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What was Tin Pan Alley? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: How Stuff Works.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: there's Charles W. Tuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: and this is Stuff You Should Know. The superstar edition.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: The old-timey superstar edition.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man. I thought this was super cool.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: It's in Pan Alley.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those things where I've I
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: sort of knew what Tin Pan Alley was, and you
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: always have heard that term thrown around, but I never really,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: really got it until this episode.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, same here.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And it's pretty cool. Like, the term Tin Pan Alley, T-I-N,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: full stop, P-A-N, alley.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: You forgot a second full stop there.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Full stop. I just want to make sure people know
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: it's not one word, like tin pan.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It's two words.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: But that is, linguistically speaking, that's a synecdoche.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: What? It is.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: You know what that is, right?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I've seen the movie.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Man, that movie. Jeez. You're talking about the Charlie Kaufman thing, right? Sure, yeah.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Synecdoche, New York.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so a synecdoche is when a specific place stands
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: in for a broader term, like Wall Street. Wall Street's
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: a real street, but Wall Street also means the finance industry.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Or Hollywood. Hollywood's a real place.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. This makes a lot more sense than the
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Charlie Kaufman movie.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So Tin Pan Alley is a bunch of things.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It was a place in New York City, which we'll
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: get to in a second, like exactly where. And it
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: was also referred to sort of the beginnings of the
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: music publishing industry and genre as well.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: There's kind of a lot of things. But it stems
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: from the root of a tin pan, like a tin
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: pan was a cheap piano. Like if you had a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: really cheap piano, you would say it sounds tin panny.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Right, because that's what the hammer on the piano is
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: hitting is tin pans rather than strings.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds just like a real tinny tone, like
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: you're beating on a tin pan. So that's where the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: term originally came from. And depending on who you ask,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: this area of New York was called Tin Pan Alley
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: because perhaps a journalist first wrote about it. all the
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: sounds coming from the songwriters from these buildings on this
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: one block sounded like Tin Pan Alley.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Right. It's no exaggeration to say Tin Pan Alley, specifically
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: this little stretch in New York, uh, like a block
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: or so, maybe less than a block.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: It's a, it's a block.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Okay. Um, was the place where the American popular music
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: industry was born?
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's specifically 28th street between six and Broadway. Um,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: kind of between Chelsea and Kipps Bay, a little northwest
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: of the Flatiron Building.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think that the beginnings of music
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: distribution wasn't pre-phonograph and pre-records. There was still music distribution,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: but it was sheet music.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Right, right. So I think, Chuck, we should get back
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: in the waveback machine and go to an indeterminate part
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: of the mid-19th century in the United States.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: So like you said there's horse poop everywhere there's a
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: lot of it um it's like you said if you
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: wanted to hear music you had basically two choices you
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: could go hear it played live somewhere everywhere from a
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: barbershop quartet to maybe an orchestra um.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Or on board Right.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Or you could have a family member who knew how
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: to play music and buy a piano and have it
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: in your home. Those were your two ways to hear
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: music because everywhere there was no such thing as radio.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Let's just say it, everybody. Yeah. There was no radio.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: There wasn't. And if you think about it, radio was,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: you know, we take it so much for granted today,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: but it was a huge watershed change. In the way
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: that Americans in the world heard their music. You could
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: just hear it at home being played by professionals. Like
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: the greatest musicians you've ever heard, you could just sit
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: around and listen to it at your home. Whereas just
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: years before, a few years before, you had to listen
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: to your 12-year-old try to bang out some song on
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: the piano that you just bought. And that was your
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: option aside from going to hear it live.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And so.
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  Speaker 2: This whole idea of the music industry being born is
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: basically predicated on two things, Chuck. One was the fact
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: that pianos were starting to become ubiquitous in American houses.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: And people were learning how to play those pianos. So
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: music instruction became kind of widespread. And then secondly, copyright
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: law started to really solidify in the United States in
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: the 19th century. And so that sheet music became much
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: more valuable than it was before.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like if you can't– like I can't read sheet music.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I can't either. Yeah, I learned to play guitar by ear.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: And kind of I guess every friend I know that's
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: a musician, except for a couple, learned by ear. If
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: you came up formally through high school band or something
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: like that or maybe just private music instruction, then you
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: may be able to read music. But back in the day,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: if you could not– and still today– if you could
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: not play by ear– The only way to do so
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: was through sheet music. And that was the first commodity
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: in the music business was literally just selling sheet music
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: to people. Right. It's hard to wrap your head around now,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: but that was the commodity.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: It is hard to wrap your head around. But if
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: you think about sheet music is basically the predecessor to
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: the cassette or the record or the CD or the MP3.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: It's the exact same thing. It's just to to hear
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: it like that is what you went and bought at
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: the store. And then you came home and played it
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: rather than listening to somebody else playing it.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And like they sold a lot of them, like
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: the very first hit that Tin Pan Alley put out.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And this was a period. I mean, this was in
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: 1881 when Wait Till the Clouds Roll By was put out. So.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Tin Pan Alley generally was early 1880s till early 1920s
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: or so.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: I saw like late 1920s. Was it early? Yeah.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess, you know, you can never say when
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: it was dead, dead.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: But in one month in 1881, they sold 75,000 copies
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: of sheet music to Wait Till the Clouds Roll By.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because this was, it was a good song. And
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: people wanted to hear the song. So they went and
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: bought the sheet music. Yeah. So that was one thing, right?
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: So there was sheet music. That was how you got
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: this stuff out. And, but even before wait till the
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: clouds rolled by, which it seems like was probably America's
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: first number one smash hit.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Um, music prior to that, there was plenty of sheet
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: music to be sold. Um, But it was largely like
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: church hymns. Boring. There was a lot that were sold
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: for schools.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And like I said, copyright law changed. It allowed Tim
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Pannelli to develop, and it did so in two ways. One,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: like the court started taking copyrights for music seriously in
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: the second half of the 19th century. So you could
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: actually enforce your copyright against people who were infringing on it. Mm-hmm.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: And then secondly, the Supreme Court specifically said, hey, if
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: you wrote a song outside of America, when it comes
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: to America, you can copyright it in America too. Which
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: means that the music publisher's source of free sheet music,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: which was just basically stealing foreign music, printing it out
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: in sheet music form, and then selling it and not
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: paying any royalties because it enjoyed no copyright protection, that
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  Speaker 2: source dried up. And so all of a sudden, this
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  Speaker 2: American music that they had to pay for now seemed
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: a lot more attractive because now they had to pay
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: for the music generated overseas too. So this copyright law
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  Speaker 2: and the fact that more and more people were learning
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: to play piano and so you had an actual market
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  Speaker 2: for sheet music, those two things came together.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: All right, let's take a break. I feel like that's
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: a pretty good setup.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: And we'll come back and talk a little bit about
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  Speaker 1: who these... Music publishers were and how they went about
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  Speaker 1: their work early on in the Tin Pan Alley era
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: right after this All right, so we've been throwing around
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the term music publishers a lot and that sort of
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: means a different thing now than it did back then
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  Speaker 1: But back then music publishers Some of them wrote songs
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: to be sure But generally, they did not. A lot
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of the early publishers out of Tin Pan Alley had
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: backgrounds as salespeople. So there was a guy named, a
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: very successful publisher named Isidore Whitmark. He started out selling
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: water filters. Another one named Leo Feist sold corsets. Another
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  Speaker 1: one named Joe Stern and Edward B. Mark sold neckties
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and buttons. And a lot of these people, I guess
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: we should point out too, came over from Europe. A
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: lot were Jewish. Some African-American songwriters like they were minorities
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: kind of for the most part early on, it feels like.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Right. And they saw a huge opportunity in this music
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: business that was starting to coalesce because prior to this,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, there were there were music publishers, but it
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: was basically some guy who worked at a printer who
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: had a friend who could transpose music by ear. And
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: they would just take some song that they heard and
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: turn it into sheet music and start selling it. Or
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: they worked at the music store and the music store
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: basically did the exact same thing. And so everyone was
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: ripping off everyone else's songs and anybody could be a
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: music publisher. But when those copyrights started to become enforced, um,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: it became much more valuable to invest in original music
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: because you could make a lot more money off of it.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: So a lot of those Jewish immigrants and a lot
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: of the African-American songwriters and composers kind of coalesced into
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: New York. They came from Boston and Detroit and Atlanta
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: and St. Louis and all over the country. And all
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: those towns lost their publishing houses and they all moved
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: to New York. And they very specifically moved to this
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: one little stretch on 28th Street and it became Tin
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Pan Alley. Yeah.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: And it's really interesting to look at how it worked
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: back then and how it sort of mirrored how music
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: grew out of that model, really, and changed in some ways,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: but kind of stayed the same in a lot of ways, too.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Like you always hear about music contracts and how terrible
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: they are for rock musicians or pop musicians, and it
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: was kind of the same way back then. These publishers
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: got together, they created this songwriting factory on this block
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: of buildings through different companies, and they would recruit songwriters
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: to come in. They had different arrangements. Sometimes They would
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: just buy it outright from you, including the rights to
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: change the name of who wrote it.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they would have the right to throw one of
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the other more, I guess, once they had established themselves,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: another co-author's name on there. But they would just say,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: write these songs, write these songs, and we're going to
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: buy them from you. And we're going to try and
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: make them pop. You couldn't put them on the radio.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So we're going to try and get them popular by.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Getting them onto vaudeville and on stage and sending not moles,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I guess, but it was almost like early payola, uh,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: sending these performers into vaudeville to sing these songs and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: perform these songs. And people are like, well, that's pretty catchy.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I want that.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Right. That's how they, that's how they marketed it. And
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: that was like the, the whole thing. Like if, if you,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: it was the first time that the, that music became
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: an industry and, Because there was almost an assembly line
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: feel to it where they would have feelers out to
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: find out what people were into as music at the time.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: One of the early transitions that Tim Pannelli underwent was
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: when it started, it was a factory for churning out comedic,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: often deeply racist songs, lots of ballads, just what you
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: think of as super old-timey songs, right? And then... the
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: public started to get kind of bored with that. And
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: they decided that they kind of liked this ragtime thing
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: that the Scott Joplin fella has, um, has started to create.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: And so Tim Pan Alley, this is classic Tim Pan Alley,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: went out, figured out, um, how to play ragtime, started
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: co-opting the ragtime genre and created pop music. So they
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: took what was a really difficult, um, kind of music.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: It's called syncopated rhythm where you've got a melody within
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: a rhythm, right? So you know ragtime, right? Sure.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: So they figured out how to take this very difficult
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: thing and kind of popify it to make it easy
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: for the audience to play. Because again, here's the thing.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: They're not saying, hey, you're the best of the best
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: studio musician. We've got this really tough song over here
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: that sounds great, but it's really tough to play. We
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: want to pay you to come play it. We're going
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: to record it and distribute it. onto the radio, that
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: didn't exist yet. They had to figure out how to
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: take difficult songs, kind of dumb them down into something
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: catchy and memorable and importantly, easy to play so that
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: they could sell that sheet music to local musicians or
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: those barbershop quartets, or so that the 12 year old
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: at home could play it for the rest of their family.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: And so that is how they kind of started to
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: take popular music and make it even more popular. They
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: decided what music was popular based on what America was
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: starting to get into at the time.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there were these musicians called songpluggers. So how
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: it would work is a music publisher in Tin Pan
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Alley would buy a song or the rights to a
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: song off of a musician who wrote it, maybe put
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: their own name on it, and then they would give
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that song to a songplugger who is a musician who
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: would go and perform this at a music shop that
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: maybe sold pianos or something like that. And this was
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: pre-radio how they got the music out in the public.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: And it was crazy. These songpluggers got money. Irving Berlin
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: started out as a songplugger. Right.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: And so it's kind of like, You know how you
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: go to a grocery store on a Saturday and they'll
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: be sitting there giving out samples of something?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: And you'll say, oh, this cheese with this cracker tastes
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: really good. I'm going to go buy this cheese and
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: these crackers. This is the exact same thing, except you
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: would say, oh, this song sounds really good. I'm going
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: to buy the sheet music. That's what music pluggers were for.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: That's how they got the word out. That's how they
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: advertised the music was to play them. And then another
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: way to do it, Chuck, is like you were saying,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: they would set vaudeville shows up or musical reviews or
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Broadway shows, whatever, with these popular songs and these songwriters
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: to help get them out that way, too. So the
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: audiences would go hear these things. So you could hear
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: them in the music shop. You could hear them at
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: the theater. You might hear them. Well, that's basically it.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: It's the theater and the music shop were the two
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: main venues, unless I'm forgetting one.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was the plugging, but there was also booming.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: So like I said, you had Irving Berlin and George
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Gershwin started out as a song plugger. Al Sherman started
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: out as a song plugger. But if you wanted to
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: be more aggressive than that even, you would do something
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: called booming, which is you would buy like 25 tickets
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to a show. You would have the plugger up there
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: playing the song, and then those 25 people would were
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: plants basically that already knew the song that would sing
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: along to it. And then everyone, the only thing better
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: than hearing a great song for the first time in
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: 1910 in New York City is hearing 25 people around
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: you singing it and you're thinking, how have I been
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: missing out on this thing? And that may be the
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: first time it was ever performed in public. And it
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: was all just a big Kind of a big scam.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: It was. It's hilarious, though, that that's how you just
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: look around and suddenly be overcome with FOMO. So you'd
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: be into this new song and run out and buy
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the sheet music, I guess. Early FOMO. So there was
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: this process to all this. And like you said, you
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: could be a no-name composer who would show up at
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Tin Pan Alley with the song that you're trying to sell.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: And if it was good, the publisher might buy it.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: But like you said, you would get some sort of
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: terrible contractor, they would buy it outright, take your name
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: off of the composition and put their own name on there.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: But they also hired composers, I think like you were
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: saying too, where they were They had a few hits
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: under their belt, so they had a steady gig at
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: the music publisher. And their contract was a little better,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: but they were not in creative control for the most part.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: It's where the music publisher would say, hey, everybody's into
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: this ragtime. Make me some ragtime songs. Everybody's into this
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: jazz and this blues stuff. Make me some bluesy kind
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: of stuff that I can turn around and sell. And
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: the competition was really fierce among the in-house composers because
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: they Just because you composed a song doesn't mean it
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: was going to be turned around and transcribed into sheet
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: music and then people would buy it. Like you had
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: to basically audition your song to see whether it made
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: it to the next level. And so in Tim Pan Alley,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: and this is where it got its name, there would be,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: you know, no-name composers, house composers, vaudeville acts, all running
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: around playing music from these open windows because there wasn't
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: air conditioning back then. And so at any given time,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: you'd walk down Tin Pan Alley and there'd be a
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: dozen or scores of different songs all being played on
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: these pianos streaming out of the windows onto the street
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: at the same time. And that's where that reporter, Monroe Rosenfeld,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: came up with the idea of Tin Pan Alley. He
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: said when he was walking down the street, he was
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: kind of describing what that was like. He said it
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: sounded like, you know, a bunch of tin pans being
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: struck at once.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And this whole area of New York, this one block,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: just really became like a creative well. There were uh
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: vaudeville theaters there were uh play theaters like it was
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: sort of the earliest incarnation of the theater district before
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: it moved toward times square uh and then other parts
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: of the entertainment industry obviously are drawn to that area
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: um variety magazine that's where it first popped up on
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that block when it was called the clipper uh the
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: william morris talent agency had an office on that block
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: yeah and it was just sort of the you know
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: after i think uh boston chicago cincinnati uh And I
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: think one other city kind of were the early seats
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: of the early music industry. It all roundly landed in
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: New York and just such a creative area and era.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: It's so neat to think about. too, because that's happened
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: in places before where if you take a bunch of
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: creative people and jam them into a small area, just
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: amazing stuff happens. Like you can do something as big
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: as birth a genre of music or like pop music
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: and Which is like an umbrella. It's not even a genre.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: There's genres underneath pop music, you know, where something that
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: big can happen when you get that many creative people
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: together in one place.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Should we take another break? Sure.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Let's take another break and we'll talk about some of
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: these songs, these composers, and the Great American Songbook right
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: after this.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Hey ho, say.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: No, talk no, talk no. All right, so there's money
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: being made.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a tad.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: A lot of money, even for early on. I mean,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine what sheet music costs, but they were
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: selling so much of it. It added up. Irving Berlin,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, he went on to start his own music
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: publishing business, but early on when he was just pumping
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: out tunes. In 1917, he made about $ 100, 000 a year
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: in royalties. Yeah, that's $ 1917 too, right? Yeah, and these songs,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: these are some standards. It's what's known as the standard
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: American songbook. It's an unofficial designation, but they're considered to
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: be the classics of the early 20th century. I mean,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: we all still know these songs. Stuff like, Ain't She Sweet?
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know that one. Ain't she sweet? You're walking
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: down the street. What? You don't know that song?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: No, that one I've not heard.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy. Do you know Babyface? Yes. Got the cutest
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: little baby face?
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, I love that song. It makes me smile every time.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Give My Regards
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to Broadway.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Happy Days Are Here Again. Over There, a lot of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: this had to do with early wartime stuff.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Sweet Georgia Brown, Take Me Out to the Ball Game.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that in particular, we got to say, that
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: was written by two guys, Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 1908.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: And they'd never seen a ball game before. No.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe that's what they were saying. The original lyric was,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: take me out to the ballgame because I've never been.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: And they changed that line.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: But that was so Tim Pan Alley, where it's like,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: everybody's into baseball right now, so let's make a song
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: about baseball. You two, we've never seen a baseball game.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Doesn't matter. Make me a song. And that's how Take
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Me Out to the Ballgame was formed.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think under one of the, like you
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: said earlier, some of the earliest work were humorous comedy songs.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: One that still Stands out today, I believe, from that
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: genre is Yes, We Have No Bananas, which I always
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: thought was kind of funny when I was a kid.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: It's a little funny.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And I guess I still do, if I'm being honest.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: There is also, yeah, you can go down this line
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: and there's some pretty substantial songs that were written during
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: this time. And not all of them were standalone. A
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: lot of them, like I said earlier, were created for
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: musical reviews.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Um, America, the beautiful was written by Irving Berlin for
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: a musical review called the yip, yip, yap Hank, which
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: no one has heard of.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: No one does that anymore.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: But, um, it was, it was meant to be performed
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: and produced by soldiers. I had an eight show run, but, um,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: The song, obviously, America the Beautiful, has survived long beyond
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: that because it became an American standard. So these vehicles
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: that were built around to kind of get the song
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: out there to the public faded away, but the songs
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: themselves have stood the test of time.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I think you pulled it from that production.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Or was it in the original production or did he
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: pull it?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: I think it was in the original one.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Well, he eventually pulled it out of the production then
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: because he thought it was too sentimental. And then that
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: song went on to be the one that everyone remembers.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right. You're right. I'm sorry it didn't show
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: up in there. But you also said, so you mentioned
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Irving Berlin forming his own publishing house. He was a
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: quintessential rags to riches story for Tim Pan Alley. Yeah.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Where he was like a waiter in a cafe, became
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: a song plugger, one of those guys who plays songs
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: to basically his marketing projects. couldn't read sheet music, knew
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: everything by ear, had a friend transpose the songs he
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: came up with into actual written music.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: That's a pretty good little factoid there, that Irving Berlin
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: couldn't read or write music.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Right. And then he became a well-known composer, and then
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: he became such a well-known composer, he opened his own
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: publishing house and then started making $ 100, 000 a year in royalties.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: There was another guy named Charles K. Harris, who was
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: one of the earlier success stories, I think in 1893
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: or two he had a song called after the ball
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: and he just knew it was a gem because he
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: offered it to a publisher and they offered him a
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: price for it that he was like that's way too
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: low i'm going to set up my own publishing house
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: and he did and he started selling it um and
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: was making something like $ 25, 000 a week in 1890s money,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: which is like 700 grand a week.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Holy cow.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: This guy just went from nobody to 700 grand a week,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: ended up selling 5 million copies of his song after
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: the ball. And if you listen to it now, it's
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: not that good, frankly. It's not, but bully for him.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: It's no Ain't She Sweet.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: No.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing, man. People, like popular music, hit the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: world like, you know, like a lightning bolt from the beginning.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, because it was so ultra-tailored for the American public. Like, again,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: they would take ragtime, which, it was a Scott Joplin creation.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: And Scott Joplin was the son of a slave. He
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: was an African-American.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of people thought he was white.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Still to this day, a lot of people think he
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: was white. I think so. I think because of his name, frankly.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: And it was the predecessor ragtime was the predecessor to jazz.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: And it had like a real, like feel to a
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: real soul. Everybody's heard like some of the original ragtime music,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: like the entertainer, the maple leaf rag. And if you
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: can't immediately bring those to mind, just go to YouTube
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: and you'll be like, Oh, okay. Of course I get that. Um,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: but the idea that, that Tim Pan Alley could just
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: kind of come along and take this cool, deep soulful
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: music and, popify it basically to make it palatable to audiences,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: in particular white audiences who had the most money at
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: the time. That was why it became so successful. It
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: was almost dumbed down. It was music that was dumbed
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: down in a way to make it appeal to as
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: many people as possible.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or even worse, co-opted by white publishers and producers
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: to be used in minstrel shows.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: This... version of music, this new genre of music that
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: was so unique in the Harlem Renaissance by Scott Joplin
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: was co-opted for minstrel shows. So shameful. Yeah.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: So there's a real debate going on now about the
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: legacy of Tim Pan Alley in some ways. And some
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: people point to it and say, look, these guys were
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: churning out the most eye-poppingly racist songs ever. that America
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: has ever come up with.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, some to be sure.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: They were selling them to the masses, and in doing this,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: because this was the origin of popular music, they were
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: really effectively perpetuating racial stereotypes and embedding them more than
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: they ever had been before because people were not being,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: mass audiences were being reached like they were with this
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: early sheet music. And so in this respect, Timpan Alley
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: doesn't deserve to be revered or respected.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Or designated as a historical landmark is the real fight.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's, I guess, recently is like late last month,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I believe, Chuck, there was a landmark commission, city landmark
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: commission meeting where this was being debated, right?
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah. And so, like you said, some people were
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: saying that on one hand, other people are saying, yeah,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: but so many of these were Jewish immigrants, an ethnic minority,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: so many of them were African-American songwriters. And Tin Pan
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Alley was also the home to the first black-owned and
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: operated music publishing business in the country.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, some people are saying, look, like, yes, it was
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: taken and co-opted to be popular, but so were operettas
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: and ballads. Like, that's just what they did. It wasn't
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: meant to be offensive to African-Americans. And as a matter
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: of fact, it was basically these Jewish immigrants saying, I
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: kind of identify with your plight. I want to preserve
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: and celebrate this and expose this music to as many
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: people as possible. And that some people pointed this process
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: in Tin Pan Alley as the way that the African-American
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: arts became exposed to the larger population of America at
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty interesting.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that debate's going on. That's where the idea
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: of whether or not this area should be designated as
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: an historic landmark is falling, right?
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and... Like you said, it's kind of hard to
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: pinpoint an actual death date of Tin Pan Alley because
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: these things like that happen gradually over time. But technology,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: like it has so many other times, kind of killed
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the notion of Tin Pan Alley, didn't it?
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: That's a really good point, right?
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: With the radio?
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: It was the radio. Radio killed the old-timey sheet music star.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: And video killed the radio star.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. So again, you didn't need to make sheet
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: music any longer, or you certainly didn't have to learn
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: to play sheet music at home if you wanted to
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: enjoy music, if you could just buy a radio.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, people quit buying pianos and it's kind of sad.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: It is sad. It would be nice if everybody was
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: walking around and knew how to play a piano. Like
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: hotel lounges would be a lot more interesting, right?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: But I mean, once the radio came along, everybody said,
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: so long, sheet music. I hated you all along, but
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: you were my only option. Now I can listen to
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: like Benny Goodman and all of these other cats who
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: are super hip and really good at what they're doing.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: And I want to listen to their music. And not
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: only did technology kill Tim Panale in this sheet music
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: publishing industry, but it also changed the genre a little bit.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: It kind of skewed it more into swing and Big band. Yeah,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: big band. Some of the stuff that came out of
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: the 30s onward, that was really kind of where that
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: transition went. Yeah.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Have you ever been somewhere where they have a public
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: piano and seen someone just walk by and sit down
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and blow minds?
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Didn't you see Greg Allman do that?
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God, no. if you know someone who saw that,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: please try and remember who it was. Cause I need
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: to hear that story.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I'll try to remember. I can't remember who it was.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. Okay.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: I don't think I'm making this up. Let me, let me,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: let me go back through my specific mental Rolodex, but
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: have you ever seen that?
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Sure. Just like you're, I mean, not Greg Allman, but
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: I've just seen your regular average person sit down at
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: a piano and like, wow, someone, uh, New York does
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: this from time to time. They'll have them on a
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: sidewalk or in a park or something. And, in Atlanta,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: they have one over in Atlantic station. I've seen people
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: do it there. Uh, and it's always just really cool.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: And that makes me miss the fact that piano, like
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: a lot more people used to learn piano than they
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: do now.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I think I would love to know how to play
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: the piano for that very reason. Cause I'd love to
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: be able to sit down and.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Just play that guy. It's so bad.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Right. Someday Chuck, it's not too late.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I remember the first time I saw it was at
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: a student council retreat in high school. There was this one, uh,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: you know, all the student councils from the county get
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: together over the course of a weekend or a week
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: and do stupid stuff and learn about leadership. But there
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: was this, there's always like this one guy on student
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: council at another school where you're like, man, he didn't
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: seem like a student council type.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: He seems like he's 30.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: This guy did. And he was on student council at
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: some other school, but he was like, you know, had
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: like the rat t-shirt and was just sort of a,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: like a dirty metal head.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: The bad boy of student council?
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: He totally was. And, There was a piano in one
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: of the lobbies of the dormitories where we stayed at
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Berry College in Rome, Georgia. And on the very last day,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: there were a bunch of people hanging out in there.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: And this dude goes over and sits down and just
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: crushes it. And I remember seeing the girls in the
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: room and thinking, that guy has got it all going on. Right. Like,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: that's the key, man.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: And that boy in the rat T-shirt grew up to
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: be Greg Allman. Have you ever been to Sig Gold's request.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Room in New York? No, what's that?
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Yumi's friend Joe McGinty owns it. He's co-owner of it,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: and he plays piano there. It's just like sing-along piano karaoke.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: And it is amazing. I cannot believe you haven't been
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: there yet. You have. So.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Does one person play the piano and everyone sings along?
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Joe McGinty plays. And then, no, people can sing along
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: if you want, but it's really one person going up
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: there and doing karaoke with Joe accompanying you on the piano.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Well, I've done the rock and roll live
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: band karaoke before.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah?
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Here in Atlanta, which is a lot of fun.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Okay. Where do you do that?
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Somewhere in the Highlands, I think. The Dark Horse, maybe?
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that sounds right.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I went for my birthday a couple of years
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: ago and did Cheap Trick's Surrender and did a pretty
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: good job, if I may say so.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Is that Surrender, parentheses, Dream Police?
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: No, those are two different songs.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Is it Surrender, parentheses, I Want You to
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Want Me?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the one.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Okay. I've heard that song before.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: But it's funny, the one in Atlanta, there's the DJ
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: English Nick.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: No. Wait, was he on the radio, like radio DJ? Yeah,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: he still is. Sure.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: English Nick in Atlanta.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: He hosts it, and he is the emergency backup if
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: you're no good.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah?
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Because being bad at karaoke is no fun, but being
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: bad at live band karaoke is really no fun for anyone.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: So he stands back there, and if you're not very good,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: he's singing along with you, and he will just give
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the signal to sort of do a little... Upping of
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: his vocals and lowering of the other vocals.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Is it like the slice across your neck like that?
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, I think it's just like an eye signal.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: I got you.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: And I remember being nervous. I was like, oh, man,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: if they bring up English Nick during Surrender, I'm going
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: to be mortified. But they didn't. And afterward, he gave
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: me a nod like, good job, buddy.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, you got the nod from English Nick.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it means a lot.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: I have the opposite story.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, what happened?
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: I went to Claremont Lounge to do karaoke years back. Okay.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Chose to do Darling Nikki.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: In the middle, the karaoke DJ breaks in and goes,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: it's like William Shatner singing, isn't.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: It, everybody? Oh, my God.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Yumi was there supporting, dancing, but really just hanging on
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: by her fingernails, you know?
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: You got stopped and insulted mid-song.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Mid-song, but I finished, buddy.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Good.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I finished.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: I would literally pay $ 100 to have seen that.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: I wager that it would have been worth $ 250. Okay.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: It was pretty bad.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Do we have anything else on Tin Pan Alley?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I forgot what we were talking about, Chuck.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Well, we're not going to get into it here. We
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: should do a full show on ASCAP, though.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because yet another thing that Irving Berlin did was
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: create ASCAP, the American Society of Composers and Performers, right?
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I think producers.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Producers, okay. Man, I didn't even have it in front
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: of me. But they basically... protect and register copyrights for artists.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's gotten so convoluted to these days. Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: I think it definitely deserves its own thing, but that
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: was another thing that was born out of Tim Pan alley. Yeah.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: And you know what? I am living in the future
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: now because I have a turntable now. Finally, again, after many,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: many years of not having one that I can play
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: wirelessly throughout all the speakers in my home. Oh, isn't
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: that amazing?
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: That is the future for sure.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: That you can actually do that. And it sounds great.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: And now I just went to the record store for
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: the first time in a long time yesterday and bought
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: 13 records. I traded in probably 500 CDs to get
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: 13 records. He was like, I'll give you 130 bucks
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: for the lot. And I was like, fine.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Fine. Just get these stupid 90 CDs away from me.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: No, they're great. But it was just I felt like
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: I should pay him to take all these off my hands.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Did you still have the jewel cases?
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: They were all jeweled up.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah, I bought records for the first time.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to make that a, when we go
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: on tour now and when I travel, I'm going to
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: make it a point to go into local record stores again.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: I think that's a great idea.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I really, really had a good time thumbing through records.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: I'll go with you. Text me.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Okay. I think that's it for Tim Pan Alley. RIP
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Tim Pan Alley, depending on your viewpoint, I guess.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there needs to be a great, I know there
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: was a movie in the 40s called Tin Pan Alley,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: but someone should do a really good look at the
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: early burgeoning film, I'm sorry, movie industry.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Almost.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Oh boy, music industry.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: About Tin Pan Alley, that'd be great.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that would be great. There's so many characters involved.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Just put Hugh Jackman and Sharknado in it. Yep. And
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: we're all good. And by the way, you got called
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: out for bringing back Bread.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: I did. I said in some episode that, I think
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: the Diving Bell episode, that we should bring bread back,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: and I guess that's what the kids all say now?
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that, but at least 10 people emailed
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: and said, yeah, millennials are talking about getting that bread.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: It's like, they are?
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I guess so. I like to think that I had
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: absolutely nothing to do with that.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: No, I bet you were the seed.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Do you think so?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: You never know, man.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: That'd be cool. Before we go, though, Chuck, I do
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: have one more thing.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: I have to give a shout out to what I
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: consider the greatest song to come out of Tim Pan Alley.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: And I believe it was an Irving Berlin song. Yeah,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: it was. Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee. Have you
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: heard that song?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: We used that for something, didn't we?
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: I don't remember. We probably did because it's prominent in
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite movies of all time, Paper Moon.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: That was a great song. I love that song so much.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: If you haven't ever heard that song, go listen to
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: it because it's one of the most just blindly optimistic
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: songs of all time.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: And it's about coffee.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: Yep, and pie. Okay, now that's it. Now I've got
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: nothing else. If you want to know more about Tin
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: Pan Alley, you can go read up on it and
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: maybe follow whether it's going to get designated as an
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: historic landmark or not. We'll find out. In the meantime,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: it's time for Listener Mail.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: So this is just a very sweet email from someone.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm sure you receive emails like this all
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: the time, but I would be remiss if I didn't
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: thank you for all the wonderful work you do. I've
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: had a really tough time with mental illness. And there
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: have been a lot of nights your wonderful podcast, Staved Off.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: panic attacks or worse thank you for keeping me calm
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: and educated and thank you for making me feel safe
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: even in perilous circumstances thank you for giving me something
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: to talk about when my depression has kept me in
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: a fog without your massive backlog and seemingly endless supply
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: of fresh fascinating subjects i surely would be lost spend
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: some time researching, and I can truly appreciate just how
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: much time and energy go into becoming familiar enough with
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: something to explain it as succinctly as you guys do.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: You're superheroes and rock stars. From the bottom of my heart,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: thank you for the wonderful work you do. You've truly
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: saved me. Kindest and warmest regards, Georgia. That is really lovely, Georgia.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: If we're ever in a town near you, you are
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: guest listed.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Yes. Wow, Chuck, I think that was a really good idea. Yeah.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Georgia. That was a very sweet email.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: We appreciate it. We're glad we could help in some
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: small measure. Thank you very much for the kudos. If
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: you want to send us kudos, we love that kind
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: of thing.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Including kudos to the candy bar.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Send us a kudos.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: They were great.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Actually, I don't know if somebody sent us one, if
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: it would still be so great.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Are they not around?
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: No, I think they would have been manufactured in 1986
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: or something like that. I don't know.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Keep up with the candy bar scene.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: That's what i'm saying they're not around anymore yeah no
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: i know okay so uh wow that was a little
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: sidetrack on kudos wasn't it yes uh if you want
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: to get in touch with us you can go on
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: to stuff you should know.com and find all of our
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: social links there and you can also send us an
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: email to stuff podcast at iheartradio.com.
• 41:07
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• 41:09
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• 41:13
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