In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a few blocks of Manhattan’s 28th Street housed sheet music publishers, composers, songwriters, and agencies. Nicknamed Tin Pan Alley, it was home to the nation’s music industry.
The playhouse being the main venue of entertainment, Broadway musicals and Union Square vaudeville acts demanded an unceasing supply of songs. A dense concentration of creative talent laid the foundation for the “Great American Songbook,” a canon of songs and jazz compositions that have stood the test of time. [Read more…] about The Creative Milieu of Tin Pan Alley
On February 27, 1861, Congress passed an Act that allowed privately printed cards weighing one ounce or less to be sent by the 
It was swinging in the Tally-Ho Club on Hudson Avenue and in the Lark Tavern on Madison. Music filled the Klub Eagle and poured out the doors of the Castle Ballroom. The Rhythm Club on Madison was rocking. Sophisticated sounds were swaying in the hotels – at the Ten Eyck and the DeWitt. As the Swing Era crested between 1935 and 1945 
The term “New World” originated from the late fifteenth century and referred to the recently discovered Americas which astonished Europeans who had previously thought of the world as consisting of Europe, Asia and Africa (the “Old World”).
On Christmas Day 1934, just a year after ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment which repealed 
