Sheet Music Special Issues: Formats and Functions

Abstract

The appearance of standard sheet music issue from first half of this century, especially that of a popular song, is familiar to both musicians and general public. Typically, item is either a single sheet folded into a folio to yield four pages, or a folio with a half-sheet inserted to yield six pages.(1) In either case, item generally begins with an illustrated title page often printed in more than color.(2) The inner pages present score, consisting of a separate staff for melody with lyrics printed below it, a piano accompaniment, and chord diagrams or symbols usually intended for ukulele, but sometimes for tenor banjo or guitar. A copyright infringement warning is often printed in fold, and advertisements for other items offered by publisher frequently occupy last page. This format is so familiar that description may, at first, seem unnecessary. Sheet music enjoyed wide distribution during first half of this century, and this fact has given it an enduring presence in homes, as well as in libraries and archives. As is frequently case, however, such seeming simplicity is deceptive, for in addition to printing popular songs in this customary format, sheet music publishers also produced a variety of special issues for specific purposes, most frequently encountered of these being copy. This essay describes formats and functions of some of these special issues, drawing its documentation in part from an archive of business papers of Jerome H. Remick Company, one of largest and most powerful firms of Tin Pan Alley, and once employer of a fifteen-year-old song plugger named George Gershwin.(3) From letters Remick's sales representatives in Chicago and Detroit sent to New York, and from those home-office responses they occasionally retained, it is clear that standard sheet music issue was called either an original copy, or simply--and more frequently--an original. The term appears often in Remick's correspondence, salesmen routinely placing orders for thousands of copies in this format. From these letters surmises that professional copy was a promotional issue for complimentary distribution within music business. The quantities ordered suggest further that these professional copies were produced inexpensively. Both these conjectures are supported by documentary evidence. By close of nineteenth century, promotional function of professional copy was apparently well established. Theodore Dreiser provided a clear explanation of its role in 1898: Usually first copies of song printed are what are called copies, for which thinnest kind of newspaper is used. Probably five thousand of these are struck off, all intended for free distribution among singing profession on stage. If professional people, on hearing song played for them in publisher's parlors think well of it, publisher's hopes rise. It is then his policy to print possibly a thousand regular copies of song, and these are sent out to the trade, which is mercantile term for all small stores throughout country which handle sheet music.(4) As twentieth century progressed, song plugging found other venues in addition to publishers' parlors and small music stores, greatly expanding distribution of professional copies. A record of this expansion is preserved in succeeding editions of a book entitled How to Publish Your Own Music Successfully, written by Jack Gordon.(5) Across nearly five decades of social and technological change, in addition to music stores and professional singers, Gordon gradually includes music departments in dime stores and department stores, music jobbers, syndicates, recording companies, piano roll manufacturers, band and orchestra leaders, theaters, and radio stations in his lists of potential recipients of professional copies. …