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DECEMBER 9,
THE
1922
Going Great!
All our National ads are featuring the
Martin and JAHN Elementary Instruc-
tors for Piano and Violin and Piano.
Likewise, the new Scales and Chords
Book sent you with Century's last new
issues.
It will pay you to show these books
on your counter while we are helping
you sell them. Besides, they guarantee—
Big Profits
and arc
Nationally Advertised
Century Music Publishing Co.
235 West 40th Street, N. Y.
sets the pace, that selects the tunes, that "puts
them over" or fails to, as the case may be.
This is a conclusion that I imagine most of us
would agree with. Yet, I do not agree with it.
If New York City were wiped off the musical
map in a year it wouldn't be missed. Ponder
that!
The musical life and interest of this country
is not in New York City—it is in such towns
as dot the great Mississippi Valley, the towns
of fifty and sixty thousand, the small towns and
large that to the New Yorker are often vaguely
and generally known as "the sticks"—at least,
that's what the show business used to call them,
and does yet.
Yet, it is in "the sticks" that music is made
or marred; it is in the average home, where the
daughter of the household entertains her friends,
part of the evening at least, at the piano. It is
in "the sticks" that the patronage comes from
that maintains not only the industry of music,
but all of the other worth-while industries of
this country.
Remember that there, in "the sticks," the
cabaret, the public dance hall, the cafe and like
establishments and institutions do not cut the
figure in the lives of the young people that
they do here in gay and giddy Gotham. Re-
member that Dad and Mama often, yes, usually,
listen now and then to the tunes that daughter
plays and sings, and they are mighty apt to
frown upon and discourage too much "jazz."
Remember, too, that the average girl in those
towns is rather inclined to reserve, and gen-
erally pretty clean-minded, so there isn't, after
all, a universal appeal in music that sounds like
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MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
something from the wild and woolly jungle as
there is in something that can be played and
sung in the home.
Most of these girls, I'll venture, are not
exceptionally skilled pianists, and I think that
as to their popular music they would like some-
thing easy to play, something not too full of
dropped stitches, not so tricky in its time.
As I write this I can imagine the industry
laughing at me, but somehow or other I feel
quite seriously that whatever there is the matter
with the music business is chargeable primarily
to the fact that the quality of our product is
not suited to the mass of those whom we expect
to purchase it.
The Question of Propaganda
Now let's take the next step, which for the
purposes of this article is the propaganda in
behalf of music, in behalf of any new tune.
What I have named "propaganda" the publisher
generally refers to as "professional work."
That means, briefly, making the public hear the
tune, become somewhat familiar with it, want
it, and buy it in the form of sheet music,
records and rolls.
For many years, and they were, according
to those apparently best informed, the most
successful years of the business, propaganda in
behalf of popular music was concentrated upon
singers, in vaudeville, and elsewhere. But in
recent years the dance hall has developed in
the larger cities to such an extent, and there
has been such a vogue of dancing in the homes,
that it would seem concentration of propaganda
is now directed through the orchestras, upon
dance tunes, rather than through singers upon
songs.
In the frenzied competition between dance
orchestras for new and original effects queer
and weird concatenations of sound wherein the
clarinet descends to whine and squeak and
yowl like a feline prowler on the back fence
at midnight; wherein the trombone forgets its
dignity and laughs like a gin-crazed stevedore
taunting his foreman; wherein the B flat cornet
tortures its silver throat with an imitation of
the sound made by a coal-laden gondola with
flat wheels rounding the curve on rusty rails,
^nd so on ad nauseam, and their demand that
tunes shall be supplied that are susceptible of
being molded to such requirements, there has
come about a situation in which, at its foun-
tainhead, the industry seems catering to fads
and faddists that cannot last, cannot endure.
New York will be the last to weary of this
situation, but I am firmly of the opinion that
•feSKN
OF IMI
•RTANCE
ETMUSIC
Dealer
with
EMADK
mm
D«ets Qoancta
SOME OF THE MANY THAT ARE ALWAYS IN DEMAND
Contmnf
o f 80NGLAND
Most Extensively Advertised Booklet of Sengs Evor Issued
SECULAR
t'Asleep is tho Deep
t'Caa't You Hoah M* Callln'.
Caroline
t* Bam boo Baby
fDear Little Boy of Mine
PEvening Brings Root 4 Ysu
t'God Made You Mlno
Heart Call. Tho
t'Heaey. if You Only Know
t*ln the Gardes of My Heart
fLamplit Hour, Tho
f'Ma Littlo Sunflower. Good-
night
t'Magic of Your Eyes. Tho
t-Mother of Pearl
t'My Rosary for You
t*Night Wind, Tho
t'One More Day
t* Resignation
t'Smilia' Through
t Songs of Dawn & Twilight
(Design—Every Littlo Nail)
t Spring's a Lovable Ladye
t'Sorter Miss You
fStarlight Love
t*Sunrise and You
t'There's a Long. Long Trail
t Values
t'Want of Ysu, Tho
t*Whor* th* River Shannon
Flow*
t'Whe Knows
SACRED
t'A Littlo While
t* Angel of Light. Load On
t*Clsser Still With Thee
t'Ever at Rost
t*God Shall Wipe Away tho
Tears
'Grateful. O Lord, Am I
"I Come to Thoo
"I Do Believe
•It Was for Mo
•My Days Are In His Hands
•Oh Lord. Remember Me
•Shine. 0 Holy Light
'Silent Voieo. The
•Teach Mo to Pray
•Thou Art My God
OPERATIC
'Gypsy Lovo Song
Kl»» Mo Agals
Mother Maahroo
My Wild Irish Rose
Too- Ra- Loo- Ra- Loo- Ral
That's an Irish Lullaby
fWhen
Irish
Eye* Are
Smiling
Those marked with <•) published for Duet
Those marked with (t) published tor Quartet
Bmmt Sailing Standard Sonw tn th* World
Hundreds of Dealers Carry This Complete Stock—Do Youf
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M . \% I T M A K K * S O N S
Now York
153
ftucaritgo
wrong >vlth
any'Feist*
JOURNEY'S
McCarthy & Tierney's Big Hit
from
"UP SHE GOES"
"JOURNEY'S END" is to "Up
She Goes " what " Alice Blue
Gown" was to "Irene."
Writ* for Dealer*' Price*
LEO.
F E I S T , Inc.,
FEIST Bldf.,
New York
the hinterland is now and for some time has
been weary of it, sick and tired of tunes, the
melody of which is so artfully concealed in
"tricks."
Music must be the master of the orchestra,
not the orchestra master of music. In the
hustle and bustle, the rush and hurry, the de-
mand of the dance is for more music—not more
quality, but more music. A tune is hardly heard
before it is deader than yesterday's newspaper;
one tune crowds another out of the way before
it has time to become acquainted with its lis-
teners; literally dance tunes fall into the market
like the Autumn leaves in the thick forest.
I want to see a return to the older form of
propaganda—to the singer. I want to see a
return to sweeter melodies, more pleasing har-
monies; to better construction and better in-
strumentation, to sounder theories and safer
practices, before the day comes that there
sweeps over the country a revulsion of musical
feeling that will hurt, and seriously, so-called
"popular" music.
I quite realize that the subject has been but
skimmed, but lightly and indifferently touched
upon, yet I firmly believe here is the kernel
of the nut, and no great revival of interest
in music, as to the "popular" product, will be
witnessed until it returns from its adventuring
in fields where novelty and tricks predominate,
rather than pure harmony and pleasing melody.
Let's have tunes again that the boys will
whistle, the men hum and the girls sing.
In conclusion, let me say that I never wrote
a tune, never published a song, never sold a
sheet of music, don't know one note from an-
other, and couldn't whistle "Annie Rooney,"
so, quite obviously, I have ventured to discuss
something of which I know very little. I make
this confession, however, firm in the belief that
in the majority it is folks a good deal like me
that do the buying of music, records and rolls
in our country. Now laugh!
^\Y/frv-"Sunshine Of Your Smile
Love Sends ©
A Little Gift g
Of Roses i
HARMS INC.62WE5T45 T -ST..NEWY0RK
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