During the first half of the 20th century -- as ports filled with immigrants and fields were traded for factory work -- a new kind of sound streamed from open windows on Manhattan's 28th Street.

Behind those windows were tiny rooms, each one graced with the usual suspects: a songwriter; an upright, slightly out-of-tune piano; and a dream that belongs on the same family tree as alchemy -- namely how to make those intransigent black-and-white keys yield the trinity of melody, fame and fortune.

Only the luckiest of the so-called Tin Pan Alley composers found all three. One of these, a certain Charles K. Harris, started his own songwriting company and took in $25,000 a week for the well-made tune titled "After The Ball." Another, a Russian immigrant named Israel Baline, did even better: He not only transformed his melodies into money but also transmuted himself -- a Jewish outsider -- into the all-American icon known as Irving Berlin.

These tuneful melodies, these bewitching combinations of notes and words, worked magic in more ways than one for their creators. They continue to work magic today as the standards crooned in every smoky bar.

"It's so well-written, it's literate, clever, romantic and sophisticated," said Chicago-based folk singer Cat Catalani, who will perform "The Music of Tin Pan Alley: 1920-1940" next week at Lakeview Branch Library and Morton Public Library. "It's just got everything, I think, that one wants in music. It's funny and it's very well-done."

Although the term Tin Pan Alley might bring to mind lush arrangements and a big band sound, Catalani has opted for solo acoustic guitar arrangements that she believes adds a fresh dimension to the songs. Besides an unplugged approach to classics such as "Give My Regards to Broadway," "Side By Side," "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off" allows for audience sing-alongs, which she encourages. She notes that older people often know every word.

"You can use your memory to remember what your life was and what it means to you -- difficult times that you lived through and wonderful times that you lived through," Catalani said. "I think music gives us that gift. And the younger people in the audience may not have the same frame of reference as the older people, but it's their parents' or their grandparents' time. It helps them know their parents or grandparents in a different way."

For instance, the restlessness of the ex-World War I servicemen -- suddenly able to compare Kansas City with Paris -- is reflected in a 1919 hit "How Are You Going to Keep Them Down on the Farm." And in the poverty-stricken 1930s, when people whistled in the dark, chances are the tune was an optimistic one such as "On the Sunny Side of the Street" or "Side by Side."

A decade later, young men drafted overseas sang along to "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" as they thought about their girlfriends back home. Meanwhile, young women -- bereft of dating prospects thanks to the draft -- sang along with tunes like "They're Either Too Old or Too Young," which contains this daring rhyme: "What's good is in the army, what's left will never harm me."

The 1920s, '30s, and '40s in some ways were a more communal time, Catalani said. Most people still experienced music by buying sheet music and playing it on the piano -- or by huddling around the neighbor's new-fangled radio. Catalani tries to reclaim some of this vanished era at her shows.

"It immediately brings you back," Catalani said. "Music is just an amazing thing in that way. You can remember the lilacs you were smelling in the back yard, and you heard that song at your eighth-grade graduation. It can bring back what you say, what you felt."

Catalani performs "The Music of Tin Pan Alley: 1920-1940" at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Lakeview Branch Library and 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Morton Public Library. Admission is free.

Gary A. Panetta is the fine arts columnist and a critic for the Journal Star. You can write him at 1 News Plaza, Peoria, IL 61643 or call him at 686-3132. His email address is gpanetta#&64;pjstar.com