Tin Pan Alley

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

Harry von TILZER, of
"Down Where the Wursburger Flows,"
"Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie"
"A Bird in a Gilded Cage"
"I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad"
   I noticed some more, important stuff, later in the two-column obituary.  From the NYHT, 11 January 1946, pg. 18, col. 3:

   A newspaper reporter, Monroe H. Rosenfeld, found Mr. Von Tilzer playing one day on a piano muted with newspaper stuck between the keys and the strings, and asked, "What kind of a tin pan do you call that?"  Mr. Von Tilzer laughed and said, "This street must sound like a tin-pan alley with so many pianos making such a din."  The reporter called his story, "Tin-Pan Alley," and the name stuck.

("Silicon Alley" was named by New York Sun editor Charles A. Dana in 1893, just beating T. A. Dorgan to the punch--ed.)