MUS 505: Popular Music and Culture

Lecture 3 - The Jazz Age and Tin Pan Alley

Peter Johnston, PhD

peter.johnston@ryerson.ca
Midterm Listening Test - In Class
10 songs will be chosen from a playlist of 20 that have been played in class. There will be 3 multiple choice questions for each
example: 1 for the name of the artist, 1 for the name of the song, and 1 for the concept or theme discussed in class.
Example:
1. The artist who recorded this song was:

A. Beyoncé
B. Rhianna
C. Solange
D. Cher
E. Shania

2. The name of this song is:

A. Independent Woman
B. Anaconda
C. One Dance
D. Billie Jean
E. Freedom

3. What concept/theme from the course does this song best represent?

A. Music of the civil rights era

B. How old music is still relevant today
C. The development of sampling technology
D. White artists illegally covering songs by black artists
E. All of the above

Midterm Test
B RO W N J MU S 5 0 5 0 5 1
Multiple Choice, 70 questions
Afrika Bambatta’s rap hit “Planet Rock” sampled elements
from a song by this German synth band:
A. Eurythmics
B. Karftwerk
C. Neu!
D. Depeche Mode

Not
E. Die Fledermaus
Necessary
5 0 0 6 2 1 6 6 6

SEE STUDY GUIDE ON D2L FOR MORE DETAILS

Not
Necessary
Learning Outcomes
Historical Context
• 1920s: The jazz age, American prosperity post-WWI,
Tin Pan Alley song factory, Broadway, race-based music
marketing, rural and urban divide in America, sacred
gospel music informs popular music
Genres
• Jazz, Tin Pan Alley songs for Broadway musicals,
standards, urban/classic blues, country blues, hillbilly
music, gospel and southern gospel, folk music
Key Terms
• The Jazz Age, Tin Pan Alley, American Dream, standard
songs, Race Records, Hillbilly Records, Blues form, the
great depression
Course Themes
• Music genres reflect social divisions, racial integration
through music, professional pop music songwriters and
the “music factory”
Themes and Connections
• Contemporary
representations of the
themes, histories, and
sounds in today’s lecture
The Jazz Age: 1920-29
• The Jazz Age was a feature of the 1920s
(ending with The Great Depression
1929-1940) when jazz music and dance
became popular
• This occurred particularly in the northern
cities of the United States, which enjoyed
unprecedented prosperity after WWI
• Jazz played a significant part in wider
cultural changes during the period, and its
influence on pop culture continued long
afterwards.
• The Jazz Age is often referred to in
conjunction with the phenomenon referred
to as the “Roaring Twenties”.
The Jazz Age: 1920-29

The Roaring Twenties

Paul Whiteman (1890-1967)
• Popularized jazz for a white audience, incredibly
successful, sold millions of records from
1920-1934
• Called himself the “King of Jazz”, and claimed
that he “made an honest woman out of jazz”.
• Was an ambassador for jazz, grew the audience
for it significantly
• Created “symphonic jazz”, by adding orchestral
instruments to the brass and woodwinds of
typical jazz
• Important early hit: “Whispering” (1920)
• Franchised his band
• Premiered George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in
Blue” in 1930
Paul Whiteman (1890-1967)

“At Sundown”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
• The most influential jazz composer
• Ran an orchestra for over 50 years
• Wrote hundreds of compositions
• Created “jungle music” for floor shows
featuring black performers playing for a
white audience at The Cotton Club.
• Featured unusual harmonies, dense
textures, and growling sounds in the
brass
• Took jazz from commercial, pop music
to the realm of “art” music
• Example: “East St. Louis Toodle-oo”,
1927
The Jazz Age - 1920s
• Racism still a big problem, but in the 1920s
African-American jazz music was synonymous
with “popular music”, the only time this has
been so
• Black bands could make a living performing at
dances and on radio broadcasts across the
country
• Recordings released as “race records” by
record labels, marketed exclusively to black
audiences
• White bands still made much more money
than black bands, often playing the same or
similar music (Guy Lombardo, Casa Loma
Orchestra)
• Black bands often played for white audiences in
venues that did not allow black patrons
Tin Pan Alley
• Tin Pan Alley - a kind of song factory, in which
standard song forms were developed to maximize
productivity and recognizability to the audience.
• Complete industry, with distribution through
"song-pluggers", and connections to Vaudeville and
Broadway
• Famous composers:
• Irving Berlin (1888-1989) - “Blue Skies”
• Richard Rogers (1902-1979) - “Oklahoma”
• Cole Porter (1891-1964) - “Under My Skin”
• George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Tin Pan Alley
• Employed many jewish immigrants who fled anti-
semitism in Europe in the late 1800s
• Many worked in the entertainment business, as it
provided opportunities for upward mobility
• Songs became “standards”, remain in the
repertoire of jazz musicians and pop singers
• Set the template for popular music forms,
conditioned listeners to hear music in a certain
way
• Songs appeared on radio, in films, in broadway
musicals, and on records, influencing a wide range
of music-makers in other styles
The Jewish Sound of Broadway
Tin Pan Alley Lyrics
• Lyrical content primarily about privacy and
romance as cultural ideals
• Reflect middle class aspirations of upward mobility
- professional composers played with the
American Dream in their lyrics, letting their
listeners know that working class people could fall
in love and buy a house
• Crooning singing style - microphones allowed for
singers to sing more quietly, resulting in more
emotive, intimate performances.
• Pre-microphone style heard in Al Jolson's "April
Showers” (1932)
• Post-microphone style with Gene Austin, “My
Blue Heaven” (1927)
Tin Pan Alley and Song Form
• 19th century song forms: AABA and
verse-chorus
• Verse - a free-rhythm introduction that
sets the dramatic context or emotional
tone of the rest of the piece (often left
out in modern renditions)
• A sections repeated but with different
lyrics
Cole Porter:
“My Heart Belongs To Daddy”
• The B section, or bridge, presents
Verse and refrain new material (melody, chord changes,
lyrics)
• Challenge to work in this form while
introducing just enough variety and
novelty to keep the listener interested -
the best songs balance predictability with
novelty
Tin Pan Alley Song Form
AABA: Anything Goes (Cole
Porter)
Intro
A1 (8 bars) - In olden days…
A2 (8 bars) - Good authors who once…
B (8 bars) - The world has gone mad…
A3 (8 bars) - Though I’m not a great
romancer…
A1 - Horn shots/saxophone solo
A2 - Horn shots/saxophone solo
B - The world has gone made
A3 - And though we’re not such…
Outro
Contemporary AABA Form
A - verse/prechorus/chorus (AABA)
A - verse/prechorus/chorus (AABA)
B - Bridge
A - chorus (AABA)

Chorus:
A - I really6 like you
A - I really6 like you
B - Oh did I say too much…
A - I really6 like you
Broadway - New York
• 1920s and 30s Broadway musicals gradually
replace Vaudeville, used songs from Tin Pan Alley.
• Songs were the main musical object, not the
singers who sang them
• Thin plot lines were knit between songs and
dance routines
• Tin Pan Alley songwriters more famous than
singers
• Broadway shows focused on songs and dancing
more than on plot development
• Many songs from shows are remembered while
the musicals they were in are not
Broadway - New York

Judy Garland - “Get Happy”

Broadway - Showboat (1927)
• “Showboat” (1927)
became the first
successful musical to
feature a complex plot,
contemporary political
themes, and a close
connection between the
music and the story.
• Started a trend where
plot, songs, and
characters became an
integrated whole
• Jerome Kern: “Old Man
River” - verse into
AABA
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
• Gershwin remains one of the most influential and
successful American composer for his melding of
European classical music with African-American
popular music
• First hit: “Swanee”, sung by Al Jolson
• “I Got Rhythm" - combines Tin Pan Alley song form
with the rhythmic vitality of African American jazz.
• Ethel Merman - “I Got Rhythm” (pre-
microphone singing)
• Wrote “concert” music as well as pop tunes, such as
Rhapsody in Blue (1924), premiered by Paul Whiteman
• Most ambitious achievement was Porgy and Bess,
which he called an American Folk Opera; mixed
opera conventions with African-American musical
techniques
George Gershwin

Rhapsody in Blue (1924): mixes “concert” music and jazz

George Gershwin

Porgy and Bess (1934): “Summer Time”

Mixes musicals and opera
Tin Pan Alley Songs
• Broadway songs rarely make the music charts;
replaced by movie soundtrack songs
• Tin Pan Alley songs remain the core repertoire in
jazz, with musicians expected to know many tunes
that first appeared in Broadway musicals
• Tin Pan Alley songs that are still performed are called
“Standards” by jazz musicians
• Older rock musicians tend to return to these songs
when they can't rock out like they used to; they have
come to represent “maturity” in music
• Example:
• 1944: Frank Sinatra records Gershwin’s “Long
Ago and Far Away” not long after it was written
• 1960s Scottish rocker Rod Stewart records
Gershwin’s “Long Ago and Far Away” in 2005
Race Records and Hillbilly Music
• Record companies discovered audiences for local,
regional musics, and marketed music to them that
was distinctly different than the Tin Pan Alley
songbook
• This new audience was immigrants from southern
rural America to the Northern cities following World
War 1
• Race records: recordings of African American
musicians marketed to an African American audience
• Hillbilly records: performed by and intended for
sale to southern rural whites
• Marketing “strategies” reflected large patterns of
segregation, and a desire to develop alternative
markets when phonograph sales declined
• “Improvements” in race relations often the result of
economics-based decision making
Race Records
Hillbilly Music
Race Records and Hillbilly Music
• Race and Hillbilly music provided the blueprint
for Rhythm and Blues, and by extension Rock'n'Roll
• Starting in 1920s, companies began to see the value
in recording African American folk music for an
African American audience
• Mamie Smith (1883-1946), first black recording
star, trained in Vaudeville.
• “Crazy Blues” (1920) sold 75,000 copies to a
mainly black audience
• Small, independent labels become the “research and
development” wing of the large labels, for they are
more tuned in to local musics and "person on the
street" tastes in music
• Furniture companies got into the music business,
selling “hardware” and “software”.
Race Records and Hillbilly Music
• Black population bought more records per capita than
the white population, and shared this music between
country and city
• Flow of recorded music created a national African
American musical culture
• W.C. Handy - the “Father of the Blues”, a Vaudeville
performer
• Bessie Smith records Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” in
1924, becomes first blues hit and a blues standard
• Example of “classic blues”: blues-informed music with
pianos, organs, horns, drums, strings, and other
instruments
• Connected with white audience because they
recognized the instruments and the forms
Bessie Smith - “St. Louis Blues”
• Blues lyrical form: AAB - a line sung twice, then
an “answering” line ending in a rhyming couplet
• Each verse shares the same melody and form with
different lyrics, so the blues is a strophic song form
• Bessie Smith: “St. Louis Blues”
Verse 1
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
A: I hate to see that evening sun go down
B: It makes me think I’m on my last go round
Verse 2
A: Feeling tomorrow like I feel today
A: Feeling tomorrow like I feel today
B: I’ll pack my trunk, and make my getaway
More Blues Form
Billie Holiday: Stormy Blues
Verse 1
A: I’ve been down so long, that down don’t worry me

A: I’ve been down so long, that down don’t worry me

B: I just sit and wonder, where can my good man be

Verse 2
A: When it rains in here, it’s storming on the sea

A: When it rains in here, it’s storming on the sea

B: Every time I come here, everything happens to me

Instrumental solos follow same form

Country/Folk/Down-Home Blues
• Originated in the Mississippi Delta in the early 1900s,
home to the largest slave population in the US
• Music of the impoverished black workforce, played in
clubs, on street corners, and in homes
• Primarily solo performers, singing and playing guitar,
telling stories of local events, places, and characters
• “Double-coded” lyrics - multiple possible meanings
• Robert Johnson - most famous Delta blues musician,
sold his soul to the devil to play guitar, died
mysteriously
• Revered by 1960s British rock bands like Led Zeppelin,
Cream, and the Rolling Stones
• “Travelling Riverside Blues” (1937) by Robert Johnson
• “Travelling Riverside Blues” by English band Led
Zeppelin (1973)
Country/Folk/Down-Home Blues
• Blind Lemon Jefferson - street preacher, country
blues player
• “Black Snake Moan” (1926)
Verse 1
A: Oh, I ain't got no mama now
A: Oh, I ain't got no mama now
B: She told me late last night, “You don't need no
mama no how”
Verse 2
A: Mmm, mmm, black snake crawlin’ in my room
A: Mmm, mmm, black snake crawlin’ in my room
B: Some pretty mama better come and get this
black snake soon
Early Country Music: Hillbilly Records
• Hillbilly Music becomes “Country and Western”
music
• Influenced by minstrel shows
• Northern record industry surprised to find a market
for local music in the south
• First “hillbilly” record: Fiddlin’ John Carson,”The
Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane” (1923)
• Growth of the music contingent on the growth of
radio broadcasting
• Popularized through “barn dances”, music and variety
shows
• Musicians were amateurs
• First hillbilly hit: Vernon Dalhart - “Wreck of the
Old 97” (1924), an urbanized folk song
Early Country Music: Hillbilly Records

The Barn Dance in the TV era

The Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers
• Main themes in country music: relationship
between country (home) and the city (away)
• Music reflects shift in patterns of work
• Carter Family: adapted songs from Anglo
folk tradition, hymns, early Tin Pan Alley,
African-American songs
• “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” (1927) -
group harmonies, guitar melody, Christian
theme, verse/chorus structure
• Jimmy Rodgers: rambler, railway worker,
loved the night life
• “Blue Yodel No. 2” (1929) - blues influence,
“high, lonesome” yodelling
Gospel Music
• Christianity a powerful force in American south
• Two traditions of sacred music in America: Gospel
Music (black), and Southern Gospel (white)
• Carter Family: “Gospel Ship”, 1935
• Guitar accompaniment, regular rhythm, loose
harmony, casual
• Golden Gate Quartet: “The Sun Didn’t
Shine” (1941)
• Syncopated rhythm, a cappella, alternating solo and
group vocal, tight harmonies and performance,
“professional”
• Gospel music a distinct stream in African American
culture, mixed in with secular music in rural White
culture
Popular Music and the Great Depression
• 1929-1939, millions of Americans out of work
• Record sales decreased dramatically
• Entertainment industry relied on established
stars
• Bing Crosby: big radio, TV, and film star,
recorded “Brother Can You Spare a Dime”,
1932
• Hillbilly and folk music singers addressed the
social problems of the Depression
• Woody Guthrie - most well-known
Depression-era protest singer, documented
the plight of the working class
• “Talking Dust Bowl Blues”
• Depression ends when World War II begins,
kick-starting manufacturing in the US
Homework

Reading:
Chapters Six and Seven

On D2L:
Reading Quiz Week 3