to YouTube and you'll be like, oh, okay, of course, I get that. But. But the idea that Tin Pan Alley could just kind of come along and take this cool, deep, soulful music and popify it basically to make it palatable to audiences, in particular white audiences who had the most money at the time. That was why it became so successful. It was almost dumbed down. It was music that was dumbed down in a way to make it appeal to as many people as possible.
- [30:05]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Or even worse, co opted by white publishers and producers to be used in minstrel shows. Yeah, this version of music, this new genre of music that was so unique in the Harlem Renaissance by Scott Joplin was co opted for minstrel shows. So shameful.
- [30:21]
Josh Clark
Yeah. So there's a real debate going on now about the legacy of Tin Pan Alley in some ways. And some people point to it and say, look, these guys were churning out the most eye poppingly racist songs that America has ever come up with. Yeah, some, to be sure, they were selling them to the masses. And in doing this, because this was the origin of popular music, they were really effectively perpetuating racial stereotypes and embedding them more than they ever had been before. Because people were not being mass audiences were being reached like they were with this early sheet music. And so in this respect, Tim, Pan Alley doesn't deserve to be revered or.
- [31:08]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Respected or designated as a historical landmark as the real fight.
- [31:11]
Josh Clark
Yeah, that's like as recently as, like late last month, I believe, Chuck, there was a landmark commission, city landmark commission meeting where this was being debated, right?
- [31:23]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Well, yeah, and so like you said, some people were saying that on one hand, other people are saying, yeah, but so many of these were Jewish immigrants, an ethnic minority. So many of them were African American songwriters. And Tin Pan Alley was also the home to the first black owned and operated music publishing business in the country.
- [31:40]
Josh Clark
Yeah, some people are saying, look, yes, it was taken and co opted to be popular, but so were operettas and ballads. Like that's just what they did. It wasn't meant to be offensive to African Americans. And as a matter of fact, it was basically these Jewish immigrants saying, I kind of identify with your plight. I want to preserve and celebrate this and expose this music to as many people as possible. And that some people pointed this process in Tin Pan Alley as the way that the African American arts became exposed to the larger population of America at the time.
- [32:18]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it's pretty interesting.
- [32:20]
Josh Clark
Yeah. So that debate's going on. That's where the idea of whether or not this area should be designated as an historic landmark is falling. Right.
- [32:29]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And like you said, it's kind of Hard to pinpoint an actual death date of Tin Pan Alley because these things like that happen gradually over time. But technology, like it has so many other times, kind of killed the notion of Tin Pan Alley, didn't it?
- [32:48]
Josh Clark
That's a really good point. Right.
- [32:49]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Like with the radio.
- [32:50]
Josh Clark
It was the radio. Radio killed the old timey sheet music.
- [32:54]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Star, and video killed the radio star.
- [32:57]
Josh Clark
Right, exactly. So, again, you didn't need to make sheet music any longer, or you certainly didn't have to learn to play sheet music at home if you wanted to enjoy music. If you could just buy a radio.
- [33:08]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. People quit buying pianos and it's kind of sad.
- [33:11]
Josh Clark
It is sad. It would be nice if everybody was walking around and knew how to play a piano. Like, hotel lounges would be a lot more interesting. Right? Yeah, but that's. I mean, once the radio came along, everybody said, so long sheet music. I hated you all along, but you were my only option. Now I can listen to, like, Benny Goodman and all of these other cats who are super hip and really good at what they're doing, and I want to listen to their. Their music. And not only did technology kill Tim Pan Alley in this sheet music publishing industry, but it also changed the genre a little bit. It kind of skewed it more into swing and. Yeah, big band. Some of the stuff that came out of the 30s onward, that was really kind of where that transition went.
- [33:58]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Have you ever been somewhere where they have a public piano and seen someone just walk by and sit down and blow minds?
- [34:06]
Josh Clark
Didn't you see Greg Allman do that?
- [34:08]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, my God, no. If you know someone who saw that, please try and remember who it was, because I need to hear that story.
- [34:16]
Josh Clark
I'll try to remember. I can't remember who it was.
- [34:18]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
That's pretty amazing.
- [34:19]
Josh Clark
Okay. I don't think I'm making this up. Let me go back through my mental Rolodex, but have you ever seen that?
- [34:28]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Sure. Just like your. I mean, not Greg Allman, but I've just seen your regular average person sit down at a piano and like, wow, someone New York does this from time to time. They'll have them on a sidewalk or in a park or something. And in Atlanta they have one over in Atlantic Station. I've seen people do it there, and it's always just really cool. And that makes me miss the fact that piano, like, a lot more people used to learn piano than they do now.
- [34:53]
Josh Clark
I think I would love to know how to play the piano.
- [34:56]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Me too.
- [34:56]
Josh Clark
Let's do it for that very Reason? Because I'd love to be able to sit down and just.
- [35:00]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I want to be that guy so bad someday.
- [35:02]
Josh Clark
Chuck, it's not too late.
- [35:04]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I remember the first time I saw it was at a student council retreat in high school. There was this one. You know, all the student councils from the county get together over the course of a weekend or a week and do stupid stuff and learn about leadership. But there's always like this one guy on student council at another school. You're like, man, he doesn't seem like a student council type.
- [35:26]
Josh Clark
He seems like he's 30.
- [35:28]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
This guy did, and he was on student council at some other school, but he was like, you know, had like the rat T shirt and was just sort of like a dirty metalhead.
- [35:37]
Josh Clark
The bad boy of student council.
- [35:39]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
He totally was. And there was a piano in one of the lobbies of the dormitories where we stayed at Barry College in Rome, Georgia. And on the very last day, there were a bunch of people hanging out in there. And this dude goes over and sits down and just crushes it. And I remember seeing the girls in the room and thinking, that guy has got it all going on, right? Like, that's the key, man.
- [36:04]
Josh Clark
And that boy in the rat T shirt grew up to be Greg Allman. Have you. Have you ever been to Sig Gold's request room in New York? Yumi's friend Joe McGinty owns it. He's co owner of it and he plays piano there. It's just like sing along piano, karaoke.
- [36:22]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, wow.
- [36:23]
Josh Clark
And it is amazing. I cannot believe you haven't been there yet. You have.
- [36:27]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
So does one person play the piano and everyone sings along?
- [36:30]
Josh Clark
Joe McGinty plays and then no, people can sing along if you want, but it's really one person going up there and doing karaoke with Joe accompanying you on the piano.
- [36:38]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, okay. Well, I've done the rock and roll live band karaoke before.
- [36:43]
Josh Clark
Oh, yeah.
- [36:43]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Here in Atlanta, which is a lot of fun.
- [36:45]
Josh Clark
Okay, where do you do that?
- [36:49]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Somewhere in the highlands, I think. The Dark Horse, maybe.
- [36:51]
Josh Clark
Okay. Yeah, that sounds right.
- [36:53]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, I went for my birthday a couple years ago and did Cheap Trick. Surrender. Did a pretty good job, if I may say so.
- [36:59]
Josh Clark
Is that Surrender parentheses, Dream Police?
- [37:03]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Those are two different songs.
- [37:04]
Josh Clark
Okay, Is it Surrender parentheses I want you to want me?
- [37:10]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, that's the one.
- [37:11]
Josh Clark
Okay. I've heard that song before.
- [37:12]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
But it's funny. The one in Atlanta, there's, you know, the dj. English Nick.
- [37:18]
Josh Clark
No, wait, was he on the radio? Like radio dj?
- [37:21]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, he still is. English Nick in Atlanta, he hosts it, and he is the. The emergency backup if you're no good. Because being bad at karaoke is no fun, but being bad at live band karaoke is really no fun for anyone. So he stands back there, and if you're not very good, he's singing along with you, and he will just give the signal to sort of do a little upping of his vocals and lowering of the other vocals.
- [37:47]
Josh Clark
Is it like the slice across your neck like that?
- [37:50]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
No, I mean, I think it's just like an eye signal.
- [37:53]
Josh Clark
I gotcha.
- [37:54]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And I remember being nervous. I was like, oh, man, if they bring up English Nick during surrender, I'm gonna be mortified. But they didn't. And afterward, he gave me a nod, like, good job, buddy.
- [38:03]
Josh Clark
Oh. Oh, you got the nod from English Nick.
- [38:06]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. It means a lot.
- [38:07]
Josh Clark
I have the opposite story.
- [38:09]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, what happened?
- [38:10]
Josh Clark
I went to Claremont Lounge to do karaoke years back.
- [38:13]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Okay.
- [38:14]
Josh Clark
Chose to do Darling Nicky.
- [38:16]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, interesting.
- [38:17]
Josh Clark
In the middle, the karaoke DJ breaks in and goes. It's like William Shatner singing, isn't it, everybody?
- [38:24]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, my God.
- [38:26]
Josh Clark
Yumi was there supporting dancing, but really just hanging on by her fingernails, you know?
- [38:32]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
You got stopped and insulted mid song.
- [38:34]
Josh Clark
Mid song. But I finished, buddy.
- [38:36]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Good.
- [38:36]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I finished.
- [38:37]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I would literally pay $100 to have seen that.
- [38:43]
Josh Clark
I wager that it would have been worth 250.
- [38:46]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Okay.
- [38:47]
Josh Clark
It was pretty, pretty bad.
- [38:50]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Do we have anything else on Tin Pan Alley?
- [38:52]
Josh Clark
I forgot what we were talking about, Chuck.
- [38:54]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Well, we should. We're not gonna get into it here. We should do a full show on ascap, though.
- [38:59]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Because yet another thing that Irving Berlin did was create ascap, the American Society of Composers and Performers. Right.
- [39:07]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I think producers.
- [39:08]
Josh Clark
Producers. Okay. Man. I didn't even have it in front of me. But they basically protect and register copyrights for artists.
- [39:16]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. It's gotten so convoluted, too, these days.
- [39:19]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Yeah. I think it definitely deserves its own thing. But that was another thing that was born out of Tin Pan Alley.
- [39:25]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And you know what? I am living in the future now because I have a turntable now, finally, again, after many, many years of not having one that I can play wirelessly throughout all the speakers in my home.
- [39:40]
Josh Clark
Oh, wow.
- [39:40]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Isn't that amazing?
- [39:41]
Josh Clark
That is the future for sure, that.
- [39:43]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
You can actually do that. And it sounds great. And now I just went to the record store for the first time in a long time yesterday and bought 13 records. I traded in probably 500 CDs to get 13 records. He was like, I'll give you 130 bucks for the lot. And I was like, fine, fine.
- [40:02]
Josh Clark
Just get these stupid 90s CDs away from me.
- [40:05]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
No, they were great, but it was just. I felt like I should pay him to take all these off my hands.
- [40:10]
Josh Clark
Did you still have the jewel cases?
- [40:12]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, yeah. They were all.
- [40:13]
Josh Clark
They were worth something jeweled up.
- [40:14]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And so, yeah, I bought records for the first time. And I'm gonna make that a. When we go on tour now. And when I travel, I'm gonna make it a point to go into local record stores again.
- [40:23]
Josh Clark
I think that's a great idea.
- [40:24]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I really, really had a good time thumbing through records. It was a lot of fun.
- [40:27]
Josh Clark
I'll go with you. Text me.
- [40:29]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, let's do it.
- [40:29]
Josh Clark
Okay. I think that's it for Tin Pan Alley. RIP Tin Pan Alley. Depending on your viewpoint, I guess.
- [40:37]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, there needs to be a great. I know there was a movie in the 40s called Tin Pan Alley, but someone should do a really good look at the early burgeoning film. I'm sorry. Movie industry, almost. Oh, boy. Music industry.
- [40:51]
Josh Clark
There you go.
- [40:52]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
About Tin Pan Alley.
- [40:53]
Josh Clark
That'd be great. Oh, yeah, that would be great. There's so many characters involved.
- [40:56]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Just put Hugh Jackman and Sharknado in it.
- [40:59]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [40:59]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yep. And we're all good. And by the way, you got called out for bringing back bread.
- [41:05]
Josh Clark
I did. I said in some episode that I think the Diving Bell episode, that we should bring bread back. And I guess that's what the kids all say now.
- [41:12]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I didn't realize that, but, like, at least 10 people emailed and said, yeah, millennials are talking about getting that bread.
- [41:19]
Josh Clark
Yep.
- [41:19]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
It's like they are.
- [41:21]
Josh Clark
I guess so. I like to think that I had absolutely nothing to do with that.
- [41:24]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
No, I bet. I bet you were the seed.
- [41:26]
Josh Clark
Do you think so?
- [41:27]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
You never know, man.
- [41:28]
Josh Clark
That'd be cool. Before we go, though, Chuck, I do have one more thing. I have to give a shout out to what I consider the greatest song to come out of Tim Pan Alley, and I believe it was an Irving Berlin song. Yeah, it was. Let's have another cup of coffee. Have you heard that song?
- [41:45]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Oh, we used that for something, didn't we?
- [41:47]
Josh Clark
I don't remember. We probably did because it's prominent in one of my favorite movies of all time, Paper Moon. That was a great song. I love that song so much. If you haven't ever heard that song, go listen to it, because it's one of the most just blindly optimistic songs of all time.
- [42:02]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
And it's about coffee.
- [42:04]
Josh Clark
Yep. And pie. Okay, now that's it. Now I've got nothing else. If you want to know more about Tin Pan Alley, you can go read up on it and maybe follow whether it's going to get designated as a historic landmark or not. Not. We'll find out. In the meantime, it's time for listener mail.
- [42:24]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
So this is just a very sweet email from someone. Hey guys, I'm sure you receive emails like this all the time, but I would be remiss if I didn't. Thank you for all the wonderful work you do. I've had a really tough time with mental illness and there have been a lot of nights your wonderful podcast staved off panic attacks or worse. Thank you for keeping me calm and educated. And thank you for making me me feel safe even in perilous circumstances. Thank you for giving me something to talk about when my depression has kept me in a fog. Without your massive backlog and seemingly endless supply of fresh, fascinating subjects, I surely would be lost. Spent some time researching and I can truly appreciate just how much time and energy go into becoming familiar enough with something to explain it as succinctly as you guys do your superheroes and rock stars. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for the wonderful work you do. You have truly saved me. Kindest and warmest regards, Georgia. That is really lovely, Georgia. If we're ever in a town near you, you are guest listed.
- [43:21]
Josh Clark
Yes. Wow, Chuck, I think that was a really good idea. Thanks a lot, Georgia. That was very sweet email. We appreciate it. We're glad we could help in some small measure. Thank you very much for the kudos. If you want to send us kudos, we love that kind of thing.
- [43:36]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Including kudos. The candy bar.
- [43:38]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I remember those.
- [43:40]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Send us a kudos.
- [43:41]
Josh Clark
They were great.
- [43:42]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [43:43]
Josh Clark
Actually, I don't know if somebody sent us one if it would still be so great.
- [43:47]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Are they not around?
- [43:48]
Josh Clark
No, I think, like they would have been manufactured in 1986 or something like that.
- [43:53]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
I don't keep up with the candy bar scene.
- [43:55]
Josh Clark
That's what I'm saying. They're not around anymore.
- [43:57]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yeah, no, I know.
- [43:58]
Josh Clark
Okay, so. Wow, that was a little sidetrack on kudos, wasn't it?
- [44:02]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Yes.
- [44:02]
Josh Clark
If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyouchouldknow.com and find all of our social links there. And you can also send us an email to stuff podcastheartradio.com.
- [44:16]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio for more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [44:27]
Josh Clark
Foreign let's talk about moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or osa, in adults with obesity. Doesn't sound familiar? Think about how you've been sleeping lately. If you've had nights where you've been told you snore loudly or choke or gasp for air and then wake up feeling tired, it may be due to OSA.
- [44:48]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
In the US moderate to severe OSA affects around 24 million adults. Many are adults with obesity, and most cases remain undiagnosed and untreated.
- [44:57]
Josh Clark
Don't sleep on the symptoms.
- [44:58]
Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Learn more@don'tsleeponosa.com this information is provided by Lilly USA, LLC.
- [45:05]
Josh Clark
This is an iHeart podcast.