Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.

This is “After the Ball,” performed by Gerald Adams and the Variety Singers:

Gerald Adams and the Variety Singers — “After the Ball”

“After the Ball” was written by Charles K. Harris, and it was the biggest hit of the 1890s.  Of course, in the 1890s, music hits weren’t measured by record sales, because mass production and distribution of record music was a thing for the future.  In those days, people bought the sheet music for their favorite songs and gathered in their and their friends’ homes and hung around the piano, singing together. Many songwriters in those days ran around the bars of Manhattan, paying singers to sing their songs, then hawking the sheet music to patrons. This area, and the music associated with it, became known as Tin Pan Alley. I’m intrigued both by this song-selling culture, and by the idea of music being sold not as recording, but as sheets of notes to be performed by the customer, not simply listened to.  Now for the shameless plug: both of these ideas partly inform my novella, Sing for Life: Tin Pan Alley,which is now available in US bookstores and online. “After the Ball,” incidentally, sold over five million copies.