Barney and Gloria: Revisiting Tin Pan Alley

Abstract

As New York's Tin Pan Alley era recedes into the past, scholars have the opportunity to reevaluate the hit-driven narrative of popular music history. Revisiting the colorful careers of its inhabitants reveals the complex economy in which they worked, the power wielded by corporations and licensing bodies, and the indefatigable spirit required to persist in the music industry. This is the story of two of these inhabitants, Barney Young-a composer, lawyer, personal manager, and music publisher- and his co-composer and fiancee Gloria Parker-also a bandleader, marimbist, and most exceptionally, musical glasses virtuoso. The story begins in the days of live-network big-band broadcasts when song plugging became an art form. They witnessed music royalties and licensing evolve and sided with the jukebox industry in its fight to avoid royalty payments. They pursued lawsuits against ASCAP, BMI, and the major networks in defense of their own music in addition to a suit against the Walt Disney Company regarding ownership of the song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Gloria even provided inspiration for film director Woody Allen. The study of Barney's business records-part of the and Barnard Young Music Business Records, 1832-1988, in their archival home at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)-provides an opportunity to move toward a more nuanced popular-music history that incorporates the entire economic landscape of the music industry in Tin Pan Alley and the vital, human stories behind it.INTRODUCTIONIn 1985, Morris Young, a successful New York ophthalmologist, sold to UIUC a 45,000-piece sheet music collection that he and his deceased brother Barnard (Barney) had accumulated.1 In 1986, Morris donated more sheet music, records, printing plates, scores, scripts, and business records from several midcentury New York music businesses.2 The collection originally fell under the purview of the Music Library but was later transferred to the UIUC Sousa Archives and Center for American Music. Because the collection was acquired from Morris, UIUC's background information on the collection mainly concerns his activities. Morris's involvement in the music businesses was peripheral, however; Barney was the driving force behind the businesses from the 1930s to his death in 1969.Barney, a Harvard law graduate, seems to have had the overarching goal of establishing a vertically integrated music conglomerate in which he would profit from all stages of production: he and his associates would compose the songs, the performers he managed would perform them, his publishing houses would publish them, his record labels would record them, and his magazines and radio program would advertise them. To achieve this, he acquired and founded many publishing houses, performing rights organizations, record labels, sheet music distributors, record distributors, and song and entertainment magazines, and he acted as a personal manager. His entry in the Cyclopedia of American Biography (most likely provided by Morris) asserts that his over forty music corporations constituted one of the earliest music conglomerates.3 Barney was a skilled song plugger, and his income depended primarily on royalties he earned from ASCAP and BMI for live and recorded radio performances of his songs. He was aided in his quest by Gloria, his co-composer, star performer, and fiancee. To some degree, Barney's story is one of frustrated ambition for the richly profitable popular music empire that might have been. But it is also a story of persistence in the face of adversity and the success of a uniquely talented musician. As of 2016, Gloria Parker is still an active musician on Long Island, New York, where she continues to write songs and perform on the musical glasses.4BEGINNINGSBarney's career in the music business began during his years at Harvard, where he earned a B.A. in 1932 and a law degree in 1935.5 Around 1932, he began the first of his music ventures, the Inter collegiate Music League, an organization intended to introduce, record, publish, and have performed over the air the best works of college composers enrolled as members. …