Writing for Vaudeville

by Brett Page

"Punk!" comments the composer. "You can't rhyme 'man' with 'grand' and get away with it these days."

"Oh, all right," grumbles the harassed song-poet, and changes both lines to a better rhyme. "I don't like that part," he gets back at the composer, "it sounds like 'Waiting at the Church.'"

"How's this, then?" inquires the composer, changing two notes.

"Fine," says the lyric writer, for the new variation has a hauntingly familiar sound, too elusive to label—is amazingly catchy.

For hours, perhaps, they go on in this way—changing a note here, a whole bar there, revising the lyric every few lines, substituting a better rhyme for a bad one, and building the whole song into a close-knit unity.

At last the song is in pretty good shape. As yet there is no second verse, but the "Boss" is called in and the boys sing him the new song. "Change 'dream' to 'vision'—it sounds better," he says; or he may have a dozen suggestions—perhaps he gives the song a new punch line. He does his part in building it up, and then the arranger is called in.

With a pad of manuscript music paper, and a flying pencil, he jots down the melody nearly as fast as the composer can pound it out on the piano. "Get a 'lead-sheet' ready as quick as you can, commands the Boss. "We'll try it out tonight."

"Right!" grunts the arranger, and rushes away to give the melody a touch here and there. As often as not, he comes back to tell the composer how little that worthy knows about music and to demand that a note be changed or a whole bar recast to make it easier to play, but at last he appears with a "lead-sheet"—a mere suggestion of the song to be played, with all the discretion the pianist commands—and the composer, the lyric writer and the "Boss" go across the street to some cabaret and try out the new song.

Here, before an audience, they can tell how much of a song they really have. They may have something that is a "winner," and they may see that their first judgment was wrong—they may have only the first idea of a hit.

But let us suppose that the song is a "knock 'em off their seats" kind, that we may get down to the moral of this little narrative of actual happenings. The "pluggers" are called in and bidden to memorize the song. They spend the afternoon singing it over and over again—and then they go out at night and sing it in a dozen different places all over the city. On their reports and on what the "Boss" sees himself as he visits place after place, the decision is made to publish immediately or to work the song over again. It is the final test before an audience that determines the fate of any song. The new song may never be sung again, or tomorrow the whole city may be whistling it.