BROADWAY, VAUDEVILLE & TIN PAN ALLEY
Along with London's West End Theater, New York's Broadway Theatre represents the highest level of production of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
You can go to a different theatre every night in Manhattan. There are more than 50 professional theatres in the Broadway theater district, and many more Off-Broadway.
Although Paris, Vienna and Rome might present the best shows in classical theatre, Broadway pushed the envelope, and became the best at presenting popular theatre, especially popular musical theatre.
The flow of theatrical talent into Manhattan began slowly, with a lot of Jewish and European immigration, after the American Revolution.
Around 1800, the 2000 seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street, now called Park Row. The Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by a flood of other theatres into the area.
The Astor Opera House opened in 1847. A riot broke out in 1849 when the lower-class patrons of the Bowery objected to what they perceived as snobbery by the upper class audiences at Astor Place.
After the Astor Place Riot of 1849, entertainment in New York City generally divided along class lines. Opera was chiefly for the upper classes. Minstrel shows and melodramas for the middle class. Variety shows in concert saloons for men of the working class.
And then, along came Vaudeville, that everyone seemed to enjoy.
Vaudeville
Vaudeville is a French word for variety entertainment, as in a theatrical variety show. Vaudeville was the most popular form of entertainment in North America for many decades, and the heart of American show business from the 1880s until 1940
Vaudeville developed from many sources, including concert saloons, minstrel shows, dime museums, freak shows, American Burlesque, French Follies, and strip shows.
A typical vaudeville performance would present a series of separate, unrelated acts - singers, dancers, popular and classical musicians, minstrels, magicians, comedians, athletes, acrobats, strongmen, female and male impersonators, jugglers, scenes from plays, lecturing celebrities, and trained animals. Variety entertainment to the max.
Before WWII, Vaudeville employed the biggest talent pool of American entertainers. After the war, entertainment outgrew the limited Vaudeville stage, and entertainers turned to radio and television to reach a wider audience.
As Vaudeville slowly transformed into television, the growth in entertainment from 1900 onward was driven by a dizzying flow of technological breakthroughs - Publishing of Sheet Music led to Musical Recordings. Radio brought us into the Television Age. TV introduced us to the wierd wired world of online entertainment.
Every decade has presented new ways of distributing music to the public. The audience for music, and the music industry has grown by leaps and bounds.
To satisfy a growing public demand for musical entertainment before world war two, the music industry turned to Tin Pan Alley.
Or more accurately, one could say, to satisfy the demand for more music, Tin Pan Alley created America's music business.
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a neighbourhood full of office buildings, in lower Manhattan, where musicians and music publishers teamed up to sell music to the world.
When copyright laws were revised and improved in the 1880s, a number of music publishers set up shop in the same business area, on the edge of Broadway's theatre district, in Manahattan.
Tin Pan Alley originally referred to a specific address: West 28th Street, near Broadway. A plaque exists on the sidewalk on 28th Street which commemorates Tin Pan Alley, the place that gave America its best music for over 50 years.
Tin Pan Alley began by selling sheet music, which was popular after 1900. By selling sheet music to America, Tin Pan Alley distributed songs that amateur singers or small town bands could perform from printed music. In the 1920s Tin Pan Alley was also publishing pop-songs and dance numbers, in newly popular jazz and blues styles.
Suddenly, the music business was making big money, for the first time in the history of music.
A group of Tin Pan Alley music houses formed a Music Publishers Association in 1895, to push for better copyright laws. By 1914, this group evolved into the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP), which was organized to aid and protect the interests of publishers and composers
Tin Pan Alley's influence over the music world faded slowly in the 1930s and 40s, with the downturn of music sales during the economic depression and world war two.
Tin Pan Alley's grand finale at the top of the pop charts ended like a shooting star with the Brill Building, the birthplace of several rock and roll classics in the 1950s.
After recording songs like The Times They Are A Changing in the 1960s, Bob Dylan was quoted as saying, "Tin Pan Alley is gone. I put an end to it. People can record their own songs now."
But for more than half a century, Tin Pan Alley was music central in America, and a place where musicians could sell their music to Broadway's theater producers and radio networks. That kind of business continues today, but it's not as big as in the days of George Gershwin.
George Gershwin started his illustrious career as a song plugger in Tin Pan Alley, playing piano to demonstrate songs for the music buying public of New York, to promote sales of sheet music.
In the 1920s, Gershwin composed some of the biggest hits of the 20th century for Broadway's musical theater - An American In Paris, Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess, I Got Rhythm, and Strike Up The Band. Gershwin also created music for many Broadway hit shows, which are still produced by theater groups today, including Girl Crazy, Funny Face, and Show Girl.
Tin Pan Alley Song Stars
The list of hit makers and master composers in Tin Pan Alley is long and illustrious. Every name in this list was a superstar hit maker in the musical world of their day.
Cole Porter
Irving Berlin
Harold Arlen
George Gershwin
George M Cohan
Hoagy Carmichael
Oscar Hammerstein
Johnny Mercer
Jerome Kern
Lorenz Hart
Richard Rodgers
Sunny Skylar
Scott Joplin
Fats Waller
Max Freedman, composer of Rock Around The Clock
Irving Berlin * The American Songbook Tradition
Irving Berlin is widely considered as one of the greatest songwriters in American history. Stephen Foster was the Father of American Music, but Irving Berlin was the doctor who brought it to life.
He had his first best selling hit in 1911, with Alexander's Ragtime Band. This was followed by a 60 year career of making a living with music. He was also an owner of the Music Box Theatre, located at 239 West Forty-Fifth St.
During his 60 year career, Irving Berlin composed more than 1,500 songs; many were major hits; plus music scores for 20 Broadway shows and 15 Hollywood films.
George Gershwin called Irving Berlin "the greatest songwriter that has ever lived". His music has been performed by thousands of artists, from Al Jolson to Lady Gaga.
Alexander's Ragtime Band was a big hit in 1911. It was also a chart hit by different artists over the next 50 years, most recently the Ray Charles version in 1959.
The Irving Berlin Songbook includes memorable classics, like Puttin' On the Ritz, There's No Business Like Show Business, Blue Skies, Easter Parade, White Christmas, and God Bless America.
Irving Berlin and Cole Porter were rare among Tin Pan Alley composers, as they wrote both the words and the music for their songs. Berlin is quoted as saying, "it's the lyrics that makes a song a hit; although the tune, of course, is what makes it last."
Irving Berlin's songs are still being recorded and played into the 21st century, which is not bad, considering that he started his life as a poor Jewish immigrant seeking refuge from Russian brutality in 1883.
At age 13, he was forced to drop out of school to work, like everyone in the family, to raise money for the rent.
As an adult, Berlin said he was unaware of being raised in poverty, since he knew no other life. Perhaps it was his range of experience with life that made him such a great song writer.
As a young boy, Irving Berlin found the best way he could earn money for the family was singing on street corners with friends. His street singing buddies included George M Cohan, who would later have a successful career producing musical theater on Broadway.
Busking on streets and singing in cafes, while he was young, provided Irving Berlin with a valuable education that lasted a lifetime.
While busking on the street, Berlin learned what kind of songs appeal to different audiences, and how popular tunes express simple and widely held sentiments.
He learned that success in the music business means making an audience happy. And that you'll never get anywhere in music singing for yourself.
Once, when singing a George Cohan song, Yankee Doodle Boy, in a Manhattan cafe, the audience gave Berlin an ovation. It's like the rest of Irving Berlin's life was dedicated to getting more standing ovations. He loved the audiences as much as the music.
After his death in 1989, at the age of 101, the New York Times wrote, "Irving Berlin set the tone and the tempo for tunes America played and sang and danced to, for much of the 20th century".
In the words of music historian, Gary Giddins, "No other songwriter has written as many anthems.... No one else has written as many pop songs, period."
Tin Pan Alley helped sell Irving Berlin's music around the world, but Tin Pan Alley wasn't the only option for musicians who were willing to work outside of New York City. There was also the Chautauqua Circuit, based in northern New York State.
The Chautauqua Cultural Community Circuit
Chautauqua, New York, was a pioneer in America's cultural evolution.
Chautauqua was both a cultural community, and later a network of cultural communities, which created a touring circuit for professional entertainers.
The original Chautauqua was created as a cultural and spiritual vacation spa for teachers, in the late 1800's, on the shores of Lake Chautauqua, in northern New York State.
From the start, Chautauqua was about the creative use of liesure time, lifelong learning, and self-improvement through healthy recreation.
With these goals in mind, it was a natural evolution from Bible studies to singing and dancing, promoting concerts, and organizing America's first professional entertainment circuit.
Chautauqua's culturally-oriented gatherings grew in popularity, and the growing cultural community organized themselves as the Chautauqua Institution, which is still going strong, more than a hundred years later.
Even in the early years, before 1900, Chautauqua saw its role as teaching teachers. And by teaching teachers, Chautauqua reached out to the whole nation.
One Chautauqua Founder, Mina Miller Edison was the wife of the inventor of electricity, Thomas Edison. Inspired by the Chautauqua Movement, she offered classes in Florida, and the Chautauqua spirit spread around the US.
Thousands of Chautauqua assemblies popped up in rural communities and towns, all over North America. This network of Chautauqua Communities organized programs of music and literature, theatrical productions, and public lectures on current issues.
This organization of Chautauqua communities was America's first organized touring circuit for entertainers and musicians, for more than 50 years.
Tent Chautauqua's developed into a touring version of Chautauqua entertainment, with musicians and storytellers taking their talents on the road, to perform for Chautauqua societies around the country.
Before Chautauqua, there were minstrel shows and travelling musicians, with famous names like Stephen Foster and the Christy Minstrels, but for these early touring musicians, there was no one helping them organize their tours.
If you were a touring musician, between 1900 and the mid-1940s, you probably toured on the Chautauqua circuit.
Touring Chautauqua groups, with their national touring schedules, would be presented in tents, in one of 10,000 towns and villages, all around America - The Chautauqua Cultural Community Circuit.
After several days of presenting shows, the Chautauqua entertainers would fold their tents and move on.
Each performer appeared for only one day. In a multi-day program, "first day" talent would move on to other Chautauqua's, followed by the "second day" performers, and so on, throughout the touring season.
By the mid-1920s, when circuit Chautauqua's were at their peak, they appeared in over 10,000 communities, to audiences totalling more than 45 million people.
During World War II, after nearly fifty years as America's biggest touring show organization, the Chautauqua Circuit quietly folded their tents for the last time. It was the end of an era.
Music & Entertainment at Chautauqua
Music was important to Chautauqua communities. Band Music was especially popular in the early years.
Spirituality was also a big part of the Chautauqua experience. The founders could see a relation between the artistic life and the spiritual life. Chautauqua has a tradition of putting artists onstage for God.
Afro-American Spirituals and Gospel Music were popular. White audiences at Chautauqua appreciated seeing African-Americans performing their own music, instead of being entertained by white-only, black-faced minstrel shows.
Other musical stars on the Chautauqua Circuit included The American Quartette, which played popular songs and music from the "old country", and The Jubilee Singers, with a mix of spirituals and popular tunes.
One featured star on the Chautauqua Circuit was The Old Country Fiddler, a well-rounded entertainer. The Old Country Fiddler played violin, was a singer, a comedian and a ventriloquist, and he told "tall tales about life in rural New England".
As the Chautauqua repertoire expanded, Symphony music became part of the regular program in 1920.
Opera was introduced to Chautauqua in 1926 when the American Opera Company began touring the country. The AOC presented five operas in one week at the Chautauqua Amphitheater. With its love for opera awakened, a Chautauqua Opera Company was established in 1929.
Adding sophistication with symphony and dance, Chautauqua developed a reputation for high quality musical productions, and established a music education program that is still respected around the world.
These days, the music continues at Chautauqua Lake in northern New York State. The community at Chautauqua has developed into one of America's ten most beautiful cultural destinations.
If you're lucky enough to get a room at the historic Atheneum Hotel in Chautauqua's Festival Season, everything is in walking distance, beside the lake. All others can camp around the lake and join the bus tours.
A typical night of entertainment might include a concert by the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, a dance program with Ballet Company, an organ recital, a Music School Festival Program, and a guest artist in the Chautauqua Amphitheater.
Admission to Chautauqua in the summer, during the busy festival season, requires a Gate Ticket, which allows entrance into the grounds, attendance at concerts and lectures, and use of the library, parks and public beaches.
For program information, visit
The Chautauqua Institution
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