THE LIFE AND DEATH OF TIM PAN ALLEY

by David Ewen ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

This story of the ""Golden Age of American popular music"" spans fifty years, 1880-1930, or from the song-publishing revolution of the '80's to Al Jolson's talkie The Jonn Singer. It is a thorough if harmless history with barely a hint of the venality that spurred the benality along music-publisher's row. Tin Pan Allay was Twenty-eighth Street in Manhattan and it received its tintinabulous appellation from a 1903 reporter's series of articles on American popular music. The foundation stone of the industry (?) was the sentimental ballad. Its greatest practitioner was Paul Dresser (brother of Gloomy Novelist Theodore Dreiser) and 14th Street and Union Square was Mecco until 1900. There it was that vaudeville, burlesque and amateur nights exhibited Tin Pan Alley's wares and gave songs their fame and glamor. Mr. Ewen briefly reviews the more glittering singers and comedians: Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, et al., the members of the Ziogfield Follies, those in musical comedy, composers such as George M. Cohan. Irving Berlin and W. C. Handy. The death of Tin Pan Alley came about when it was swallowed up by the big entertainment industries, disk jockeys, mass distribution processes--and the importance of the computer and lyricist vanished. Sic transit gloria Weltschmerz.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Funk & Wagnalls

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION