Tin Pan Alley
What was Tin Pan Alley?
Does Tin Pan Alley still exist?
What were some famous Tin Pan Alley songs?
What led to the decline of Tin Pan Alley?
Tin Pan Alley, genre of American popular music that arose in the late 19th century from the American song-publishing industry centered in New York City.
History
The genre took its name from the byname of the street on which the industry was based, being on 28th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway in the early 20th century; around Broadway and 32nd Street in the 1920s; and ultimately on Broadway between 42nd and 50th streets. The phrase âtin panâ referred to the sound of pianos furiously pounded by the so-called song pluggers, who demonstrated tunes to publishers. Some historians credit songwriter and journalist Monroe Rosenfeld with coining the term Tin Pan Alley, but its origin is uncertain.
Tin Pan Alley comprised the commercial music of songwriters of ballads, dance music, and vaudeville, and its name eventually became synonymous with American popular music in general. When these genres first became prominent, the most profitable commercial product of Tin Pan Alley was sheet music for home consumption, and songwriters, lyricists, and popular performers labored to produce music to meet the demand.
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List of songwriters
Among the famous songwriters of Tin Pan Alley were:
Notable Tin Pan Alley songs include Cohanâs âGive My Regards to Broadway,â Berlinâs âAlexanderâs Ragtime Band,â Albert Von Tilzer and Jack Norworthâs âTake Me Out to the Ball Game,â and George Gershwinâs âSwanee.â
Decline
In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain references the cheap upright pianos that gave Tin Pan Alley its name in a chapter about a family and their âlittle old pianoâŠthat had tin pans in it, I reckon.â
The growth of film, audio recording, radio, and television created an increased demand for more and different kinds of music, and Tin Pan Alley was rendered actually and metaphorically dead as other music-publishing centers arose to supply melodies for these genres. The Brill Building at 1619 Broadway, for example, became the hub of professionally written rock and roll in the 1960s, and Nashvilleâs Music Row became the center of country music songwriting in the â50s. In 2019 five former Tin Pan Alley buildings on West 28th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway were designated New York City landmarks.
