Albums in Tin Pan Alley
Various Artists
Description
The modern music industry was born in 1885 when several sheet music publishers established offices along West 28th Street in Manhattan. From the Turn of the Century through the 1930s, this area, which journalist Monroe Rosenfeld dubbed "Tin Pan Alley" due to the cacophony of numerous songwriters banging out tunes on pianos, was the home of the biggest American music publishers. Composers for hire churned out songs that were published as sheet music and sung and played in homes across the nation. George Gershwin and Irving Berlin started their careers as Tin Pan Alley "song pluggers"—traveling performers who sold songs—before becoming best-selling composers. The rise of radio and recordings eventually led to a decline in sheet music sales, but Tin Pan Alley lives on through the era's timeless songs.
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