The Lyric's The Thing

Well, Al, it's time for a musical interlude on this Sunday morning with a trip down memory lane, or should I say more accurately, a walk through Tin Pan Alley.

Long before radio and the phonograph were widely available, songwriters would gather in several office blocks in Manhattan between 5th and 6th Avenue, nicknamed Tin Pan Alley, writing what were to become the popular tunes of the day.

And one such song is our choice for today's The Lyrics, The Thing, the quaint retelling of...

Walking Your Date Back Home.

Paul Harrington, good morning.

Good morning, Pat.

It's an innocent little ditty from 1931 called Walking My Baby Back Home.

And although the telling from the chap's point of view sounds more like floating on air all the way back home, but written, as you say, in Tin Pan Alley on precisely 28th Street between 5th and 6th.

Now, I say this not to pretend that I know Manhattan like the back of my hand, but to demonstrate the whole...

I suppose, industrious nature of not only the native New Yorkers, but the many immigrant cultures that would not only become native New Yorkers, but make up the kaleidoscope that is New York today.

In the early days, districts were formed, whether it's the financial theatre district, Chinatown, Little Italy, Diamond District.

But it all made sense that folks who did business together were in close proximity.

And in theory, it would make doing business more efficient.

So why did Tin Pan Alley begin its life in what was then known as the Flower District? Well, there you go.

It was purely commercial because think of musicians and songwriters starting out wouldn't have much money.

So this is where the cheap rent was at that time.

And when it became populated with writers and publishers and it started to prosper, it moved eventually to the Brill Building.

But of course, these rooms and the buildings in the Flower District weren't state-of-the-art or insulated rooms, hence the name Tin Pan Alley, because such was the racket or cacophony made up by these cheap tinny-sounding pianos.

And of course, everyone was playing different tunes at the same time, and it sounded like rattling of tin pans, pots and pans.

A lot of those buildings would have been brownstones, which you wouldn't get now for lover money.

Speaking of love, the couple in the song are arm-in-arm over marriage.

meadow

and farm oh yeah and the owls fly by and they give me the eye walking my baby back home I mean it's quite a rural feel to the song at first but there's a verse which I have omitted for time purposes but where they pop into a barbecue which would have been a very popular urban thing to do in the 30s 30s America still is by the way my own family extended family in Canada they barbecue winter and summer And anyway, there's also the formal dress could suggest an urban chap in a three piece suit.

And as they get up close and personal, he gets her powder all over his vest.

Of course, vest being another name for a waistcoat.