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“Watch Out For The Sharks”: Gender, Technology, and Commerce in the American Song-Poem Industry1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2013
Abstract
Since the early 1900s, song-poem entrepreneurs, often referred to as “song sharks,” have fueled a diffuse and largely hidden American industry that produces music to accompany the poems and lyrics of amateur writers. These entrepreneurs have long been demonized in the popular media for preying on the naiveté of their clientele. Yet despite charges of exploitation, this musical equivalent of the vanity press has survived for over a century. Although the vast majority of song-poets and their song-poems have remained in obscurity, in the 1990s, song-poems developed a cult following among record collectors; as “anonymous collaborations,” these recordings highlighted tensions between poignant personal expression and impersonal commercial rendering that appealed to listeners with a penchant for the obscure. This article draws on advertisements, sheet music, media coverage, and personal interviews to piece together a history of the song-poem industry, with particular focus on the gendered dimensions of the practice, the role of technology in the production process, and the multiplicity of meanings embedded in song-poems for both song-poets and collectors.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Society for American Music 2013
Footnotes
1
“Watch Out For The Sharks” is the title of a song by Wild Man Fischer, a songwriter who became popular in the “outsider music” genre after he was promoted by Frank Zappa. The song is written from the point of view of a song-poet complaining about being taken advantage of by a song-poem company. Wild Man Fischer, Pronounced Normal, Rhino Records RNLP-021, 1981.
References
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Tyler, Linda L. “‘Commerce and Poetry Hand in Hand’: Music in American Department Stores, 1880–1930.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 45/1 (1992): 75–120.Google Scholar
Waksman, Steve. Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
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The American Song-Poem Anthology: Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush? Liner notes by Michael Hill. Bar/None Records BRNCD-137, 2003.Google Scholar
The American Song-Poem Christmas: Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Foot Four? Bar/None BRNCD-147, 2003.Google Scholar
American Song-Poem Music Archives. “Deeper into the ‘Shadow World’ of Song-Poem Music.” http://www.songpoemmusic.com/.Google Scholar
Sam DeVincent Collection of American Sheet Music. The Lilly Library. Indiana University–Bloomington.Google Scholar
Sheet Music Collection. Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays. The John Hay Library. Brown University.Google Scholar
“Amaze Your Friends! Write the Words for a Song.” Broadway Composing Studios advertisement, Illustrated World 36/6, 1922.Google Scholar
Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Park. “The True Rights of Women.” Godey's Lady's Book 28/6 (June 1844): 272.Google Scholar
Chusid, Irwin. Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music. Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2000.Google Scholar
Epand, Len, “A Phantom Orchestra at Your Fingertips,” Crawdaddy! (April 1976): A27–A28.Google Scholar
Fine, Gary Alan. Everyday Genius: Self-Taught Art and the Culture of Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Ford, Henry. “How the Jewish Song Trust Makes You Sing.” The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem: Jewish Influences in American Life 3 (1921): 86.Google Scholar
Jones, John Bush. The Songs That Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Katz, Mark. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Keightley, Keir. “‘Turn It Down!’ She Shrieked: Gender, Domestic Space, and High Fidelity, 1948–1959.” Popular Music 15/2 (1996): 149–77.Google Scholar
Koza, Julia Eklund. “Music and the Feminine Sphere: Images of Women as Musicians in ‘Godey's Lady's Book,’ 1830–1877.” Musical Quarterly 75/2 (1991): 103–29.Google Scholar
Leppert, Richard. “Sexual Identity, Death, and the Family Piano.” 19th-Century Music 16/2 (1992): 105–28.Google Scholar
Lipsitz, George. “The History of the Present is Not Being Written: Music and Memory in the Transnational Economy.” Repercussions 7/8 (1999–2000): 327–49.Google Scholar
Lipsitz, George. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Miller, Bonny H. “Ladies’ Companion, Ladies’ Canon? Women Composers in American Magazines from Godey's to the Ladies Home Journal.” In Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music, ed. Susan, C. Cook and Judy, S. Tsou, 156–82. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Théberge, Paul. Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Hanover, NH:Wesleyan University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
“To Wage War on Fake Music Publishers Until the Latter Make an Unconditional Surrender,” The Music Trades 54, 30 September 1922.Google Scholar
Tyler, Linda L. “‘Commerce and Poetry Hand in Hand’: Music in American Department Stores, 1880–1930.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 45/1 (1992): 75–120.Google Scholar
Waksman, Steve. Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Waksman, Steve. “Reading the Instrument: An Introduction.” Popular Music and Society 26/3 (2003): 251–61.Google Scholar
The American Song-Poem Anthology: Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush? Liner notes by Michael Hill. Bar/None Records BRNCD-137, 2003.Google Scholar
The American Song-Poem Christmas: Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Foot Four? Bar/None BRNCD-147, 2003.Google Scholar