Inventing Entertainment

Brian Dolan's social and cultural history of the music business in relation to the history of the player piano is a critical chapter in the story of contemporary life. The player piano made the American music industry-and American music itself-modern. For years, Tin Pan Alley composers and performers labored over scores for quick ditties destined for the vaudeville circuit or librettos destined for the Broadway stage. But the introduction of the player piano in the early 1900s transformed Tin Pan Alley's guild of composers, performers, and theater owners into a music industry.

Brian Dolan is professor of humanities at the University of California, San Francisco and the author of Ladies of the Grand Tour and Wedgwood: The First Tycoon.

Chapter 1 Soundscape and Memory Chapter 2 Missionaries and Museums Chapter 3 Chronic Mechanitis Chapter 4 Every Collector's Dream Chapter 5 A Musical Morse Code Chapter 6 A Search for Identity Chapter 7 Possession Chapter 8 Expressio Chapter 9 A Race for the Rolls Chapter 10 Philosophers of the Fetish