by Ben Yagoda
All told, that year Como sold: Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 223.
“I didn’t want it to seem”: Quoted in Michael Castellini, “Sit In, Stand Up and Sing Out: Black Gospel Music and the Civil Rights Movement” (master’s thesis, Georgia State University, 2013).
“all these Wall Street types”: Will Friedwald, “When He Was 46 It Was a Very Good Year,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2009.
“We got a call from Louis Lipstone”: Gene Lees, Portrait of Johnny, 166.
“It was not, as one realizes”: George Frazier, “Jocks, Jukes and Discs,” Variety, April 9, 1947, 33.
“The historic thing about ‘The Paleface’”: “‘The Paleface,’ Without Bing Crosby and Dot Lamour, Opens at the Paramount,” New York Times, December 16, 1948.
“Only four studios”: “Budget Cuts Hit Tunesmiths,” Billboard, November 15, 1947.
“comparatively second rate”: Detroit News, February 22, 1947, in Evans.
“I began to hate California”: Max Wilk, They’re Playing Our Song, 158–59.
“The Road pictures symbolized”: Wilfrid Sheed, The House That George Built, 235–36.
V. What Happened to the Music? 1946–1954
“The Sinatra phase had ended”: Quoted in Arnold Shaw, The Rockin’ ’50s, 142.
“When jazz and popular music lose”: Quoted in Richard Palmer, Such Deliberate Disguises, 21.
In 1945, major networks dropped: Lewis A. Erenberg, Swingin’ the Dream, 217.
“the most historic jam session in the annals of jazz”: Time, May 24, 1943, 63–64.
“mixed up with popular music”: Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya, 372.
“different only in that its purpose seems to be”: “On the Stand: Dizzy Gillespie,” Billboard, October 9, 1948.
“So you get all them weird chords”: Quoted in Ernest Borneman, “‘Bop Will Kill Business Unless It Kills Itself First’—Louis Armstrong,” Down Beat, April 7, 1948, 2–3.
“We’re tired of that old New Orleans”: Richard Boyer, “BOP,” The New Yorker, July 3, 1948, 28.
But at the end of the twentieth century: William Ruhlmann, Breaking Records, 99.
“If the songs a country sings”: “Top Song Hits: Sentimental Ballads About Love Are Most Popular in U.S. Today,” Life, October 21, 1946.
In a 1949 Billboard poll: “11th Annual College Poll,” Billboard, June 11, 1949.
“Cornell University, in addition”: “Campus Kids’ Ork Squawks,” Billboard, February 14, 1948, 19.
“Ballroom operators complain”: Don Dornbrook, “Swing Has Swung,” Milwaukee Journal, February 16, 1947, 8.
“sweet-with-a-beat Elliot Lawrence”: “Dinah, Bing, Melchior, Cop Vocal Honors,” Billboard, August 2, 1947, 38.
“the Hit Parade . . . seemed to show”: Wilfrid Sheed, The House That George Built, 244.
“Near You” as especially “decadent” and “bloodless”: “What’s Wrong with Music,” Metronome, April 1948, 16, quoted in Albin Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 87.
“And just like that, the magical coincidence”: Sheed, The House That George Built, 244.
“It’s a throwback”: Valley Times, March 4, 1950. In Evans.
“bellwether song of the folk music trend”: Allen Churchill, “Tin Pan Alley’s Git-tar Blues,” New York Times, July 15, 1951, 8.
“a full-fledged resurgence”: Jack Gould, “Comedy and Music,” New York Times, December 24, 1944, 35.
“But there are more people”: Quoted in Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 154.
“Great songs aren’t being written”: Down Beat, July 30, 1952, 6, quoted in Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 59.
“I’ve been looking for wonderful pieces”: “What’s Wrong with Music,” Metronome, April 1948, 16, quoted in Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 87.
“just hack out songs”: Quoted in Cary Ginell, Mr. B, 125.
Variety concurred, calling the 1948 crop of songs: “Jukes, Jocks, and Disks,” Variety, August 4, 1948, 34.
what Tin Pan Alley “lived on” at mid-century: Shaw, The Rockin’ 50s, 14–15.
“Are you out of your mind?”: The Ray & Wyn Ritchie Evans Foundation. http://www.rayevans.org/.
224 recordings of the song: Ibid.
“For years we did nothing but play”: Frank Stacy, “Nat Cole Talks Back to Critics,” The Capitol, April 1946.
“Some creeps said”: Quoted in Ginell, Mr. B, 107–8.
“a pasta of Neapolitan, bel canto”: Shaw, The Rockin’ 50s, 21.
Paramount logically offered: Daniel Mark Epstein, Nat King Cole, 208.
“Crux, essence and heart”: Arnold Shaw, Lingo of Tin-Pan Alley, 15.
“Everybody but the music publisher”: Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 329–30. Ellipsis in original.
“A musical composition in itself”: Waring v. WDAS Broadcasting Station, 327 Pa. 433, 441, 194 A. 631, 635 (Pa. 1937), quoted in Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 21.
“chattel”: RCA Mfg. Co. v. Whiteman, 114 F.2d 86, 89 (C.A.2 1940), quoted in Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 24.
“complete with chandelier”: “Martin Block, Disc Jockey, Dies; Started ‘Make-Believe Ballroom,’” New York Times, September 20, 1967.
There were 813 AM stations: Philip H. Ennis, The Seventh Stream, 136.
“As I got to the outskirts”: Roy Kohn, Songplugger, or How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?, 19.
“hated by the majority”: Ennis, The Seventh Stream, 120.
two hundred new songs were offered: Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 236.
one-in-twenty chance: Ennis, The Seventh Stream, 120.
“As it twanged its way”: Arnold Passman, The Deejays, 128.
“a postwar show business phenomenon”: Quoted ibid., 123.
“the disc jockey, in our opinion”: “Lo, the Poor Disc Jockey,” Billboard, February 7, 1948, 36.
“It was believed . . . that the city”: Ennis, The Seventh Stream, 12.
“Ballads take a long time to develop”: “Howie Richmond Views Craft of Song,” Billboard, August 28, 1999, 43.
One way Richmond tried to do so: Shaw, The Rockin’ ’50s, 65.
His methods paid off: “Songwriters Hall of Fame 1983 Award & Induction Ceremony.” http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/.
“Cut ’em, press ’em, ship ’em”: Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 237.
“Oddly enough for a man of such musical ability”: George Frazier, “Weird Business—Pop Music,” Vogue, August 1, 1954.
“What makes you want to dig”: Will Friedwald, Sinatra!, 178.
“Whatever became of music?”: John S. Wilson, “Weston: What Became of Music?” Down Beat, December 30, 1949, 7, quoted in Keir Keightley, “You Keep Coming Back Like a Song.”
“Miller had too much power”: Donald Clarke, The Rise and Fall of Popular Music, 408.
“There he experimented with recording techniques”: Jon Pareles, “Les Paul, Guitar Innovator, Dies at 94.” New York Times, August 13, 2009.
The song . . . sold more than 20 million copies: http://www.songwritershalloffame.org.
“It’s easy to laugh at Johnnie Ray”: Howard Taubman, “Cry with Johnnie Ray,” New York Times, April 27, 1952.
“finest musicianship”: Quoted in Friedwald, Sinatra!, 175.
“an absolutely first-rate oboist”: Quoted in Richard Severo, “Mitch Miller, Maestro of the Singalong, Dies at 99,” New York Times, August 2, 2010.
“deep lack of interest”: Robert Rice, “The Fractured Oboist,” The New Yorker, June 6, 1953.
“I wouldn’t buy that stuff for myself”: “Music: How the Money Rolls In,” Time, August 20, 1951.
“I think M
itch Miller”: Friedwald, Sinatra!, 178.
“Mitch had a knack”: Tony Bennett with Will Friedwald, The Good Life, 172–74.
“I thought the lyric ranged”: Rosemary Clooney with Joan Barthel, Girl Singer, 74.
“Hey, that’s a nice tune”: Friedwald, Sinatra!, 188.
“Chief beef hinges on Sinatra’s claim”: Ibid., 196.
“Do I still think it’s hard”: Nat Hentoff, “Hokey Tunes ‘Bug’ Frank,” Down Beat, March 25, 1953.
“was trying to find a scapegoat”: Ted Fox, In the Groove, 47.
“My name is ‘Mitchell’”: James Kaplan, Frank, 476.
“was known for making the guitar sound like a chicken”: Ibid., 527.
“Before Mr. Miller’s arrival at Columbia Records”: Celler, 4675.
“That is the trouble”: Ibid., 4911.
“I’d go out to Las Vegas”: Charles Granata, Sessions with Sinatra, 77.
VI. Brill Building Boys, and Girl, 1950–1955
“the small-scale amusement industry”: A. J. Liebling, The Jollity Building, 30.
“the Brill Building was Tin Pan Alley”: Richard Adler with Lee Davis, You Gotta Have Heart, 7.
“The offices were so small”: Burt Bacharach, Anyone Who Had a Heart, 42, 43.
“I was trying to roll myself back”: Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat, 381.
“the nature of musical literacy changed”: Phillip Ennis, The Seventh Stream, 41.
“It looked simple”: Paul Zollo, Songwriters, 200.
“If I would work with him every day”: Jackson R. Bryer and Richard A. Davison, The Art of the American Musical, 97.
“Steam Heat” origin: Adler with Davis, You Gotta Have Heart, 10–11.
“I want you to play everything”: Jerry Herman, Showtune, 19. The meeting was in 1951.
“I became a song fan”: Phillip D. Atteberry, “A Conversation with Dave Frishberg,” Mississippi Rag, April 1996.
“Frank always wanted to be”: Thomas Laurence Riis, Frank Loesser, 234.
thirty-six separate recordings of its songs: Ibid., 238.
“something that didn’t bother us much”: Adler with Davis, You Gotta Have Heart, 30.
“couldn’t take dictation”: C. Gerald Fraser, “Carolyn Leigh, Lyricist for ‘Peter Pan,’ Dies,” New York Times, November 21, 1983.
One day she dialed a wrong number: Leigh.
she’d just come back from a visit to her father: Author interview with June Rosenthal Silver.
“His name is ‘Moose’”: Carolyn Leigh to Robert Marks, December 28, 1953. This and the following quotations from Leigh (hereafter CL) correspondence are from Leigh.
“If you are not tied up”: Howard Richmond to CL, August 24, 1953.
“who promptly decided”: CL to Robert Marks, December 28, 1953.
“The general picture”: CL to Charlie Adams, undated.
she got calls from seventeen publishers: Variety, March 3, 1954.
it had sold 350,000 copies: “‘Young at Heart’ Title of New Warner Flick,” Billboard, June 12, 1954, 18.
Leigh’s share of that: Statement from Sunbeam Music, August 15, 1954. Leigh. “Standard royalty” for writers at the time was three cents a copy.
“the current crop of young songsmiths”: “Jerry Ross (& Adler), B’way’s Cleffing ‘Boy Wonder,’ Dies at 29,” Variety, November 16, 1955, 49.
The song came on the radio: Mary Martin, My Heart Belongs, 205.
“He said, ‘Are you busy now?’”: New York World-Telegram and Sun, October 4, 1954.
“If I can live a life of crime”: “On Peter Pan,” The Journal of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, June 1982.
“the tendency of Carolyn’s to always write”: Deborah Jowitt, Jerome Robbins, 245.
“dull . . . with lyrics to match”: “Legit Tryout,” Variety, July 21, 1954, 3.
“We were told”: CL to Harry Kalcheim, William Morris Agency, August 8, 1954.
“the second act socko number”: “Plays Out of Town,” Variety, July 21, 1954, 50.
“just too sad”: Author interview with Sandy Stewart.
“My boy, you have not written a score”: Ibid.
“the largest audience”: Collier’s, May 27, 1955.
“hope that you haven’t gone”: Robert Marks to CL, March 15, 1954.
“No—I haven’t yet gone”: CL to Marks, March 17, 1954.
“At least one of them”: Booton Herndon, “The Battle over the Music You Hear,” Redbook, December 1957, 91.
“ankled BMI”: Variety, May 18, 1955.
“I am fed up”: CL to Jerry Livingston, January 10, 1956.
“Every composer I’ve met”: CL to Harold and Edith Spina, November 7, 1954.
“You may very well object”: CL to Elma Duncan, October 19, 1955.
VII. The Big Beat, 1951–1968
“Things were pretty sleepy”: Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, 5.
a 1953 Billboard headline: Bob Rolontz, “Pop—C.&W.—R.&B.: Demarcation Lines Are Growing Hazy,” Billboard, September 12, 1953, 15.
an all-time high of $15 million in 1953: Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages, 87.
“The teen-age tide has swept”: Bob Rolontz and Joel Friedman, “Teen-Agers Demand Music with a Beat, Spur Rhythm-Blues,” Billboard, April 24, 1954, 1.
“The rhythm and blues market”: Steve Schickel, “A La Country & Western, R.&B. Music Invades Pop Market; Jukes, Disk Stores Feeling Trend,” Billboard, August 14, 1954.
“the r.&b. invasion”: Paul Ackerman, “Tin Pan Alley Days Fade on Pop Music Broader Horizons,” Billboard, October 15, 1955, 1.
“the popularity of the rock ’n’ roll beat”: Variety, March 30, 1955, quoted in Albin Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 206.
“From this point on”: “R&R Has ‘Had It’ Here, O’Seas Not Hot: ASCAP on Top,” Variety, October 17, 1956, 54.
In a 1956 interview . . . Johnny Green: Down Beat, September 19, 1956, 44.
“two words to a lyric”: Jim Walsh, “‘Pops’ on Pop Music Biz Today,” Variety, June 5, 1957, 45.
As Billboard had to acknowledge: Billboard, September 9, 1957, 18.
“The so-called ‘tunes’”: Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave, Anti-Rock, 45.
“The people of this country”: The Instrumentalist, September 1958, 92.
“Rock ’n’ roll smells phony and false”: Gertrude Samuels, “Why They Rock ’n’ Roll—and Should They?” New York Times Magazine, January 12, 1958, 19. The Sinatra quotation was attributed to an unnamed “Paris magazine.” It is an open question if he actually said it, and phrases like “imbecilic reiteration” and “martial music” don’t especially sound like Sinatra. But the quotation was in circulation for some four decades before his death, and he doesn’t seem to have denied it.
“Svengali grip on the teenagers”: “Biz Big but So Are Kids’ Riots,” Variety, April 11, 1956, 1.
“definitely influenced in their lawlessness”: Ruth Stevens, “Editorially Speaking . . . ,” Music Journal 16 (1958), 3.
“leer-ics”: The first installment appeared in Variety on February 22, 1955.
Radio stations around the country: Martin and Segrave, Anti-Rock, 21.
“Wash-Out-the-Air” subcommittee: Ibid., 23–24.
“because she thought it was a children’s song”: http://www.rayevans.org/.
“Paramount had told him”: Typed manuscript, “Act Number Three,” Evans.
“Last Saturday when I heard”: Harry Ruby to Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, September 10, 1956. Evans. “Cement Mixer” was a 1946 jazz novelty number by Slim Gaillard. “On the Street Where You Live” was from Lerner and Loewe’s smash Broadway musical My Fair Lady; Vic Damone’s rendition reached number four on the charts.
selling more than 18 million records: Billboard, December 21, 1968. The “Tammy” Oscar loss may have been the result of excessive zeal. Universal sent out more than two thousand copies of the record to Academy members, plus a letter purportedly handwritten by Tammy herself. “Stunt has the competition burning,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter. “Feeling is this is electioneering and shouldn’t be permitted.” The song was satirized by Stan Freberg on his album The Madison Ave. Werewolf: “When I hold your sweet, hairy hands tight in mine . . . Clammy! Clammy!”
“The kids are being short-changed”: Los Angeles Mirror-News, March 14, 1958, quoted in Evans.
“a call to veteran songwriters”: “Vet Cleffers Must Get Hip to Market,” Billboard, March 10, 1958.
“probably the very first rock and roll record”: Jonny Whiteside, Cry, 102.
“paunchy prophet of doom”: Mitch Miller, “June, Moon, Swoon and Ko Ko Mo,” New York Times Magazine, April 24, 1955, 19. Intentionally or not, Miller had the paunchy prophet mangle the title of “Tweedlee Dee.” LaVern Baker had recorded the song for Atlantic Records the year before; true to form, Georgia Gibbs’s copycat cover version for Mercury was a bigger hit.
“Emotion never makes you a hit”: Will Friedwald, Sinatra!, 24–25.
“To say you’ve grossly mishandled”: “Deejay: Performer or Puppet?,” Variety, March 12, 1958, 60.
When a special master appointed by the court: Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 423.
“adamant in their demands”: “Cleffers Nix Hanging on Webs’ Bid to ‘Divest’ If Suit Is Withdrawn,” Variety, October 3, 1956, 63.
“an army of disc jockeys”: Marya Mannes, “Who Decides What Songs Are Hits?,” Reporter 16 (1957), 36.
“Have you, along with millions” . . . “under-the-counter bribes”: Booton Herndon, “The Battle over the Music You Hear,” Redbook, December 1957, 88.
“one of ASCAP’s best friends”: Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 404.
“an electronic curtain”: Celler, 4208.
“rock and roll and the other musical monstrosities”: Ibid., 4425–26. Rose was referring to “Love Me, and the World Is Mine,” a 1906 song by Ernest Ball that was popular among barbershop quartets; “He Beeped When He Shoulda Bopped,” a 1940s number by Dizzy Gillespie; and “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” a 1956 rock-and-roll song by Gene Vincent.