Nightflying: The Entertainment Guide

“TUNES AND TALES FROM TIN PAN ALLEY”

The popular music business in its early decades was generally known by the evocative name of “Tin Pan Alley.” The term “Tin Pan Alley” was supposedly coined by a songwriter/reporter named Monroe Rosenfeld about 1903. He said the din of song pluggers pounding battered uprights on publisher’s row in NY’s 28th street, sounded like they were all banging on tin pans. The men and women of the Alley were the first to think of pop music as a product. They turned it out week after week, year after year, and they knew how to merchandise it. Their creations were the stuff of dreams. They were tunes in search of an audience. There were 1000s upon 1000s of great tunes written during the 4 decades of the Golden Era of Popular Music. Every song has a story. I have chosen only 10 for today.

“Shine On, Harvest Moon” D minor, Verse and Chorus:
Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes; 9 weeks at #1 in 1909; Recorded later by Ethel Waters and Kate Smith. Norworth and Bayes also wrote “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” This song, written in 1908, is believed to be the first popular song written about the moon. In those days, the verse was considered, in most songs, the most important part, with a short, catchy chorus. This is one of the first to make the chorus as important as the verse. Soon the verses fell by the wayside and few people sing them or even remember them today. I love this one because it sets such a delightful scene for the familiar chorus.

G: 1924: “It Had to Be You” Isham Jones and Gus Kahn

You hear this tune once and you can hum it. You hear it a second time and you have nearly learned the words. One of our most popular standards, it continues to give pleasure more than 75 years after bandleader Isham Jones first banged out the tune in less than an hour. The story goes that for his 30th birthday his wife gave him a baby grand piano. Within an hour, he supposedly composed 4 songs, including “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “The One I Love Belongs To Somebody Else,” in addition to this tune, “It Had To Be You.” 3 standards in 60 minutes is pretty darned good work.

Bb 1927: “Stardust” Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish.

This is reportedly the most requested popular song of all time. Written by ex-Indiana lawyer Hoagy Carmichael, who wrote many great standards including “Georgia On My Mind,” the melody line sounds more like an instrumental than a vocal, and an improvisation at that, making it even more wondrous that it should become so popular. Hoagy wrote lyrics but discarded them. It took Mitchell Parish, who wrote the lyrics to dozens of pop standard songs including “Deep Purple” and “Stars Fell on Alabama” to write the lyric that has made this unusual melody immortal. Nat King Cole revived this song of unrequited love in the 50s and sang the lovely verse no one had ever heard before. “You wandered down the lane and far away, leaving me a song that would not die.” I never tire of playing this song and singing its lovely lyrics.

C: 1924: “My Blue Heaven” Walter Donaldson, George Whiting

Walter Donaldson wrote dozens of pop standards too, but none became as big a hit as this tune, first made popular by Gene Austin. It is unusual in that during the era of the “flapper” and bathtub gin, this tune paints a beautiful picture of the joys of marriage, home and hearth, as do several other of Donaldson’s songs, such as “At Sundown.”

Bb 1930: “On the Sunny Side of the Street” Bb

Lyrics by Dorothy Fields, Music by Jimmy McHugh. This is one of the most cheery songs to come out of the era of the Great Depression, when everybody needed cheering along. Dorothy wrote many other great tunes, including “Don’t Blame Me,” “I’m In The Mood for Love” “Just the Way You Look Tonight” and “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” Dorothy went on to write the libretto for the great musical “Annie Get Your Gun.”

Eb 1932: “I’ve Got The World On A String”

Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen. This song is also one of the most aggressively cheerful songs to come out of America’s most dismal decade. The word “Got” falls percussively on the downbeat. It was written for the Cotton Club Parade of 1932. Arlen would be intensely writing music while Koehler would lie on the couch listening. Arlen would angrily accuse him of sleeping on the job. When Arlen finished a song, he would play it over for Koehler and he would fit lyrics, usual slangy, punchy phrases, into Arlen’s song. although they wrote dozens of great songs together, this was their greatest rhythm number.

C: 1945 “Sentimental Journey”

Les Brown and Ben Homer: Lyrics by Bud Green. The title came from an English travel book. Ben Homer was working on the tune and took it to Les Brown. Bud Green wrote a nice lyric. He even had to coin a word, “Yearny,” to rhyme with “Journey.” Les Brown worked on the rhythm to match the clickety clack of the rails in other train songs from the Swing Era, like “Chattanooga Choo Choo” “Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe” and “Blues in the Night.” Doris Day had just started singing with the Les Brown band and could always sell a song. The bridge even echoes the train whistle’s wail, “Seven..that’s the time we leave, at seven.”

Eb: 1954 “Hey There” Richard Adler and Jerry Ross
The Broadway musical “Pajama Game” was a breakthrough for 2 young new composers who were destined to continue the Rodgers and Hammerstein legacy. They both worked together on words and music. Their first big hit, and the one that got most attention, was Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches.”

From the show “Pajama Game, “the music for “Hey There” was taken from a Mozart sonata, at Frank Loesser’s suggestion. Listen and you will hear the form A, B, A, C. The lyric is quite different from most songs, as it is a wise friend’s counsel to someone who has just fallen hopelessly and helplessly in love. “Won’t you take this advice I hand you like a brother?”

1953 “Young At Heart”

Lyrics by Carolyn Leigh; Music by Johnny Richards. As we have seen, not all tunesmiths were men. Carolyn Leigh was only 25 when she was writing skits for the Phil Silvers TV Show. But she landed a job writing lyrics for a music publisher. After over 200 unsuccessful lyrics, she was given the music to this song. She wrote the lyrics and the song was picked up by Frank Sinatra, who recorded it in 1954. It was his “comeback song,” his first big hit since 1947. When Broadway star Mary Martin’s husband and manager heard it on the air, he knew he had found the lyricist for the musical “Peter Pan,” starring his wife. He called Carolyn and she thought it was a joke and almost hung up on him. But she got the job and went on to be a prolific composer for Broadway plays. Among her most memorable tunes are “Hey, Look Me Over,” “Give a Little Whistle,” from “Pinnochio,” “How Little We Know” and “Witchcraft,” 2 more big hits for Sinatra.

1960 “Moon River”

Music by Henry Mancini, Lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Mancini and Mercer were asked to write a song for Audrey Hepburn to sing in the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” It had to be simple, like a folk song. Mancini wrote the music in about 20 minutes. The melody consists of only 9 notes, all white keys in the key of C natural. Mercer submitted several sets of lyrics until he got it right. The original title was “Blue River” and was named after the river he and his friend used to go pick huckleberries near in Savannah GA. After several changes, the song not only became the hit song of the movie but Henry Mancini’s signature song, then later Andy Williams, who even named his theater in Branson after it. Like Huck Finn, the 2 drifters are “Off to see the world.” “Moon River” also revived Mercer’s career in the days when Rock and Roll was taking over the airwaves.

View Bob's previous column.

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