Low Bridge, Everybody Down (sheet music cover)

Thomas S. Allen (1876–1919), an early figure in

Tin Pan Alley Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street ...

, was an American

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

composer, manager, and

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

ist. He was born in Natick, Massachusetts, and died in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Popular songs

In 1902, his popular fusion of schottische and

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott J ...

, "Any Rags", became a major hit.

Modern impact

* "Whip and Spur" (1902) is performed at

circuses A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclis ...

and

rodeos Rodeo () is a competitive equestrian sport that arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain and Mexico, expanding throughout the Americas and to other nations. It was originally based on the skills required of the working va ...

. * " Low Bridge, Everybody Down", also known as "Fifteen Years on the Erie Canal" or "Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal" (1913) is a well-known song, often referred to as a folk song. Included in the Seeger Sessions, folk album by Bruce Springsteen * T. S. Eliot spliced lines together from two songs for ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the Octob ...

''.

References

External links

List of Works

Erie Canal Song by Thomas S. Allen
The list of Allen's works omits his 1914 composition "I Wonder What Will William Tell", Music by "X, with apologies to G. Rossini", Daly Music Publishing, Boston Mass. 1876 births 1919 deaths People from Natick, Massachusetts American male composers American composers American violinists American male violinists Vaudeville performers {{US-composer-19thC-stub