Thanks to Benito Vila for copy editing and format assistance.

Thanks to Elijah Wald for pointing out numerous cases of errors, omissions, bad guesswork, my simply being wrong, thus rescuing me from being seen as an utter dunderhead.

Welcome to this thing here!

This is a basic framework for one of the most epic constructs in the history of humanity: American music, and more specifically, the American Popular Song in the 20th Century (that is, 1901 to 2000, with the UK joining the party in 1965).

All these notes will be online and interactive. I welcome any added information or corrections, as well as your personal song-related anecdotes. Comments like, “how could you pick that song when you could have picked this one instead?” are welcomed.

One purpose of this project is to create a collaborative interactive historical/educational resource. One detail among many I want to go into is the question of what proportion of a given songwriter’s works are alpha songs as opposed to the beta or even throwaway level. Specifically, who has the best batting average?

Huh? Who has the longest stretch of writing alpha songs? No points off for duds along the way. The winner is…Willie Nelson! He wrote his first song in 1940 at age seven, the year before Bob Dylan was born. His first recorded song was in 1956. He’s closely followed by Paul Simon’s first recorded song in 1957. Both Willie Nelson and Paul Simon are still writing great songs. My fast ‘n’ dirty look at Irving Berlin, who I know wrote a lot––even mostly, I believe––crappy songs, like all the ones he wrote for the Marx Brother’s Coconuts, for example. He wrote about 70 to 80 great songs out of 1500. Not that I’ve heard every one, and I did find one unknown alpha song, “God Save The Philippines”, but “I Wish And Wish Again I Was Back In Michigan”, yuck. I simply don’t have time to listen to each song he wrote. If I was a betting man, I’d say he’s written maybe a couple dozen alpha songs that I’m not aware of. Probably less.

Also, I want to go into the question of how long a given writer turns out alpha work. There are details regarding this aspect of Irving Berlin’s songwriting in the individual song notes. But hey, no blame! Given Berlin’s bell-ringers, if he also wrote 1400 shitty songs, so fucking what? Another thing I want are comments dealing with the ‘80s and ‘90s, where my knowledge is quite scant. Again, your involvement in all this is most welcome.

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