Offers a comprehensive guide to Tin Pan Alley music, covering over 1,200 songs from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 1950s. While many books have been written about Tin Pan Alley--the colloquial name assigned to popular music before the advent of rock 'n' roll--there are very few about the individual songs that define this enormously significant style of American music. This encyclopedia of over 1,200 songs written from the middle of the 19th century through the 1950s provides information and commentary on the music embraced by the American public. No other single volume contains as much information on the subject, and author Thomas Hischak provides a highly informative yet also highly readable guide to the songs, their periods, their styles, and their performers. Ideal for researchers and browsers alike, The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia is a long overdue examination of an American musical institution. This institution comprises songs written not for the stage or screen, but for saloons, singalongs, dance orchestras, sheet music, piano player rolls, recordings, nightclubs, concerts, and radio broadcasts. As such, they made up the very fabric of American popular culture for centuries: from early American folk songs to Civil War melodies, from 19th-century sentimental ballads to minstrel songs, from ragtime to jazz, from the Depression through the fifties, Thomas Hischak's study explains in layman's language how this music survived over time, and how it came to play such an influential role in American popular culture.