Jeff: Many of us grew up listening to radio and have done so all our lives. During that time, we’ve probably heard thousands of radio jingles, but we don’t often think much about how they developed. So we thought we’d investigate, and as a result, this week we’re starting a new two-part series on the history of radio jingles. Here’s Ray Robinson in Los Angeles to tell us more.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Yes, in the sixties and seventies, no self-respecting Top 40 station would have lasted long without a decent jingles package, but it wasn’t always that way. The concept of jingles on the radio began, not with station branding, but with the advertising firms on Madison Avenue in New York City. You see, the very first radio jingles were not about the station or the programming at all, but rather about the products they were selling.
Commercials of any kind were first allowed on U.S. radio in 1922, but they were generally read live by whoever was on the air at the time. That all changed in 1926, when General Mills, the company that made Wheaties breakfast cereal made broadcasting history, by using a sung commercial for the first time. Companies were not allowed at that time to sell directly through commercials, so this one simply asked, “Have you tried Wheaties?”
That commercial was first aired on Christmas Eve 1926, having been distributed to a limited number of stations on acetate discs. Wheaties product sales improved markedly in areas where the musical commercial was heard, whereas in other areas where only text commercials were read out, product sales stagnated. Advertising executives figured sung commercials would be less boring and possibly a lot more memorable than simple text messages, and so an idea was born. Plus, by recording the commercials on acetate discs, they could potentially use celebrity singers, and could guarantee the quality of the commercial played at each radio station.
Sung commercials proved to be especially successful with one important audience demographic – children! In Europe, in the 1930’s, one of the most famous children’s programs on Radio Luxembourg was sponsored by the makers of Ovaltine, and featured the Ovaltineys singing a very catchy theme tune.
And if you’re not familiar with Ovaltine, it’s a type of hot chocolate drink often given to children at bedtime. I’m sure hundreds of thousands of cans were sold as a result of that pre-War program sponsorship.
After the war, distribution of commercials on small spools of reel-to-reel tape became easier and less expensive – here are some you might remember from the 50’s and early 60’s. This one for Schick Stainless Steel Blades was used on both sides of the Atlantic:
I remember Ajax as ‘The White Tornado’ from around 1970, but way before that in the 1950’s, it was ‘The Foaming Cleanser’:
The Ford Motor Company got in on the act with an adaptation of a popular song from the time:
And not to be outdone, Chevrolet employed the celebrity talent of singer Dinah Shore:
And of course, if you were out in your car, you always wanted to look your best. Remember Brylcream – “a little dab’ll do ya”?
One that I remember very vividly from the 60’s in the UK was for a paint manufacturer – Silexene:
And I could still sing that word perfect today – I heard it so many times on the offshore stations of the 60’s.
Well, you get the idea. There are hundreds more like this, for the likes of Pepsi, Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, Martini, Sunsilk Shampoo, Stimerol Chewing Gum, Murray Mints, Nabisco, Jello, and the list goes on.
One of the most famous commercial jingle production companies was PAMS Productions Inc., based in Dallas, Texas. PAMS actually stood for Production, Advertising and Merchandising Service, and when it was founded by Bill Meeks in 1951, its primary business by far was creating advertising jingles like the ones I’ve just played.
Bill Meeks was a musician who played with a couple of bands in the Dallas area, and since 1947 he had also been working at Gordon McLendon’s radio station KLIF. There, he’d been responsible for putting together musical promotional spots for the station’s sponsors.
While Bill was producing spots for products, he came up with the idea to do the same for KLIF itself. The reaction from both the sponsors and the KLIF listening audience was so positive that he decided in 1951 to form his own production company – PAMS.
In 1954, KLIF switched away from its varied music programming approach and became one of the very first stations to adopt the new Top 40 format, and to perfect it with the help of Bill Meek’s jingles.
The more Bill worked on his promotions, the more he realized that radio stations were in need of better promotion to set themselves apart, and that’s where he began to focus his major efforts. His original approach was to find musicians and singers and then come up with short “jingles” with generic lyrics. He would then package these into a “Series” of ten each, and then make them available to stations both near and far – eventually coast-to-coast and in Canada too.
When a station would receive the latest PAMS series package, station personnel would select their favorites, then compose some lyrics to customize the jingle for local station identity. They sent their input to PAMS where the customized vocals would be sung over the original musical backgrounds and then the final product was returned to the station on reel-to-reel tape.
But in the 1960’s, technology changed when cartridge tape players became available, playing short recordings on a loop of tape, that always stopped at the right place to be played again. The ‘Fidelipac’ cartridge was first developed in 1954 by inventor George Eash, and tape players that could play those cartridges were first introduced commercially by Collins Radio Co. at the 1959 NAB convention. Other competitors quickly followed, such as the now infamous Spotmaster. Carts (as they were familiarly called) were much easier for stations to use, since reel-to-reel tapes no longer had to be loaded and cued up, and that made the concept of ‘self-op’ possible, which also saved radio stations a lot of expense. So as cart machines began to proliferate in the early 1960’s, PAMS’ jingles caught on like wild fire and stations across the United States jumped on the opportunity for this exciting, new approach to branding.
And with more and more stations switching to the Top 40 format in the late 50’s and early 60’s, demand for Bill Meek’s radio branding jingles increased so much that by 1964, station jingles had become PAMS’ primary business, overtaking that of commercials.
Here’s an example of a jingle for KLIF 1190 from PAMS series 17 in 1961:
and here are a couple from PAMS series 27 in 1963:
And if you didn’t grow up in Dallas, I’m sure you can replace those call letters in your mind with whatever station WAS using PAMS jingles in the town where you lived!
Well, when we continue the ‘History of Radio Jingles’ in two weeks’ time, we’ll look at how the business developed, and in particular how jingle packages were used overseas in the 1960’s and 70’s by the European offshore stations, by the BBC, by Radio Luxembourg, and many others.
For now, back to you, Jeff.
