of “making” money. Who for a moment would think seriously of using the terms “production” and “service” with reference to popular songs or motion pictures? Motion pictures in their higher reaches might have some claim on those terms—not the typical Jewish pictures, however; but the modern crop of popular songs, never! The terms “production” and “service” do not belong to the popular song industry at all, but the term “salesmanship” does, as the reader will presently see. It is well to remember that where there is only “salesmanship” without the other two qualities, the public is always the sufferer.
“Popularity,” when interpreted by the Jews who manufacture jazz for the United States, means “familiarity,” that’s all. The theory is that a song need not possess merit as regards words or music to be successful. It can be “popularized” artificially by constant repetition, until it becomes familiarized to the public ear, and thus familiarized it becomes “successful.”
The principle is expressed in the words of the song, “Everybody’s Doin’ It.” You go to the theater and hear a song. Next day at lunch the café singer is singing the same song. Blaring phonographs used for advertising purposes blat out the same song at you as you pass on the street. You walk past an afternoon band concert in the park—the band is playing the same song. If you are a normal person you have a feeling that perhaps something has been going on in the world while you were engaged with your own affairs. The song—you say to yourself frankly—is silly and the music trivial; but you keep your opinion a secret, because, after all, “everybody’s singin’ it.” Not long after you find yourself humming it. You go home, and your daughter is “practicing up” on the piece. It yells its way through your home and through your neighborhood and through your city and through your state until in sheer disgust, and in one day, the people pitch it bodily out-of-doors. But, behold, another song is waiting to take its place—a song fresh from Yiddish Tin Pan Alley. And the agony is repeated. This occurs from 30 to 50 times a year.