Stuff You Should Know - Selects: What was Tin Pan Alley?

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

Tin Pan Alley was an area of New York around the beginning of the 20th Century that served as ground zero for the earliest iterations of the music publishing industry. Learn all about this unique place and time in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nailah Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast

Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes.

To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me, Josh. the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, it's me, Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our Tin Pan Alley episode from May 2019. It's one of those topics I knew nothing about, but was pleasantly surprised to find

that it's super interesting. It's about the birth of the music industry and the place where a lot of great songs that are still really great today were produced. Hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry over there and this is Stuff You Should Know, the superstar edition, the old timey superstar edition. Yeah man, I thought this was super cool.

Tim Pan Alley. Yeah, this is one of those things where I've, sort of knew what tin pan alley was mm-hmm And you always have heard that term thrown around, but I never really really got it Until this episode yeah same here, and it's pretty cool like the term tin pan alley TIN Full stop PAN Alley you forgot a second full stop there full stop I just want to make sure people know it's not one word like tin pan. Right. It's two words.

Right. But that is, linguistically speaking, that's a synecdoche. What? It is. You know what that is, right? I've seen the movie. Man, that movie. Geez.

You're talking about the Charlie Kaufman thing, right? Sure, yeah. Yeah. Synecdoche, New York. Yeah. So, a synecdoche is when a specific place stands in for a broader term, like Wall Street. Like Wall Street's a real street, but Wall Street also means like the finance industry. Right.

Or Hollywood. Hollywood's a real place. Oh, okay. This makes a lot more sense than the Charlie Kaufman movie. Right. Or Hollywood. Hollywood's a real place. Oh, okay. This makes a lot more sense than the Charlie Kaufman movie. Yeah. So, Tin Pan Alley is a bunch of things. It was a place in New York City, which we'll get to in a second, like exactly where.

And it was also referred to sort of the beginnings of the music publishing industry and genre as well. Yep. There's kind of a lot of things, but it stems from the root of a tin pan, like a tin pan was a cheap piano. Like if you had a really cheap piano, you would say it sounds tin-pan-y. Right, because like that's what the hammer on the piano's hitting is tin pans rather than strings. Yeah, it sounds just like a real tinny tone, like you're beating on a tin pan. So that's where the term originally came from. And depending on who you ask, this area of New York was called Tin Pan Alley because

perhaps a journalist first wrote about it, all the sounds coming from the songwriters from these buildings on this one block sounded like Tin Pan Alley. Right. It's no exaggeration to say Tin Pan Alley, specifically this little stretch in New York, like a block or so, maybe less than a block I think. It's a block. Okay. Was the place where the American popular music industry was born? Yeah, so it's specifically 28th Street between 6th and Broadway,

kind of between Chelsea and Kips Bay, a little northwest of the Flatiron building. Gotcha. And it's interesting to think that the beginnings of music distribution wasn't like pre-phonograph and pre-records. There was still music distribution, but it was sheet music. Right, right. So I think, Chuck, we should get back in the wave back

machine and go to an indeterminate part of the mid-19th century in the United States. Let's do it. So, like you said... There's horse poop everywhere. There's a lot of it. It's like you said, if you wanted to hear music, you had basically two choices. You could go here, played live somewhere, everywhere from a barbershop quartet to maybe

an orchestra. Baby on board? Right. to maybe an orchestra. Or you could have a family member who knew how to play music and buy a piano and have it in your home. Those were your two ways to hear music because everywhere there was no such thing as radio. Let's just say it everybody. There was no radio. There wasn't. And if you think about it, radio was, you know, we take it so much for granted today, but it was a huge watershed change in the way that Americans in the world heard their music. You could just hear it at home being played by professionals,

like the most, the greatest musicians you've ever heard. You could just sit around and listen to it at your home. Whereas just years before, a few years before, you had to listen to your 12 year old try to bang out some song on the piano that you just bought. And that was your option aside from going to hear it live. And so this whole idea of the music industry being born, it was basically predicated on two things, Chuck.

One was the fact that pianos were starting to become ubiquitous in American houses, and people were learning how to play those pianos. So music instruction became kind of widespread. And then secondly, copyright law started to really solidify in the United States in the 19th century. And so that sheet music became much more valuable than it was before. Yeah, like if you can't, like I can't read sheet music.

I can't either. Yeah, I learned to play guitar by ear. And kind of, I guess every friend I know that's a musician, except for a couple, learned by ear. If you came up formally through high school band or something like that, or maybe just private music instruction, then you may be able to read music. But back in the day, if you could not, and still today, if you could not play by ear, the only way to do so was through sheet music. And that was the first commodity in the music business was literally just selling

sheet music to people. Right. So before- It's hard to wrap your head around now, but that was the commodity. It is hard to wrap your head around, but if you think about sheet music as basically the predecessor to the cassette or the record or the CD or the MP3, it's the exact same thing. It's just to hear it, like that is what you went and bought at the store, and then you came home and played it rather than listening to somebody else playing it.

Yeah, and like they sold a lot of them. Like the very first hit that Tin Pan Alley put out, and this was a period, I mean this was in 1881 when Wait Till the Clouds Roll By was put out. So Tin Pan Alley generally was early 1880s till early 1920s or so. I saw like late 1920s. Was it early? Oh really? Yeah. Yeah, I guess you can never say when it was dead dead. Right.

But in one month, in 1881, they sold 75,000 copies of sheet music to Wait Till the Clouds Roll By. Right. That's amazing. Yeah, because this was a good song and people wanted to hear the song, so they went and bought the sheet music. Yeah. So that was one thing, right? So there was sheet music.

That was how you got this stuff out. But even before Wait Till the Clouds Roll By, which it seems like was probably America's first number one smash hit. Yeah. Pop music. Prior to that, there was plenty of sheet music to be sold, but it was largely like church hymns. Zoring. There was a lot that were sold for schools. And like I said, copyright law changed, it allowed Tim Panalli to develop

and it did so in two ways. One, like the court started taking copyrights for music seriously in the second half of the 19th century. So you could actually enforce your copyright against people who were infringing on it. And then secondly, the Supreme Court specifically said, hey, if you wrote a song outside of America, when it comes to America,

you can copyright it in America too. Which means that the music publisher's source of free sheet music, which was just basically stealing foreign music, printing it out in sheet music form, and then selling it and not paying any royalties because it enjoyed no copyright protection. That source dried up. And so all of a sudden, this American music that they had to pay for now seemed a lot more attractive because now they had to pay for the music generated overseas too. So this copyright law and the fact that more and more people were learning to play piano and so you had an actual market for sheet music, those two things came together.

All right. Let's take a break. I feel like that's a pretty good setup. Okay. And we'll come back and talk a little bit about who these music publishers were and how they went about their work early on in the Tin Pan Alley era, right after this. I think everything I might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nailah Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, cause I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the goat. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy

for your family? It means a lot to me, just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general.

Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Adventure should never come with a pause button. Remember the movie pass era where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9? It made zero cents and I could

not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the Tech Podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind MoviePass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of MoviePass, the company that he founded. His story is wild and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France or you go to England or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing

Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're watching Black Panther. And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me, and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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All right, so we've been throwing around the term music publishers a lot, and that sort of means a different thing now than it did back then. But back then, music publishers, some of them wrote songs, to be sure, but generally they did not. A lot of the early publishers out of Tin Pan Alley had backgrounds as salespeople. So there was a guy named, a very successful publisher named Isadore Whitmark. He started out selling water filters. Another one named Leo Feist sold corsets.

Another one named Joe Stern and Edward B. Mark sold neckties and buttons. And a lot of these people, I guess we should point out too, came over from Europe. A lot were Jewish. Some African-American songwriters, like, they were minorities, kind of for the most part early on, it feels like. Right. And they saw a huge opportunity in this music business that was starting to coalesce. Because prior to this, I mean, there were music publishers, but it was basically some guy who worked at a printer who had a friend who could transpose music by ear, and they would just take some song that they heard

and turn it into sheet music and start selling it. Or they worked at the music store, and the music store basically did the exact same thing. And so everyone was ripping off everyone else's songs and anybody could be a music publisher. But when those copyrights started to become enforced, it became much more valuable to invest in original music because you could make a lot more money off of it.

So a lot of those Jewish immigrants and a lot of the African-American songwriters and composers kind of coalesced into New York. They came from Boston and Detroit and Atlanta and St. Louis and all over the country. And all those towns lost their publishing houses and they all moved to New York. And they very specifically moved to this one

little stretch on 28th Street and it became Tim Pan Alley. Yeah, and it's really interesting to look at like how it worked back then and how it sort of mirrored how music grew out of that model really and changed in some ways but kind of stayed the same in a lot of ways too. Like you always hear about music contracts and how terrible they are for rock musicians or pop musicians. And it was kind of the same way back then. These publishers got together, they created this songwriting factory on this block of buildings through different companies.

And they would recruit songwriters to come in. They had different arrangements. Sometimes they would just buy it outright from you, including the rights to change the name of who wrote it. Sometimes they would have the right to throw one of the other more, I guess once they had established themselves, another co-author's name on there. But they would just say, write these songs, write these songs, and we're going to buy them from you. And we're going to try and make them popular.

Like you couldn't put them on the radio. So we're going to try and get them popular by getting them onto vaudeville and on stage and sending, not moles I guess, but it was almost like early Paola, sending these performers into Vaudeville to sing these songs and perform these songs. And people were like, well, that's pretty catchy. I want that. Right. That's how they marketed it. And that was like the whole thing. Like if you, it was the first time that music became an industry. Because there was almost an assembly line feel to it

where they would have feelers out to find out like what people were into as music at the time. One of the early transitions that Tim Panelli underwent was when it started, it was a factory for churning out like comedic, often deeply racist songs, lots of ballads, just what you think of as super old timey songs, right? And then the public started to get kind of bored with that and they decided that they kind of liked this ragtime thing

that the Scott Joplin fella has started to create. And so Tim Panalli, this is classic Tim Panalli, went out, figured out how to play ragtime, started co-opting the ragtime genre and created pop music. So they took what was a really difficult kind of music, it's called syncopated rhythm, where you've got a melody within a rhythm, right? So you know ragtime, right? Sure. Okay, so they figured out how to take this very difficult thing and kind of popify it

to make it easy for the audience to play. Because again, here's the thing, they're not saying, hey, you're the best of the best studio musician. We've got this really tough song over here that sounds great, but it's really tough to play. We wanna pay you to come play it. We're going to record it and distribute it onto the radio.

That didn't exist yet. They had to figure out how to take difficult songs, kind of dumb them down into something catchy and memorable and importantly easy to play so that they could sell that sheet music to local musicians or those barbershop quartets, or so that the 12-year-old at home could play it for the rest of their family. And so that is how they kind of

started to take popular music and make it even more popular. They decided what music was popular based on what America was starting to get into at the time. Yeah. And they would, there were these musicians called song pluggers. So how it would work is a music publisher in Tin Pan Alley would buy a song or the rights to a song off of a musician who wrote it, maybe put their own name on it, and then they would give that song to a song plugger who is a musician who would go and perform this at a music shop that maybe sold pianos or something like that. And this was pre-radio how they got the music out in the public. And it was

crazy. These song pluggers got money. Irving Berlin started out as a song plugger. Right. And so it's kind of like if you, you know how you go to a grocery store on a Saturday and they'll be sitting there giving out samples of something? Sure. And you'll say, oh, this cheese with this cracker tastes really good. I'm going to go buy this cheese and these crackers. This is the exact same thing, except you would say,

oh, this song sounds really good. I'm going to buy the sheet music. That's what music pluggers were for. That's how they got the word out. That's how they advertised the music was to play them. And then another way to do it, Chuck, is like you were saying, they would set vaudeville shows up or musical reviews or Broadway shows,

whatever, with these popular songs and these songwriters to help get them out that way too, so that audiences would go hear these things. You could hear them in the music shop, you could hear them in the music shop. You could hear them at the theater. You might hear them, well, that's basically it. It's the theater and the music shop where the two main venues, unless I'm forgetting one. Yeah, and they would, that was the plugging, but there was also booming. So, like I said, you had Irving Berlin and like George Gershwin started out as a song plugger, Al Sherman started out as a song

plugger. But if you wanted to be more aggressive than that even, you would do something called booming, which is you would buy like 25 tickets to a show. You would have the plugger up there playing the song, and then those 25 people were plants basically that already knew the song that would sing along to it. And then everyone, you know, the only thing better than hearing a great song for the first time in, you know, 1910 in New York City is hearing 25 people around you singing it and you're thinking, how have I been missing out on this thing? And that may be the first time it was ever performed in public.

And it was all just a big, kind of a big scam. It was. It's hilarious though that that's how you just look around and suddenly be overcome with FOMO. So you'd be into this new song and run out and buy the sheet music, I guess. Early FOMO. So there was this process to all this. And like you said, like you could be a no-name composer who would show up at Tim Pan Alley with the song that you're trying to sell.

If it was good, the publisher might buy it, but like you said, you would get some terrible contract or they would buy it outright. Take your name off of the composition and put their own name on there. But they also hired composers, I think like you were saying too, where they had a few hits under their belt, So they had a steady gig at the music publisher and their contract was a little better,

but they were not in creative control for the most part. So where the music publisher would say, hey, everybody's into this ragtime, make me some ragtime songs. Everybody's into this jazz and this blues stuff. Make me some bluesy kind of stuff that I can turn around and sell. And the competition was really fierce among the in-house composers, because just because

you composed a song doesn't mean it was going to be turned around and transcribed into sheet music and then people would buy it. Like you had to basically audition your song to see whether it made it to the next level. And so in Timpanallium, this is where it got its name, there would be no-name composers, house composers, vaudeville acts, all running around playing music from these open windows because there wasn't air conditioning back then. And so at any given time you'd walk down Tim Pan Alley

and there'd be a dozen or scores of different songs all being played on these pianos, streaming out of the windows onto the street at the same time. a dozen or scores of different songs all being played on these pianos streaming out of the windows onto the street at the same time. And that's where that reporter Monroe Rosenfeld came up with the idea of Tim Pan Alley. He said it when he was walking down the street he was kind of describing what that was like. He said it sounded like you know a bunch of Tim Pans being struck at once. Yeah and this whole area of New York, this one block, just really became like a creative well.

There were vaudeville theaters, there were play theaters, like it was sort of the earliest incarnation of the theater district before it moved toward Times Square. And then other parts of the entertainment industry obviously are drawn to that area. Variety Magazine, that's where it first popped up on that block when it was called the Clipper. The William Morris Talent Agency had an office on that block. And it was just sort of the, you know, after I think Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and I think one other city kind of where the early seats of the early music industry, it all roundly landed in New York in just such a creative area and era.

It's so neat to think about too, because that's happened in places before where if you take a bunch of creative people and jam them into a small area, just amazing stuff happens. Like you can do something as big as birth a genre of music or like pop music, which is like an umbrella. It's not even a genre. There's genres underneath pop music, you know, where something that big can happen when you get that many creative people together in one place.

Should we take another break? Sure. All right. Let's take another break and we'll talk about some of these songs, these composers in the Great American we'll talk about some of these songs, these composers, in the Great American Songbook right after this. I think everything I might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in.

I'm Nailah Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo your dad's like really the goat. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good.

Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adventure should never come with a pause button. Remember the movie pass era where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9?

It made zero sense and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Brigitte Todd, host of the Tech Podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind MoviePass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of MoviePass, the company that he founded. His story is wild and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France, or you go to England, or you go to Hong Kong,

those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're watching Black Panther. And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. You say you never give in to a meltdown. Never let kids' toys take over the house. or wherever you get your podcasts. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown. Never let kids' toys take over the house. And never fill your feed with kid photos. You'd never plan your life around their schedule. Never lick your thumb to clean their face. And you'd never let them leave the house looking like less than their best.

You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it. Never let them stay up too late. And never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. All right. So there's money being made. Yeah, a tad.

A lot of money, even for early on. I mean, I can't imagine what sheet music costs, but they were selling so much of it. It added up. Irving Berlin, I mean, he went on to start his own music publishing business, but early on when he was just pumping out tunes. In 1917 he made about $100,000 a year in royalties. Yeah, that's $1917 too, right? Yeah, and these songs, like these are some standards, you know, it's what's known as the standard American song book. Just like, it's an unofficial designation, but they're

considered to be like the classics of the early 20th century. Like, I mean, we all still know these songs, stuff like, Ain't She Sweet? I don't know that one. Ain't she sweet, you're mucking down the street. What? You don't know that song? No, that one I've not heard. Oh boy. Do you know babyface? Yes, got the cutest little babyface. Yes. I love that song. It makes me smile

By the light of the silvery moon give my regards to Broadway sure happy days are here again Over there a lot of this had to do with like wartime early wartime stuff, right? Sweet Georgia Brown take me out to the ball game. Yeah, and that in particular we got to say, that was written by two guys, Jack Norworth and Albert von Tilzer. Yeah, 1998. And they'd never seen a ball game before. No. Well, maybe that's what they were saying.

But yeah, they were like, please. The original lyric was, take me out to the ball game because I've never been. Right, exactly. And they changed that line. saying. The original lyric was, take me out to the ball game because I've never been. Exactly. And they changed that line. But that was so Tim Pan Alley, like where it's like everybody's into baseball right now, so let's make a song about baseball. You too, we've never seen a baseball game. Doesn't matter. Make me a song. And that's how Take Me Out to the Ball Game was formed. Yeah, and I think under one of the, like you said earlier, some of the earliest work

were like kind of humorous comedy songs. One that still stands out today, I believe, from that genre is Yes We Have No Bananas, which I always thought was kind of funny when I was a kid. It's a little funny. And I guess I still do, if I'm being honest. There was also, yeah, you can go down this line and there's some pretty substantial songs that were written during this time. And not all of them were standalone. A lot of them, like I said earlier, were created for musical reviews.

Yeah. America the Beautiful was written by Irving Berlin for a musical review called Yip Yip Yip Hank, which no one has heard of. No one knows that anymore. But it was meant to be performed and produced by soldiers. It had an eight show run. But the song, obviously, America the Beautiful, has survived long beyond that

because it became an American standard. So like these vehicles that were built around to kind of get the song out there to the public faded away, but the songs themselves have stood the test of time. Yeah, absolutely. I think he pulled it from that production. Or was it in the original production, or did he pull it? I think it was in the original one.

Well, he eventually pulled it out of the production then because he thought it was too sentimental. And then that song went on to be the one that everyone remembers. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I'm sorry it didn't show up in there. But you also said, so you mentioned Irving Berlin forming his own publishing house. He was a quintessential rags to riches story for Tim Pan Alley. Yeah. Where he was like a waiter in a cafe, became a song plugger, one of those guys who plays songs to basically his marketing, couldn't read cheap music,

knew everything by ear, had a friend transpose the songs he came up with into actual written music. That's a pretty good little factoid there, that Irving Berlin couldn't read or write music. Right. And then he became good little factoid there, that Irving Berlin couldn't read or write music. Right. And then he became a well-known composer, and then he became such a well-known composer he opened his own publishing house and then started making $100,000 a year in royalties.

Amazing. There was another guy named Charles K. Harris, who was one of the earlier success stories, I think in 1893 or two. He had a song called After the Ball. And he just knew it was a gem because he offered it to a publisher and they offered him a price for it that he was like, that's way too low. I'm gonna set up my own publishing house.

And he did, and he started selling it and was making something like $25,000 a week in 1890s money, which is like 700 grand a week. This guy just went from nobody to 700 grand a week in 1890s money, which is like 700 grand a week. Holy cow. This guy just went from nobody to 700 grand a week, ended up selling five million copies of his song after the ball. And if you listen to it now, it's not that good, frankly. It's not, but bully for him.

It's no ain't she sweet. No. Yeah, it's amazing, man. People, like popular music hit the world like a lightning bolt from the beginning. Yes, because it was so ultra tailored for the American public. Like, again, they would take ragtime, which was a Scott Joplin creation. And Scott Joplin was the son of a slave. He was an African American. A lot of people thought he was white.

Still to this day, a lot of people think he was white. I think because of his name, frankly. And it was the predecessor, ragtime was the predecessor to jazz. And it had like a real like feel to a real soul. Everybody's heard like some of the original ragtime music, like the entertainer, the maple leaf rag. And if you can't immediately bring those to mind, just go to YouTube and you'll be like,

oh, okay, of course I get that. But the idea that Tim Panalli could just kind of come along and take this cool, deep, soulful music and popify it basically to make it palatable to audiences, in particular white audiences who had the most money at the time. That was why it became so successful. It was almost dumbed down. It was music that was dumbed down in a way to make it appeal to as many people as possible. Yeah, or even worse, co-opted by white publishers and producers to be used in minstrel shows.

Yeah. This version of music, this new genre of music that was so unique in the Harlem Renaissance by Scott Joplin was co-opted for minstrel shows. So shameful. Yeah, so there's a real debate going on now about the legacy of Tim Pan Alley in some ways. And some people point to it and say, look, these guys were churning out the most eye-poppingly racist songs that America has ever come up with. Yeah, some to be sure. They were coming, they were selling them to the masses.

And in doing this, because this was the origin of popular music, they were really effectively perpetuating racial stereotypes and embedding them more than they ever had been before because people were not being, mass audiences were being reached like they were with this early sheet music. And so in this respect, Tim Panelli doesn't deserve to be revered or respected. Or designated as a historical landmark as the real fight. Yeah, that's like as recently as like late last month, I believe, Chuck, there was a

landmark commission, city landmark commission meeting where this was being debated, right? Well, yeah. And so like you said, some people were saying that on one hand, other people are saying, yeah, but so many of these were Jewish immigrants, an ethnic minority. So many of them were African-American songwriters. And Tin Pan Alley was also the home to the first black-owned and operated music publishing business in the country. Yeah.

Some people are saying, look, like, yes, it was taken and co-opted to be popular, but so were operettas and ballads. Like, that's just what they did. It wasn't meant to be offensive to African-Americans. And as a matter of fact, it was basically these Jewish immigrants saying, I kind of identify with your plight. I want to preserve and celebrate this

and expose this music to as many people as possible. And that some people pointed this process in Timpan Alley as the way that the African-American arts became exposed to the larger population of America at the time. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, so that debate's going on. That's where the idea of whether or not this area should be designated as an historic landmark is falling, right?

Yeah. And like you said, it's kind of hard to pinpoint an actual death date of Tin Pan Alley because these things like that happen gradually over time. But technology, like it has so many other times, kind of killed the notion of Tin Pan Alley, didn't it? That's a really good point, right? Like with the radio? It was the radio. Radio killed the old-timey sheet music star. And video killed the radio star. Right, exactly. So, again, you didn't need to make sheet music any longer,

or you certainly didn't have to learn to play sheet music at home if you wanted to enjoy music, if you could just buy a radio. Yeah, people quit buying pianos and it's kind of sad. It is sad. It would be nice if everybody was walking around and knew how to play a piano. Like hotel lounges would be a lot more interesting, right? Yeah. But that's, I mean, once the radio came along, everybody said, so long, sheet music. I hated you all along, but you were my only option.

Now I can listen to like Benny Goodman and all of these other cats who are super hip and really good at what they're doing. And I wanna listen to their music. And not only did technology kill Tim Panalli in this sheet music publishing industry, but it also changed the genre a little bit. It kind of skewed it more into swing and some of the stuff

that came out of the 30s onward. That was really kind of where that transition went. Yeah, have you ever been somewhere where they have a public piano and seen someone just walk by and sit down and blow minds? Didn't you see Greg Allman do that? Oh my God, no. If you know someone who saw that, please try and remember who it was because I need to hear that story.

I'll try to remember. I can't remember who it was. That's pretty amazing. Okay. I don't think I'm making this up. Let me go back through my mental Rolodex. But have you ever seen that? Sure. Let me go back through my mental Rolodex. But have you ever seen that?

Sure. Just like your, I mean, not Greg Almond, but I've just seen your regular average person sit down at a piano and like wow someone. New York does this from time to time. They'll have them on a sidewalk or in a park or something. In Atlanta, they have one over in Atlantic Station. I've seen people do it there. And it's always just really cool. And that makes me miss the fact that piano,

like a lot more people used to learn piano than they do now, I think. I would love to know how to play the piano. Me too, I say it all the time. Just for that very reason, because I'd love to be able to sit down and just play. I want to be that guy so bad. Right.

Someday, Chuck, it's not too late. I remember the first time I saw it was at a student council retreat in high school. There was this one, you know, all the student councils from the county get together over the course of a weekend or a week and do stupid stuff and learn about leadership. But there was this, there's always like this one guy on student council at another school, you're like, man, he doesn't seem like a student council type. He seems like he's 30. This guy did. And he was on student council at some other school, but he was like, you know, had like the rat t-shirt and was just sort of like a dirty metalhead.

The bad boy of student council. He totally was. And there was a piano in one of the lobbies of the dormitories where we stayed at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. And on the very last day, there were a bunch of people hanging out in there and this dude goes over and sits down and just crushes it. And I remember seeing the girls in the room and thinking, that guy has got it all going on. Like that's the key, man. And that boy in the rat t-shirt grew up to be Greg Alman.

Have you ever been to a Siggold's request room in New York? No, what's that? Yumi's friend Joe McGinty owns it. He's co-owner of it and he plays piano there. It's just like sing-along piano karaoke. Oh, wow. And it is amazing. I cannot believe you haven't been there yet.

You have. So does one person play the piano and everyone sings along? Joe McGinty plays. And then, no, like people can sing along if you want, but it's really one person going out there and doing karaoke with Joe accompanying you on the piano. Oh, okay. Well, I've done the rock and roll live band karaoke before.

Oh, yeah? Here in Atlanta, which is a lot of fun. Okay. Where do you do that? Somewhere in the highlands, I think, the Dark Horse maybe. Okay, yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, I went for my birthday a couple of years ago and did Cheap Tricks Surrender and did a pretty good job, if I may say so.

Is that Surrender, parentheses, Dream Police? No, those are two different songs. Oh, okay. Is it Surrender, parentheses, I want you to want me? Yeah, that's the one. Okay. I've heard that song before. But it's funny, the one in Atlanta, there's, you know, the DJ English Nick.

No, wait, was he on like the radio, like radio DJ? Yeah, he still is. Yeah, sure. English Nick in Atlanta. Yeah. He hosts it, and he is the emergency backup if you're no good. Because being bad at karaoke is no fun, but being bad at live band karaoke is really no fun for anyone. So he stands back there and if you're not very good, he's singing along with you and he will just give the signal to sort of do a little

upping of his vocals and lowering of the other vocals. Is it like the slice across your neck like that? No, I mean, I think it's just like an eye signal. I gotcha. And I remember being nervous. I was like, oh man, if they bring up English Nick during surrender, I'm going to be mortified. But they didn't.

And afterward he gave me a nod like, good job, buddy. Oh, you got the nod from English Nick. Yeah, it means a lot. I have job, buddy. Oh, you got the nod from English Nick. Yeah, that means a lot. I have the opposite story. Oh, what happened? I went to Claremont Lounge to do karaoke years back. Okay. Chose to do Darling Nicky.

Oh, interesting. In the middle, the karaoke DJ breaks in and goes, it's like William Shatner singing, isn't it, everybody? Oh my God. Yumi was there supporting, dancing, but really just hanging on by her fingernails, you know? You got stopped and insulted mid-song.

Mid-song, but I finished, buddy. Good. I would literally pay $100 to have seen that. I wager that it would have been worth $250. Okay. It was pretty, pretty bad. Do we have anything else on Tin Pan Alley? I forgot what we were talking about, Chuck.

Well, we should, we're not going to get into it here. We should do a full show on ASCAP, though. Yeah, because yet another thing that Irving Berlin did was create ASCAP, the American Society of Composers and Performers, right? I think producers. Producers, okay. Man, I didn't even have it in front of me. But they basically protect and register copyrights for artists.

Yeah, it's gotten so convoluted to these days. Yeah. Yeah, I think it definitely deserves its own thing. But that was another thing that was born out of Tim Pan Alley. Yeah, and you know what? I am living in the future now because I have a turntable now, finally, again, after many, many years of not having one, that I can play wirelessly throughout all the speakers in my home.

Oh. Isn't that amazing? That is the future for sure. That you can actually do that. And it sounds great. And now I just went to the record store for the first time in a long time yesterday and bought 13 records. I traded in probably 500 CDs to get 13 records. He was like, I'll give you $130 for the lot. And I was like, fine.

Fine. Just get these stupid 90 CDs away from me. No, they were great. But it was just, I felt like I should pay him to take all these off my hands. Did you still have the jewel cases? Oh yeah, they were all jeweled up. And so, yeah, I bought records for the first time, and I'm gonna make that a, we're gonna go on tour now, and when I travel, I'm gonna make it a point to go into local record stores again.

I think that's a great idea. I really, really had a good time thumbing through records. It was a lot of fun. I'll go with you. Text me. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. I think that's it for Tim Pan Alley. RIP Tim Pan Alley, depending on your viewpoint, I guess.

Yeah, there needs to be a great, I know there was a movie in the 40s called Tim Pan Alley, but someone should do a really good look at the early burgeoning film, I'm sorry, movie industry. Almost. Oh boy, music industry. There you go. About ten panellists, that'd be great. Oh yeah, that would be great.

There's so many characters involved. Just put Hugh Jackman and Sharknado in it. Yep. And we're all good. And by the way, you got called out for bringing back bread. I did. I said in some episode that, I think the Diving Bell episode, that we should bring bread back. And I guess that's what the kids all say now.

I didn't realize that. But like at least 10 people emailed and said, yeah, millennials are talking about getting that bread. Yep. It's like they are. I guess so. I like to think that I had absolutely nothing to do with that. No, but I bet you were the seed.

Do you think so? You never know, man. That'd be cool. Before we go though, Chuck, I do have one more thing. I have to give a shout out to what I consider the greatest song to come out of Tim Pan Alley. And I believe it was an Irving Berlin song. Yeah, it was.

Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee. Have you heard that song? We used that for something, didn't we? I don't remember. We probably did because it's prominent in one of my favorite movies of all time, Paper Moon. That was a great song. I love that song so much.

If you haven't ever heard that song, go listen to it. Cause it's one of the most just blindly optimistic songs of all time. And it's about coffee. Yep, and pie. Okay, now that's it. Now I've got nothing else. If you wanna know more about Tim Pan Alley,

you can go read up on it and maybe follow whether it's going to get designated as an historic landmark or not. We'll find out. In the meantime, it's time for listener mail. So this is just a very sweet email from someone. Hey guys, I'm sure you receive emails like this all the time, but I would be remiss if I didn't thank you for all the wonderful work you do.

I've had a really tough time with mental illness, and there have been a lot of nights your wonderful podcast staved off panic attacks or worse. Thank you for keeping me calm and educated, and thank you for making me feel safe, even in perilous circumstances. Thank you for giving me something to talk about when my depression has kept me in a fog. Without your massive backlog and seemingly endless supply of fresh, fascinating subjects, I surely would be lost.

Spend some time researching, and I can truly appreciate just how much time and energy go into becoming familiar enough with something to explain it as succinctly as you guys do. Your superheroes and rock stars, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for the wonderful work you do. You've truly saved me. Kindest and warmest regards, Georgia."

That is really lovely, Georgia. If we're ever in a town near you, you are guest listed. Yes. Wow, Chuck, I think that was a really good idea. Thanks a lot, Georgia. That was a very sweet email. We appreciate it. We're glad we could help in some small measure.

Thank you very much for the kudos. If you want to send us kudos, we love that kind of thing. Including kudos, the candy bar. Yeah, I remember those. Send us a kudos. They were great. Yeah. Actually, I don't know if somebody sent us one,

if it would still be so great. Are they not around? No, I think like they would have been manufactured in 1986 or something like that. I don't keep up with the candy bar scene. That's what I'm saying. They're not around anymore. Yeah, I know. Okay. So, wow, that was a little sidetrack on kudos, wasn't it? Yes.

If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and find all of our social links there. And you can also send us an email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I think everything I might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need the talk is tapping in. I'm Nailah Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that

our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace,

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