Song Pluggers in the American Music Industry

Song pluggers were a big part of the growing music industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Before recorded music could be distributed, publishers hired professional songwriters to churn out new hits. Then songs were aggressively promoted through “pluggers,” who performed songs in vaudeville theaters and other venues to boost sheet music sales.

The job of a song plugger was to get the public excited enough to buy the sheet music and play the songs at home.

A song was considered a “hit” based on how many copies of its sheet music were sold. Newspapers started printing lists of the best-selling sheet music of the week. (This tradition continues with published lists of all sorts of top-selling forms of entertainment.)

How Music Spreads

Americans have always loved music, but before record players and radios, the only way to introduce new music was for people to hear another person sing or play music they didn’t know.

During the 19^th century, families might sit together in their parlors or on their porches to sing hymns or family favorites. Violins, banjos, and harmonicas were common in the home.

If a community was big enough to support a theater, then musical performances and vaudeville often presented new material.  But growth was slow since new music had to spread community by community. 

Train travel helped. Pullman porters worked hard but had idle time during trains stops. They met with local people to sing and talk. As they got back on their route, they took the music with them.

The Golden Age of the Piano

After the Civil War, pianos became a longed-for household luxury item. An upright piano cost several hundred dollars, but families often saved for them as they offered great entertainment for all members of the family. From 1869-1905, manufacturers sold upward of 261,000 annually.  

Along with instrument sales came a growing need for sheet music. While some people can play by ear, most need music.  The time was right for this growing trend, because printing methods were easier and cheaper. The use of lithography (printing from slabs of limestone with rolled-on ink) made printing accessible to more publishers. Mustic publishing could expand in ways that no one dreamed.

Companies printed everything from patriotic marches to folk songs like “Oh! Susanna,” as well as waltzes, sentimental songs, and ragtime.

By 1890, many department stores opened counters for the sale of sheet music, and its popularity brought the price down. Customers could expect to pay from 10-25 cents per song.

Song Demonstrators in Stores

As department stores set up sheet music departments, they needed ways to boost sales, so they added “song demonstrators.” Many big city department stores had mezzanines where they placed pianos. When a customer selected a few sheets of music that were of interest, the sheet music was sent to the pianist. With luck, the customer bought the music requested—and perhaps a few other people in the store who heard the songs decided to buy the music, too.

These music demonstrators were store employees who were top-flight at sight-reading new music.

Music Publishers Needed Song Pluggers

The first music publisher to employ song pluggers is thought to be the Harding Music Company, located in the Bowery in New York City. The store originally sold instruments and classical sheet music, but times were changing.

The neighborhood was filled with vaudeville theaters and saloons. When one of the sons inherited the business, Frank Harding (1864-1939), knew it was time for change. He loved the lively musicians who hung out around the vaudeville theaters. He began buying and publishing their songs. (Some said that Frank traded beer for songs.) 

Harding then saw that he needed to hire performers to introduce the songs in other parts of town. To expand his reach beyond the theaters in his neighborhood, he hired singers and pianists to go uptown to bars and sporting events to promote the songs he published. 

Tin Pan Alley

As the music business developed, several companies established their businesses in Manhattan in the west twenties (between 5^th and 6^th avenues). Because the companies had no air conditioning, windows were left open during warm weather, and the cacophony of music could be heard around the area. People started referring to the neighborhood as Tin Pan Alley.

The publishers soon had their own song pluggers appearing across the city.  

Who were Tin Pan Alley Song Pluggers?

A good song needed to be presented in such a way that listeners want to hear it again, so the best song pluggers were magnetic performers who could “sell” a song.

Some pluggers had connections with some of the big stars of the day. If they had performed with someone like Al Jolson or Bing Crosby, they could put in an “ask” to the big star. If Jolson or Crosby performed it, the song was likely to be a hit.

 For men (and it usually was men) who wanted to become composers, music publishers hired staff composers and lyricists. These employees could improve their situation if they could also perform well–someone had to plug it.

Composers were also incentivized by a change in copyright law in 1909. Congress passed the Copyright Act. For the first time, composers could collect royalties for public performance of their work.

Some Big Names Started as Song Pluggers

While there were many pluggers, only a few song pluggers achieved lasting fame. A few of them are names we still know today: Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Lil Hardin Armstrong (Louis Armstrong’s wife), to name a few.

Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidor Baline) was a particularly astute song plugger who composed and plugged for Tin Pan Alley for several years. Eventually he refined the process when he moved to Los Angeles to write music for the movies.

Berlin’s Early Years

The Baline family (the name with which they immigrated) fled Russia in 1893 to escape persecution. Isidore/Irving (1888-1989) was age 5 at the time. While the lower east side of New York offered community and a level of safety, life was not easy.  Irving Berlin’s father, a cantor, could find no appropriate employment, so he worked for a kosher butcher. His mother was a midwife. After school, the children did what they could to add to the family income.

Like other young boys, Irving sold newspapers on street corners. He found that if he sang while selling, customers would sometimes pitch him another penny or two. He told his mother that his dream was to work at one of the cafes with singing waiters. 

Within a couple of years, Berlin’s “dream” came true. As a singing waiter at the Pelham Café, Berlin found he could fiddle around on the piano when there were no customers. This brought about his first musical sale. He and the pianist collaborated on a song called “Marie from Sunny Italy.”  Berlin wrote the lyrics, and when the song sold, he earned 33 cents for the rights.

Playing the Black Keys

Like other untrained composers, Berlin mostly played from the black keys. It made it easier to find harmonies, and he needed to work with only a five-note scale. With this simplified system, he could translate the melodies in his head to the piano.

As he progressed in his career, he was introduced to the “transposing piano.” This invention dated to 1801. British instrument maker Edward Ryley came up with a way for pianists to change the key in which they played without having to transpose the written music. The transposing piano had a lever under the keyboard that could be shifted, thus moving the entire keyboard laterally. (See below for a photograph of one of Irving Berlin’s transposing pianos, currently on view at The Weitzman National Museum of Jewish History in Philadelphia.)

 For accompanists, these pianos made it easier for them to switch keys to suit a particular vocalist. For Berlin, it opened a new world.   With a transposing piano, he could work from the keys with which he was comfortable (generally composing in F sharp). When he was satisfied, he could use the transposing piano to create the ultimate sound he wanted to hear. 

 Berlin was known for saying: “The black keys are right there, under your fingers. The key of C is for people who study music.”

From Song Plugger to Top-Selling Composer

Berlin’s early songs capitalized on his heritage with “Yiddish Eyes” and “The Yiddish Ball Player,” but he soon put to use all that he learned as a waiter, a plugger, and as a lyricist.  In 1911, his song “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” sold a million copies.

As Irving Berlin’s success grew, the movie business beckoned. When he first arrived in Los Angeles in the 1920s, musical movies were not particularly popular, but there was employment. Though the films were not necessarily big hits, Irving Berlin had a couple of songs that emerged from that time. Both “Mammy” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” brought him enough fame that he was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Since the entertainment industry slowed during the Depression, Berlin returned to New York. Then in 1935, he received an offer from RKO Productions that took him back to L.A. With this new opportunity, Berlin began studying how to get a song to “pop” in a movie.

Song Plugging in the Movies

Berlin saw that since movies offered longer sustained entertainment for audiences, featured songs could be longer, too. With added time in the soundtrack, audiences were more likely to remember it.

Audiences also responded positively when a well-liked tune was used again. Another character could echo the song that had been introduced, or the song could be used during dance scenes.

By this time, songs were being heard on radio, and flat disc records were being made, but sheet music was still popular. These small refinements led to increased music sales of all types.

Irving Berlin left behind a massive legacy, composing an estimated 1,500 songs. He rose from humble beginnings as a singing newsboy and waiter to become a master song plugger and legendary composer. “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911), “God Bless America” (1938), “White Christmas” (1942), and “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1946) are just a few of the songs for which he’ll long be remembered.

Like any good plugger, he knew how to bring home a song.

Thank you to The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History for added information and the photo use of Irving Berlin’s transposing piano.

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