The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists (Oxford Paperbacks)

335 Pages·1992·12.94 MB·English

by  Philip Furia

THE POETS OF
TIN PAN ALLEY
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THE POETS OF
TIN PAN ALLEY
A History of
America's Great
Lyricists
PHILIP FURIA
New York Oxfordd • Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1990 by Philip Furia
1992 Paperback Preface © 1992 by Philip Furia
First published in 1990 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314
First published as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1992
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Furia, Philip, 1943-
The poets of Tin Pan Alley : a history of America's great lyricists / Philip Furia.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. American poetry—20th century—History and criticism.
2. Songs, English—United States—History and criticism.
3. Popular literature—United States—History and criticism.
4. United States—Popular culture—History—20th century.
5. Popular music—United States—History and criticism.
6. Lyric poetry—History and criticism.
7. Lyricists—United States. J. Title.
PS309.L8F8 1990 782.42164'026'8—dc20 90-35937
ISBN 0-19-506408-9
ISBN 0-19-507473-4 (PBK)
Since the copyright page cannot legibly accommodate
all the copyright notices, pages preceding the Index
are to be considered
an extension of the copyright page.
109876543
Printed in the United States of America
For Karen,
It had to be you
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Preface
This book began while I was a Fulbright professor at the Univer-
sity of Graz in Austria. When my students in a course on modern
American literature, art, and music asked me about popular
songs during the 1920s and '30s, I first professed to know noth-
ing about the subject. Then I realized that the songs I had loved
all my life, the standards of Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins,
Berlin, and Porter, had once been the popular songs of their
time. It was when I tried to satisfy the curiosity of my Austrian
students by typing up the lyrics of some of those songs that I
realized how truly poetic they were. My first thanks therefore go
to my students and colleagues at the University of Graz for spark-
ing and then sharing my enthusiasm for this subject in its earliest
stages. I must also thank my students at the University of Minne-
sota, particularly the diverse group of students I have had the
opportunity to teach through Continuing Education and Exten-
sion, for helping me develop my ideas about American popular
songs.
My colleagues, Marty Roth and Michael Hancher, gave gen-
erously of their time to read my entire manuscript with great
care, never allowing their enthusiasm for my subject to relax
their demands for clarity of insight and coherence of argument.
To the extent the final version of the book meets those de-
mands, it is indebted to them. Thanks, too, to other colleagues
who read portions of the manuscript at crucial stages of its
development—Kent Bales, Edward Griffin, Peter Reed, and
George T. Wright. Since this is a book I have tried to write for
viii Preface
the large audience that loves American popular song, I am
grateful too for the careful readings the entire manuscript re-
ceived from Tony Hill, from Bob Lundegaard, and from Steve
Davis, who, along with Steve Benson, invited me to discuss
American popular song in several of their programs on KUOM
Radio.
I also wish to thank Sheldon Meyer of Oxford University
Press for his editorial suggestions, Stephanie Sakson-Ford for
her careful editing of the manuscript, and Kathy Erickson of the
Lazear Literary Agency for her help in seeing the book through
to publication. Thanks, too, to Laurie Patterson, who guided me
through the labyrinth of word processing. For their guidance
through the maze of copyright permissions, I would like to thank
Fred Ahlert, Jr., Lewis Bachman, David Bogart, Jeffrey Brabec,
Lynnae Crawford, Jeanne Fong, Sidney Herman, Theodore Jack-
son, Eula Johnson, Donald Kahn, Florence Leeds, Averill
Pasarow, Lourdes Richter, and Jack Rosner and his staff at
Warner Brothers Music. Support for my research was provided
by the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota and the
College of Liberal Arts, which enabled me to do research at the
Library of Congress and the New York Public Library's Perform-
ing Arts Division at Lincoln Center.
From beginning to end, this book owes numerous debts to
Les Block, academic colleague, consummate jazz pianist, and lo-
cal impresario who has included me in his efforts to keep these
great songs alive and kicking. I owe an old debt to my Uncle
Eugene, who for years heroically taught me music, and to my
mother and father, who endured my enthusiasm for rock and
roll but also introduced me to their music, which by then had
become the standards of American popular song. I hope that I
have done the same for my sons, Peter and Nick, who, while still
preferring their music, have listened to mine with good humor
and occasional enthusiasm during the writing of this book. In the
dedication I have acknowledged the help of my wife, who lis-
Preface ix
tened to the songs with me, discussed the lyrics, read and reread
chapters and revisions of chapters, and, most of all, radiated the
wit, grace, and urbanity that, I came to learn, is what all those
songs are about.
Minneapolis P. F.
February 1990
Preface to the Second
Edition
With this new edition of The Poets of Tin Pan Alley, I can answer a
question raised by many readers from around the country who
share my love for these great songs. "Why," many of them have
asked, "doesn't the book have a chapter about the lyrics of
Sammy Cahn ... or Alan Jay Lerner, Frank Loesser, or other
great lyricists of recent years?" The lyricists I call the poets of Tin
Pan Alley wrote songs in the years between World War I and
World War II, when a close relationship between the popular
music industry, then known as Tin Pan Alley, and the musical
comedies of Broadway and Hollywood gave the songs of that era,
as I try to show in the book, their distinctive character. That
relationship blossomed in 1914 when Jerome Kern saw a song he
had written for a Broadway musical go on to become indepen-
dently popular through sheet-music sales on Tin Pan Alley. By
the time of Kern's death in 1945, that relationship had begun to
change in ways that transformed the Broadway theater, the Holly-
wood musical, and the character of American popular song.
While Jerome Kern's career neatly parallels this period of
1914 to 1945, the careers of other songwriters do not. Indeed,
Irving Berlin, Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and others continued
writing songs into the late 1940s, the '50s, and, in some cases, the