"Tin Pan Alley" in today's NY TIMES

[Steve Lease]

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Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 9:16 AM
Subject: "Tin Pan Alley" in today's NY TIMES


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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
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> Subject:      "Tin Pan Alley" in today's NY TIMES
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>
>    Forget the Sunday TIMES MAGAZINE.  Today's NEW YORK TIMES City Section
FYI
> discusses "Tin Pan Alley."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/nyregion/02FYI.html
>
>    Stop the torture and kill me already!  "Tin Pan Alley" was done just
> recently at The Straight Dope:
>
> http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtinpanalley.html
>

Tin pan as "musical" instrument (not a piano).



In the 1853 Indiana case of Bankus v. State involving a riot, the court
stated that the defendant's were giving the victim a charivari ".which
Webster defines and explains as follows: ' mock serenade of discordant
music, kettles, tin-pans, &c., designed to annoy and insult. It was at first
directed against widows who married a second time, at an advanced age, but
is now extended to other occasions of nocturnal annoyance and insult.'



In a later Indiana case in which a tin pan is used the court concluded that
the defendants " were probably engaged in giving a 'newly-wedded pair' that
kind of a concert or serenade which is usually called a charivari. Such a
concert is usually much more entertaining to the performers than it is to
the audience, and when it is engaged in by three or more performers, with
zeal and earnestness, it may often be denominated as a riot, and the
performers therein may be subjected to the punishment prescribed for such
offence."



-Steve Lease