Illustrating Tin Pan Alley: From Ragtime To Jazz

By Fern Siegel (Posted July 26, 2024)

Tin Pan Alley has a colorful history. Named for the dozens of pianos being pounded in publisher's New York demo rooms, it dominated popular music in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Its legacy is on display in “Illustrating Tin Pan Alley: From Ragtime to Jazz” at the Society of Illustration through Sept. 21. The show is an intimate, rare and important tribute to a remarkable cultural era.

Its singular artistry became the epicenter of American pop music and publishing, thanks to musicians such as Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Scott Joplin and George M. Cohan and famed composer-publishers like Harry Von Tilzer.

Long before record players or radios were in every American home, songs that succeeded in Tin Pan Alley found their way to the stage and nightclubs.

The SOI’s exhibition of select sheet music and illustrations is drawn from the collection of Harlem historian John T. Reddick. His research focuses on the community’s Jewish and Black music culture between 1890-1930. 

From sheet music before WWI to the Roaring Twenties, Reddik has compiled a colorful collection that doubles as an important element in American musical history — both for its artistry and cultural context. Covers include Sophie Tucker’s “Vamping Sal,” “Daddy I Ain’t Mad At You,” “Underneath the Harlem Moon” and The Cotton Club’s “Rhyth-Mania.” The lively poster for “Hallellujah,” a King Vidor production, is also on display.

Al Hirschfeld and Sidney Leff are among the noted illustrators and their work is engaging and dynamic, serving as key marketing tools to publicize songs.

Tin Pan’s location: 47-55 West 28 St.

Tin Pan Alley began life in 1870 as Italian-style row houses built for the wealthy on West 28th Street, between 5-6th Avenues. Over time, the residents moved out, and songwriters, vaudeville and Broadway performers, song-pluggers and musicians moved in. They wanted to be close to the theater district.

Aspiring songwriters came to demonstrate tunes they hoped to sell to publishers, such as “Give My Regards To Broadway,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band" and “Take Me Out To the Ball Game.” These songs, among others, are ingrained in American culture.

The composer W.C. Handy – known as “The Father Of The Blues” and the first African American publisher of his own material – worked on Tin Pan Alley. So did George Gershwin, Cole Porter and jazz composer-pianist Fats Waller.

And, thanks to the invention of upright pianos, musical commerce was changing the course of American music. As recordings and player piano rolls pushed business to new heights, Americans were transformed into musical consumers at home.

Sheet-music illustrations, effectively ads for Tin Pan Alley songs, were critical to reaching a wider audience. The exhibit reveals the songwriters, music publishers and performers — many were Eastern European Jewish immigrants. They defined popular music, and often Broadway, in the first 50 years of the 20th century.

Blues, Broadway, jazz, ragtime, Latin rhythms — all were showcased on Tin Pan Alley. The eclectic choices and the extraordinary talents created a musical phenomenon.

The exhibit is presented in partnership with the nonprofit Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project, which commemorates the legacy of Tin Pan Alley. A few pieces in the exhibit include depictions now viewed as offensive or problematic. These artworks, per SOI, “are presented to offer a comprehensive view of the era and to foster an understanding of the history and evolution of popular music and performance in America.”

All connect us to an essential part of American cultural history.

Sophie Tucker’s 1916 song. She was known as “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas.”

SOI - 128 East 63 St, 2nd floor.