Tin Pan Alley Publications, 1587 Broadway, New York 19 NY
1955: Tin Pan Alley, Inc., 1650 Broadway, New York 19 NY
then: Tin Pan Alley, Inc., PO Box 405, Radio City Station, NYC 19 NY
then: Tin Pan Alley, Inc. Lake Grove, NY 11755
then: TPA Records, Tin Pan Alley, Inc., Box 7438, Sarasota, FL 34278
motto: “Profiles in Music”

Tin Pan Alley was, in most respects, a typical song-poem label. But a tiny extra helping of musical ambition allowed them to turn out a distinctly more professional-sounding product than their competition. An indicator of their illusions of legitimacy is the fact that their labels featured the actual stage names of the respective performing artists, as opposed to the white-bread pseudonyms so commonly found on song-poem records.

Tin Pan Alley was founded in 1941 by Jack Covais, a 27-year-old violinist who had been born in Italy but emigrated to Brooklyn with his family while still a youth. Covais started his songwriting career as a lyricist, with musical settings to his words made in fleeting collaborations with semi-established songwriters, a fitting parallel to his eventual career as a song shark. Covais’ personal songwriting efforts were sincere attempts to succeed legitimately but, unable to hook up with an established publisher, he wound up self-publishing instead, using the name Tin Pan Alley Publications.

Note that the song he claims put him on the map is the same one whose very release that claim accompanies. I could see where his name might be “fast becoming a house-hold word,” but I can’t fathom how it could have happened quite that fast.

As is often the case, the stiff competition and general cliquishness of the straight music industries drove Covais to increasingly blur the edges of his business practices. By 1943 he was already dabbling in song-poem publishing, and by 1953, if not earlier, Tin Pan Alley had become a full-blown song-poem operation. For the song-poem work, Covais changed hats from lyricist to composer. It was also around ‘53 that the emphasis of Tin Pan Alley’s product shifted from printed to recorded music.

It is Tin Pan Alley’s earliest recordings, featuring name acts knocking out material submitted and subsidized by amateur lyricists, that makes the company stand out from the pack. These sessions were mostly in a jump or post-swing vein at first, then doo-wop and rockabilly were added to the label’s repertoire of styles.

Tin Pan Alley’s recordings are remarkably full and lively compared to the limp product of other song-poem companies, yet there’s something about them that sets them apart from legitimate records in those same styles. For one thing, it’s disconcerting to hear such accomplished musicians tear into ridiculous songs such as “Buck Teeth And A Pony Tail” or “Ho! Ho! If You Eat Me.” (Other memorable Tin Pan Alley titles from this period include “Love Is Like A Cigarette,” “A Heart Is Like A Zoo,” “A Fat Man In A Compact Car ,” “The Glory Of Evil,” “Heart-Smashing Daddy” and “But She Loved A Cat, In A Rex Harrison Hat!”) Besides the silly lyrics, another disorienting factor is that Tin Pan Alley singers would approach the material with a slightly scaled-back version of the kind of loopy exaggeration that characterizes more obvious-sounding song-poems. On the whole, Tin Pan Alley sessions were convincing simulations of real music, but the singers’ subtle “wink” is a tip-off to hipper listeners that this record is still nothing but a goof.