by Ben Yagoda
The team of Burt Bacharach (at the piano) and Hal David had knocked around the Brill Building for years. But when they teamed up with singer Dionne Warwick in 1962, their music started to soar.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s a pleasure to thank the many people who helped this project on its fairly long and winding road to becoming a book. Enthusiasm at the start of the process from Gary Giddins, a writer whose work I greatly respect, was enormously helpful and encouraging. Michael Feinstein, the chief page-turner of the Great American Songbook, gave the book his blessing early on and—equally important—pointed me in the direction of Ervin Drake and of Ray Evans’s papers. Later on, two fine writers, Wes Davis and Gary Rosen, read the manuscript and had a lot of helpful ideas and suggestions.
Many other writers, scholars, and authorities generously provided information, encouragement, introductions, and other kinds of assistance: Jon Burlingame, Samuel Freedman, Adam Gopnik, Peter Guralnick, Tad Hershorn, Miles Krueger, John Leland, Jill Lepore, Joyce Maynard, Marc Myers, Mark Rotella, David Suisman, Michael Tisserand, Thomas Vinciguerra, Ed Ward, Joseph Weiss, and Sheila Weller.
I am grateful to the remarkable people who agreed to be interviewed. They are more or less my heroes. Their names are listed on page 267, but I’d like to make mention of two inspiring women who have since passed away: Marian McPartland and Mary Rodgers Guettel. They are among a number of interviewees who are not directly quoted in the book, but whose insights enriched my understanding of themes, people, and periods.
Thanks to friends and colleagues who offered insight and encouragement, and at the very least acted interested: Bruce Beans, Laurie Bernstein, Mark Bowden, John Caskey, Andy Cassel, Richard Davison, Jim Dean, Bruce Dorsey, Henry Fuhrmann, Denis Harper, Martha Hodes, Sam Hughes, John Jebb, Kevin Kerrane, McKay Jenkins, Don Lessem, Donald Mell, Dan Menaker, Elizabeth Mosier, Daniel Okrent, Rachel Pastan, Tom Pauly, Craig Pittman, Dan Rubin, Gene Seymour, Michael Stein, Bill Stempel, Nanette Tobin, and Rick Valelly. Special appreciation to three couples who put me up (and put up with me) on research trips: Ann Gerhart and Michael Sokolove, in Washington, D.C.; Ann Toler and Thomas Bourgeois, in Los Angeles; and Jana DeHart and John Marchese in New York.
As always, my work was greatly facilitated by the good work of librarians and archivists. Special mention goes to John W. Rumble at the Country Music Hall of Fame, Juliette Appold of the University of Pennsylvania, Jeff Bridgers at the Library of Congress, and Susan Brynteson and Linda Stein of the University of Delaware.
I could have not completed the book without the great work of my assistants Sara Wilson and Maddie Thomas. Research assistance was also provided by Nathan Truman and Lizy Yagoda, and, at the University of Delaware, Emily Arnold, Michael Golden, Hans Howk, Sean Kauffman, Daniel Kolitz, Mary Kate Reilly, and Anna Short.
Linda Ng has been an extraordinary photo researcher and aide. I also want to thank Michael Randolph for his cooperation and his fine work in curating the invaluable photographs of his father, William “PoPsie” Randolph.
Thanks to June Rosenthal Silver, for permission to quote from her sister Carolyn Leigh’s papers.
My interest in and knowledge and appreciation of great American songs have been shaped over the years by the writings of Stephen Holden and the late Whitney Balliett, and by the radio programs of Jonathan Schwartz. I have been listening to him for four decades that have flown by as if by magic. Tony Bennett’s six-decade dedication to the highest standards in repertoire and performance is an inspiration.
Thanks to Geoffrey Kloske of Riverhead Books, for the jacket, and much else. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to work with the whole Riverhead team, including Caty Gordon, Anna Jardine, Jynne Martin, Claire McGinnis, and Mary Stone. David Chesanow’s astute copyediting saved me from error and infelicity.
The namesake of the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency and his colleagues, Shana Cohen and Ross Harris, are, in a word, aces.
I often marvel at my good fortune in sharing my life with Gigi Simeone, Lizy Yagoda, and Maria Yagoda. In the words of an underappreciated song by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, “It amazes me.”
NOTES
Record Charts
This book includes frequent references to the ranking of individual records—“number-one record,” “top ten,” and so on. Unless otherwise indicated, the sources for these are the charts compiled by Billboard magazine, as collated in a serious of invaluable books written and edited by Joel Whitburn. The particular books I relied on most were:
The Billboard Book of Top 40 Albums. New York: Billboard, 1987.
The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. 8th edition. New York: Billboard, 2004.
Joel Whitburn’s Pop Hits, 1940–1954: Compiled from Billboard’s Pop Singles Charts, 1940–1954. Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 1994.
Interviews
I conducted interviews with the following: Herb Alpert, Roger Angell, Irvin Arthur, Irving Caesar, Barbara Carroll, Bill Charlap, Ervin Drake, Michael Feinstein, Dave Frishberg, Norman Gimbel, Mary Rodgers Guettel, Sheldon Harnick, Dick Hyman, Jack Jones, Elliott Lawrence, Jo Sullivan Loesser, Susan Loesser, Johnny Mandel, Marion McPartland, Peter Nero, Phyllis Newman, Randy Newman, Bucky Pizzarelli, Curly Putman, Linda Ronstadt, Paul Schwartz, June Rosenthal Silver, Sandy Stewart, Charles Strouse, Gay Talese, Allen Toussaint, Jimmy Webb, and Tim Weston. In cases where a quotation is attributed to one of those people and no other source is given, it comes from the author interview.
Abbreviations
Evans. Ray Evans papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.
Leigh. Carolyn Leigh papers, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library.
Celler. U.S. Congress. House Antitrust Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Monopoly Problems in Regulated Industries. Part 2, vol. 3, 84th Cong., 2nd sess., 1956.
Pastore. U.S. Congress. Senate Subcommittee on Communications of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Amendment to the Communications Act of 1934 (Prohibiting Radio and Television Stations from Engaging in Music Publishing or Recording Business). 85th Cong., 2nd sess., 1958.
Prologue: Premises, Premises
“Standard tunes, first of all”: “Keith Jarrett: ‘I Want the Imperfections to Remain,’” All Things Considered, NPR, May 27, 2013, http://www.npr.org/2013/05/27/186505248/keith-jarrett-i-want-the-imperfections-to-remain.
Near the height of the Great American Songbook era: Duncan MacDougald Jr., “The Popular Music Industry.” In Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank N. Stanton, Radio Research 1941, 66.
Berlin’s payments from ASCAP: Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer, 524. Berlin got $87,000 from ASCAP in 1952 and $101,000 in 1954.
A 1980 People magazine interview: Barbara Rowes, “Johnny Marks Has Made Millions off ‘Rudolph,’ but the Songwriter Still Says Humbug,” People, December 22, 1980.
I. Mr. Miller and Mr. Schwartz, 1954
“Like, ‘You know, all those songs’”: “Bob Dylan: The Paul Zollo Interview,” Americansongwriter.com, https://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/01/bob-dylan-the-paul-zollo-interview-3/5/.
“wrote with total self-assurance”: Alec Wilder, American Popular Song, 313.
Schwartz’s father was a lawyer in Moscow: Author interview with Paul Schwartz.
“cut a suave path”: Jonathan Schwartz, All in Good Time, 23.
A year later, some staffers at ASCAP put together figures: Pastore, 88–89.
Interviewed by Cue magazine: Ralph Blumenthal, “Bob Merrill, 74, Composer and Lyricist, Dies,” New York Times, February 19, 1998.
“Their conclusions were the same as mine”: Pastore, 467.
“I took a Broadway show score”: Celler, 4200.
“ASCAP has tried to live”: “Justice Dept. Sifts ASCAP Complaints Against BMI,” Billboard, April 12, 19
52.
“While top names like Rodgers & Hammerstein”: “Songsmiths Do Solo on $150,000,000 Suit; Touch Off Music-Radio Discord,” Variety, November 11, 1953, 50.
“preference to the performance”: Schwartz v. Broadcast Music, Inc., 16 F.R.D., 31, 33 (S.D.N.Y. 1954).
“placing American music in a strait jacket”: Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 402.
“20,000 pages of testimony”: Schwartz v. Broadcast Music, Inc., 180 F. Supp. 322 (S.D.N.Y. 1959).
Miller testified: Pastore, 48.
“Hereafter, more emphasis will be placed”: “New Pop Era Plotted by Col Records: Miller Post Sparks It,” Billboard, February 11, 1950, 3.
Within a year and a half, the label’s pop music sales: Time, “Music: How the Money Rolls In,” August 20, 1951.
“looked in the control room”: James Kaplan, Frank, 526.
“donned a coonskin hat”: Arnold Shaw, The Rockin’ ’50s, 45.
“There were publishers”: Robert Rice, “The Fractured Oboist,” The New Yorker, June 6, 1953.
“I thought it over”: Pastore, 49.
II. I Get a Kick out of You, 1885–1933
“The word for Dick Rodgers’ melodies”: Quoted in William McBrien, Cole Porter, 368.
Tin Pan Alley background: Ben Yagoda, “Lullaby of Tin Pan Alley,” American Heritage, October/November 1983.
The median total payment Foster received: David Suisman, Selling Sounds, 23.
“In his 1926 autobiography”: Charles K. Harris, After the Ball, 57.
His brother the novelist Theodore Dreiser: Quoted in Gary A. Rosen, Unfair to Genius, 12.
“The reader will naturally wonder”: Harris, After the Ball, 15.
“Nowadays, the consumption of songs in America”: “How Popular Song Factories Manufacture a Hit,” New York Times, September 18, 1910.
they generally sold a publisher: Suisman, Selling Sounds, 44.
“With a few notable exceptions”: Quoted ibid., 43.
“I can speak of only one composer”: Alec Wilder, American Popular Song, 119–20.
Early-twentieth-century changes: Suisman, Selling Sounds, 319.
A milestone . . . which sold two million records each: Charles Hamm, Yesterdays, 336.
By 1929, more than 105 million records: Suisman, Selling Sounds, 16.
“Previous to 1897 every song”: Paul Whiteman and Mary Margaret McBride, Jazz, 171.
“The skill and genius of Tin Pan Alley”: Hamm, Yesterdays, 361.
“popular songwriting is the most highly overpaid form”: Quoted in Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 91.
“It is true that music”: Quoted in Suisman, Selling Sounds, 173.
About 190,000 radio units: Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty, 419.
By the mid-1930s, ASCAP was annually collecting: Hamm, Yesterdays, 339.
by means of a complicated classification system: Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 104.
Jelly Roll Morton and ASCAP: Howard Reich and William Gaines, “Down and Out in New York,” Chicago Tribune, December 13, 1999.
“People buy music”: Isaac Goldberg, Tin Pan Alley, 308.
Max Dreyfus biography and quotations: Yagoda, “Lullaby of Tin Pan Alley.”
“Important composers and lyricists of that day”: David Ewen, The Life and Death of Tin Pan Alley, 296–97.
“was considered radical for this abuse”: Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 91.
In the 1920s in particular, musical comedies: Ibid., 355.
“were no longer subsistence piece workers”: Rosen, Unfair to Genius, 22.
Sigmund Romberg grossed: Russell Sanjek, From Print to Plastic, 16.
“Angry because Dick Trevor has not returned”: Thomas Hischak, The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, 411.
Warner Bros. paid the team of Harry Warren and Al Dubin: Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 153.
“Harlem cabarets, other cabarets”: Edmund Wilson, The Twenties, 183. Wilson’s references are to Hugo Riesenfeld (the second and third letters of his name were often transposed), a conductor and composer known for elevating jazz to the classical realm; Burton Rascoe, a literary critic; Webster Hall, a Greenwich Village ballroom famous for wild soirees; Vincent Lopez, a popular bandleader; and the burlesque shows offered by the Minsky family at the National Winter Garden theater on Houston Street.
“displacement of beat”: Hamm, Yesterdays, 373.
“Syncopation is the soul of every American”: Quoted in Douglas, Terrible Honesty, 356.
“Our whole present music”: Gilbert Seldes, The 7 Lively Arts, 73.
“In the search for song-pluggers”: Hazel Meyer, The Gold in Tin Pan Alley, 50.
“As I breathlessly awaited”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, 88.
“Where did he get it?”: Quoted in Douglas, Terrible Honesty, 358.
“combines slow and fast”: Mark N. Grant, The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical, 136.
“Love songs”: Will Friedwald, Stardust Melodies, 6.
“fast and jazzy”: Ira Gershwin, Lyrics on Several Occasions, 111.
“all too often ultra-sentimental”: Kenneth S. Clark, “Why Our Popular Songs Don’t Last,” Forum, March 1934, 171.
“polluting the once-pure air”: Quoted in Jonathan Yardley, Ring, 366–67.
III. Jukebox Saturday Night, 1925–1942
Here are the songs that reached number one: Joel Whitburn, Pop Hits, 1940–1954, 385–90.
“There is better popular music today”: Abbe Niles, “Ballads, Songs and Snatches,” The Bookman, April 1928.
“too many” current offerings were “entirely too intricate”: Kenneth S. Clark, “Why Our Popular Songs Don’t Last,” Forum, March 1934, 170–71.
“All those publishers”: Jack Lawrence, They All Sang My Songs, 91–92.
Variety’s 1970 obituary of Marlo: Variety, February 11, 1970, 63.
“Play, Fiddle, Play” lawsuit: Gary A. Rosen, Unfair to Genius, 6–7.
“The ‘sweet’ technique”: Abbe Niles, “Ballads, Songs and Snatches,” The Bookman, June 1928, 422.
“The best white ensembles”: Fortune, August 1933, 90.
“a weak sister incapable of holding”: Music & Rhythm, August 1941, 10, quoted in Lewis A. Erenberg, Swingin’ the Dream, 69.
“The stranglehold music publishers had”: John Hammond, John Hammond on Record, 142.
The long-forgotten Shep Fields: William Ruhlmann, Breaking Records, 78.
“Hot musicians look down”: E. J. Nicholas and W. L. Werner, “Hot Jazz Jargon,” Vanity Fair, November 1935, 71–72.
“projected rich, full musical sounds”: George T. Simon, The Big Bands, 4.
In an eight-month period in 1941 and 1942: Peter Townsend, Pearl Harbor Jazz, 178.
“Swing fused love songs”: Erenberg, Swingin’ the Dream, 53.
By 1937, Variety estimated: Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 204.
All the top bands were heard: Andre Millard, America on Record, 172.
an average hit sold about 250,000 copies: Duncan MacDougald, “The Popular Music Industry,” in Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank N. Stanton, Radio Research 1941, 71.
They consumed about 13 million records: Millard, America on Record, 169.
The most successful group: Hamm, Yesterdays, 384–85.
“When we started out”: Clarissa Start, “Man of Musical World,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 1, 1940.
“He seems to have”: Johnny Mercer, unpublished memoir. Johnny Mercer Collection, Georgia State University.
“who did not always receive credit”: Terry Teachout, Duke, 113.
“It was a great period!”: Max Wilk, They’re Playing Our Song, 147.
“George died on July 11, 1937”: Newsweek, July 15, 1940.
“The harmonic language of Tin Pan Alley”: Hamm, Yesterdays, 367.
Livingston and Evans: Unless otherwise noted, all quotations concerning Livingston and Evans are from scrapbooks, diaries, and correspondence in the Ray Evans Papers at the University of Pennsylvania.
At the beginning of the Depression: Philip H. Ennis, The Seventh Stream, 101.
IV. As Time Goes By, 1941–1948
“do their bit in the present crisis”: “Gene Buck Tells Tin Pan Alley to Pen War Songs,” Variety, December 1, 1941, 4.
“Old songs and sentimental ballads”: Mike Levin, “Since You Went Away,” Down Beat, November 1944, 1.
“The trouble, from the viewpoint of America’s Ministry of Propaganda”: Abel Green, “New Dance Steps of Martial Spirit May Be Necessary to Cue Songs from Slush into War Channels,” Variety, October 7, 1942, 2.
“hits me right where it hurts”: Judy Litoff and David Smith, Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front, 107.
“so inclined to escape”: Down Beat, June 1, 1942, 3.
“I also think Frank showed”: Will Friedwald, Sinatra!, 126.
Crosby had once told his in-house lyricist: James Kaplan, “The King of Ring-a-Ding-Ding,” Movies Rock (a Vanity Fair publication), December 2007.
“In CBS’s Manhattan playhouse”: Time, July 5, 1943.
“put the kibosh on the big bands”: Friedwald, Sinatra!, 127.
“We’re going into the open market”: Down Beat, April 15, 1942, 12.
“Four- and five- and even seven-voice”: Mel Tormé, My Singing Teachers, 161.
“We record like mad”: Milt Gabler, The Milt Gabler Story, 12. Unpublished manuscript, Milt Gabler Papers, the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1940, ten of twelve songs: William Ruhlmann, Breaking Records, 169.