Quotes

[on beginning his career as a 'song-plugger'] I knew how to play the piano, and that's how I got the job. Twenty-five bucks a week. It was a very nice job - only seven days a week, eleven in the morning until one in the morning. Here's what pluggers had to do. Every one of the publishing companies would have four, five, maybe even ten little offices with pianos. The vaudeville actors, the cafe performers, and the singing waiters would come in, and we'd demonstrate whatever songs the company was plugging. This was from eleven in the morning until six. At six at night you got into the subway and went home to the Bronx to have your supper, then you came back. Five cents each way - which was a lot cheaper than the sixty cents that a downtown restaurant would charge. Then you met a singer someplace in a cafe and demonstrated a song. Then you went back to the nickelodeons with the illustrated slides - the projectionist up in the booth threw the slides on the screen, while you were downstairs at the piano playing the song and singing it with the audience. That's the way songs were made, back in the 1912-13s.