by Laurence Maslon
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| Piano player, and buildings in Tin Pan Alley. |
The 1920s saw the advent of three major advances in technology that would not only influence the quality of American domestic life but also reconstruct the entire edifice of show business: broadcast radio, electronic sound reproduction, and talking pictures. By the time the decade was over, the sound of America had completely changed. In 1920, two radio stations sprang up, carrying snippets of the news, and by 1926, the National Broadcast Company, operating out of New York City, started the first national broadcast -- a variety show that was carried over two dozen affiliate stations across the country. By the end of the decade, 40 percent of all Americans had radio consoles in their homes; not surprisingly, the number reached 58 percent for households in New York City.
What Americans listened to most was music. Almost three quarters of radio programming was devoted to music, much of it classical, but popular music began making tremendous inroads over the airwaves. As the decade wore on and jazz became more popular, band performances were broadcast from Harlem's Cotton Club and other metropolitan hot spots. Large sections of America were listening to black performers -- to the extent that they were unaware of the musicians' race -- for the very first time. Of course, jazz and show tunes proved to be the lodestone of popular broadcast music.
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| Old-fashioned radio and phonograph. |
Radio initially provided the young century's second uppercut to the music publishing business of Tin Pan Alley. Gramophone recordings had severely undermined the sales of sheet music in the late 1910s, as the gramophone slowly replaced the upright piano in parlors across the country. By 1920, artists like Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor had achieved million-plus sales with their recordings of Broadway hit songs, far outpacing sheet music sales. Now, Tin Pan Alley considered itself lucky if a song sold 100,000 copies of sheet music. By 1925, advances in electronic sound recording allowed studios to get better range and fidelity in reproducing the work of their recording artists. Recording companies like Victor realized that the radio could be more friend than foe. Rather than squeezing out the popularity of a recording, if artfully promoted, radio could enhance the exposure of an artist or a song. So began the recording industry's long and complicated affair with the broadcast media. "The music you want when you want it," the industry trumpeted.
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photo credits: Photofest; Digital Imagery© copyright 2001 PhotoDisc, Inc.; and the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization
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