American Popular Music and Its Business: The First Four Hundred Years Volume II: From 1790 to 1909 (American Popular Music & Its Business)

489 Pages·1988·33.16 MB·English

by  the late Russell Sanjek

American Popular Music
and Its Business
THE FIRST FOUR HUNDRED YEARS
II
From 1790 to 1909
American Popular Music and Its Business
THE FIRST FOUR HUNDRED YEARS
Volume I. The Beginning to 1790
Volume II. From 1790 to 1909
Volume III. From 1900 to 1984
American Popular Music
and Its Business
THE FIRST FOUR HUNDRED YEARS
II
From 1790 to 1909
RUSSELL SANJEK
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1988
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1988 by Elizabeth Sanjek
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sanjek, Russell.
American popular music and its business.
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
Contents: v. 1. The beginning to 1790—v. 2. From
1790 to 1909—v. 3. From 1900 to 1986.
1. Popular music—United Slates—History and criticism.
2. Music—United Slates—History and criticism. 3. Music
trade—United States—History and criticism. I. Title.
ML200.S26 1988 7SO'.42'0973 87-18605
ISBN 0-19-504310-3
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Part One 1790 to 1860
1. Music Publishing in the New Republic 1790-1800, 3
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, 3
2. The Business of Popular Music 1800-1860, 25
Copyright, 25
Changing Technology, 34
3. Sheet Music Publishing.in Pre-Civil War America, 47
Philadelphia, 49
New York, 57
The Nineteenth-Century Social and Stage Dance, 92
European Music Publishers in New York, 95
Boston, 97
The South, 121
Frontier and Western Music Publishers, 127
The Board of Music Trade, 137
The Other Music-Publishing Business, 143
4. American Musical Theater 1800-1860, 146
In Search of a National Popular Music, 146
Yankee Doodle on the Stage, 149
Early Growth of the Frontier Theater, 154
The Black American Discovered, 156
The American Stage Black and His Music, 161
The American Circus—Incubator of the Minstrel Show, 166
The Arrival of the Minstrel Show, 170
5. The Music of God's Americans 1800-1860, 179
Worship Under the Open Skies, 180
The Shape-Note Business, 190
The First Great Urban Evangelists, 195
The Lunch-Hour Revival Movement, 199
The American Sunday School Movement, 201
Lowell Mason and Popular Religious Music, 203
Vi
Contents
6. The Music of Black Americans 1800-1860, 212
Popular Music and Black Americans, 214
The Emergence of the Black Spiritual, 220
Part Two 1861 to 1909
7. "The Singin'est War" 1861-1865, 225
Song Publishing in the Confederacy, 225
Song Publishing in the North, 228
Some Civil War Songs and Their Writers, 239
8. The Music of God's Americans 1865-1909, 247
The Singing Evangelists, 247
The Shape-Note Business, 265
9. Black Music in America 1860-1909, 269
The Spirituals, 269
Minstrels and the Millionaires of Minstrelsy, 273
The First Great Black Songwriters, 276
Cakewalks and Coon Songs, 290
Classic Ragtime, Its First Rise and Fall, 297
10. The American Musical Theater 1865-1909, 303
Popular Music on the Post-Civil War Stage, 303
Vaudeville and Popular Music, 337
11. Popular Music in the Age of Gigantism 1866-1909, 346
Music Publishing in the Midwest, 351
Copyright and the Music Business, 357
Changing Technology and Distribution, 361
Mr. Edison's Wonderful Talking Machine, 363
The Board of Music Trade, 368
The Pianola and the Victrola, 380
The Pursuit of Copyright Revision, 392
Tin Pan Alley, 401
Bibliography, 421
Index, 447
PART ONE
1790 to 1860
This page intentionally left blank
CHAPTER 1
Music Publishing in
the New Republic 1790-1800
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston
On November 18, 1790, Andrew Adgate, a Philadelphia brush-factory operator
and mechanic whose love of music had brought about formation of America's
earliest and most advanced free school for "spreading the knowledge of vocal
music," entered for copyright registration the first musical work printed in the
new nation. In accordance with the first copyright law of the United States,
passed on May 31, 1790, by the first Congress, "for the encouragement of
learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the authors and
proprietors of such copies," and signed by President George Washington, Ad-
gate paid sixty cents to the Philadelphia District Court clerk, who then entered
notice of the work as the tenth title in a new ledger. By this action, Adgate, as
a citizen, was assured that his book could not be printed for the next fourteen
years without his permission, provided he advertise the fact of registration and
deposit a copy of the work within the next two months. Armed with this grant
of protection, Adgate sold his new work, the third edition of his Rudiments of
Music, or Philadelphia Harmony, together with other of his compilations, both
at his metal brush- and comb-making establishment and at the Uranian Acad-
emy, which he had founded in 1785. This interdenominational institution, ded-
icated to encouraging participation in church singing, had quickly become one
of the new capital city's best-known and important cultural forces.
The first American copyright law was based on England's 1710 Statute of
Queen Anne. Like this forerunner, according to copyright expert Barbara Ringer,
it was "a narrow stingy law that had to be expanded piecemeal during the
century that followed." The British legislation was the result of persistent lob-
bying by London bookseller publishers and naturally favored their interests,
although subsequent revision during the eighteenth century increased authors'
rights. The new American republic continually failed to do the same in any
truly meaningful way for more than one hundred years.
3