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