By 1900 industrial processes had begun to reshape all lives and all culture. Popular music was about to be transformed. Stephen Foster in the mid-1800s was the first writer of songs that were recognizably pop, tunes that would later be performed by artists ranging from Nat King Cole to the Beatles without anyone noticing that they were more than 100 years old. By the
One of the things that strikes you when you look at the world at the turn of the twentieth century, on 1 January 1900, is how surprisingly modern it was. There was refrigeration, central heating, telephones; cars and airplanes were just around the corner. It was a different world, but still a very recognizable one. By 1900 industrial processes had begun to reshape all lives and all culture. Popular music was not immune, and it was about to be transformed.
There was mass production in all things; this was a driving force in increased piano sales in both Britain and America between 1870 and 1910. Tens of thousands of pianos in the pubs and drawing rooms of Britain were provided by massive factories in Kentish Town, north London. Historian Ann Douglas has said that piano literacy was almost as high as print literacy among wealthier American women. It was a sign of affluence and culture. In New York, the Gershwin family acquired a piano in 1910, which was hoisted through the window onto the second floor of their home, originally for their son Ira. As a result, in Britain and America the sheet-music industry obligingly filled a vacuum. The piano in the parlour became more viable once mass production brought down the cost of sheet music: in the 1890s it was still common for a copy of a popular song to set you back four shillings, but by 1900 you had the “sixpenny songsheet.”