Exhibits: Irish Themes in Sheet Music

Tin Pan Alley

Music historians mark the beginning of Tin Pan Alley in 1886 when M. Witmark & Sons published "Grover Cleveland's Wedding March." By the turn of the century, sheet music was a well-established commodity. As technology advanced to the point where mass printing was possible, enterprising songwriters who did it as an avocation recognized a great new untapped market for selling new songs. Union Square was becoming the entertainment capital of the country and the music publishing industry was growing around it. Many of the earlier publishers gathered in a section of New York City on 28th Street off Broadway. This area came to be known as Tin Pan Alley. Its close proximity to the theater district allowed it to eagerly provide new materials for minstrel, burlesque and vaudeville shows. Tin Pan Alley was an idea as well as a place.

Songwriters kept an ear to the ground for news that would provide their next song. It could be written-to-order and be on stands in time to make it a promotional tool. It was used in political campaigns, to tout new inventions, to publicize or memorialize events, personalities or products. But most of the songwriters tried to please the public, to represent and express popular sentiment and to give the American people what they wanted to hear. Into this came Charles K. Harris from Milwaukee who wrote the song that started the big sheet music sale period with his five-million seller 1892 hit "After the Ball." Lyricists and composers now recognized a business that could make them rich and the popular music business was on its way. Events and celebrities were waltzed, marched, polka-ed, ragged, fox-trotted to whatever tune the Alley deemed fitting for the occasion. As vaudeville spread from the big cities, hundreds of provincial theatres across the country featured traveling acts and Tin Pan Alley music followed. Demand for the latest songs kept the presses humming.

The heyday of Tin Pan Alley was from 1900-1920. In 1942 Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" shattered established sales records and Tin Pan Alley went to work penning most of the Christmas songs that we are now familiar with. However, by the mid 1950's, Tin Pan Alley was all but over.

 

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