Song plugger

Last updated

A song plugger or song demonstrator was a vocalist or piano player employed in the early 20th century by department stores, music stores and song publishers to promote and help sell new sheet music, which was how hits were advertised before good-quality recordings were widely available. Music publisher Frank Harding has been credited with innovating the sales method. [1] Typically, the pianist sat on the mezzanine level of a store and played whatever music was sent up to him by the clerk of the store selling the sheet music. Patrons could select any title, have it delivered to the song plugger, and get a preview of the tune before buying it.

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, those who worked in department and music stores were most often known as "song demonstrators", while those who worked directly for music publishers were called "song pluggers."

Musicians and composers who had worked as song pluggers included George Gershwin, [2] Ron Roker, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and Lil Hardin Armstrong. Movie executive Harry Cohn had been a song plugger. [3]

Modern usage

Later, the term was used to describe individuals who would pitch new music to performers, with The New York Times describing such examples as Freddy Bienstock performing a job in which he was "pitching new material to bandleaders and singers". [4] In 1952, Ernest Havemann wrote:

There are about 600 song-pluggers in the U.S.; they have their own union; they are powerful enough to bar all outsiders; and they command fees up to $35,000 a year [worth $357,149 today] plus unlimited expense accounts. Their job is to persuade the record companies to use songs, put out by their publishing houses, and the radio station disk jockeys to play the records." [5]

Song plugging remains an important part of the industry. Record labels and managers will actively search for songs that their artist can record, release and perform, especially in the case of those performers who don't write their own material.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Gershwin</span> American composer and pianist (1898–1937)

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the songs "Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the hit "Summertime".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irving Berlin</span> American composer and lyricist (1888–1989)

Irving Berlin was a Russian-American composer, songwriter and lyricist. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Songwriter</span> Person who writes the words or music to songs

A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. A songwriter who mainly writes the lyrics for a song is referred to as a lyricist. The pressure from the music industry to produce popular hits means that song writing is often an activity for which the tasks are distributed between a number of people. For example, a songwriter who excels at writing lyrics might be paired with a songwriter with the task of creating original melodies. Pop songs may be composed by group members from the band or by staff writers – songwriters directly employed by music publishers. Some songwriters serve as their own music publishers, while others have external publishers.

Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Arabic, or other languages – the medium of sheet music typically is paper. However, access to musical notation since the 1980s has included the presentation of musical notation on computer screens and the development of scorewriter computer programs that can notate a song or piece electronically, and, in some cases, "play back" the notated music using a synthesizer or virtual instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cover version</span> Later version of a song already established with a different earlier performer

In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song released around the same time as the original in order to compete with it. Now, it refers to any subsequent version performed after the original.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Von Tilzer</span> American songwriter (1872–1946)

Harry Von Tilzer was an American composer, songwriter, publisher and vaudeville performer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doris Fisher (songwriter)</span> American singer

Doris Fisher was an American singer and songwriter, collaborating both as lyricist and composer. She co-wrote many popular songs in the 1940s, including "Whispering Grass", "You Always Hurt the One You Love", "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", "That Ole Devil Called Love", and "Put the Blame on Mame." Her songs were recorded by the Ink Spots, Louis Prima, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, Pearl Bailey, the Mills Brothers and Ella Fitzgerald amongst others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tin Pan Alley</span> Historic name for a collection of music publishers and songwriters in Manhattan, New York

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. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower District of Manhattan; a plaque on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth commemorates it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital music store</span> Online retailer of audio files

A digital music store is a business that sells digital audio files of music recordings over the Internet. Customers gain ownership of a license to use the files, in contrast to a music streaming service, where they listen to recordings without gaining ownership. Customers pay either for each recording or on a subscription basis. Online music stores generally also offer partial streaming previews of songs, with some songs even available for full length listening. They typically show a picture of the album art or of the performer or band for each song. Some online music stores also sell recorded speech files, such as podcasts, and video files of movies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Warren</span> American composer and lyricist (1893–1981)

Harry Warren was an American composer and the first major American songwriter to write primarily for film. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song eleven times and won three Oscars for composing "Lullaby of Broadway", "You'll Never Know" and "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe". He wrote the music for the first blockbuster film musical, 42nd Street, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, with whom he would collaborate on many musical films.

Carlin America is an American music publisher with a catalog of over 100,000 titles. The company, created under its current name in 1995 by its founder Freddy Bienstock, is headquartered on East 38th Street in Manhattan. Bienstock died on September 29, 2009, after which Carlin Music was run by his daughter Caroline and son Robert.

"Summertime" is an aria composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel Porgy on which the opera was based, and Ira Gershwin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don't Be Cruel</span> 1956 single by Elvis Presley

"Don't Be Cruel" is a song that was recorded by Elvis Presley and written by Otis Blackwell in 1956. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2004, it was listed #197 in Rolling Stone's list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song is currently ranked as the 173rd greatest song of all time, as well as the sixth best song of 1956, by Acclaimed Music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pitch correction</span> Technique for calibrating the pitch of an audio recording to match musical notes

Pitch correction is an electronic effects unit or audio software that changes the intonation of an audio signal so that all pitches will be notes from the equally tempered system. Pitch correction devices do this without affecting other aspects of its sound. Pitch correction first detects the pitch of an audio signal, then calculates the desired change and modifies the audio signal accordingly. The widest use of pitch corrector devices is in Western popular music on vocal lines.

Freddy Bienstock was an American music publisher who built his career in music by being the person responsible for soliciting and selecting songs for Elvis Presley's early albums and films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of music publishing</span>

Music publishing is the business of creating, producing and distributing printed musical scores, parts, and books in various types of music notation, while ensuring that the composer, songwriter and other creators receive credit and royalties or other payment. This article outlines the early history of the industry.

Hill & Range is a music publishing company which was particularly responsible for much of the country music produced in the 1950s and 1960s, and had control over the material recorded by Elvis Presley over that period. It is today part of Warner Chappell Music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Harding</span> American music publisher (1880–1925)

Frank Harding 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.

Chas. H. Hansen Music Corp. was an American music publisher founded by Charles Henry Hansen (1913–1995) in 1952 and incorporated in New York. Its music covered a broad spectrum of genres that included classical, jazz, folk, rock, country, popular, educational — and music text books. For Beatles fans, the firm was widely known for having been the sole U.S. publisher and distributor of Beatles sheet music, beginning 1964. By the 1980s, Hansen Music ventured away from the pop field, focusing on classics and jazz method books. The firm, in 1980, was also operating 7 retail sheet music stores — two in San Francisco, three in Seattle, and two in Las Vegas. The name — Charles Hansen Music & Books, Inc. — became inactive in 1991. Hansen House Music Publishers — a Florida registered fictitious name of Hansen Publications, Inc. — became inactive December 31, 2009. The Hansen House web page is now inactive, listed as being "parked" by the GoDaddy domain registrar. The internet archive at https://web.archive.org has their latest snapshot of this website being active as in September 2013; contact person listed on earlier versions was Ramon Duran. The larger part of the Charles Hansen catalog was acquired by Warner Brothers Publications, then subsequently sold to Alfred Publications. According to Billboard in 1972, Wometco, headed by Mitchell Wolfson, had a pending offer to acquire Hansen, retaining Hansen and his staff.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Tin Pan Alley
  2. ↑ ComposerFan.com. "George Gershwin Biography" . Retrieved 6 Jun 2013.
  3. ↑ Thomas, Bob (1967). King Cohn - The Life and Times of Harry Cohn . G. P. Putnam's Sons. p.  96. ISBN   978-1893224070.
  4. ↑ Sisario, Ben. "Freddy Bienstock, Who Published Elvis Presley Hits, Dies at 86", The New York Times , September 24, 2009. Accessed September 26, 2009.
  5. ↑ Ernest Havemann (Dec 8, 1952). "The Fine Art of the Hit Tune". LIFE Magazine. 33 (23): 163.

Bibliography


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.