Joseph W. Stern & Co. was a music publisher in New York City. The Library of Congress has dozens of their songsheets including numerous coon songs in its collection. [2]
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Joseph W. Stern & Co. was a music publisher in New York City. The Library of Congress has dozens of their songsheets including numerous coon songs in its collection. [2]
Joseph W. Stern (January 11, 1870 - March 31, 1934) was a self taught pianist and traveling salesman. [3] He partnered with fellow travelling salesman Edward B. Marks to found the music publishing company in 1894. They promoted their music with performances accompanied by colored lantern slides."The Little Lost Child" was the first song they published and became a huge hit.
Stern retired in 1920 and the firm became Edward B. Marks Music Company. Its publishings include hits such as "Strange Fruit" by Abel Meeropol (made famous by Billie Holiday) in 1939. The company has been a subsidiary of Carlin America since 1980. [4]
Albert Von Tilzer was an American songwriter, the younger brother of fellow songwriter Harry Von Tilzer. He wrote the music to many hit songs, including, most notably, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".
Fred Fisher was a German-born American songwriter and Tin Pan Alley music publisher.
George Gard "Buddy" DeSylva was an American songwriter, film producer and record executive. He wrote or co-wrote many popular songs, and along with Johnny Mercer and Glenn Wallichs, he co-founded Capitol Records.
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally, it referred to a specific location on West 28th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower District of Manhattan, as commemorated by a plaque on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth.
William "Tell" Taylor (aka TellienéTell Roberts;. Tell was born October 28, 1876 to Clarinda Jane Roberts and John Asbury Taylor, on a farm near the Village of Vanlue, Amanda Township, Hancock County, Ohio. He was an American traveling vaudeville performer, tenor vocalist, playwright, music publisher, composer, and lyricist who had written over 200 popular songs. His biggest hit was "Down by the Old Mill Stream" from 1910, one of the most commercially successful Tin Pan Alley publications of the era. The song was published by Tell Taylor, Inc., which he had co-founded in 1907. Taylor performed vaudeville theaters and founded a Chicago music publishing house bearing his name. His other notable songs include "He Sleeps Beneath the Soil of France," "I Love You Best of All," "If Dreams Come True," "Little Old Home in the Valley," "Rock Me to Sleep in the Old Rocking Chair," "Some Day," and "When the Maple Leaves Were Falling." Taylor also wrote the Broadway comedies Tiger Lillee and In New York Town.
Lew Brown was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States. During World War I and the Roaring Twenties, he wrote lyrics for several of the top Tin Pan Alley composers, especially Albert Von Tilzer. Brown was one third of a successful songwriting and music publishing team with Buddy DeSylva and Ray Henderson from 1925 until 1931. Brown also wrote or co-wrote many Broadway shows and Hollywood films. Among his most-popular songs are "Button Up Your Overcoat", "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries", "That Old Feeling", and "The Birth of the Blues".
M. Witmark & Sons was a leading publisher of sheet music for the United States "Tin Pan Alley" music industry.
Maude Nugent was an American singer and composer.
Egbert Anson Van Alstyne was an American songwriter and pianist. Van Alstyne was the composer of a number of popular and ragtime tunes of the early 20th century.
Andrew Benjamin Sterling was an American lyricist.
The 32-bar form, also known as the AABA song form, American popular song form and the ballad form, is a song structure commonly found in Tin Pan Alley songs and other American popular music, especially in the first half of the 20th century.
The latter part of the 19th century saw the increased popularization of African American music and the growth and maturity of folk styles like the blues.
Theodore F. Morse was an American composer of popular songs.
An illustrated song is a type of performance art that combines either live or recorded music with projected images. It was a popular form of entertainment in the early 20th century in the United States.
"The Little Lost Child" is a popular song of 1894 by Edward B. Marks and Joseph W. Stern which sold more than two million copies of its sheet music following its promotion as the first ever illustrated song, an early precursor to the music video. The song was also known by its first three words: "A Passing Policeman." The song's success has also been credited to its performance with enthusiasm by Lottie Gilson and Della Fox.
Frank Harding (1864-1939) was a Tin Pan Alley music publisher, who was credited with creating the method of selling music called plugging. Harding paid singers to sing his published songs in shops and beer halls to get them known and attract customers. Composers such as Irving Berlin and George Gershwin later got their starts as pluggers. He was active from the 1880s through the 1920s.
"Sipping Cider Thru' a Straw" is a 1919 novelty song, also called "Thipping Thider Thru a Thtraw", composed by Tin Pan Alley songwriters Carey Morgan (1885–1960) and Lee David (1891–1978) and published by Joseph W. Stern & Co.
Anatole Friedland, also spelled as Anatol Friedland and Anato Friedland, was a composer, songwriter, vaudeville performer, and Broadway producer during the 1900s. He is most-known for composing songs with lyricist L. Wolfe Gilbert. Their most popular songs include, "My Sweet Adair" (1915), "Are You From Heaven?" (1917), and "My Own Iona" (1916).
Robert A. King was a prolific early twentieth century American composer, who wrote under pen names including the pen names, Mary Earl, Robert A. Keiser, and Betty Chapin.
Just a Girl That Men Forget is an American waltz ballad song, written by Al Dubin, Fred Rath and Joe Garren with sheet music published in 1923 by Jack Mills, Inc.. It was an in-demand Tin Pan Alley hit song in 1923 and 1924, popularized by singers Herbert Payne and Lewis James. It was also a well purchased piece of sheet music, and during the Tin Pan Alley era, the sheet music sales determined if a song was a "hit" rather than charts.