The Jingle Jangle

When the band struck up the jazz classic Muskrat Ramble over Los Angeles' KTTV, Lyricist Ray Gilbert winced to hear his own words replaced by others: "You're gonna love this coffee, man oh man ..." Last week Gilbert sued for $300,000 from the sponsor (Hills Brothers Coffee), the ad agency (N. W. Ayer), and his own music publisher (George Simon), who explained that he had sold the singing-commercial rights to the music --minus the lyrics--for $500. Gilbert charged that the jingle had injured his reputation "by reducing him in the eyes of the music profession, publishers and the public to the level of a jingle writer."

But for all Gilbert's distress, the lowly singing commercial--once denounced by Herbert Hoover, and banned from the air "in the public interest" by Detroit's WWF --now commands the talents of bigger names than his. Last month Frank (Guys and Dolls) Loesser entered the jingle-writing lists with a new firm, Frank Productions Inc., which boasts a creative stable dwarfing the credits of any Broadway musical: Hoagy (Stardust) Carmichael, Vernon (April in Paris) Duke, Harold (Fanny) Rome and, for lyrics alone, Ogden Nash. On his heels came Raymond Scott, composer of Lucky Strike's Be Happy, Go Lucky, who announced that he was forming "The Jingle Workshop" to concentrate on musical plugs.

"Native Art Form." The little jingle is now bigtime. Admen long ago realized that not since Young crossed the Rubicam has advertising found a more hypnotic pitch. In the 18 years since Pepsi-Cola hit the spot with a jazzy version of the English ballad John Peel, the singing commercial has become as entrenched in U.S. culture as the madrigal in the Italian Renaissance. Says Scott: "There's a definite challenge to writing jingles. To me, they've become as much a part of the American scene as any native art form." Says Columbia Records' spade-bearded Arranger-Producer Mitch Miller, who has plunged enthusiastically into the new art: "I remember asking Rodgers and Hammerstein how they decided what to put to music, and what to leave to dialogue. They replied that they used music only when it became impossible to convey an' emotional feeling by words alone. The same should apply to commercial musical spots."

The simplest way for an advertiser to get music for his commercials is to take it free from the public domain, e.g., Rheingold Beer's current use of the Banana Boat Song. The sponsor may also buy commercial rights to hit melodies. The fees run into thousands of dollars in the case of composers such as Cole Porter, who leased his It's De-Lovely to De Soto. At first, songwriters resisted this practice, but now many of them welcome it. They not only share the fees with their publishers, but they get regular ASCAP or

BMI royalties for each performance of the commercial.

Reversing the Trend. Even better, some songwriters claim that the use of their tunes in commercials helps to sell the original song as well as the sponsor's product. For NBC's Ford Show singing commercials, the J. Walter Thompson ad agency consults experts for early spotting of songs that promise to be hits, so the commercials can "ride" them on the way up. Before his latest venture began, Composer Loesser contracted to give White Owl Cigars the title song of his Most Happy Fella for a filmed commercial, with the six principals of the Broadway show's cast. The result sold not only White Owls but tickets to the show.

The bulk of singing commercials are manufactured complete by specialists. The biggest ad agencies turn out their own, e.g., Young & Rubicam keeps a full-time staff of a dozen jinglesmiths. Smaller agencies get their stuff from such jingle firms as Manhattan's Scott-Textor Productions, which has sung the praises of virtually everything from the U.S. Air Force ("They took the blue from the skies/And a pretty girl's eyes") to toilet paper ("Don't you wish you/Had new Scott Tish-yew?"). For a network singing commercial, including musical arrangements, casting and production supervision, Scott-Textor gets $2,000, turns out numbers that would sound plausible in a Hollywood musical.

When a jinglemaker tires of his art--as millions of his listeners often do--he can still dream of other rewards. Some commercial tunes, e.g., Chiquita Banana, have sung their own glories so well that their composers have been able to reverse the trend and get them published as regular songs. Jingles can even make a star. Vocalist Peggy King was an unknown in the jingle jungle when Mitch Miller signed her for Columbia Records. What impressed him was her rendition of a spot for Hunt's Tomato Sauce.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.