FORGOTTEN.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17395, 4 March 1922, Page 15

FORGOTTEN.

' SONGS OF YESTERDAY. A rear ago ev*ry messag® *** whictlinj -Abe.-' A if '•Bubbles" was still a favourite, dav pursed lip-' «e shrilly «mtUn« "Pegzy O'Neill." To-morrow— • "Where are the songs a reporter asked a man in music publishing and selling. 10 ' he queried in return, with a "oould tell you tbe words of 'I» M Your Sweetheart,' or the tune of ' ooU Dear,' to-day?" The average popular song, plained, has a life of any nunibei months under twelve. Sometimes takes sis months t-o become n "it, a then, in one little month more, is as dead as Julius Caesar or the song tnat sought the grave, as it began to gro in popularity. Sales, during the I) - terny existence of the ballad, nrc couii - ed in hundreds of thousands, and t a day comes when a pile of wastepap represents the air that filled the anil Some Old Favourites.

"Waxing reminiscent, the music man • recalled past triumphs w'*', 1 , a srn, '°- , song BU<:cess»'' r he said, "sells wonderfii - ly. On© of the biggest we handled ran into 150,000 copies, and if you multiply that, by tho rest o f. the Er.glish-speakmg world you get some idea, of the foitu in a 'bast seller' among song?. Ainong the finest bargains we have handled are •Till We Meet Again,' 'Bubbles, and 'Back Home in Tennessee,' m recent, years, and of course there are thousands of others handled by other houses tha aro equally good, and pernaps bettsi. Heaven alone knows how many copies of 'Tipperarv' were sold, or, to go back into what are the dark ages pt the song industry, how many copies of Soldiers of the ijueen,' or 'Two Little Urls in Blue.' Those old songs were good sellers, but you'd find very few people to-dav who know anything about la-. ra-ra-Boom-do-Ay,' 'Would lou 'After tho Ball,' and » m ß ' Evfta 'Yip-I-Addy,' and 'Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland' are quite forgotten nwv, and 'Tlio Heart of the Uity' can t be found. _ .. Sudden Death. "They die very, very quickly. You remember the famous song, 'I Had to Get Under,' and so on. It went like hot cakes. We ordered another 12,000 copies, and when they arrived it liad gone like a toy balloon. No one ever asked for it again, arid we use those copies of that 'best seller' as packing paper to-day. Once a song is dead it is well and truly dead, and music stores must have hundreds and hundreds of tons of gaudy covers and 'words and music by -—r that are so much lumber.'" . He was not despoudent. - The man who sells music that sudden death is part of the business. He expects it any day. , The "Song-Smithß." New York, he explained, is the home of the'"song-smiths," as they are there known, the men who chum out each day the melodies the public demands, from "home-and-mother" ballads to the craziest of jazz conceptions. Every popular success, no matter whore it may be published, goes to the end of the earth from tho "song-smiths," * coterie of hard workers, who live by Times' square, infesting large blocks of buildings, and keening a businesslike fiiger upon the pulse of public taste. Their creations aro tried out, pronounced wanting, then discarded. Undaunted they begin again on a new theme, and one day they strike fortune. "For," explained the music man, "a popular lift means a fortune. It's not the actual sales that do the trick, it's the royalties on the records and flavor rolls. Tho rights of these for tho' world are lield by the New Yorlc companies, and when the records are made, the royalties pour in from Moscow to Invercargill. |I have travelled much in America and Europe, flnd in enemy country, the New Yora successes make tho same appeal. Before the war, Vienna, then the recognised home of musical culture, Italy, and the other places I visited, were dancing to 'Dixies' and 'Ohios,' just like the rest of the world -The rights for Australia alone cost a lot of money. In New York recently a publisher wanted mt» to make an advance payment of 60,000 dollars for a big seller, besides paying a royalty on each copy; so you soe what success must mean," Little Chance Here. Questioned as to whether local mueio publisher wove besieged by budding geniuses waiting on their doorsteps with rolls of world-shaking harmony, the music mai> said that there was practically no chance for big success here. "The grea.t organisation of the firms for which the 'Gong-Sttiitlis' work, their connexion with the gramophone and mechanical player • companies, and their methods of publicity through vaudeville nn'f picturei houses, preclude anyone trying to cope with them," he said. "I [(have seen some fvne songs published in 1 Australia, and some fine piano pieces, but their local success lias been a mere drop in the ocean compared with the New York stuff. The return from any one of them must of necessity be of most modest dimension?. It may be hard to- understand, but it is a fact that tho 'song-smiths,' keen business men, who scorn any idea of art for art's sake, are a little coterie, a Bohemia, of their own. They exchange' ideas, compare notes, anid decide ,Jor themselves. Immense popularity proves tfeir decisions to be right, but here a. man haS no standard of comparison, no means of judging popular taste. He might be as certain as could be that-lie had the goods,' and it is an almost foregone conclusion that his work would be a 'dud' from the popular viewpoint. The 'songemiths' practically create the publio taste before they satisfy it." England was once the home of song (hits.. The imprimatur of the big musichalls was the hall-mark of suocess. But to-day the English market is almost nonexistent, and New York is the- recognised home of the popular music industry.. "All our panto and music-hall hit?," said the music man in conclusion,, "come originally from New York. Many ane republished here, and in other countries; many arc adapted to meet certain conditions. But the genesis of each lies in .that colony on Broadway,- between 42nd and ofitih streets. I don't know i what they'll let loose on us nextl No on© can. "tell "what "they'd do. - But ono thing Ido know. If it's good enough, to get out, it's simply bound to be the rage and to make everyone whistlo and hum until the next one comes along. "If I could live in New York and write another 'Daddy' or another 'Her Golden Hair was Hanging Down Her Back,' or another 'liosary,' I mightn't be an artist, but somehow I'd know that 1 was satisfied. I ' —Sydney "Daily Telegraph."