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![[Bob Boyd's World of Music]](bobswor2.gif)
“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.
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