Making Songs Popular Now “Big Business”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 956, 26 April 1930, Page 20

Making Songs Popular Now “Big Business”

Once “ Song Plugging ” Ranked as Minor Industry ... It has Now Reached Giant Proportions with Millions as Objective ...

■ E used to wear an eyepiercing checker-boaid vest. A bowler hat slid to one side of his head. A horseshoe pin, set in “diamonds,” sparkled from his necktie, and white spats were reflected in the mirror-like shine of his patent leather shoes. When he didn’irwear spats his buttoned shoes had cream-coloured cloth tops. He swung a yellow stick, stuck a cigar in one corner of his mouth, and flashed a paste gem from his middle finger. This was the old-time “song plugger”—a person who seemed newly escaped from some musical comedy. They didn’t call him a plugger in those days. Then he was the “sheet music salesman.” But, alas, he is extinct. Or, at least, he has changed so that his own dealer wouldn’t know him, writes Gilbert Swan in the Toronto “Star.” With his “line” of songs under his arms, he marched upon the biggest music dealer. With great assurance, he planked himself down at the piano and whammed off his numbers to dealers and gathering crowds alike. If the piano happened to be out of tune he would take off his coat and fix it. And if it so happened that some vaudeville numbers were appearing in town, it was up to him to see ’that his latest songs were in the repertoire of the better acts. Slipping the act a few shillings did it. This arranged, he would invite the music dealers to the show. Then, when one of his firm’s songs was introduced, he would nudge the nearest dealer impressively and whisper, “See, what’d I tell you? Greatest song hit today. . . . They’re all singin’ it. . . . It’s goin’ to sweep tbe country.” His deals closed, he moved on. But che time came when certain acts demanded a fee for “plugging.” In the end it forced the music publishers of Tin Pan Alley to form a protective association. But that little graft is gone Tl,e song plugging game has gone tinough a dozen stages since then. “Plug” a Giant Now Today the “song plug” i s a verv giant. A song, ,let us say, is written tor a talking picture. Before the picture is finished the number is being turned into gramophone records. It is being used by acts on vaudeville circuits allied with the picture and record organisation. Meanwhile the entertainers of the air are sending it over the radio via jazz band, voice and What have you? Almost overnight, tens of millions of people are ha '' ng .,f tune thrust into their ears' willy-nilly. It s a strange and amazing transition from the sporty "sheet music” man of yesteryear. An entertainer jumps out of his Matffin r in i t e n UP , tQ a bl °a<J<=asting station. In the elevator he takes a J? asly slance at bis wrist watch, for -.e has many other engagements. The chances are that he leads an orchestra in a night club after midnight plays at a private function in Park Avenue and spends a half hour in a gramophone studio. Early in the morning he must be at one of thl talking picture studios for a “short n? b p C h f and b3Ck at ,he gramophone plain before noon. So it goes He s the plugger of the moment If he has a popular orchestra, or a “band,”

as they call it in “tile alley,” lie’s the most important item in the plugging system.

To be sure, the vaudeville acts still show up in the professional rooms of melody lane, but this is just a gesture to “the profession.” No one who is honest about it pretends to give a single liaug about a mere “plug” from the stage in these days. What difference does it make whether or not the Zilch Sisters i and Doe put on your song, when it can be sent out to millions in a singlS evening by radio? Time was when they were mightv glad to get the Zilch Sisters and Doe

to sing a potential hit. In fact, the Tm Pan Alley, which now is passing as built around this effort. Each publishing house had its proroof - The room, generallv speaking, was a six by ten inclosure roughly fenced off from similar rooms tab'e aCI Tb' aS - a piauo ’ a chalr and a tame. The pianos were thumped until the keys became a jaundiced yellow the a£t ernoons and well nliddm -2 vepm ss. a pedestrian in the middle Foities off Broadway could hear the cacaphony of sounds'floating through the windows s Here is was that “the acts” went song shopping. Here went the people ° a^ 1 °course run over the newest composes in othr:r° r nk ( m ;, 10dy Sh ° P and then antour woman on a shopping

')a haddye sot iu c °tuedy numbers’”’ babv d a . re ? uest - “Get this one market wfi aUKh chorus in the “erse ”' laUgh aud tend in every

Whereupon the tireless '“Si ™ h Prov iS ed step^ e a nd or gtture e s CUt SI there 5 ' P ™ tessio l nal r °oms are still

By such steps as these, the "song plug” has arrived at the staggering ramifications of today:

First, the birth of the modern songselling age came just after the South African War. Just as every war stimulates the music makers, so this produced “Just Break the News to Mother” and half a dozen other “tear jerkers.”

Then came the stereopticon and with it the “illustrated songs” of sentimental memory. Ballads were in great favour—-“Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage,” and the like!

Bands were next on the “plugging”

list, with Sousa at the head. But the minstrel show had also taken on a considerable vogue, and the burntcork boys created song popularity It was out of the minstrel troupe that AI Jolson rose. A great song plugger then, he is looked upon today as the most important hit maker in the entertainment world. And after the band came dance music, and the real beginning of today’s song market. And came the dance record. Here it was that Pa” l M hiteman first got his tremendous following. He was far and away the most popular of the dance record maestros. There had been one other step; the cake walk. And since this period linked with the “rag” and the “band plug” era, it also ushered in Irving Berlin, with his “Alexander's Ragtime Bund.” It was upon the cakewalk that Leo Feist, the music publisher, began his business career. Mr. Fete: it was, too, who kept an eye on White man and finally arranged with thaband to popularise Feist tunes. Whiteman’s success followed liim to t” e radio broadcasting rooms. Then came the movie theme song. '-Ramona was the first. Strangely enough, Mabel Wayne, w ho wrote "Ramona,” was one of-®* last to succumb to the call of Hollywood. Only recently did she agree to head westward, when the bills ” Santa Monica already echoed with the noises of the boys and girls from Ti Pan Alley. With all these changes had e- 0130 metamorphosis in the tvpes of salesmen. The old “city slicker” salesmen no longer was seen in the land.