The Bomb - First Million-seller

  Dominic Vautier  1/7/2011

Many a heart is aching,
If you could read them all.[1]

In 1892 an event occurred that had to greatly influence American music.  A cheep pop song After the Ball, exploded upon the public to become the first million-seller ever.  It was followed immediately that same year by another million-seller, Daisy Bell.

All the melee was caused by just this one song, and was there any way the industry had anticipated its immense success?  Was the song something special?  Was it so unique that it had to cause such Elvis-type reactions?  Was it revolutionary, perhaps a brand new kind of music altogether?  Did it carry some exotic message?  Was it a wild ragtime song out of the chorus line of Babe Connors[2], or a rousing jazz number imported right from the French Quarter or a snappy can-can straight from Paris?  Nope.  It was none of these.  After the Ball was nothing more than a second-rate tearjerker slow waltz with a second-rate melody, like a hundred other tearjerkers that had come before it.  This one, however, just like Hound Dog, came along at the right time.

Apparently people were ready and the market was ready.  The unfulfilled expectations, the young, music-hungry consumers were ready, the piano industry, a new purchasing power, fresh consumerism, rising tide of consumer confidence, and a desire for new types of entertainment was ready.  Conditions were excellent.

Copies of the song ran out in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, and most other cities.  The presses went full steam at Charlie Harris’ publishing house, where the owners worked 24 hours a day cranking out sheet music.  The song was pirated, as underground publishers joined in.  Harris didn’t mind, since he was busy making a monthly profit of about $25,000 just from the sale of this one song.[3]  That kind of money was considerable then, and Charlie was more than satisfied with his unexplained and unexpected success.

The After the Ball phenomenon was the beginning of a fad.  The Hula-Hoop was a fad too that generated similar enthusiasm.  In both cases a huge opportunity to make a bundle was there, because the demand was so intense and supply was so limited. The arrival of big time popular music in 1892 looked every bit like another Hula-Hoop type thing, but this fad did not go away.  It just get bigger and better, and far from going away, not only is it still with us, it has come to dominate the entire world.  In fact, there are very few places left on the globe that have not been exposed to and seduced by the sounds of that unique contribution to humanity called American popular music.  It has been said that one-third of the world’s population learned their English from just three songs: Working for the Yankee Dollar, Sentimental Journey, and Hound Dog.

[1] Picture by Charles Dana Gibson, 1898; words from After the Ball by Charles Harris, 1892.
[2] Babe Connors was a famous night club owner from St. Lewis.
[3] Jack Burton, The Blue Book of Tin Pan Alley (New York: Century House, 1951), 36.