Tin Pan Quotes & Sayings

The very first hit factory was T.B. Harms, a Tin Pan Alley publishing company overseen by Max Dreyfus. With staff writers like Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers, T.B. Harms was the dominant publisher of popular music in the early twentieth century. Dreyfus called his writers "the boys" and installed pianos for them to compose on around the office on West Twenty-Eighth, the street that gave Tin Pan Alley its name, allegedly for the tinny-sounding pianos passersby heard from the upper-story windows of the row houses. The sheet-music sellers also employed piano players in their street-level stores, who would perform the Top 40 of the 1920s for browsing customers. — John Seabrook

Forgiveness and the release of the past open the creative flow of life, supporting all levels of mind, heart, body, emotion, and spirit. This energy flow determines the state of our health, our desire to create and procreate, our willingness to develop our gifts, and how we use or deny the life force that we are given as human beings ... by choosing to let go of the past, our fears, and our negative patterns or reactions to life, we are suddenly funded with a resurgence of life force, which propels us into a newfound way of being and a very different way of understanding the world. — Jamie Sams

In the, uh, '30s and '40s, the Brill Building was the hub of, uh, musical activity in Tin Pan Alley in New York City. I believe Irving Berlin was there, and uh, and everything just centered around there. — Al Kooper

Downstairs, I could hear the return of a long-lost sound: Amy making breakfast. Banging wooden cupboards (rump-thump!), rattling containers of tin and glass (ding-ring!), shuffling and sorting a collection of metal pots and iron pans (ruzz-shuzz!). A culinary orchestra tuning up, clattering vigorously toward the finale, a cake pan drumrolling along the floor, hitting the wall with a cymballic crash. — Gillian Flynn

A row of trees far away, there on the hillside.
But what is it, a row of trees? It's just trees.
Row and the plural trees aren't things, they're names. — Alberto Caeiro

When we realize what we were before Christ and what we deserved in that state, it further magnifies the enormity of the gospel for us. — Paul David Washer

There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record. — Branford Marsalis

A lot of his songs, when they started out, sounded like old music. They arrived on his doorstep, wandering orphans, the lost children of large and venerable musical families. They came to him in the form of Tin Pan Alley sing-alongs, honky-tonk blues, Dust Bowl plaints, lost Chuck Berry riffs. Jude dressed them in black and taught them to scream. — Joe Hill

Then on to all the terrific american songwriters, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles, from Bob Dylan to Paul Simon. Whoever wrote and sang in the song form I have appreciated. — Tom Chapin

Sometimes, when she's out here alone, she can feel the pulse of something bigger, as if all things animate were beating in unison, a glory and a connection that sweeps her out of herself, out of her consciousness, so that nothing has a name, not in Latin, not in English, not in any known language. — T.C. Boyle

The only greater [evil] than separation ... [is] living under a government of discretion. — Thomas Jefferson

A good chef has to be a manager, a businessman and a great cook. To marry all three together is sometimes difficult. — Wolfgang Puck

I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll. — John C. Reilly

Radical acceptance rests on letting go of the illusion of control and a willingness to notice and accept things as they are right now, without judging. — Marsha M. Linehan

You don't just have to be influenced by rock, or goth, anymore. It's okay to say, 'My influences are Tin Pan music from Bali and Rihanna.' There are still so many combinations that haven't been done yet. — Grimes

Back then, the business depended on bohemians ... They needed Kristofferson and Roger Miller ..It was the tail end of something ... the last Tin Pan Alley ... and we were the night shift! They gave us keys, because they knew the best songs weren't written in daylight ... We got our keys taken away several times ... me and Guy Clark. — Steve Earle

I was at the Apollo Theater all the time, skipping school, and I worked in a barbershop. That's how I started with doo-wop. Now I've come full circle. I did all kinds of music. I used to work on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. — George Clinton

I take very seriously my responsibility as Secretary-General to make sure that the United Nations is doing everything it can to uphold the universal prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. — Ban Ki-moon

The words to country songs are very earthy like the blues. They're not as dressed up and the people are very honest and say, 'Look, I miss you darlin', so I went out and got drunk in this bar.' That's the way you say it. Where in Tin Pan Alley they would say, 'Oh I missed you darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and had a dinner for one.' That's cleaned up now, you see? But country and blues tells it like it is. — Ray Charles

For those, like me, who can't rely on being given a home smoker this Christmas, you can build your own approximation with just a roll of tin foil and a big wok or pan for which you have a lid. — Yotam Ottolenghi

Uh-huh. You can't fool me. The kind of compassion you have is like a diamond - won under tremendous pressure. Well, whatever fire forged you, you are special. You're a jewel." Michael — Eli Easton

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line — Duke Ellington

Believe me, my journey has not been a simple journey of progress. There have been many ups and downs, and it is the choices that I made at each of those times that have helped shape what I have achieved. — Satya Nadella

Meg lit the gas burner, above which a pan sat in readiness. "The soup is all homemade." "Meg, it's Heinz tomato." Sanne held up the empty tin she'd spotted in the recycling pile. "To which I have added extra pepper and a spoonful of Bovril, thus rendering it homemade. — Cari Hunter