Tin Pan Alley

TIN PAN ALLEY

TIN PAN ALLEY, a phrase probably coined early in the 1900s, described the theatrical section of Broadway in New York City that housed most publishers of popular songs. As the music-publishing industry moved from the

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area around Twenty-eighth Street and Sixth Avenue to Thirty-second Street and then to the area between Forty-second and Fiftieth streets, the name "Tin Pan Alley" moved with it. The term suggests the tinny quality of the cheap, overabused pianos in the song publishers' offices. As the songwriting and music-publishing industry moved to other parts of the city, and to other cities as well, Tin Pan Alley became a term applied to the industry as a whole.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Furia, Philip. The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Jasen, David. Tin Pan Alley: The Composers, the Songs, the Performers and their Times: The Golden Age of American Popular Music from 1886–1956. New York: D. I. Fine, 1988.

Tawa, Nicholas. The Way to Tin Pan Alley: American Popular Song, 1866–1910. New York: Schirmer Books, 1990.

Stanley R. Pillsbury / h. r. s.

See also Broadway ; Music Industry .