Foreword

Abstract

The inspiration for this issue—focusing on Tin Pan Alley, popular song, and songwriting—initially came from a gathering of scholars at Case Western Reserve University in early spring 2013. And while the participants (myself included) didn't need much of an excuse to gather and exchange ideas, we realized—once the papers had all been read—that not only did the divergent topics intersect via unexpected new avenues but that many of us had been working on similar topics from different perspectives, sometimes for many years. The upshot was that we not only reaffirmed the value of getting together to exchange ideas in an open forum but, more importantly, that there was a more than burgeoning interest in popular songwriting and the song trade in the United States during the era roughly corresponding to Tin Pan Alley's heyday, that being the latter decades of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth. The papers (both herein and at the conference) also constitute a reassessment of a seemingly defunct or at least passé form of artistic, personal, and cultural expression: printed sheet music. All of the authors, in one way or another, engage with commercially produced sheet music, including attention not only to music and lyrics but also to the advertisements, the cover illustrations, the publishers, the price, and so on. Beyond the notes, letters, and images on the page, several papers challenge interpretations of popular songs, including questioning the phenomenon of embodying a person's experiences with songs and interrogating the myriad ways songs can serve as a barometer of social and cultural trends. While these articles all address, in some way or another, the inspiration and/or industry that drove—and continues to drive—the popular song business, the authors take the common theme of songwriting in wildly different and productive directions.