Tin Pan Alley Pop
tagStarted 1900Peak 1910-1930Last big hit 1935
The earliest mass-market American pop: sheet-music songcraft from New York's publishing houses, built for parlor piano, vaudeville and early phonograph. Catchy verse-chorus tunes, sentimental or novelty lyrics, often performed by harmony quartets and vaudeville stars. Tuneful, simple, and engineered for maximum singability and sales.
History
Named for the West 28th Street Manhattan district where songwriting firms clustered from the 1890s, Tin Pan Alley industrialized pop songwriting through plugging and sheet-music sales. It dominated popular music into the 1920s before radio, recordings and the Great Depression reshaped the business, but its craft template seeded every later pop songbook tradition.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley
- https://www.britannica.com/art/Tin-Pan-Alley
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shine_On,_Harvest_Moon