Tin Pan Alley: From Ragtime to Jazz

This small, beautifully curated exhibition at The Society of Illustrators features sheet music covers and illustrations drawn from the collection of Harlem historian John T. Reddick whose research has focused on that community’s Black and Jewish music culture between 1890-1930. Forty artworks on the second floor reflect cultural and social norms of the period through representation of popular music, often a nation’s barometer. Drawing, photographs and graphics offer a glimpse of aesthetic and social history.

John T. Reddick

Reddick begins his talk with traditional photos of African Americans including children picking cotton. Along with watermelon and chicken, cotton was a stereotype that came to symbolize Black culture to Caucasians. “You don’t cartoon something unless its understanding is pervasive….There’s nothing joyful about a child picking cotton,” he comments. Music was very different in the south. Minstrel tunes, spirituals/gospel, and blues were pervasive. Publishers and producers considered these collectively a separate market from that which sold up north. 

A logo of Charles B. Ward Music Publishing shows everyone to whom its catalog was trying to appeal: Moneyed White Men, Black Men, Women, Immigrants (here, Irish). Ward was a vaudeville entertainer and composer (“The Band Played On“/”Casey Would Waltz with a Strawberry Blonde,” for example) who strove for broader vision.

Left: Caricature of Bert Williams 1922 – Artist Alfred Frueh

We hear about the popular success of Bert Williams from his early Williams and Walker partnership to his accomplishments as a solo performer in the Ziegfeld Follies and on recordings.”I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient — in America,” Reddick quotes. The artist’s signature character wore blackface. “A black face, run-down shoes and elbow-out make-up give me a place to hide. The real Bert Williams is crouched deep down inside the coon who sings the songs and tells the stories,” he wrote.

Theater productions by George W. Walker and Will Marion Cook raised the public perceptions of African Americans. The hugely fashionable Cakewalk began on plantation with the enslaved humorously mimicking the social dancing of Whites, eventually finding its way – plausibly through Vernon and Irene Castle – to the salons of Europe. “The American Songbook is written by immigrants and African Americans, both outsiders,” Reddick notes. A black songwriter, Ernest Hogan’s 1898 “All Coons Look Alike to Me,” sold more than a million copies, but its associated stereotype art and lyrics caused him to lose prominence: All coons look a-like to me/ I’ve got an-oth-er beau, you see/And he’s just as good to me as you nig! /ev-er tried to be…

Russian/Jewish immigrant Sophie Tucker was quick to realize ragtime was the underpinning of new rhythmic music. Her photo is on the cover of sheet music for “Somebody’s Done Me Wrong” advertised as The Best Coon Shout Ever Written. To convey that a White singer could sing like Bessie Smith, publishers tagged them”Coon Shouters” in the manner of blackface minstrels. The music of “Daddy, I Ain’t Mad At You” places Tucker next to the illustration of a Black dandy, yet she also adorned music for “The Yiddish Wedding Jubilee” demonstrating her freedom to define and make her own choices.

James Reece Europe founded The Clef Club, a combination musicians’ hangout, fraternity club, labor exchange, and concert hall in Harlem, and helped unionize Black performers. In the army, Europe lead
the Harlem Hell Fighters band. He was welcomed into the Vanderbilt home (professionally), whereas Jewish musicians passed over. Europe noted that White entertainers were provided with music stands, Black were not, due to the assumption that Blacks couldn’t read music. He joked that his compositions were so complicated White musicians couldn’t play it even with sheet music.

The art of Al Hirschfeld (movie promotion pre-New York Times) and Sidney Leff (sheet music cover) is extremely similar. Reddick discovered the illustrators attended the same high school commercial training program. No action was taken. Angular drawings exude energy.

Crossovers back and forth between prejudice, breaking barriers, community similarities, art and music make the lecture illuminating and entertaining.

Photo of John T. Reddick by Alix Cohen
Cover courtesy of Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project and The Society of Illustrators
All artwork courtesy of collector, John T. Reddick

Tin Pan Alley: From Ragtime to Jazz
Exhibit at The Society of Illustrators 
128 East 63^rd Street
Through October 12, 2024

Talk by Harlem Historian and Exhibit Curator John T. Reddick
Organized by the nonprofit Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project which commemorates and continues the legacy of Tin Pan Alley, the culturally rich and diverse birthplace of American Popular Music on 28th Street between Broadway and 6th Avenue in New York City.