Classic American Popular Song

The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000

David Jenness, Donald Velsey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136797446
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Classic American Popular Song: The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000 addresses the question: What happened to American popular song after 1950? There are numerous books available on the so-called Golden Age of popular song, but none that follow the development of popular song styles in the second half of the 20th century. While 1950 is seen as the end of an era, the tap of popular song creation hardly ran dry after that date. Many of the classic songwriters continued to work through the following decades: Porter was active until 1958; Rodgers until the later 1970s; Arlen until 1976. Some of the greatest lyricists of the classic era continued to do outstanding and successful work: Johnny Mercer and Dorothy Fields, for example, continued to produce lyrics through the early '70s. These works could be explained as simply the Golden Age's last stand, a refusal of major figures to give in to a new reality. But then, how can we explain the outstanding careers of Frank Loesser, Cy Coleman, Jerry Herman, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Fred Kander and John Ebb, Jule Styne, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and several other major figures? Where did Stephen Sondheim come from? For anyone interested in the development of American popular song -- and its survival -- this book will make fascinating reading.

1

Classic Pop at Midcentury

Even the identifying phrases are troublesome. Alec Wilder's “American Popular Song”¹ claims too much because there are other American musical traditions of importance that he was not concerned to cover. All Americans know folk songs, nineteenth-century sentimental songs, or children's songs and musical games that are by definition popular.

Tin Pan Alley is a sociohistorical term that fits well only for part of the first half of the twentieth century. From the 1920s until after World War II, there was a large cadre of songwriters under contract as house writers to an oligopoly of music publishers and producers. Their job was to turn out songs for revues, for the recording-radio nexus, for home consumption on the parlor piano, or for public occasions. Most such songs were of little value, and vanished quickly. The most talented songwriters, including Ira and George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Harold Arlen, began in Tin Pan Alley. Eventually, as their talents were recognized, they became free agents, producing entire scores, sometimes on speculation, sometimes under contract for a show or film. To call the tradition we are concerned with Tin Pan Alley would lend an air of antiquation or an implication of routine to many good songs, especially of later decades.

A possible category name would be “American theater songs.”² Many aficionados would accept this usage. For the period before 1950, calling the songs we (like Wilder) value most “theater songs” would involve only minor inaccuracy. Certain songs were not in fact written for theater or films; some were created for cabaret; some directly for the sheet music and record audience. Others were originally intended for shows or movies that did not in the event get produced, and became known only later by being performed in clubs, on the radio, or on record albums. The principal objection to our using this term in this book is that we cannot assume a priori that typical songs from the decades after 1950 will continue to have originated in the theater.

Forte and others use the phrase “classic popular song,” or refer to “the golden era,” by which they mean roughly 1920 to 1950.³ This of course isolates that period from what happened after 1950, or implies that there is a fixed period of time after which good songs become “classic,” like vintage automobiles. Beginning toward the end of the twentieth century, some commentators on popular music have simply called the genre “the Great American Song(book),” taking as a standard for reference the works established by midcentury.⁴ This metonymic usage carries with it the implication that “they don't write them like that any more,” an implication we examine in this book.

We shall be writing about songs from the theater, films, and cabaret; songs from the jazz realm; and stand-alone songs that got recorded. Depending on context, we use some of the terms cited above, but tend to fall back on “classic pop” or “the classic (American) popular song.” “Pop song” is not just a compression of “popular song.” “Popular song” is an enumerative concept: some songs are known to specialists, but “popular songs” are widely known in the general public, perhaps to millions. “Classic pop,” however, refers to the conceptualization of a genre, an ideal type involving—as we discuss in this and the following chapter—certain intrinsic features and reflecting some external circumstances, settings, occasions, or cultural functions.⁵

The juxtaposition of “classic” and “popular” may seem inherently contradictory. Most of us differentiate “classical” from “popular” music, even though it is not possible to give tight definitions. However, in cultural theory, “classical” may also imply: formally ordered; a set of techniques or methods continuing for more than a generation; requiring formal training or skill. We believe these connotations to be valid. They are also historically accurate, in that the great songwriters of the 1940s through the 1960s— for example, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Jule Styne, and others—consciously followed the example of Kern and Gershwin and Berlin.

There is another useful meaning that the term classical suggests. An artistic or culture style becomes “classic” when it is attended to, endorsed, and economically supported by the dominant taste-making sector of a society. The songs in the great tradition, from 1920 to 1950, became familiar to the cosmopolitan urban elite and were valued by them in preference to the music-hall or parlor songs of the Victorian era. The latter genre was seen as old-fashioned, not stylish; the newer songs were up-to-date, appropriate to the Jazz Age and later eras. Many of them originated in the Broadway musical or in films, which in those decades were attended primarily by persons of the White urban middle- and upper-middle class. Great songs of the period are frequently alluded to in the fiction of the period, where they take on iconic significance. When the leading characters in the novel, “Tender is the Night,” hear the song Poor Butterfly, one knows instantly what they are feeling—nostalgia for life in the United States—without Fitzgerald's having to say so.⁶

There is, of course, a considerable irony in the classicizing of this song style. The songs of Tin Pan Alley, certainly in the 1920s, were songs written by immigrants or the children of immigrants, for other immigrants. The songwriters, like the music publishers, were mostly Jewish, though the intended audience was broader than this. The first popularity for these songs was among relatively poor ethnic groups in the great American cities: part of the pattern of assimilation was to learn this aspect of the national culture. That the best early songwriters “made it” to Broadway and films ensured acceptance by the elites, so that the songs became “classic” in society as a whole.

We emphasize that “classic pop” refers to a stable style, not to some level of achievement. As is the case with all music, those who appreciate a style, broadly, listen to instances that range from routine to superlative. One hopes, of course, that those one thinks the best-made, the most inspired, will be the ones with the longest life and the widest fame, but there are lots of fine songs that are, after all, hardly known. Conversely, because a particular song is not very good does not mean that it never fitted the style category in question.⁷

Establishing something as “classic” involves a doubled process. Not only did these songs become validated by the upper strata of the society; by the same token, popular songs from other traditions, fully developed and widely known in the 1930s and 1940s—Black blues and gospel, country blues and fiddle songs, the old songs of the British isles still vibrant in the uplands of the American Southeast—were not thus validated, except by scholars. What is clear is that, as of about 1950, there was one song style known nationwide, by all middle-class Americans—by definition, one “classic popular” genre. These are the songs that Wilder discussed.

Times have changed, and knowledge and appreciation of valid American popular song traditions have vastly enlarged. In the next chapter of this book we take up some of the sociocultural factors that caused this enormous change. Whether the style on which this book concentrates remained the classic American popular song style at the end of the twentieth century, is a question we return to in our final chapter. We turn now to a more thorough description of that style in and of itself.

The Format of the “Classic American Popular Song,” circa 1950

We use the term format to suggest something looser than a tightly specifiable form. Songs in this tradition are marked by a fairly stable set of features in common. At first glance, all these features seem easy enough to describe in layman's language, but if one digs deeply into any of them the details and boundaries become complex.

The song is, first of all, short and compact. The majority of songs are written in 32 bars, give or take a couple. They lie loosely within European ABA song form, in that their structure involves an opening section; a contrasting or at least different middle section; and a final section that is, normally, related to the opening one. It is thus a closed form: musically, the final section almost invariably returns to the melodic material, rhythm, key, and harmony of the opening (or of some earlier section). Much the same can be said of the verbal dimension: the distinctive phrase, figure of speech, or metaphor of the song occurs near the beginning, sometimes in the title, and it is then alluded to, elaborated on, or repeated thereafter, very often near the end.

The classic popular song tradition, however, tends to depart from the simplest European song form: statement, departure, and return. In the most common format, there are four distinct sections. There is an opening section, then a repetition or variation of that section, then a section that departs or contrasts—in character and usually in key—and then the closing section, recalling the beginning. The structural layout, in terms of measures, is typically A₈A₈B₈A₈. Often a degree of tonal closure, strong or partial, occurs at the end of each A-section. The final eight bars nearly always terminate with a complete cadence, a return to the home key. The verbal dimension is similarly organized, with the prototypical material—a concept or metaphor—stated near the beginning, a contrast of thought in the middle, and a sense of return toward the end. In terms of structural balance, the song tends to be front-loaded regardless of the exact proportions of the sections.

Simple symbol systems can convey some of the fine points. Thus, A₁A₁BA₁ indicates that the opening two eight-bar sections and the final eight bars are essentially alike. The sequence A₁A₂BA₁ indicates that the second section is like the first but breaks a certain amount of new ground, while the final eight returns exactly. The sequence A₁A₂BA₃ suggests that the first two and the final eight-bar sections are to some extent parallel, but that there is considerable variation among them. For example, the final A may have a conclusive or summative character, imparting more weight than the opening. That same purpose is served in a number of fine songs by repeating a portion of the final eight or by a short coda or extension in the same key that contains an afterthought; thus by accretion a weightier (or somet...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Classic Pop at Midcentury
• 2 The Music Went Round and Round…
• 3 Late Flowering from Old Stock
• 4 Indian Summer of the Classic Popular Song
• 5 Restocking the Songbook
• 6 The Land Where the Good Songs Go
• 7 Other Voices in Popular Song
• 8 Sondheim and After
• 9 Classic American Popular Song at the End of the Twentieth Century
• Permissions
• General Index
• Song Index
• Songwriters' Index