Songwriting Duos:
Fats Waller & Andy Razaf
The hub of the music business used to be situated on 28th St. between 6th Ave. and Broadway. The conglomeration of music publishing houses known as Tin Pan Alley comprised some of the earliest innovators of songwriting including the likes of Fats Waller, Irving Berlin, Scott Joplin, George and Ira Gershwin, and more. This was the nerve center of popular music for nearly 70 years (~1880-1950).
The effects of Tin Pan Alley have been lasting on the music business, most specifically the separation of songwriting and recording as two parallel, yet separate industries and revenue streams. This gave rise to the record label structure we have been following since the 1950s as well as the 360 deals labels are striving for nowadays for better or worse.
Yet, this is the scene that gave rise to jazz and blues through both the underground musicians network as well as the songs that fueled the monetization of early music forms. In Tin Pan Alley songwriting duos formed to create some of the early classics we still pay to this day.
One of the early innovators in jazz, Fats Waller, was a mainstay of the scene and worked to copyright over 400 songs with his closest collaborator Andy Razaf. These songwriting duos were some of the first to form in jazz. Check out just a few of the amazing compositions Razaf and Waller penned together below: