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Radio Jingles
By Ken R.
At age 51, I’m a bit too young to remember hearing Amos and Andy on the radio, but I certainly am old enough to remember hearing NBC’s weekend programming, known as “Monitor.” As I sat in the back seat of my father’s Buick watching the Chicago skyline go by, I was intrigued by the interesting electronic sound “beacon” they used each hour and the wonderful jingles, too. The local NBC station was WMAQ(AM) at that time.
In 1960, another Chicago powerhouse, WLS(AM) began to present a brighter sound aimed at teenagers. Anita Kerr produced the first set of jingles, as I discovered many years later. These cuts had a special warmth that was very memorable as they sang “the station with personality… WLS.”
In 1962 my family moved to Toledo, Ohio. As we drove across the country on a vacation in 1965, it dawned on me that stations in many markets aired the same jingles… but with different call letters. For example, WEAM(AM), Washington and WABC(AM), New York both used jingles with the phrase “radio a go go.” So did WOHO(AM), in our home town. This was really interesting. After placing a call to our local station and getting switched from person to person for a while, someone told me the jingles were made by a company called PAMS of Dallas.
The next few calls I made started me on a life-long love affair with jingles. I persuaded someone at PAMS to send me a few demo reels called “Sonosational,” “The Jet Set” and “Radio a Go Go,” and I was absolutely hooked forever.
The first ID jingle was probably 1948 for WWSW Pittsburgh, done by Siday/Johnson. Tom Merriman and Bill Meeks were both starting to write station IDs about that time as well in Dallas.
Bill Meeks first began creating radio jingles in 1947, while working for Gordon McLendon at KLIF in Dallas. He founded PAMS as an advertising agency in 1951. It was not intended to be just a "jingle company", but an advertising and marketing company. One of the "products" that needed promotional help at that time was radio. So PAMS created a series of singing jingles that could be customized for different stations. At first stations were reluctant to spend money on such an extravagance, so many early packages were sold on a barter basis. PAMS would provide jingles to a station in return for commercial air time. The time was then sold to PAMS ad agency clients.
Other classic jingles were done by Johnny Mann, Pepper-Tanner, JAM, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx.
In 1980, after the original PAMS had been out of business a couple of years, I purchased all their tapes which had been seized by the IRS for failure to pay withholding tax. Included were about 5500 reels of station jingle package masters and hundreds of multi-track tapes that represented the master instrumentals used to produce the jingles. I had no idea that within a few years and after obtaining appropriate copyright permission, my recording studio would be re-singing those original jingles for oldies stations around the world.
In 1996 we began to put some of the original classic PAMS jingles from the 1960s and early 1970s on CD on a trial basis and the response from my friends was phenomenal. I had thought there might be a dozen or so people around the world who would be interested in them, but I was very wrong. Our client database now numbers almost 900 jingle fans in places like England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Japan and even Australia!
Writing “The Jingle Book” was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. I had been a writer for Radio World for several years, but this was my first book. It was self-published and we broke even on our expenses within one week of announcing its availability.
I have no idea why I love radio ID jingles, but I do.
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Here are some fun
facts, excerpted from “The Jingle Book.”
¨The famous “93 KHJ” a capella jingles recorded by Johnny Mann in 1965 were produced without instruments …only because the Los Angeles musicians union was on strike that week. What started out as an accident (a capella jingles) started a huge trend in top-40 radio.
¨One of the first jingles was recorded in 1938. It was “Pepsi Cola hits the spot, 12 full ounces, that’s a lot. Twice as much for a nickel, too… Pepsi Cola is the drink for you.” It was written by Eric Siday who was paid $500 for his efforts.
¨Anita Kerr and her various vocal groups sang jingles for WLS(AM), KMPC(AM), KQV(AM) and many others. But did you know her singers also sang back up on “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Big Bad John,” and “Forever?”
¨Bill Meeks, president of PAMS was once almost locked out of his suite at an NAB show in Las Vegas because he ran out of money. He promptly took several hundred dollars, went downstairs to the casino and won $10,000 which was more than enough to pay the bill.
¨Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, got her start at WING(AM) radio in Dayton where she failed at several jobs. Her mentor when she later moved to Hollywood was Dawes Butler, the voice of Huckleberry Hound.
Ken R is the Master Jingle Man at PAMS.