When looking through acoustic era recordings, it can be easy to assume that the more common songs we see must have sold well in sheet music sales. While in many cases this was in fact true, it was more likely that the publishers of these songs were connected with the recording studios who made the records. There are always outliers however, sometimes some pieces were recorded everywhere, but the sheet music is very hard to find today. A lot of this doesn’t end up making much sense when you really look into recordings made before 1915. Oftentimes recording companies had more power over what was recorded than we might think. In this I will highlight a few examples and why sheet music sales may not have corresponded to record sales.
Throughout the 19th century, the numbers of sheet music sales determined the popularity of any piece. Before the 1840s, sheet music was generally only printed by the hundreds in batches, and if it all sold, another edition would be printed. It was usually quite manageable for publishers at the time, and at the time the major publishers in the United States were in Boston and Philadelphia, not New York. Much of this was changed by the popularity of Stephen Foster and minstrel shows. While the style of music was southern based, it was all being written in New York. Soon Foster’s pieces were being sold by the thousands, so the publishers had to keep up. It is because of this that the center of music publishing moved to New York instead.
Publishers and recording studios started to connect in the mid 1890s, and a lot of this had to do with record companies moving uptown in New York. After the boom of nickelodeons in the early 1890s, the entertainment district started to move from the Bowery by Lower Manhattan up to beyond Union Square (above 14th Street), and with this move not only came theaters, but also publishers, and phonograph companies. It is here where we get the inception of Tin Pan Alley.
Usually when people think of this term they associate it with publishers and songwriters, but what people forget is that this actually had to do with the marrying of publishers and recordings. Everything was incredibly close. Between Union Square and Herald Square (14th Street to 34th Street) was practically all the publishers and recording companies that supplied all of the United States. In 1896, Columbia moved from Washington DC to 27th Street and Broadway, which was then just a block from the actual Tin Pan Alley. There was also a publisher right next door to them, W.B. Gray.
Gray published many pieces by recording artists, Fred Hylands and Frank P. Banta included. He also featured many recording artists on his covers, especially Will F. Denny. This connection allowed for an easy flow of sheets to the Columbia studio. It often gave them access to pieces before they were actually published. It also encouraged several recording artists to become publishers. People like Fred Hylands, Roger Harding, and Ruby Brooks soon became rather successful publishers in their own right. Brooks was arguably the most successful of these publishers, as he had gained quite a following in the very competitive world of tin pan alley, and he had actually been established before publishers were set up there.
Many obscure pieces soon started to show up on records, pieces that, based on their lack of popularity in sheet music, shouldn’t have been recorded. By 1900, it seemed that record companies had an incredibly cozy relationship with publishers on Tin Pan Alley. A great example of this relationship is Harry Von Tilzer. He was among the most popular songwriters of the early 1900s, but it seemed that he was connected to phonograph companies before 1900. In 1899, he wrote his own “Rag-time Dance” that ended up being recorded several times before the middle of 1900. Then in 1901 came his “Whoa Bill,” which was soon being recorded by every label in town at the time. The next year came his ragtime piece “Chocolate Drops.”
What all of these have in common (other than their composer) is that they were recorded widely but the sheet music for them today is incredibly rare. This would initially not make any sense (imagine my surprise upon actually getting a copy of two of them recently). “Whoa Bill” was recorded on every label and by practically every orchestra, but good luck finding the original sheet music. It could be inferred that labels like Columbia and Zon-O-Phone were directly connected to Von Tilzer, who at the time was independently publishing on 28th Street. It is possible that he gave them all advance copies, and because the recordings of the piece became popular, he simply didn’t need to print more sheets.
This also happened with pieces written and published by recording artists. Fred Hager went from an underperforming composer and bandleader to one of the most well known writers in Tin Pan Alley practically overnight. This started with his piece “The Midnight Flyer.” Hager had actually written this piece before its publication, all the way back in 1901 under the name “The Climax March” (for the Climax records he was making at the time). So when he wanted to attempt to make a big hit in Tin Pan Alley, he just brought the old piece to E.T. Paull and it became a major success. Later that year came his biggest yet, “Laughing Water.”
What distinguishes these from other pieces mentioned however is that these are still very common to find today. Hager’s pieces before this are incredibly difficult to find. Since he, and his partner Justin Ring, were regular recording artists, their pieces has priority in their studios, so pieces like “The Scarecrow Dance” and “Handsome Harry” were recorded dozens of times.
Sometimes it wasn’t even the publishers who were encouraging things to be recorded, occasionally it was all the recording folks’ decision. It is because of people like Charles Prince and Eddie King that some very obscure ragtime was recorded, like “Whoa You Heifer” and “Jungle Time Rag.” Those were regional pieces that certainly wouldn’t have been sold in the east where they ended up being recorded. You can be sure that recording these was the choice of the leader’s own taste.
So while there was some sort of correlation between sheet music sales and recordings in the early acoustic era, much of it is more complicated than that. The community of recording folks in the early days was much smaller than it became in the 1920s, and this allowed for a lot of bias in what was and wasn’t recorded, or you could say that the actual recording artists themselves had more control over what was recorded. Obviously if something was very popular onstage in a Broadway show, it was recorded, but the sheet music for those pieces may not always be easy to find, either. This topic is very complicated and confusing, but it lends a fascinating look into how recordings were conducted before 1925.
