NOTES

Introduction

1. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003); Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); and Charles F. McGovern, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). For more general and/or theoretical discussions, see, among many others, Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Martyn J. Lee, Consumer Culture Reborn: The Cultural Politics of Consumption (New York: Routledge, 1993); Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), and Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand Management (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1991); and Don Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity (Malden, MA: Polity, 1997).

2. Karl Hagstrom Miller, Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); and David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

3. Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976); Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994); and Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). A single exception is Lawrence R. Samuel, Brought to You By: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001).

4. See Robert Goldman, Reading Ads Socially (New York: Routledge, 1992); Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising (New York: Guilford, 1996); Sut Jhally, The Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and the Political Economy of Meaning in the Consumer Society (New York: Routledge, 1990); and Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (New York: Marion Boyars, 1978).

5. For useful treatments of Sombart, see Arjun Appadurai’s introduction to The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

Much has been made of the disagreements between Sombart and Max Weber, but their foci were quite different, Weber’s on the religious ideologies of a small but ultimately influential group of religious zealots; and Sombart’s on the consumption of luxury goods by the wealthy, a practice that came to shape the development of modern capitalism in Europe in his estimation. Sombart was careful not to claim simply that it was consumption of luxury goods alone that explains the rise of capitalism, but that there were various causes. This argument wasn’t necessarily incompatible with Weber’s; he notes, for example, “In the management of personal affairs haute finance is just as remote from the penny-pinching shopkeeper as is the feudal aristocracy. The notion of thrift is as little known to the one as to the other. The lower-middle-class views, which later spread to all ranks of the middle class, are foreign to the wealthy strata of the capitalist era, that is to say, at least to those strata which accounted for luxury consumption in those days.” Werner Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, trans. W. R. Dittmar (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 87. More generally, he argues, “Development never takes an absolutely linear course, not even within one and the same cultural circle, for now and then the direction is diverted by countertendencies” (ibid., 43).

6. For a useful treatment of the origins of capitalism, see Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origins of Capitalism: A Longer View (New York: Verso, 2002).

7. Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (New York: Norton, 2010), 222.

8. George Lipsitz, “Consumer Spending as State Project: Yesterday’s Solutions and Today’s Problems,” in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 142.

9. For a useful and representative collection of Adorno’s writings on music, see Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

10. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

11. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990).

12. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

13. Excluding my own contributions, the published literature consists of David Allan, “An Essay on Popular Music in Advertising: The Bankruptcy of Culture or the Marriage of Art and Commerce?,” Advertising and Society Review 6 (2005), http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr; Nicholas Cook, “Music and Meaning in the Commercials,” Popular Music 13 (1994): 27–40; David Huron, “Music in Advertising: An Analytic Paradigm” Musical Quarterly 73 (1989): 557–74; Bethany Klein, As Heard on TV: Popular Music in Advertising (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009); Ronald Rodman, “And Now an Ideology from Our Sponsor: Musical Style and Semiosis in American Television Commercials,” College Music Symposium 37 (1997): 21–48; Linda M. Scott, “Understanding Jingles and Needledrop: A Rhetorical Approach to Music in Advertising,” Journal of Consumer Research 17 (1990): 223–36; and Anna Lisa Tota, “ ‘When Orff Meets Guinness’: Music in Advertising as a Form of Cultural Hybrid,” Poetics 29 (2001): 109–23.

14. Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

15. See Alexander Russo, Points on the Dial: Golden Age Radio beyond the Networks (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). For writings on the South, see Pat Ahrens, “The Role of the Crazy Water Crystals Company in Promoting Hillbilly Music,” JEMF Quarterly 6 (Autumn 1970): 107–8; Chad Berry, ed., The Hayloft Gang: The Story of the National Barn Dance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008); Pamela Grundy, “From Il Trovatore to the Crazy Mountaineers: The Rise and Fall of Elevated Culture on WBT-Charlotte, 1922–1930,” Southern Cultures 1 (Fall 1994): 51–73, and “ ‘We Always Tried to Be Good People’: Respectability, Crazy Water Crystals, and Hillbilly Music on the Air, 1933–1935,” Journal of American History 81 (March 1995): 1591–1620; Craig Havighurst, Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); Tracy E. W. Laird, Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots Music along the Red River (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Bill C. Malone, “Radio and Personal Appearances: Sources and Resources,” Western Folklore 30 (July 1971): 215–25; Kristine M. McCusker, “ ‘Dear Radio Friend’: Listener Mail and the National Barn Dance, 1931–1941,” American Studies 39 (Summer 1998): 173–95; Timothy A. Patterson, “Hillbilly Music among the Flatlanders: Early Midwestern Radio and Barn Dances,” Journal of Country Music 6 (Spring 1975): 12–18; Richard A. Peterson and Paul DiMaggio, “The Early Opry: Its Hillbilly Image in Fact and Fancy,” Journal of Country Music 4 (Summer 1973): 39–51; Ivan M. Tribe, “The Economics of Hillbilly Radio: A Preliminary Investigation of the ‘P.I.’ System in the Depression Decade and Afterward,” JEMF Quarterly 20 (1984): 76–83; and Daniel W. Wayne, “The National Barn Dance on Network Radio: The 1930s,” Journal of Country Music 9 (1983): 47–62.

Chapter 1

1. For a treatment of this earlier period, see Timothy D. Taylor, introduction to “Radio,” in Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of Early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio, ed. Timothy D. Taylor, Mark Katz, and Tony Grajeda (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).

2. Joan Shelley Rubin, The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 24.

3. Norman J. Ware, Labor in Modern Industrial Society (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1935), 101.

4. See Martha L. Olney, Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). See also Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1929), for an ethnographic study of the changes in consumption patterns in the 1920s.

5. Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 29. See also William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1993).

6. See Stewart Ewen, All-Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York: Basic, 1988); and Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), ch. 5.

7. See Neil Harris, “The Drama of Consumer Desire,” in Yankee Enterprise, ed. Otto Mayr and Robert C. Post (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1981).

8. Leach, Land of Desire, 372.

9. Herbert Hoover, “Advertising Is a Vital Force in Our National Life,” Advertising World, August 1925, 77.

10. Quoted by Daniel Horowitz, Morality of Spending: Attitudes toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1985), 137.

11. Edward A. Filene, Successful Living in This Machine Age (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1932), 1; emphases in original.

12. “Messenger to the King,” Collier’s, 3 May 1930, 78, quoted by Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994), 229. The “king is the people” metaphor seems to have been common; Roland Marchand calls it the “parable of the democracy of goods” (Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 217–22) and elsewhere quotes a document from Barton, Durstine and Osborne in the early 1920s that employs much the same language (ibid., 31).

13. Lears, Fables of Abundance, 205.

14. “Senator Borah on Marketing” (editorial), Printers’ Ink, 2 August 1923, 152.

15. Leverett S. Lyon, “Advertising,” The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 1 (1922), 475, quoted by Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), 57.

16. George Harrison Phelps, Tomorrow’s Advertisers and Their Advertising Agencies (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1929), 251, quoting Robert Updegraff in Advertising and Selling.

17. Herbert W. Hess, “History and Present Status of the ‘Truth-in-Advertising’ Movement as Carried on by the Vigilance Committee of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 101 (May 1922): 211.

18. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 90.

19. A 1931 study for the Columbia Broadcasting System focused on toothpastes, shaving creams, soaps, cigars, and cigarettes; the dominance of personal hygiene goods is telling. Robert F. Elder, Does Radio Sell Goods? ([New York]: Columbia Broadcasting System, 1931). The Variety Radio Directory compiled figures from 1936 by type of business, revealing that after “Foodstuffs” and “Miscellaneous,” the next two categories were “Toilet goods” and “Drugs and pharmaceuticals.” “Broadcast Advertising by Type of Sponsoring Business (1936),” Variety Radio Directory, 1937–1938 [n.p.: Variety, 1937], 689.

20. See Edwin L. Dunham, Lecture 11, Library of American Broadcasting, Hedges Collection 10: Music in Broadcasting (A–F), box 1, file 21; see also Leon Lichtenfeld, interview by Layne R. Beaty, 29 May 1988, Library of American Broadcasting, Transcripts AT 1336, University of Maryland, College Park.

21. Ray Perkins, interview by Ed Dunham, 3 December 1965, Library of American Broadcasting, Transcripts AT 36, University of Maryland, College Park.

22. For a discussion of the efforts to inform the public about radio, see Timothy D. Taylor, “Music and the Rise of Radio in Twenties America: Technological Imperialism, Socialization, and the Transformation of Intimacy,” in Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technology in Sonic Cultures, ed. Paul Greene and Thomas Porcello (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004).

23. Raymond Francis Yates, “What Is Wrong with Radio?,” Nation’s Business, quoted in “The Radio Business,” Literary Digest, 5 May 1923, 28.

24. M. H. Aylesworth, “Radio’s Accomplishment,” Century Magazine, June 1929, 219.

25. National Broadcasting Company, Broadcast Advertising, vol. 1, A Study of the Radio Medium—the Fourth Dimension of Advertising (New York: National Broadcasting Company, 1929), 25. For more on the rise of psychological techniques used in advertising in this period, see Gillian Dyer, Advertising as Communication (New York: Methuen, 1982); and T. J. Jackson Lears, “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880–1930,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon, 1982).

26. Edith Lewis, “The Emotional Quality in Advertisements,” J. Walter Thompson News Bulletin, April 1923, 11–14, quoted by Lears, Fables of Abundance, 227.

27. See, for example, National Broadcasting Company, Musical Leadership Maintained by NBC (New York: National Broadcasting Company, 1938).

28. Quoted by Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 26; emphasis Barnouw’s.

29. Letter to Philip Kobbé Company Inc., 17 February 1925, National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 3, folder 124, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

30. J. Walter Thompson Company Staff Meeting Minutes, box 1, folder 5, 11 July 1928, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

31. Gerard Chatfield, “Advertising Agency Should Recognize and Use Radio,” J. Walter Thompson Company, News Letter, vol. 10, no. 8, 15 September 1928, p. 1, Newsletter Collection, Main Newsletter, box A, J. Walter Thompson collection, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

32. Letter from George W. Hill to Merlin H. Aylesworth, 1928, Library of American Broadcasting, Hedges Collection 315, Client Testimonials (A–M), University of Maryland, College Park. Hill was the model for the authoritarian and intimidating Evan Llewellyn Evans in Frederic E. Wakeman’s best-selling novel on the advertising industry, The Hucksters (New York: Rinehart, 1946). For more on Hill, see Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

33. An example is Dr. Strasska’s Toothpaste, which sponsored a program in Cleveland featuring a Mr. [Charles W.] Hamp, “who sang, played instruments, cracked jokes and otherwise stirred up the air for twelve weeks during the dinner hour,” every day. Joslyn and John Reber, who was soon to replace Joslyn as head of the radio department, both agreed that the show was terrible and that Hamp “has no particular form or class.” But then, this ultimately did not matter because “the people who buy toothpaste like it.” The radio show, combined with a program in some department stores that gave away free samples of the then-unknown toothpaste, resulted in 8,412 requests for samples; local stores sold 47,500 tubes. J. Walter Thompson Company Staff Meeting Minutes, box 1, folder 7, 3 April 1929, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

34. Improving the Smiles of a Nation! How Broadcast Advertising Has Worked for the Makers of Ipana Tooth Paste (New York: National Broadcasting Company, 1928). Merchandising was an important consideration for sponsors; in 1929, NBC produced a booklet for potential advertisers. The first volume was all about broadcasting and programs. In 1930, a second volume appeared: Broadcast Advertising, vol. 2, Merchandising (New York: National Broadcasting Company, 1930). This booklet contained many more merchandising ideas than NBC promoted in its Ipana Troubadours pamphlet, including program theme song sheet music, a personal budget book, pamphlets about programs, and more.

35. “I Believe in Broadcast Merchandising,” Broadcast Merchandising, August 1933, 13.

36. Francis Chase Jr., Sound and Fury: An Informal History of Broadcasting (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942), 24.

37. Douglas Duff Connah, How to Build the Radio Audience (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1938), 192.

38. National Broadcasting Company, Broadcast Merchandising: Reprints from August 1933 to August 1936 (New York: National Broadcasting Company, n.d.), 3.

39. See Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994).

40. Quoted by Carrie McLaren and Rick Prelinger, “Salesnoise: The Convergence of Music and Advertising,” Stay Free!, Fall 1998, last accessed 11 August 2010, http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/15/timeline.html.

41. Alice Goldfarb Marquis, “Written on the Wind: The Impact of Radio during the 1930s,” Journal of Contemporary History 19 (1984): 387.

42. M. H. Aylesworth, “Forces That Push Radio Forward,” New York Times, 22 September 1929, §12, p. 8.

43. Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., Advertising by Radio (New York: Ronald Press, 1929), 94.

44. Carl Dreher, “As the Broadcaster Sees It,” Radio Broadcast, July 1928, 161. The Four Indian Love Lyrics are by Amy Woodforde-Finden (1860–1919), an American known for composing exoticist songs who was married to a British soldier in India.

45. Dunlap, Advertising by Radio, 90–91.

46. “Radio’s Magic Carpet; Extensive Printed Advertising Reinforces Broadcast Campaign,” Broadcast Advertising, July 1929, 26. Most of the music played was the familiar panoply of light classics, though the program’s theme was entitled “The Call of the Desert” (composed, I believe, by Howard Coates).

47. George C. Biggar, “Broadcasting Barn Warmings Boosts Jamesway Barn Equipment,” Broadcast Advertising, July 1930, 12.

48. Henry Volkening, “Abuses of Radio Broadcasting,” Current History 33 (December 1930): 397.

49. V. M. Wallace, “Mexican Orchestra Plays 432 Weeks for Chili Account,” Broadcasting, 15 April 1934, 16.

50. P. H. Pumphrey, “Writing, Casting and Producing the Radio Program,” Broadcast Advertising, August 1931, 17, 42. Such a practice denied many musicians the opportunity to perform under their own names, however, and their careers suffered as audiences struggled to keep up with musicians who changed jobs, and thus names. For example, one of the most popular acts in early radio was a singing duo of Billy Jones and Ernest Hare, first known as the Happiness Boys for the Happiness Candy Company, later known as the Interwoven Pair when they sang for the Interwoven Socks Company. See “Branded Men and Women: Pioneers Who Paved the Way and Paid with Personal Oblivion,” Radio Guide, 3 March 1932, 1, 13; “Problem for the Industry: Swapping of Talent by Sponsors Causes Confusion,” Newsweek, 19 September 1939, 22; and Susan Smulyan, “Branded Performers: Radio’s Early Stars,” Timeline3 (1986–87): 32–41. Also, broadcasters had an interest in keeping former names before the public, but this clashed with advertisers’ desires; an internal memo at NBC from 18 February 1932 said, “In a telephone conversation today with Miss Birney of Benton and Bowles [a major advertising agency] she expressed a desire, on the part of Mr. Benton, that in all of our releases concerning Billy Jones and Ernie Hare we refrain from any mention of their former titles, such as ‘Happiness Boys’ and the ‘Interwoven Pair.’ ” National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 11, folder 19, Jones and Hare (“Happiness Boys”), Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

51. “An Appraisal of Advertising Today,” Fortune, September 1932, 37.

52. “Pepper and Salt,” Wall Street Journal, 9 June 1938, 4.

53. See, for example, Dunlap, Advertising by Radio, 73.

54. Frank A. Arnold, Broadcast Advertising: The Fourth Dimension (New York: Wiley, 1931), 29.

55. Ibid., 30.

56. P. H. Pumphrey, “Choosing the Program Idea,” Broadcast Advertising, July 1931, 40. On the importance of music in early radio broadcasting, see also George Burton Hotchkiss, An Outline of Radio Advertising: Its Philosophy, Science, Art, and Strategy (New York: Macmillan, 1935).

57. J. Walter Thompson Company Staff Meeting Minutes, box 1, folder 7, 3 April 1929, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

58. Edgar H. Felix, Using Radio in Sales Promotion: A Book for Advertisers, Station Managers and Broadcasting Artists (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1927), 134. There was a public discussion of how radio was changing tastes, with the terms highbrow, lowbrow, and even middlebrow being bandied about with some frequency. See “Are You a ‘Middlebrow’?,” Popular Radio, June 1923, 619; Mary Jordan, “Radio Has Made ‘High-Brow’ Music Popular,” Radio News, February 1928, 884, 932, 934; “Mr. Average Fan Confesses That He Is a ‘Low Brow,’ ” Radio Revue, December 1929, 30–32; “Mr. Fussy Fan Admits That He Is a ‘High-Brow,’ ” Radio Revue, January 1930, 16–18, 46; and William D. Murphy, “High Hats for Low Brows,” Printers’ Ink, 8 February 1934, 61–62.

59. Jarvis Wren, “The Musical vs. Dramatic Radio Program,” Advertising and Selling, 6 August 1930, 27, 46.

60. Russell Byron Williams, “This Product Takes That Program,” Broadcast Advertising, May 1931, 10–11.

61. Radio Advertising Rates and Data, Standard Rate and Data Service, December 1936, quoted by Neil H. Borden, Problems in Advertising (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937), 642.

62. For more on the legitimation of advertising, see Marchand, Advertising the American Dream. On the question of uplifting the taste of the nation, it is interesting to note that landmark classical broadcasts were repeatedly reported as news and editorialized about in the New York Times and other papers. And there were many published arguments about radio uplifting tastes. For just a few, see John C. Freund, “Excerpts from an Address Broadcasted from WJZ,” Wireless Age, May 1922, 36; Lee de Forest, “Opera Audiences of To-Morrow,” Radio World, 5 August 1922, 13; “Radio Fan Goes to See Opera after Broadcast,” Radio World, 14 April 1923, 29; C. M. Tremaine, “Radio, the Musical Educator,” Wireless Age, September 1923, 39–40; “Radio Cultivates Taste for Better Music,” Radio World, 19 July 1924, 24; Charles Orchard Jr., “Is Radio Making America Musical?” Radio Broadcast, October 1924, 454–55; John Wallace, “The Listeners’ Point of View,” Radio Broadcast, April 1926, 667–68; Jordan, “Radio Has Made ‘High-Brow’ Music Popular”; Paul Kempf, “What Radio Is Doing to Our Music,” Musician, June 1929, 17–18; Walter Damrosch, “Music and the Radio,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 177 (January 1935): 91–93; Howard Hanson, “Music Everywhere: What the Radio Is Doing for Musical America,” Etude, February 1935, 84, 118; and Peter W. Dykema and Karl W. Gehrkens, “Radio as a Potential Force in Music Education,” in The Teaching and Administration of High School Music (Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1941). For a thoughtful, less boosterish consideration of the subject, see Robert A. Simon, “Giving Music the Air,” Bookman 64 (1926): 596–99. For interesting discussions of a “lowbrow” product attempting to sponsor “highbrow” music, see Frank Finney, “Grand Opera, Symphonies and Cigarettes,” Printers’ Ink, 25 January 1934, 13–16; Allan P. Ames, “In Defense of Mr. Hill,” Printers’ Ink, 1 February 1934, 53–56; and Murphy, “High Hats for Low Brows.” For a scholarly treatment of the larger notion of taste and civilization in the face of mass culture, see Warren I. Susman, “Culture and Civilization: The Nineteen-Twenties,” in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984).

63. P. H. Pumphrey writes, “In the current state of collected data on this subject [of type of music used in programs], the choice of music is really more likely to depend on the musical taste of the advertisers’ president, chairman of the board, sales manager, advertising manager, and others who make up the committee on strategy” (Pumphrey, “Choosing the Program Idea,” 40). Alice Goldfarb Marquis writes that the music played by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians was selected by the wife of the advertising manager for General Cigar Company. Marquis, “Written on the Wind,” 392, citing Carroll Carroll, None of Your Business: Or My Life with J. Walter Thompson (Confessions of a Radio Writer) (New York: Cowles Book Company, 1970), ix.

64. Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination . . . from Amos ’n’ Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern (New York: Times Books, 1999); and Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).

65. See Frederick H. Lumley, Measurement in Radio (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1934), 27–29, for a discussion of the flaws of many surveys of radio audiences; his hypothetical example is of a musical case.

66. Alfred P. Sloan, letter to M. H. Aylesworth, 2 January 1935, National Broadcasting Company Archives, General Motors–1935, box 37, folder 7, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

67. Alfred P. Sloan, letter to M. H. Aylesworth, 10 January 1935, National Broadcasting Company Archives, General Motors–1935, box 37, folder 7, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison. Thanks are due to Ronald Radano and Scott Carter for acquiring the two Sloan letters for me.

68. “Radio Listeners Vote for Favorite Composers,” Radio News, December 1927, 606. The complete list, in order of popularity, is: Richard Wagner: Overture to Tannhäuser, Franz von Suppé: Poet and Peasant Overture, Franz Schubert: “Marche Militaire,” Ludwig van Beethoven: Fifth Symphony, Franz Schubert: Unfinished Symphony, Charles Gounod: Ballet Music from Faust, Jules Massenet: Meditation from Thaïs, Fritz Kreisler: “Liebesfreud,” Sir Arthur Sullivan: H.M.S. Pinafore, Peter Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker Suite, Rudoph Friml: The Firefly, Peter Tchaikovsky: Symphonie Pathetique, Victor Herbert: “Dagger Dance” from Natoma, Edvard Grieg: “In the Morning,” Carl Maria von Weber: “Invitation to the Dance,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Edwin Poldini: “Poupée Valsante.”

69. Felix, Using Radio in Sales Promotion, 123.

70. Ibid., 123.

71. A 1931 article wrote of a questionnaire sent to radio stations asking for lists of requests and the sentiments expressed in fan mail and concluded much the same. “Jazz Music Is Preferred by Listeners, Stations Report,” Broadcast Advertising, April 1931, 7, 21.

72. M. H. Aylesworth, “Broadcast Advertising,” National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 6, folder 38, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

73. Dunlap, Advertising by Radio, 86.

74. Ibid., 87.

75. Ibid., 90. It is not entirely clear which Maxwell House program Dunlap was referring to, for there were several in the late 1920s.

76. Eldridge Peterson, “Music on Lucky Strike ‘Hit Parade’ Is Part of Advertisement,” Printers’ Ink Monthly, May 1941, 30.

77. Ibid., 44.

78. Sherman G. Landers, “Putting a Cigar on the Air,” Broadcast Advertising, June 1929, 5.

79. Ibid., 6.

80. National Broadcasting Company, Making Pep and Sparkle Typify a Ginger Ale (New York: National Broadcasting Company, 1929), 6.

81. James H. Collins, “Giving Folks What They Want by Radio,” Saturday Evening Post, 17 May 1924, 11.

82. Arnold, Broadcast Advertising, 55.

83. Reser (1896–1965) was a spectacular banjo virtuoso. For a compilation album, see Banjo Crackerjax, 1922–1930, Yazoo 1048, 1992.

84. Dunlap, Advertising by Radio, 88.

85. In the 1950s, the program returned for a time; a recording is available: Harry Reser and the Clicquot Club Eskimos, Bauer Studios 981014, n.d.

86. National Broadcasting Company, Making Pep and Sparkle, 8.

87. Ibid., ii.

88. The last page of the sheet music of Reser’s “Clicquot Fox Trot March” is an advertisement for Paramount banjos and lists the instrumentation of the group: Paramount tenor banjo, two Paramount plectrum banjos, Paramount melody banjo, Paramount B-flat melody banjo, saxophone, piano, tuba, drums, and Paramount tenor harps.

89. National Broadcasting Company, Making Pep and Sparkle, 17.

90. Ibid., 5. The sleigh bells and barking dogs are not represented in the published version of the “Clicquot Club March.”

91. Gerard Chatfield, “Advertising Agency Should Recognize and Use Radio,” J. Walter Thompson Company, News Letter, vol. 10, no. 8, 15 September 1928, p. 1, in the J. Walter Thompson collection, Newsletter Collection, Main Newsletter, box A, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

92. J. Walter Thompson Company Staff Meeting Minutes, box 1, folder 7, 3 April 1929, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC. J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) was the brother of James Weldon Johnson, who had a distinguished career as a composer and performer; Taylor Gordon (1893–1971) was a vaudevillian and singer of spirituals.

93. “Aunt Jemima on the Radio,” J. Walter Thompson Company, News Letter, vol. 10, no. 25, 15 December 1928, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

94. J. Walter Thompson Company Staff Meeting Minutes, 16 April 1930, box 2, folder 3, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

95. This impulse has its roots in print advertising earlier in the twentieth century; see Lears, Fables of Abundance, 291–94.

96. Warren I. Susman, “ ‘Personality’ and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture,” in Culture as History, 277.

97. See Taylor, “Music and the Rise of Radio in Twenties America,” for a discussion of the crowd and radio.

98. Susman, “ ‘Personality,’ ” 280; the Fitzgerald quotation is from The Great Gatsby, p. 2, quoted by Rubin, Making of Middlebrow Culture, 24.

99. David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

100. Dumenil, Modern Temper, 78.

101. Waldemar Kaempffert, “The Social Destiny of Radio,” Forum 71 (June 1924): 769.

102. James C. Young, “Broadcasting Personality,” Radio Broadcast, July 1924, 246. Rothafel’s program was Roxy and His Gang, one of the earliest hit radio programs, a musical variety show broadcast from 1927 to 1931. Later he became known as the guiding hand behind the building of Radio City Music Hall. For a report on fans thronging at a Roxy concert, see Taylor, Katz, and Grajeda, Music, Sound, and Technology in America. For studies of Rothafel, see Ross Melnick, “Rethinking Rothafel: Roxy’s Forgotten Legacy,” Moving Image 3 (2003): 62–95, and “Station R-O-X-Y: Roxy and the Radio,” Film History: An International Journal 17 (2006): 217–33, and “Roxy and His Gang: Silent Film Exhibition and the Birth of Media Convergence,” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2009.

103. Olive Palmer, “Requirements of the Radio Singer,” Etude, December 1931, 849.

104. Roy Durstine, “We’re on the Air,” Scribner’s Magazine, May 1928, 631.

105. William B. Benton, “Building a Program to Get an Audience,” address before the annual meeting of the Association of National Advertisers Inc., White Sulphur Springs, WV, 6–8 May 1935; Library of American Broadcasting, Hedges Collection, 22, Advertising Agencies’ Part in Broadcasting’s Growth (A–Q), box 4, file 6, p. 10, University of Maryland, College Park.

106. “Radio Rays,” J. Walter Thompson Company newsletter no. 1 (1 January 1928), 20–21, quoted by Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 139.

107. Found in the Archive of the National Broadcasting Company, box 2, folder 82, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison. This form is reprinted in Taylor, Katz, and Grajeda, Music, Sound, and Technology in America.

108. National Broadcasting Company, Broadcast Advertising, 1:31.

109. National Broadcasting Company, Making Pep and Sparkle, 24.

110. Ibid., 5.

111. National Broadcasting Company, Improving the Smiles of a Nation!, 24; emphasis in original.

112. For a discussion of music and personality in the television era, see “Successful Commercial Jingles Sell by Expressing a Product’s Personality,” Printers’ Ink, 28 March 1958, 36–37.

Chapter 2

1. National Broadcasting Company, Making Pep and Sparkle Typify a Ginger Ale (New York: National Broadcasting Company, 1929), 6.

2. Such as Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination . . . from Amos ’n’ Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern (New York: Times Books, 1999).

3. Quoted by T. J. Jackson Lears, “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880–1930,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon, 1982), 8; emphasis in original.

4. Orange Edward McMeans, “The Great Audience Invisible,” Scribner’s Magazine, April 1923, 416.

5. Ibid., 411.

6. Roy Durstine, “We’re on the Air,” Scribner’s Magazine, May 1928, 625.

7. M. H. Aylesworth, “Radio’s Accomplishment,” Century Magazine, June 1929, 216.

8. “The March of Radio: What Radio Broadcast Is Trying to Do,” Radio Broadcast, May 1923, 12.

9. See also Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994), 230–31.

10. “American Man-in-the-Street” (editorial), Fortune, December 1942, 142.

11. Some companies gave away massive amounts of free products; the George Ziegler Company gave away twenty-seven tons of candy in five weeks in 1930, for example. See “Musical Contest Program Sells 27 Tons of Candy in Five Weeks,” Broadcast Advertising, October 1930, 12, 300.

12. Chet Crank, “Gilmore Radio Circus Boosts Gasoline Sales 9500% in Three Years,” Broadcast Advertising, February 1931, 12.

13. Letter from E. P. H. James to Harcourt Parrish, 13 July 1931, National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 4, folder 17, p. 2, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

14. Roy Durstine, “Audible Advertising,” in Radio and Its Future, ed. Martin Codel (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1930), 54.

15. Frederick H. Lumley, Measurement in Radio (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1934), 50–51.

16. Letter from James to Parrish, 2.

17. Ibid., 4.

18. Martin L. Davey, “Secrets of a Successful Radio Program,” Broadcasting, 1 July 1932, 9.

19. Ibid., 9. The broadcast scripts reveal that the music wasn’t all that highbrow, though much of it was played by well-known organist Chandler Goldthwaite; other selections were sung by the “Davey Male Quartet” or some other pickup ensemble. Selections from the program broadcast 5 January 1930, for example, include the program’s theme song, “Just a Song at Twilight”; “Anitra’s Dance,” attributed to Edvard Grieg; “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”; “Jingle Bells”; “Rosary” by Ethelbert Nevin; Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesfreud”; “Annie Laurie” by Lady John Scott; “Soldier’s Chorus” from Charles Gounod’s Faust; “When You and I Were Young, Maggie”; and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again”; concluding with “Auld Lang Syne.” J. Walter Thompson Company, As Broadcast Scripts, reel 10, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

20. J. Walter Thompson Company Staff Meeting Minutes, 14 January 1930, box 2, folder 3, p. 7, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

21. Davey, “Secrets,” 9.

22. Whatever the makeup of the audience, however, sales improved with this program. In April 1930, John Reber reported that sales for February 1930 (the month after advertising began) were double the previous February’s; March sales were double the previous March’s. Reber claimed that Davey had never had an increase of more than 15 percent. J. Walter Thompson Company, Staff Meeting Minutes, 16 April 1930, box 2, folder 3, p. 5, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC. Orrin E. Dunlap Jr. says that sales increased by 20 percent during the first four months of advertising, which, he says, provides evidence that “jazz and ultra-modern melody” are not necessarily “essential elements” of a radio program. Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., Radio in Advertising (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931), 143. For more on this program, see Timothy D. Taylor, Mark Katz, and Anthony Grajeda, eds., Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of Early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).

23. Davey, “Secrets,” 9.

24. Merrill Denison, “Why Isn’t Radio Better?” Harper’s Magazine, February 1934, 580.

25. “Fan Mail: Letters Are More Bread and Butter to Stars of Microphone,” Literary Digest, 22 May 1937, 21.

26. See “What the Public Likes in Broadcasting Programs Partly Shown by Letters,” Radio World, 21 July 1923, 11; James L. Palmer, “Radio Advertising,” Journal of Business of the University of Chicago 1 (October 1928): 495–96; E. F. McDonald, “What We Think the Public Wants,” Radio Broadcast, March 1924, 382–84; “Replies to WJZ Questionnaire on Listeners’ Tastes Show Classical Music More Popular Than Jazz,” New York Times, 21 February 1926, § 8, p. 17; Herman S. Hettinger, A Decade of Radio Advertising (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933). See also Affie Hammond, “Listeners’ Survey of Radio,” Radio News, December 1932, 331–33; and “Favorite Musical Numbers of the Farm Audience,” Broadcast Advertising, June 1929, 25–27.

27. See Douglas’s chapter “The Invention of the Audience,” in Listening In; and Charles Henry Stamps, The Concept of the Mass Audience in American Broadcasting: An Historical-Descriptive Study (1957; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1979).

28. McDonald, “What We Think the Public Wants,” 383.

29. Daniel Starch, “A Study of Radio Broadcasting Based Exclusively on Personal Interviews with Families in the United States East of the Rocky Mountains” (unpublished manuscript commissioned by NBC, 1928), 24. See also “Sizing Up the Radio Audience,” Literary Digest, 19 January 1928, 55.

30. Edgar A. Grunwald, “Program-Production History, 1929–1937,” in Variety Radio Directory, 1937–1938 (n.p.: Variety, 1937), 19.

31. P. H. Pumphrey, “Choosing the Program Idea,” Broadcast Advertising, July 1931, 40. Pumphrey credits the tables in his article to Herman Hettinger without a citation, but they are clearly from Herman S. Hettinger and Richard R. Mead, The Summer Radio Audience: A Study of the Habits and Preferences of Summer Radio Audiences in Philadelphia and Vicinity (Philadelphia: Universal Broadcasting Company, 1931). Inexplicably, however, Pumphrey’s figures are, without exception, different from Hettinger’s, even though all of the horizontal and vertical labels are the same.

32. Hettinger and Mead, Summer Radio Audience, 32.

33. Pumphrey, “Choosing the Program Idea,” 40.

34. Ibid.

35. Ralph M. Hower, The History of an Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer & Son at Work, 1869–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 153.

36. For more on market segmentation in this era, see Jason Chambers, Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African Americans in the Advertising Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Charles F. McGovern, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Richard Ohmann, Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century (New York: Verso, 1996); and Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

37. “Boston Survey Shows It’s the Program Not the Station That Gets the Listeners,” Broadcast Advertising, June 1930, 9.

38. “An Appraisal of Advertising Today,” Fortune, September 1932, 37.

39. The audience-as-commodity idea is known as the “blind spot” debate in Marxist theories of communication, first forwarded by Dallas W. Smythe in Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987), 27; see Dallas W. Smythe, “Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 1 (Fall 1977): 1–27, for his first treatment of this idea. A lively dialogue ensued after the publication of Smythe’s article. See Graham Murdock, “Blindspots about Western Marxism: A Reply to Dallas Smythe,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 2 (Spring–Summer 1978): 109–19; Bill Livant, “The Audience Commodity: On the ‘Blindspot’ Debate,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 3 (Winter 1979): 91–106; Dallas Smythe, “Rejoinder to Graham Murdock,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 2 (Spring– Summer 1978): 120–27; and Sut Jhally, “Probing the Blindspot: The Audience Commodity,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 6 (Spring 1982): 204–10.

For a thoroughgoing exploration of the notion of the audience as commodity, see Sut Jhally, The Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and the Political Economy of Meaning in the Consumer Society (New York: Routledge, 1990). See also Ien Ang, Desperately Seeking the Audience (New York: Routledge, 1991); Kathy M. Newman, Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935–1947 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); and James G. Webster and Patricia F. Phalen, “Victim, Consumer, or Commodity? Audience Models in Communication Policy,” in Audiencemaking: How the Media Create the Audience, ed. James S. Ettema and D. Charles Whitney (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994).

40. William S. Paley, Radio as a Cultural Force (n.p., 1934), 5.

41. Durstine, “Audible Advertising,” 51.

42. William Paley, As It Happened: A Memoir (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979), 44.

43. Ibid., 45.

44. “And All Because They’re Smart,” Fortune, June 1935, 82.

45. Ibid., 148.

46. Ibid., 146; emphasis in original.

47. Ibid., 160.

48. Paley, As It Happened, 50.

49. J. Walter Thompson Company Staff Meeting Minutes, box 4, folder 4, 15 September 1931, p. 11, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

50. National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 4, folder 47, Music That Satisfies, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

51. Stamps, Concept of the Mass Audience, 165.

52. “Outline of Strategic Radio Presentation for Borden—Draft October 14, 1948,” National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 188, folder 34, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison; uppercase word in original.

53. Columbia Broadcasting System, Vertical Study of Radio Ownership: An Analysis, by Income Levels, of Radio Homes in the United States (New York: Columbia Broadcasting System, 1933), and Markets in Radio Homes, by Income Levels and Price Levels (New York: Columbia Broadcasting System, 1934).

54. Columbia Broadcasting System, Ears and Incomes (New York: Columbia Broadcasting System, 1934), 3.

55. Ibid., 6; emphases in original.

56. CBS, Ears and Incomes, 24.

57. Princeton Radio Research Project, foreword to H. M. Beville Jr., Social Stratification of the Radio Audience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Office of Radio Research, 1939), v.

58. This figure appears in H. M. Beville Jr., “The ABCD’s of Radio Audiences,” Public Opinion Quarterly, June 1940, 205. Despite research such as this, sophisticated for its time, old assumptions persisted about what particular social groups wanted to hear. One article from 1946 writes matter-of-factly, “Generally, farm people like Western music or some of the older ballads.” Victor J. Dallaire, “Music Helps Select Your Audience,” Printers’ Ink, 27 December 1946, 32.

59. “Talent Expenditures,” Variety Radio Directory, 1937–1938 (n.p.: Variety, 1937), 183.

60. Jascha Heifetz, “Radio, American Style,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, October 1937, 502.

61. Phil Spitalny, “ ‘The Hour of Charm,’ ” Etude, October 1938, 639.

62. Warren B. Dygert, Radio as an Advertising Medium (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939), 89.

63. Ibid., 96.

64. Charles Magee Adams, “A Hand for Radio,” North American Review, September 1933, 208.

65. Hadley Cantril and Gordon W. Allport, The Psychology of Radio (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935), 42–43.

66. See Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), for a discussion of “tempo” in this period.

67. “Reproduce Product’s Tempo in Program, Says Woolley,” Broadcast Advertising, May 1931, 26.

68. Ibid., 26, 28.

69. On crooning as effeminate, see Allison McCracken, “ ‘God’s Gift to Us Girls’: Crooning, Gender, and the Re-creation of American Popular Song, 1928–1933,” American Music 17 (Winter 1999): 365–95.

70. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 336.

71. There is conflicting information about when this first program aired. Vallée’s autobiography says that the first airdate was 29 October 1929. Rudy Vallée, My Time Is Your Time: The Rudy Vallée Story, with Gil McKean (New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1962), 86. A 1946 J. Walter Thompson Company document says 24 October 1929. W. M. Davidson, memo to Fanny Bell, 9 July 1946, The Colin Dawkins Papers, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, box 14, TV-Radio Department 1930–1964 and n.d., John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC. I am using the earlier date based on an internal J. Walter Thompson Company document detailing the history of the program. J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, Accounts–Standard Brands–Fleischmann, box 17, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

72. Staff Meeting Minutes, 26 August 1929, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, box 2, folder 1, p. 12, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

73. “Fleischmann’s Yeast—Rudy Vallee,” J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, JWT Account Files, box 17, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

74. Vallée with McKean, My Time Is Your Time, 87.

75. Letter from John F. Royal to G. F. McLelland, 31 July 1931, National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 3, folder 31, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

76. Most of the writing about Vallée was the stuff of fanzines, but see Martha Gellhorn, “Rudy Vallée: God’s Gift to Us Girls,” New Republic, 7 August 1929, 310–11. Despite the huge amount of ink used about Vallée at the height of his popularity, there is still little scholarly work on him.

77. In late 1930 and/or early 1931, the J. Walter Thompson Company, evidently concerned about the longevity of Rudy Vallée’s popularity, hired an investigator to observe Vallée’s live performances on tour in a number of American cities for two and a half months. The unnamed investigator—and, one assumes, his bosses—didn’t think to interview audience members, but audiences were observed, and theater personnel interviewed. There were clearly concerns about the gender of Vallée’s audience (Vallée’s appeal was assumed to be much greater for women than men; his supposed appeal to women listeners was legendary, the subject of many articles in the radio and other popular press). The results were highly scientized. Exact attendance figures were reported, as were the number of tickets sold that were above average; numbers of people standing were also recorded, as was the percentage of performances at which patrons stood. Applause (“character of response”) was rated, whether Exceptional, Outstanding, Excellent, Good, or Satisfactory, based on the factors of Volume, Intensity, Frequency, Extent of duration, and Degree maintained at original intensity. And percentage of men and women was tallied, down to the last individual, so that the investigator could report that the combined audiences were 38.8 percent men and 61.2 percent women. J. Walter Thompson Company, Research Department, New York, “A Study of the Public’s Reaction to Rudy Vallee during His Ten Weeks Tour of the Paramount Publix Theaters,” May 1931, Rudy Vallee Collection, Business-10, Standard Brands: Audience Study 1931, Thousand Oaks Library, Thousand Oaks, CA.

78. William B. Benton, “Building a Program to Get an Audience,” address before the annual meeting of the Association of National Advertisers Inc., White Sulphur Springs, WV, 6–8 May 1935, Library of American Broadcasting, Hedges Collection, 22, Advertising Agencies’ Part in Broadcasting’s Growth (A–Q), box 4, file 6, p. 4, University of Maryland, College Park.

79. Rudy Vallée, Vagabond Dreams Come True (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1930), 69.

80. J. Walter Thompson Company, Staff Meeting Minutes, 12 August 1930, box 2, folder 5, p. 3, emphasis and ellipses in original, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

81. Faulkner’s boss, Robert T. Colwell, explicated these points about showmanship in “The Program as an Advertisement,” in The Advertising Agency Looks at Radio, ed. Neville O’Neill (New York: D. Appleton, 1932).

82. William L. Bird Jr., “Better Living”: Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 1935–1955 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), 5–6.

Chapter 3

1. Quoted in Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 61.

2. Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, vol. 2, 1933–53 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 17.

3. Memorandum from Bertha Brainard to William S. Rainey, 2 March 1933, National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 90, folder 13, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

4. See Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994), 237.

5. Barnouw, Golden Web, 36.

6. Douglas B. Craig, Fireside Politics: Radio and Political Culture in the United States, 1920–1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 12; and Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 71.

7. Cross, All-Consuming Century, 71.

8. Ibid., 73.

9. Ibid.

10. Lears, Fables of Abundance, 237; Cross, All-Consuming Century, 77.

11. Roy Dickinson, “Freshen Up Your Product,” Printers’ Ink, 6 February 1930, 163.

12. A Primer of Capitalism (New York: J. Walter Thompson Company, 1937), 10; emphases in original.

13. Lears, Fables of Abundance, 238.

14. Ibid., 238–39.

15. “An Appraisal of Advertising Today,” Fortune, September 1932, 37.

16. Earnest Elmo Calkins, “The New Consumption Engineer, and the Artist,” in A Philosophy of Production: A Symposium, ed. J. George Frederick (New York: Business Bourse, 1930), 125–26.

17. Ibid., 128–29. For more on questions of the visual arts and advertising in this period, see Michele H. Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

18. Barry Manilow, telephone interview by author, 24 August 2009. There is a live recording of Manilow singing a medley of jingles, some of which he wrote himself: Barry Manilow Live, Arista A2CD 8049, 1986. Thanks go to John T. Carr III for telling me of this medley.

19. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989, OED Online (Oxford University Press, 1989), 12 April 2000, s.v. jingle.

20. See at least Brooks McNamara, Step Right Up (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976); and “Jingles Have Long History, Stracke Says,” Advertising Age, 13 February 1967, 20–21.

21. Jean-Rémy Julien, Musique et publicité: Du Cri de Paris . . . aux messages publicitaires radiophoniques et télévisés (Paris: Flammarion, 1989), 21–24.

22. See Julien, Musique et publicité.

23. Frank Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising (New York: Doubleday, Doran, and Company, 1929), 374. Thanks are due to Linda Scott for informing me of this book.

24. Quoted by Presbrey, History and Development of Advertising, 374.

25. Dry Goods Economist, 10 February 1894, quoted by Presbrey, History and Development of Advertising, 376.

26. Presbrey, History and Development of Advertising, 378–79.

27. For more on Phoebe Snow, see Margaret Young, “On the Go with Phoebe Snow: Origins of an Advertising Icon,” Advertising and Society Review 7 (2006), http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr.

28. Frank Rowsome Jr., The Verse by the Side of the Road: The Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles (New York: Penguin, 1965), 72.

29. The Burma Shave verses did have a life on television; see “Burma Shave Adapts Roadside Jingles to TV,” Advertising Age, 4 September 1967, 4.

30. Charles Austin Bates, Good Advertising (New York: Holmes, 1896), 201.

31. Presbrey, History and Development of Advertising, 377

32. For a collection of early sheet music advertising, see Bella C. Landauer, Striking the Right Note in Advertising (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1951). For a discussion of this practice, see Rick Reublin, “The American Capitalist Initiative, Advertising in Music,” Parlor Songs, August 2000, last accessed 22 July 2011, http://www.parlorsongs.com/insearch/vanitymusic/vanitymusic.asp.

33. Ed. Rice, interview by Dana Ulloth, 30 July 1979, Library of American Broadcasting, Transcripts AT-540, University of Maryland, College Park.

34. See Maurice Zolotow, “The Troubadour of Trouper Hill,” Saturday Evening Post, 30 May 1942, 21, 52, 54, 57; and Carol A. McCafferty and Susan E. King, “Harry Frankel: Singin’ Sam, More Than the Barbasol Man,” Traces (Winter 2005), 26–35. One source said the jingle began airing in 1920, but this is highly unlikely since commercial broadcasting began in that year. “Barbasol Jingle Is Back on Radio,” Advertising Age, 3 April 1961, 2.

35. “Advertising and Marketing,” New York Times, 7 March 1953, 27.

36. Warren B. Dygert, Radio as an Advertising Medium (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939), 96.

37. Herman S. Hettinger and Walter J. Neff, Practical Radio Advertising (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1938), 22.

38. Letter from E. P. H. James to Harcourt Parrish, 13 July 1931, National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 4, folder 17, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

39. Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., Advertising by Radio (New York: Ronald Press, 1929), 87.

40. John F. Schneider, “The NBC Pacific Coast Network,” last accessed 11 August 2010, http://www.bayarearadio.org/schneider/nbc.shtml.

41. Frank W. Spaeth, Radio Broadcasting Manual (New York: Sales Promotion Division of the National Retail Dry Goods Association, 1935), 75.

42. “Fitch Uses the Air to Sell Care of the Hair,” Broadcast Merchandising, April 1936, 97. For more on Hall, see F. C. Fritz, “Wendell Hall: Early Radio Performer,” in American Broadcasting: A Source Book on the History of Radio and Television, ed. Lawrence W. Lichty and Malachi C. Topping (New York: Hastings House, 1975).

43. Reginald T. Townsend, “Fun for Millions—and Millions for Pebeco,” Broadcasting, 15 January 1936, 12.

44. See “$100,000 Re-run for a 1936 Jingle,” Sponsor, 11 July 1959, 42, for a story of a regional jingle from this year.

45. Ed. Rice, interview by Dana Ulloth. The Novachord was introduced by Hammond Organ Company in 1939 and was an all-tube, early polyphonic synthesizer.

46. “National Archives Sound Recordings Named to National Recording Registry,” press release, National Archives, January 30, 2003, last accessed 14 March 2010, http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2003/nr03–22.html.

47. Quoted by James Gray, Business without Boundary: The Story of General Mills (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954), 160.

48. Ibid.

49. This jingle was derived from the chorus of a 1919 hit song, “Jazz Baby,” made popular by Marion Harris.

50. Quoted by Gray, Business without Boundary, 162.

51. Gray Business without Boundary, 163. See also General Mills: 75 Years of Innovation Invention Food & Fun (Minneapolis: General Mills, 2003).

52. “The Advertising Century: Top 100 Campaigns,” Advertising Age, last accessed 1 August 2010, http://adage.com/century/campaigns.html; and J. C. Louis and Harvey Z. Yazijian, The Cola Wars (New York: Everest House, 1980), 68.

53. “New Pepsi Jingle Has No Rime, Some Reason,” Printers’ Ink, 9 May 1958, 12.

54. Presumably, this was a flyer given away free to customers who asked. Demand must have been high, for a slightly later version of the jingle was circulated that was much less lavishly produced.

55. Walter Mack and Peter Buckley, No Time Lost (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 134–35; emphasis in original.

56. Thomas Whiteside, “I Can Be Had—for PELF,” New Republic, 16 February 1948, 22.

57. Louis and Yazijian write that Mack paid the duo twenty-five hundred dollars, and twenty-five hundred dollars more later (Louis and Yazijian, Cola Wars, 68).

58. There is a letter to this effect from the Pepsi-Cola Company to a music publisher dated April 1940, National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 79, folder 51, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

59. Randy Cohen, “Songs in the Key of Hype: Jingles Sweeten Sales Pitch with Pop Tunes, Catchy Cliches,” More, July–August 1977, 12.

60. “Pepsi-Cola Theme Song Now Heard over 8 Stations,” Bayside Times, 14 December 1939, 2.

61. “Pepsi-Cola’s Walter Mack,” Fortune, November 1947, 176.

62. Ibid.

63. Harry Lewis Bird, This Fascinating Advertising Business (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947), 231.

64. Liner notes to A Tribute to the Friends of Radio: Your Program Guide to 65 Years of Great Radio Advertising (Atlanta: McGavren Guild Radio, 1988).

65. Letter from Niles Trammell to Walter S. Mack Jr., 13 March 1941, National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 85, folder 102, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

66. Mack and Buckley, No Time Lost, 136.

67. Walter Mack, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 16 December 1985, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

68. Louis and Yazijian, Cola Wars, 69.

69. Ibid.

70. Al Graham, “Jingle—or Jangle,” New York Times magazine, 29 October 1944, 26.

71. Liner notes to Tribute to the Friends of Radio.

72. Warren E. Kraemer, “Millions in Nickels: Loft’s Pepsi-Cola Is a Dynamic Speculation, Coca-Cola a Solid Investment,” Magazine of Wall Street, 23 March 1940, 737.

73. William L. Bird Jr., “Better Living”: Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 1935–1955 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 4.

74. The song appeared on a 1925 recording to induce people to purchase phonographs that could play recordings that had been produced using electrical microphones. “Using a microphone suspended over the Metropolitan Opera House stage, its engineers recorded the British hunting song ‘Do You Ken John Peel,’ by 850 members of fifteen metropolitan-area clubs, gathered there for a concert by the Associated Glee Clubs of America. ‘Adeste Fideles,’ sung by the entire group—4,850 singers, according to the company’s magazine advertising—was issued jointly with ‘John Peel’ on a twelve-inch Columbia record in June. Public response was commensurate with the company’s enthusiasm.” Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business: The First Four Hundred Years, vol. 3, From 1900 to 1984 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 67. Nowadays, the song can still be heard as a children’s ditty on some recordings.

75. Alan Bradley Kent and Austen Croom-Johnson, foreword, “How to Create a Hit Radio Jingle—Fourteen Steps,” in Charles Hull Wolfe, Modern Radio Advertising (New York: Funk and Wagnalls / Printers’ Ink, 1949), 563.

76. Philip Hinerfeld, interview by Scott Ellsworth, Boca Raton, FL, 7 November 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

77. Ibid.

78. “Strange People Make Strange Songs to Market Their Wares on the Air,” Life, 7 October 1940, 78.

Singer, actress, and songwriter Hank Fort says that she wrote a jingle in the mid-1930s, “Royal Crown Cola Hits the Spot,” which was used on the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Show and she played it for Johnson before he cowrote “Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot.” Hank Fort, interview by Edwin Dunham, 12 January 1966, Library of American Broadcasting, Transcripts AT-154, University of Maryland, College Park.

79. Graham, “Jingle—or Jangle,” 26; Sylvia Weiss, “It Isn’t Shakespeare but It Pays,” New York Times, 19 December 1943, 7.

80. Whiteside, “I Can Be Had,” 20.

81. Ibid., 22. See also “Jingle All the Way,” Time, 21 August 1944, 75.

82. “WQXR Extends Its Ban,” New York Times, 31 March 1944, 23.

83. “Specialist,” New Yorker, 4 October 1947, 27.

84. Tom Morris, “Today’s Radio Jingle Makes Listeners Tingle,” Advertising Age, 8 April 1957, 77.

85. Edgar Kobak, “Singing Commercials,” Music Journal, September–October 1944, 19. For yet another complaint, see Volney D. Hurd, “Singing Commercials,” Christian Science Monitor Magazine, 10 March 1945, 5.

WQXR wasn’t the only station to ban jingles. A 1955 article from Time magazine describes a case in which station WGMS, Washington, DC’s “Good Music Station,” featured a medley of southern songs performed by the National Gallery Orchestra. Later, Columbia Records brought out a recording of the music, and the radio station broadcast the LP. Mitch Miller, head of A&R (artists and repertoire) at Columbia Records in this era, was approached and thought that one of the songs, “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” might have the potential to be a hit, so he made (or had made) a more up-tempo arrangement. Then, people at the J. Walter Thompson Company, for which Miller consulted, decided that this newer version could employ new lyrics to help sell the 1956 Ford. But when this commercial found its way to WGMS, which had a ban against jingles, the station didn’t broadcast it, even though the earlier incarnation had been first heard on the station. According to Time, “Station executives took another look at the situation—and at the Ford check and capitulated.” “The Yellow Rose of Ford,” Time, 19 September 1955, 87.

86. Bill Backer, The Care and Feeding of Ideas (New York: Times Books, 1993), 112.

87. “Outline for Strategic Radio Presentation for Borden—Draft October 14, 1948,” National Broadcasting Company Archive, box 118, folder 34, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

88. “Sound Ads Cause Apprehension,” New York Times, 16 August 1948, 26.

89. “Jingle All the Day,” Newsweek, 10 June 1940, 65.

90. Several such commercials were produced, with titles such as “Chiquita Banana Goes North,” “Chiquita Banana Helps the Pieman,” and “Chiquita Banana and the Cannibals.” Some of these are viewable at “Chiquita Banana Commercial,” last accessed 31 August 2010, http://wn.com/Chiquita_Banana_Commercial.

91. “Bananas, Yes,” Time, 23 July 1945, 66; the figure of 376 stations is from “That Great Jingle,” last accessed 14 October 2006, http://www.chiquita.com (page no longer available); the other figures are from “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Banana,” Results from Radio 3, National Association of Broadcasters, Department of Broadcast Advertising, Library of American Broadcasting, pamphlet 1964 (College Park: University of Maryland, 1945).

92. “Chiquita Banana,” Tide, 1 February 1946, 23.

93. Carrie McLaren and Rick Prelinger, “Salesnoise: The Convergence of Music and Advertising,” Stay Free!, Fall 1998, last accessed 11 August 2010, http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/15/salesnoise.html. See also “Tunesmiths, Admen Can Commingle—When There’s Green Stuff in a Jingle,” Advertising Age, 29 May 1961, 6.

94. “Chiquita Banana,” Tide, 23.

95. “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Banana.”

96. Charles Hull Wolfe, Modern Radio Advertising (New York: Funk and Wagnalls / Printers’ Ink, 1949), 563.

97. “BBDO Newsletter,” Printers’ Ink, 12 January 1945, 3.

98. “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Banana.”

99. Harry Walker Hepner, Effective Advertising, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1949), 361.

100. “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Banana.”

101. Ibid.; emphases and ellipsis in original. Although not attributed, I think this quotation is from literature of the United Fruit Company.

102. Ibid.; emphasis in original.

103. “That Great Jingle.” For an earlier update, see Patricia Strnad, “Modern Chiquita,” Advertising Age, 26 February 1990, 4. (Words and music by Garth Montgomery, Leonard Mackenzie, and William Wirges. Copyright © 1945 [renewed] by Music Sales Shawnee, a Division of Tom Cat Music Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.)

104. Kent and Croom-Johnson, foreword, “How to Create a Hit Radio Jingle,” 561.

105. Wolfe, Modern Radio Advertising, 563.

106. Ibid., 564.

107. Ibid., 565.

108. “Agency Head Irv Olian Jingles While Driving, Doesn’t Get Paid for It,” Advertising Age, 25 January 1954, 40.

109. Joseph J. Seldin, “Selling the Kiddies,” Nation, 8 October 1955, 305. For a history of advertising to children, see Lisa Jacobson, Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

110. “Specialist,” 27.

111. Ibid.

112. Fairfax M. Cone, With All Its Faults: A Candid Account of Forty Years in Advertising (New York: Little, Brown, 1969), 209.

113. Thomas Whiteside, “The Relaxed Sell,” New Yorker, 3 March 1950, 79.

114. Whiteside, “I Can Be Had,” 23.

115. Whiteside, “Relaxed Sell,” 80.

116. Eugene Feehan, “The Sound of TV Music,” Television Magazine, February 1967, 48.

117. Whiteside, “Relaxed Sell,” 79.

118. Lawrence R. Samuel, Brought to You By: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 43.

119. Lincoln Diamant, Television’s Classic Commercials: The Golden Years, 1948–1958 (New York: Hastings House, 1971), 181. Short jingles such as this were known as “tag” jingles, complete in six or seven seconds, named because they could serve to end a longer commercial. See Arthur Bellaire, TV Advertising: A Handbook of Modern Practice (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 168. Pierre Martineau writes that a study of this jingle revealed, “As soon as women heard the first half of the jingle . . . they had an unconscious compulsion to finish it. . . . The total couplet was fixed in their minds like an unforgettable tune.” Pierre Martineau, Motivation in Advertising: Motives That Make People Buy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957), 111.

This jingle was made into a commercial hit by the Jumpin’ Jacks in 1956; the genesis of it, along with sales figures, was reported in Fairfax M. Cone, The Blue Streak: Some Observations, Mostly about Advertising (n.p.: Crain Communications, 1973), 81. Other jingles were turned into popular songs in this era; see Feehan, “Sound of TV Music,” 44; “New Lyrics Turn Ad Jingles into Pop Records for the Juke Box Trade,” Advertising Age, 19 April 1954, 72; and “Sell It with Music,” Time, 14 June 1954, 52.

120. Cone, With All Its Faults, 240.

121. Ibid., 241.

122. Ibid., 241–42.

123. Cone, Blue Streak, 75.

124. Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 120.

125. Kent and Croom-Johnson, foreword, “How to Create a Hit Radio Jingle,” 557.

Chapter 4

1. See Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994); Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Charles F. McGovern, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); and Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic, 1983).

2. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003), 8.

3. See Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott (New York: Verso, 2005), 442.

4. The figures were calculated from Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), appendix.

5. Arno H. Johnson, Huge New Markets: Unprecedented Opportunities Offered by Today’s Explosive Economic Pressures, 1955, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, JWT: Company Publications, 1955–1958, box 12: Huge New Markets, 1955, 1–2, emphases in original, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

6. Ibid., n.p.; emphasis in original.

7. Sherry B. Ortner, New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of ’58 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 34–35. For more on this subject, see Glen O. Gabbard and Krin Gabbard, Psychiatry and the Cinema, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1999).

8. See Ernö Rapee, Motion Picture Moods for Pianists and Organists (New York: G. Schirmer, 1924), for the first publication of music that addressed specific moods. For studies of music and silent films, see Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); and Gillian B. Anderson, Music for Silent Films, 1894–1929: A Guide (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1988).

9. See Michele Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting from Radio to Cable (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).

10. Hadley Cantril and Gordon W. Allport, The Psychology of Radio (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935), 217. See also Herman S. Hettinger and Walter J. Neff, Practical Radio Advertising (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1938), for a discussion of the question of mood that shows little knowledge of music.

11. David Bennett, “Getting the Id to Go Shopping: Psychoanalysis, Advertising, Barbie Dolls, and the Invention of the Consumer Unconscious,” Public Culture 17 (2005), 11. This useful article has been important to my understanding of Dichter’s work. See also Daniel Horowitz, “The Emigré and American Consumer Culture,” in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Society in the Twentieth Century, ed. Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

12. Ernest Dichter, “A Psychological View of Advertising Effectiveness,” Journal of Marketing 14 (July 1949): 63.

13. Rena Bartos, “Ernest Dichter: Motive Interpreter,” Journal of Advertising Research 26 (February–March 1986): 15. For another overview, see Martin Mayer, Madison Avenue U.S.A.: The Extraordinary Business of Advertising and the People Who Run It (Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, 1992).

14. Ernest Dichter, “Psychology in Market Research,” Harvard Business Review 25 (1947): 441.

15. Ernest Dichter, “Scientifically Predicting and Understanding Human Behavior,” in Consumer Behavior and Motivation, ed. Robert H. Cole (Urbana: Bureau of Economic and Business Research, College of Commerce and Business Administration of the University of Illinois, 1956), 33; emphasis in original.

16. Dichter, “Psychology in Market Research,” 443.

17. Pierre Martineau, Motivation in Advertising: Motives That Make People Buy (New York: McGraw Hill, 1957), 6.

18. Ibid., 6–7.

19. Ibid., 112.

20. Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: David McKay, 1957), 3.

21. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Laurel, 1983); see also Bennett, “Getting the Id to Go Shopping.”

22. See Clark M. Agnew and Neil O’Brien, Television Advertising (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958); and Arthur Bellaire, TV Advertising: A Handbook of Modern Practice (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959).

23. “P&G Soap Drab in Color . . . Great for Washing Hands,” last accessed 30 July 2011, http://www.old-time.com/commercials/1940’s/L-A-V-A.htm.

24. “Motivation in TV Spots Hikes Use of Music,” Advertising Age, 22 June 1959, 18.

25. Sidney Lawrence, memorandum to Helen Fledderus, 31 May 1960, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, Advertising Vertical File, 1950–1994, box 8: Adv-Commercials-Jingles, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

26. George Wyland, “Music Can Have a Special, Selling Language of Its Own,” Broadcasting, 27 February 1961, 20.

27. “Beneficial Users ‘Parade’ Psychology,” Sponsor, 17 September 1962, 35.

28. Ibid.

29. “Tin Pan Alley: Lyres for Hire,” Time, 21 April 1961, 69.

30. Robert Alden, “Advertising: Commercial Music in Discord,” New York Times, 3 July 1960, §F, p. 10.

31. Everett G. Martin, “Beware of Background Music on TV Ads: The Tunes May Be ‘Fixed,’ ” Wall Street Journal, 13 November 1959, 1.

32. “Should You Pre-score Your TV Commercials?,” Sponsor, 11 July 1959, 44.

33. Walter Carlson, “Advertising: Composer with a Commercial,” New York Times, 26 June 1966, 122. See also “Bring Musicians in on Ad Planning, Leigh Urges,” Advertising Age, 4 May 1959, 14.

34. “Gold Pan Alley,” Newsweek, 15 August 1966, 64.

35. “Tip Top Jingle Money Makers,” Sponsor, 30 April 1962, 33.

36. “Music to Sell by Hits $18-Million Note,” Business Week, 8 September 1962, 70.

37. “What Are the Advantages of Original Scores in TV Commercials?,” Sponsor, 31 May 1958, 44.

38. Mitch Leigh, telephone interview by author, 16 February 2007.

39. Martin, “Beware of Background Music,” 1.

40. “Backstreet Blues” is on a Music Makers demonstration disc, MM-D1158, n.d.

41. Martin, “Beware of Background Music,” 1.

42. Carlson, “Advertising: Composer with a Commercial,” 122.

43. Mitch Miller, “Jingles in Television and Radio Commercials,” American Association of Advertising Agencies, Papers from the 1956 Regional Conventions, p. 26, Library of American Broadcasting, Hedges Collection: 22: Advertising Agencies Put in Broadcasting Growth (R–Z), box 4, file 7, University of Maryland, College Park.

44. “Everybody’s Singing along with Mitch,” Broadcast Advertising, 10 April 1961, 40.

45. Ibid.

46. For more on Eaton, see Jason Chambers, Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African Americans in the Advertising Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

47. “Composer Finds Challenge and Success in Agency Music Field,” Sponsor, 10 June 1963, 46.

48. Roy Eaton, telephone interview by author, 4 August 2009.

49. Albert R. Kroeger, “Music for the Golden Minute,” Television Magazine, December 1960, 66, 69.

50. Ibid., 40.

51. Ibid., 41; emphasis in original.

52. Ibid., 66.

53. Ibid.

54. Dorothy Ferenbaugh, “Television’s Musical Jingles,” New York Times, 22 December 1963, §X, p. 21.

55. Eugene Feehan, “The Sound of TV Music,” Television Magazine, February 1967, 47.

56. Martin Rossman, “If Beethoven Were Alive, He Could Score Big at Agencies,” Los Angeles Times, 15 February 1971, §D, p. 11.

57. “The Making of a Commercial,” Today’s Film Maker, June 1974, 39.

58. William Meyers, The Image-Makers: Secrets of Successful Advertising (London: Macmillan, 1984), 119–20.

59. William A. Henry III, “Mirror, Mirror, on the Tube,” Time, 17 August 1981, 85.

60. Meyers, Image Makers, 121.

61. Esther Thorson, “Emotion and Advertising,” in The Advertising Business: Operations, Creativity, Media Planning, Integrated Communications, ed. John Philip Jones (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 209.

62. Meyers, Image Makers, 121.

63. John McDonough and Allan Ross, “Jingle Jangle: Who Makes Singing Commercials and Why,” High Fidelity, November 1976, 85.

64. Tamar Crystal, “The Men Who Make the Music That Makes Madison Avenue Move,” pt. 1, Millimeter, April 1977, 36.

65. Cyndee Miller, “They Write Songs That Jingle, Jangle, Jingle,” Marketing News, 6 November 1989, 6.

66. Joyce Rutter, “Kuby Conducts,” Advertising Age, 1 August 1988, 15S.

67. Raymond Serafin, ‘“Heartbeat’: New Ads Pump Life into Chevy’s ‘American’ Image,’ ” Advertising Age, 12 January 1987, 3.

68. Ibid.

69. Bill Meyer, “Is Music Drowning Out the Pitch?,” Adweek, 14 September 1981, 17.

70. See Eric Pace, “There’s a Song in Their Art,” New York Times, 2 May 1982, §F, p. 4.

71. Sidney Hecker, “Music in Advertising—What the Data Don’t Tell Us,” ARF Conference Report, November 1982, 14; emphases in original.

72. Chuck Reece, “Creatives Grapple with Music and 15s,” Adweek, 31 March 1986, C.P. 22. For more on Ciani’s electronic advertising music, see Timothy D. Taylor, “The Avant-Garde in the Family Room: Advertising and the Domestication of Electronic Music in the 1960s and 1970s,” in The Oxford Sound Studies Handbook, ed. Karin Bijsterveld and Trevor Pinch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

73. This line appears in David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (New York: Vintage, 1985), 111.

74. Edmond M. Rosenthal, “Civilization Comes to the Jingle Jungle as Music Houses Pull Together for a Better Deal,” Television/Radio Age, 23 May 1977, 34.

75. Randy Cohen, “Songs in the Key of Hype: Jingles Sweeten Sales Pitch with Pop Tunes, Catchy Cliches,” More, July–August 1977, 14.

76. For a description of how clients use library music, see Joyce Kurpiers, “Reality by Design: Advertising Image, Music and Sound Design in the Production of Culture,” PhD diss., Duke University, 2009, 139–46.

77. For some examples, see Judy I. Alpert and Mark I. Alpert, “Music Influences on Mood and Purchase Intentions,” Psychology and Marketing 7 (Summer 1990): 10–35; Gordon C. Bruner II, “Music, Mood, and Marketing,” Journal of Marketing 54 (1990): 94–104; James J. Kellaris and Anthony D. Cox, “The Effects of Background Music in Advertising: A Reassessment,” Journal of Consumer Research 16 (1989): 113–18; James J. Kellaris, Anthony D. Cox, and Dena Cox, “The Effect of Background Music on Ad Processing: A Contingency Explanation,” Journal of Marketing 57 (October 1993): 114–25; Patricia A. Stout and Roland T. Rust, “The Effect of Music on Emotional Reponses to Advertising,” in The Proceedings of the 1986 Conference of the American Academy of Advertising, ed. Ernest F. Larkin (Norman: School of Journalism, University of Oklahoma, 1986); and Patricia A. Stout, John D. Leckenby, and Sidney Hecker, “Viewer Reactions to Music in Television Commercials,” Journalism Quarterly 67 (Winter 1990): 887–91.

78. Gerard J. Tellis, Effective Advertising: Understanding When, How, and Why Advertising Works (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), 164.

79. Buddy Scott, “The Magic of Jingles and the Audio Image,” Broadcasting, 8 August 1983, 24.

80. Meyer, “Is Music Drowning Out the Pitch?,” 18.

81. Howard G. Ruben, “They Second That Emotion,” Advertising Age, 7 September 1987, C15.

82. Fritz Doddy, interview by author, New York City, 14 April 2004.

83. Andrew Knox, interview by author, New York City, 14 May 2004.

84. Phil Dusenberry, Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising (New York: Portfolio, 2005), 171–72.

85. Ron Tindiglia, Make Money as a Jingle Composer (Harrison, NY: Tindiglia Enterprises, 1984), 4.

86. Al Stone, Jingles: How to Write, Produce and Sell Commercial Music (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1990), 3.

87. Norm Richards, “The Myth of Memorability in Commercial Music,” Advertising Age, 23 July 1979, S-23–S-24; emphases in original. See also “Jingle Men Make Artistic Strides,” Back Stage, 25 July 1980, 1, 12.

Chapter 5

1. Tom Kemp, The Climax of Capitalism: The U.S. Economy in the Twentieth Century (New York: Longman, 1990), 131.

2. Bill Backer, telephone interview by author, 4 May 2004.

3. “Most Agencies Buy Singing Commercials Outside, Study Finds,” Advertising Age, 30 November 1959, 54.

4. “Things to Know in Buying Jingles,” Sponsor, 27 February 1960, 37.

5. “Tin Pan Alley: Lyres for Hire,” Time, 21 April 1961, 69.

6. “Tip Top Jingle Money Makers,” Sponsor, 30 April 1962, 34, 32.

7. Susan Loesser, A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in His Life (New York: Donald I. Fine, 1993), 228.

8. In 1957–58, Loesser signed a one-year agreement with Young and Rubicam to “act as a musical consultant and make arrangements with other composers to furnish original music jingles.” The music that resulted was to become the property of the advertising agency (rather than the advertiser, the normal arrangement). Memo from Sigrid H. Pederson to Jack Devine, 15 October 1958, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, JWT: Radio TV Dept., Devine, box 10: NY Office: Talent, Rights and Contracts: ASCAP, 1958, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

9. “The Jingle Jangle,” Time, 6 May 1957, 50.

10. Clark M. Agnew and Neil O’Brien, Television Advertising (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958), 134.

11. “Jingle Jangle,” 50.

12. “J. Walter Thompson’s Hit Parade,” Television Magazine, July 1959, 105.

13. Letter from Charles Vanda to Carroll Carroll, 21 August 1958, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, JWT Radio TV Department Papers of the Administrator, John E. Devine, box 11: Hollywood Office: Memos, Reports and Correspondence, 1957–1958, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

14. “Tip Top Jingle Money Makers,” 32.

15. Agnew and O’Brien, Television Advertising, 135.

16. Arthur Bellaire, TV Advertising: A Handbook of Modern Practice (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 103.

17. Memo from Dick Neff to Joe Stone and Dan Seymour, 17 December 1956, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, Papers of Dan Seymour, box 1, 1956, Oct.–Dec., and 1956, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

18. “Oratorios for Industry,” Time, 24 July 1964, 42.

19. Joey Levine, telephone interview by author, 17 October 2009.

20. “Tip Top Jingle Money Makers,” 34.

21. The form of the mature jingle encompassed several types in this era: the “donut,” a sixty-second commercial with vocals at the beginning and the end, leaving the middle free for a voice-over. The first twenty seconds are called the “front”; the middle section, the “bridge,” or “hole”; and the final section, the “tag.” A “lift” is any section of the commercial that can be edited out and used as a stand-alone entity; one jingle guidebook author’s example is “LAVA” for Lava soap. Antonio Teixeira Jr., Music to Sell By: The Craft of Jingle Writing (n.p.: Berklee Press, 1974), 4. There is also a commercial known as a “weave job,” in which the musical message weaves around the voice-over. Also, according to composer and guidebook author Al Stone, there are “bumps” or “spikes”: “similar to a weave in that a word or a line simply jumps out of context. . . . The bump or spike is used as an interruption of the flow of the jingle without destroying the overall effect of the track. The point is to accent or emphasize a key word or phrase the advertiser feels is critical to its campaign.” Last, the “stingers” or “butt ons,” which are “simply a short jingle usually just singing the advertiser’s name or slogan.” Al Stone, Jingles: How to Write, Produce and Sell Commercial Music (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1990), 10.

22. Philip Hinerfeld said all he wanted was “something to move her ass by.” Philip Hinerfeld, interview by Scott Ellsworth, Boca Raton, FL, 7 November 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

23. Sid Ramin’s music for Pepsi had sixty-five commercial recordings made of it, according to Terry Galanoy, Down the Tube, or Making Television Commercials Is Such a Dog-Eat-Dog Business It’s No Wonder They’re Called Spots (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1970), 177; see also “Girl Watch Tune from Pepsi Enters Pop Music Arena,” Advertising Age, 26 December 1966, 23. Burland’s Alka-Seltzer jingle is discussed in chapter 6. Ramin recorded a version with Andy Williams with lyrics by Tony Velona. Ramin says that he was directed by BBDO to write something that sounded close to Herb Alpert but not so close that the company would be sued; Alpert ended up recording a version of the tune, which was derived from a television theme song to The Trials of O’Brien that Ramin had written. Sid Ramin, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 18 December 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

24. Teixeira, Music to Sell By, 6. More complex taxonomies emerged a little later, such as this one from the late 1970s:

1. Big and showy music. When you are trying to make your idea larger than life, the sound of big music can be of great help. . . .

2. Music to shoot to. A whole category of picture-montage commercials originate, not on a storyboard, but with a music track to which a storyboard is drawn. . . .

3. Music as bookends and a rug. This method takes a music-and-word phrase to open a commercial, continues the theme music under the body of the commercial (like a musical rug) and then closes the commercial with the second bookend, the reprise of the music-and-word phrase.

4. Using somebody else’s hit music. . . .

5. Music for mood. If the broadcast idea you are trying to portray is based on emotional response rather than copy points and hard facts, music can guide you into a most separate world of persuasion. (Hooper White, “Striking a High Note: Music in TV Production,” Advertising Age, 12 November 1979, 67, 70)

25. Brian Albano, interview by author, Lynbrook, NY, 11 March 2004. Albano’s band, the Forum Quorum, was the main case study in a book by Leslie Lieber, How to Form a Rock Group (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1968).

26. Louis Gorfain, “Jingle Giants,” New York, 23 April 1979, 50–53.

27. See “The Singing Saleswoman,” Ebony, April 1964, 143; “Oratorios for Industry”; and Sal Nuccio, “Advertising: Treasure in the Jingle Jungle,” New York Times, 8 November 1964, §F, p. 14, for more on jingle singer salaries.

28. Linda November, telephone interview by author, 28 July 2009.

29. Janie Fricke, telephone interview by author, 4 August 2009.

30. November, telephone interview by author, 28 July 2009. For more on this jingle, see Tom McFaul, “How the Pussy Learned to Sing,” 1 April 2002, last accessed 11 August 2010, http://www.classicthemes.com/50sTVThemes/singingPussy.html.

31. Mitch Miller, “Jingles in Television and Radio Commercials,” American Association of Advertising Agencies, Papers from the 1956 Regional Conventions, p. 25, Library of American Broadcasting, Hedges Collection: 22: Advertising Agencies Put in Broadcasting Growth (R–Z), box 4, file 7, University of Maryland, College Park.

32. Ibid.

33. “Everybody’s Singing along with Mitch,” Broadcast Advertising, 10 April 1961, 40.

34. See “McGuires Join Sales Ranks in Deal with Coke,” Advertising Age, 12 January 1959, 58, for an article on the growing number of singers recording commercials in this era.

35. These materials no longer appear to be in the archive.

36. Letter from Jack Reeser to Robert V. Ballin, 18 May 1954, quoted by Herman Land, “The Diary of Ford’s ‘This Ole House’ Jingle,” Sponsor, 10 January 1955, 41.

37. Letter from Joe Stone to Jack Reeser, 22 June 1954, quoted in Land, “Diary,” 41, 97.

38. Letter from Robert V. Ballin to Jack Reeser, 7 August 1954, quoted in Land, “Diary,” 98.

39. Letter from Jack Reeser to Joe Stone, 4 September 1954, quoted in Land, “Diary,” 100.

40. Letter from Joe Stone to Robert V. Ballin, 13 September 1954, quoted in Land,
“Diary,” 101.

41. Letter from W. Eldon Hazard to Joe Stone and Dwight Davis, 20 October 1954, quoted by Land, “Diary,” 103.

42. “J. Walter Thompson’s Hit Parade,” 105.

43. “A Commercial about Growing up—and How It Grew,” J. Walter Thompson Company News, 19 April 1961, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, Newsletter Collection, Main Series, 1961–1964, box 8, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

44. “ ‘The Times of Your Life’: The Why and How of the Kodak Song,” J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, The Granger Tripp Papers, box 1: Eastman Kodak Series, Subject Files, Songs, “The Times of Your Life” 1974–78, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC; emphases in original.

45. All letters are contained in the J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, The Papers of Granger Tripp, box 1: Eastman Kodak Series, Subject Files, Songs “Turn Around,” 1961–65, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

46. “Jack O’Brian Says,” New York Journal-American, 17 April 1961, 22.

47. “Kodak’s ‘Sellevision’ Marathon,” Kodak Dealer News, September–October 1962, 16.

48. “Jingle Music Freeing Itself from Current Disk Trends: Lucas,” Variety, 17 November 1976, 57.

49. Steve Karmen, Who Killed the Jingle? How a Unique American Art Form Disappeared (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2005), 99.

50. This issue was addressed in some detail in a trade press article: Marion Preston, “Monday Memo,” Broadcasting, 9 January 1978, 14.

51. Norm Richards, “The Myth of Memorability in Commercial Music,” Advertising Age, 23 July 1979, S-24.

52. Dan Aron, “The End (?) of the Boring Jingle,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 16B.

53. Judith Topper, “Creatives Try to Change Score,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 58.

54. Randy Cohen, “Songs in the Key of Hype: Jingles Sweeten Sales Pitch with Pop Tunes, Catchy Cliches,” More, July–August 1977, 17.

55. Steve Karmen told me that in the 1970s, advertisers began to request “a major, original piece of music that fits behind, and supports all the different concepts an advertiser may need in their commercials”—this was an anthem. Steve Karmen, telephone interview by author, 2 September 2009.

56. Even with the successes that jingle proponents could point to, by the end of the 1940s, there were serious questions about jingles’ efficacy and their intrusiveness. Veterans like Alan Bradley Kent and Austen Croom-Johnson acknowledged that there were a lot of bad jingles on the air, which would “end up by killing the goose that laid the golden egg,” and that radio stations and advertising agencies needed to be much more careful about what they put on the air. Quoted in Charles Hull Wolfe, Modern Radio Advertising (New York: Funk and Wagnalls / Printers’ Ink, 1949), 557. In 1945, The Christian Science Monitor published a rant by Harlow Shapley, a Harvard professor, who wrote vividly of an experience listening to a broadcast of Arturo Toscanini:

Our attentive listening had, in a sense, made us communicants in a majestic ethereal cathedral. We had collaborated in a timeless divine service. And then suddenly, as our applause registered deep gratitude . . . before we could defend ourselves a squalling, dissonant, hasty singing commercial burst in on the mood. . . . What we got was a hideous jingle about soap, and we could not protect ourselves. The great art had been prostituted in the interest of immediate cash return to the broadcasting industry and its commercial patron. . . . Toscanini and the listeners had more than wasted the afternoon. (Volney D. Hurd, “Singing Commercials,” Christian Science Monitor, 10 March 1945, 5; ellipses in original)

Six years later, Science News Letter described a device that people could attach to their radios to silence singing commercials. “Singing Commercials Cut from Radio by Device,” Science News Letter, 31 March 1951, 204.

A study conducted by Harry Field and Paul F. Lazarsfeld in the mid-1940s revealed many listeners’ distaste for jingles, even though they admitted that such commercials could be attention-getting devices. Lazarsfeld and Field reprinted several responses to jingles from their subjects: “ ‘Them singing ditties. They just kinda make you happy.’ (Wife of laborer, Texarkana, Tex.) . . . ; ‘Singing commercials are so silly—about the mentality of a six-year-old.’ (Wife of engineer, Tacoma, Wash.); ‘Ivory Soap. Like to sing the song. Children enjoy it.’ (Wife of elevator operator, Bronx, N.Y.); ‘The singing, the jingles—the whole thing is ridiculous.’ (Wife of welder, Belleville, N.J.).” Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Harry Field, The People Look at Radio (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946), 31. Lazarsfeld and Field’s data also showed that 18 percent of listeners believed there were too many jingles on the air, and 15 percent believed that there was too much singing in commercials (ibid., 36).

57. Melvin S. Hattwick, How to Use Psychology for Better Advertising (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950), 254.

58. “Jingle Facts: How Effective Are Television Commercials with Jingles?” J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, JWT: Advertising Vertical File, 1950–1994, box 8, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC; emphases in original.

59. Schwerin Research Corporation Bulletin, May 1964, “Music in Commercials,” J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, Advertising Vertical File, 1950–1994, box 8: Adv-Commercials-Jingles, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC

60. See “Jingles vs. Spoken Commercials: Which?” Sponsor, 22 June 1964, 42–45; “Does Music Add to a Commercial’s Effectiveness,” McCollum/Spielman Topline, October 1978; Michael L. Rothschild, Advertising: From Fundamentals to Strategies (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1987), from data in Keith L. Reinhard, “I Believe in Music,” Needham, Harper and Steers Inc.; and David W. Stewart and David H. Furse, Effective Television Advertising: A Study of 1000 Commercials (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986).

61. Robert T. Colwell, “America’s Attitudes toward Advertising,” Atlanta Advertising Institute, 9 April 1965, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, Writings and Speeches Collection, box 2: Colwell, Robert T., John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

62. Arguments against the jingle could be just as impressionistic. Best known among them was the legendary David Ogilvy, whose famous dictum “If you have nothing to say, sing it” resonated through many publications of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (New York: Vintage, 1985), 111. Ogilvy on Advertising provided a list of what not to do in commercials, including:

When you have nothing to say, sing it. There have been some successful commercials which sang the sales pitch, but jingles are below average in changing brand preference.

Never use a jingle without trying it on people who have not read your script. If they cannot decipher the words, don’t put your jingle on the air.

If you went into a store and asked a salesman to show you a refrigerator, how would you react if he started singing at you? Yet some clients feel short-changed if you don’t give them a jingle. (Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 111; emphasis in original).

In Confessions of an Advertising Man, Ogilvy wrote, “Don’t sing your selling message. Selling is a serious business.” David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man (New York: Atheneum, 1963), 133.

In an interview from the 1980s, Ogilvy said, “I hate music. I hate sound commercials. And I have always said, my God, if you have nothing to say, sing it. But there have been a few sound commercials that have sold products. Very, very few. People who use sung commercials are lunatics. If you want to buy a frying pan, you come into my store and come up to my counter and say, ‘I want a frying pan,’ and I start singing to you in Alexandrian couplets, you’ll think I’m a lunatic and you’ll run like hell. Why do people . . . ? Because they’re entertaining. They’re not selling, they’re entertaining.” Pepsi Collection no. 111, National Museum of American History, series 4, subseries a, box 33, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC. This material was probably misfiled in this location; this seems to have been the audio portion of a documentary on advertising from the 1980s.

63. Rich Meitin, “Creative and Effective Use of Music in Advertising,” presentation to J. Walter Thompson, Chicago, October 1990, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, Information Center, Vertical Files 2000–0283, series B: Advertising and Marketing Subject Files, box 3, Advertising Appeals-Music, Jingles, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

64. Patricia Winters Lauro, “Forget Jingles. Viewers Prefer Familiar Tunes in Commercials,” New York Times, 8 November 1999, §C, p. 1.

65. Roy Schecter, personal communication, 21 February 2003.

66. Spencer Michlin, personal communication, 28 July 2009.

67. Karmen, Who Killed the Jingle?, 140.

68. Steve Karmen, Through the Jingle Jungle: The Art and Business of Making Music for Commercials (New York: Billboard Books, 1989), 120–21.

69. Karmen, Who Killed the Jingle?, 177–78.

70. For a treatment of the rise of electronic music in advertising, see Timothy D. Taylor, “The Avant-Garde in the Family Room: Advertising and the Domestication of Electronic Music in the 1960s and 1970s,” in The Oxford Sound Studies Handbook, ed. Karin Bijsterveld and Trevor Pinch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

71. Karmen, Who Killed the Jingle?, 21; emphasis in original.

72. Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulation,” in Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 170.

73. Ibid.

Chapter 6

1. James P. Forkan, “Tunes That Sing Songs of Sales,” Advertising Age, 23 July 1979, S-1.

2. “Kingston Trio Selling 7-Up,” Billboard, 17 October 1960, 4.

3. “Ford Summer Series Builds TV Show on Advertising Motif,” Advertising Age, 30 July 1962, 95.

4. Dillon reiterates many of the points of this white paper in Tom Dillon, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 23 May 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

5. J. C. Louis and Harvey Z. Yazijian, The Cola Wars (New York: Everest House, 1980), 138.

6. Phil Dusenberry, Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising (New York: Portfolio, 2005), 125.

7. Louis and Yazijian, Cola Wars, 138.

8. James Forkan, “Pepsi Generation Bridges Two Decades,” Advertising Age, 5 May 1980, 41, 43.

9. “Pepsi-Cola Plans Big Radio-TV Splash,” Broadcasting, 13 February 1961, 33.

10. Ibid.; see also “Advertising: Epitaph for ‘Makin’ Whoopee,’ ” New York Times, 8 February 1961, 49.

11. “New Pepsi Jingle Has No Rime, Some Reason,” Printers’ Ink, 9 May 1958, 13.

12. “Pepsi Localizes Its Second Flight of Radio Jingles,” Advertising Age, 8 May 1961, 38.

13. Dillon, interview by Ellsworth, 23 May 1984.

14. “Pepsi Doubles Already Big Radio Budget,” Broadcasting, 15 January 1962, 30.

15. Sommers recorded a special birthday song from Pepsi, which, after playing, would be followed by a list of local teenagers’ birthdays (ibid., 32).

16. Thomas Frank, Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), ch. 8.

17. Mary Jo Kaplan, “Cola Wars and Remembrance: Coca-Cola,” Advertising Age, 1 August 1988, 31S.

18. Louis and Yazijian, Cola Wars, 233–34. “Rum & Coca-Cola” was originally a calypso composed by Lord Invader and Lionel Belasco that was recorded by many musicians and became a hit for the Andrews Sisters in 1945.

19. “Coke Meets Its Goal: ‘In’ Not ‘Way Out,’ ” Broadcasting, 29 June 1964, 46.

20. Kaplan, “Cola Wars and Remembrance,” 31S.

21. Louis and Yazijian, Cola Wars, 233.

22. Anne Phillips, telephone interview by author, 9 October 2009.

23. Hilary Lipsitz, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 19 April 1985, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

24. Kaplan, “Cola Wars and Remembrance,” 31S. Many of these versions are collected on Great Cola Commercials, vol. 1, Vox 1, 1996; and Great Cola Commercials, vol. 2, Vox 2, 1996. Musicians include Chicago, Ray Charles, Nancy Sinatra, the Newbeats, Warner Mack, Fontella Bass, the Tremeloes, Brooklyn Bridge, Freddie Cannon, and many more.

According to Hooper White, “music for commercials is of greatest value when it can be ‘pooled up,’ with many different tempos, arrangements, and versions,” though it can be expensive because of all the arranging and musicians needed. Hooper White, How to Produce Effective TV Commercials (Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, 1989), 186. This is a strategy that dates at least until the late 1950s. A jingle for Carolina Rice, introduced in 1948, was recorded by Janette Davis “in a sexy southern drawl,” and was intended to appeal to “the housewife,” “the Negro population,” the “Spanish speaking population,” “kids,” and the “retailer.” After a decade of use, however, the company and its advertising agency decided not to scrap the jingle but to have variations of it written. These were incorporated into a single jingle, which included “scraps of classical (for the housewife), Dixieland (for the Negro), and cha-cha (for Spanish).” “Single Jingle Builds 10-Year Success,” Sponsor, 8 November 1958, 39. Attempting to market to the Spanish-speaking population was unusual in this era, and would be for at least another decade; see “Howard Clothes’ New Drive Puts Stress on Radio,” Advertising Age, 29 February 1960, 211, for another article on the use of Spanish-language advertising that indicates the still unusual nature of this strategy over a decade later.

25. “Music to Buy Media By,” Sponsor, November 1967, 14. See also “Coke Adds to Teen-Appeal Jingle Singers,” Advertising Age, 11 October 1965, 19.

26. Dillon, interview by Ellsworth, 23 May 1984.

27. Philip Hinerfeld, interview by Scott Ellsworth, Boca Raton, FL, 7 November 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

28. John Bergin, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 6 February 1985, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

29. Allen Rosenshine, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 10 December 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

30. Dillon, interview by Ellsworth, 23 May 1984.

31. “ ‘Pepsi Generation’ Jingle Bows in Radio Spot Drive,” Advertising Age, 3 August 1964, 2.

32. Frank, Conquest of Cool, 175.

33. Louis and Yazijian, Cola Wars, 139.

34. Frank, Conquest of Cool, 171, citing Forkan, “Pepsi Generation Bridges Two Decades,” 41.

35. Sid Ramin, personal communication, 22 October 2009.

36. I have been unable to locate such a recording. Sid Ramin, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 18 December 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

37. Tom Anderson, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 14 November 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

38. Bergin, interview by Ellsworth, 6 February 1985.

39. “Pepsi Launches All-Out Campaign Promoting ‘Generation’ Theme,” Sponsor, 14 September 1964, 19.

40. Frank, Conquest of Cool, 176.

41. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994).

42. Phillips, telephone interview by author, 9 October 2009.

43. Hilary Lipsitz, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 7 February 1985, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

44. Frank writes that during this period, Pepsi produced a commercial that was clearly influenced by psychedelia. I have been unable to see this, so will rely on Frank’s description of this commercial, a

fragmented, impressionistic montage of hip urban nightlife that is as naïve and rosy a rendering of the counterculture as anything written by Roszak or Reich. The commercial is very dark throughout with only city lights and a variety of glowing emblems shining through the gloom. Figures are always dim, lit from one side only, or illuminated by a flashing strobe lamp. No one speaks though the entire commercial; even the Pepsi jingle, which drones throughout in a Byrds-like rendering, has to go without lyrics. The spot is held together by the sporadic appearance of a woman wearing fashionably short hair and a sequined minidress. As it opens she is striking poses for the camera; perhaps she is a model of some sort. Then she is having her face painted with a fluorescent flower design. After shots of Times Square, marquee lights, and a large Pepsi logo rendered in sequins, she is shown drinking from a cup marked with the glowing word ‘Pepsi,’ holding an oversized lollipop, and dancing to music being played by a rock band. (Frank, Conquest of Cool, 178)

See “Psychedelic Jingles to Turn Listeners On,” Broadcasting, 31 October 1966, 77, for a slightly earlier usage of psychedelic music, which Detroit-based Theme Productions Inc., the music production company, called “Intensodylic Sound,” in part because of its electronic genesis.

45. Louis and Yazijian, Cola Wars, 139.

46. Rosenshine, interview by Ellsworth, 10 December 1984.

47. Ibid.

48. Lipsitz, interview by Ellsworth, 7 February 1985.

49. Bergin, interview by Ellsworth, 6 February 1985.

50. Louis and Yazijian, Cola Wars, 139.

51. “Pepsi’s ‘Got a Lot to Give’ Drive Wins Viewer Praise; Music Sought,” Advertising Age, 22 December 1969, 2, 34.

52. Frank, Conquest of Cool, 182, quoting PepsiCo, Media Ordering Catalog for 1970.

53. Pepsi 70, Pepsi-Cola Radio PA 1760, 1970; emphasis in original.

54. Pepsi 1971, PA 1818, n.d.

55. Rosenshine, interview by Ellsworth, 10 December 1984.

56. Backer provides a detailed history of this commercial in Bill Backer, The Care and Feeding of Ideas (New York: Times Books, 1993).

57. Hilary Lipsitz discussed fees paid to major musicians in the 1960s, which were quite low because musicians in this period were paid out of promotion budgets and not advertising, a practice that later changed. Lipsitz, interview by Ellsworth, 19 April 1985. The abstract of this interview includes an undated estimate for three commercials performed by the Union Gap, a band popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the fee for musicians was $2,376; the fee for “Talent” was $4,000. Collection 111, Series 2, box 13, Hilary Lipsitz, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

58. Backer, Care and Feeding of Ideas, 48.

59. Bill Backer, telephone interview by author, 4 May 2004.

60. This was reported in a clipping reproduced in Backer, Care and Feeding of Ideas, 251.

61. Backer, telephone interview by author, 4 May 2004.

62. This was reported in an uncited clipping in Backer, Care and Feeding of Ideas, 214.

63. Uncited clipping reprinted in Backer, Care and Feeding of Ideas, 205.

64. Backer’s Care and Feeding of Ideas reprints several clippings on these cover versions and sales.

65. For a later campaign in which Coke targeted youth reminiscent of the “Hilltop” commercial, see Debbie Seaman, “Coke Gives Refresher Course in Singing,” Adweek, 16 February 1987.

66. Frank, Conquest of Cool.

67. C. H. Sandage, Vernon Fryburger, and Kim Rotzoll, Advertising Theory and Practice, 11th ed. (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1983), 103.

68. Dan Seymour, keynote address, Art Directors Club of New York, Annual Visual Communications Conference, 14 April 1965, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, JWT Writings and Speeches Collection, box 32: Seymour, Dan, 1964–1966, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC; emphasis in original.

69. Dan Seymour, “The New Reality of Radio,” 10 November 1967, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, Duke University, JWT Writings and Speeches Collection, box 32: Seymour, Dan, 1967–1968, April, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

70. Dan Seymour, speech before Distributor Sales Meeting, Indianapolis, 11 September 1967, J. Walter Thompson Company Archive, JWT Writings and Speeches Collection, box 32: Seymour, Dan, 1967–1968, April, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

71. Fairfax M. Cone, The Blue Streak: Some Observations, Mostly about Advertising (n.p.: Crain Communications, 1973), 187.

72. “Music to Buy Media By,” 14.

73. “Six (6) Rock Groups to Give Word on Music to AA Workshop,” Advertising Age, 13 April 1970, 28.

74. “The Biography of a Commercial,” Sponsor, 5 April 1965, 41; emphasis in original.

75. Edward Buxton, Creative People at Work (New York: Executive Communications, 1975), 156; ellipses in original.

76. “Jingles Production Co. in Nashville Gears to Growth,” Billboard, 29 August 1970, 4.

77. Eugene Feehan, “The Sound of TV Music,” Television Magazine, February 1967, 28.

78. Terry Galanoy, Down the Tube, or Making Television Commercials Is Such a Dog-Eat-Dog Business It’s No Wonder They’re Called Spots (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1970), 78.

79. Feehan, “Sound of TV Music,” 28–29.

80. Galanoy, Down the Tube, 75. See also “Alka-Seltzer ‘Stomach’ Tune Becomes Pop-Hit—and Not for Belly Dancers,” Advertising Age, 10 January 1965, 3.

81. See Chuck Wingis, “Songwriter Nichols Bemoans ‘Budget’ Jingles,” Advertising Age, 13 September 1976, 116, for a discussion of “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

82. Steve Karmen, Through the Jingle Jungle: The Art and Business of Making Music for Commercials (New York: Billboard Books, 1989), 93.

83. Michael J. Arlen, Thirty Seconds (New York: Penguin, 1980), 31–39.

84. Arlen, Thirty Seconds, 40–41.

85. Paul Cohen, “Twenty Years After: Woodstock Redux,” Back Stage, 21 April 1989, 2B.

86. Artie Schroeck, telephone interview by author, 28 July 2009.

87. James P. Forkan, “Rockbill Gives Advertisers, Rock Stars Exposure,” Advertising Age, 20 November 1978, 12.

88. See Pamela G. Hollie, “A Rush for Singers to Promote Goods,” New York Times, 14 May 1984, §D, p. 1.

89. Eliot Tiegel, “Warner Puts Top-40 Hits in Ads,” Advertising Age, 26 August 1985, 49.

90. Stuart Elliott, “Can Mick Jagger Deliver Chap Stick to Masses? ‘Rolling Stone’ Tells All,” Advertising Age, 29 September 1986, 43.

91. Leslie Savan, The Sponsored Life: Ads, TV, and American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 284.

92. Bob Weinstein, “The Medium Music Is the Message,” Madison Avenue, July 1985, 46.

93. Bill Meyer, “Is Music Drowning Out the Pitch?,” Adweek, 14 September 1981, 17.

94. “1950s and ’60s Rock Still Alive in Radio-TV Jingles,” Billboard, 26 July 1980, 70.

95. Ben Allen, “Ad Music: One Long Jingle,” Back Stage, 20 April 1979, 1.

96. Nancy Millman, “They Make the Music That Makes the Ad Sing,” Advertising Age, 22 September 1980, S-10.

97. Meyer, “Is Music Drowning Out the Pitch?,” 1, 17.

98. Judith Topper, “Agency Reveals the Whys, Wheres and Whens of Getting the Score,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 10B.

99. Anthony Vagnoni, “Music Makers Sing Out,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 1.

100. “Good News! Plus: Because Shaving Can ‘Hurt So Bad,’ ” Marketing through Music, April 1987, 5.

101. Michael Gross, “Selling to ‘The Big Chill’ Beat,” Adweek, 4 February 1985, C.R. 30.

102. Hunter Murtaugh, telephone interview by author, 16 October 2009.

103. John Wall, “Madison Avenue Learns to Rock,” Insight, 14 April 1986, 54.

104. “Emotion Sells More Than Perfume; It Sells Cars, Too,” Marketing News, 22 November 1985, 4.

105. Pamela Sherrid, “Emotional Shorthand,” Forbes, 4 November 1985, 215.

106. “Emotion Sells More Than Perfume,” 4.

107. Sherrid, “Emotional Shorthand,” 215.

108. “News from the World of Ford,” 11 June 1985, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives, Advertising Vertical File, box 8, pp. 1–2, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

109. Ibid.

110. “New Lincoln-Mercury Campaign Highlights the Distinctive Sound of Rod Stewart,” Marketing through Music, October 1986, 1. See also Raymond Serafin, “Ford Division Plows into Radio,” Advertising Age, 1 September 1986, 3.

111. Wall, “Madison Avenue Learns to Rock,” 55.

112. Christine Demkowych, “Music on the Upswing in Advertising,” Advertising Age, 31 March 1986, S-5.

113. Lawrence Graham and Lawrence Hamdan, Youthtrends™: Capturing the $200 Billion Youth Market (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987). The book contains several discussions of music.

114. “New Book Promotes Music in Youth Advertisements,” Marketing through Music, October 1987, 1, 6.

115. “Godley and Creme Drive L-M into ‘New Age,’ ” Marketing through Music, November 1987, 6.

116. “Hitachi Culture Special Presents Kitaro Debut,” Marketing through Music, November 1987, 6.

117. “Marketers Invited to Take the ‘A’ Train,” Marketing through Music, May 1988, 6.

118. “M.T.M. Datafax,” Marketing through Music, March 1989, 1. For more on New Age music in advertising in this period, see Laura Loro, “New Age Music Scores in Ads,” Advertising Age, 22 August 1988, 39.

119. Blayne Cutler, “For What It’s Worth,” American Demographics, August 1989, 42.

120. Joyce Rutter, “Kuby Conducts,” Advertising Age, 1 August 1988, 15S.

121. “Commercials Swing to Music,” Ad Day/USA, 6 August 1981.

122. Jon Burlingame, “Tyros, Composer and Classics Vie for Ad Time,” Variety, 29 July–4 August 2002, A4.

123. Jock Baird, “Chevys, Chunkies, & Cheerios,” Musician, March 1990, 62; emphasis in original.

124. Susan Hamilton, telephone interview by author, 16 October 2009.

125. James Fadden, “HEA Will Drop a Line to Keep Things Fresh,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 12B. See also Walter Bottger and Henry Martin, “Where Goes the Jingle?,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 42B.

126. Fadden, “HEA Will Drop a Line,” 12B.

127. “Track Record Enterprises—The ‘Un-jingle’ Producers,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 14B.

128. Nancy Millman, “Her Road to Fame Was Paved with Commercials,” Advertising Age, 19 December 1983, M-4.

129. Hooper White, “Beers Battle to Take over the Night,” Advertising Age, 22 September 1986, 73.

130. Rutter, “Kuby Conducts,” 15S.

131. Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott (New York: Verso, 2005), 27.

132. Ibid., 38.

133. Ibid., 425.

134. Ibid., 438.

135. Ibid., 443.

136. Joyce Kurpiers, “Reality by Design: Advertising Image, Music and Sound Design in the Production of Culture,” PhD diss., Duke University, 2009, 47.

137. Cone, Blue Streak.

138. Frank, Conquest of Cool.

139. Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 270.

140. Boltanski and Chiapello, New Spirit of Capitalism, 441.

Chapter 7

1. George Lipsitz, “Consumer Spending as State Project: Yesterday’s Solutions and Today’s Problems,” in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). For more on consumption in the 1980s, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003); and Martyn J. Lee, Consumer Culture Reborn: The Cultural Politics of Consumption (New York: Routledge, 1993).

2. Timothy D. Taylor, Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).

3. James B. Twitchell, Lead Us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 18.

4. See Christopher Shannon, A World Made Safe for Differences: Cold War Intellectuals and the Politics of Identity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001); and Taylor, Beyond Exoticism.

5. Scott Elias, interview by author, New York City, 19 April 2004.

6. Buddy Scott, “The Magic of Jingles and the Audio Image,” Broadcasting, 8 August 1983, 24.

7. “Music Houses Achieve New Prominence in Music Marketing Era,” Marketing through Music, March 1987, 6.

8. On the importance of niche marketing, see Scott Lash and John Urry, Economies of Signs and Space (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994); and Scott Lash and John Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).

9. For a discussion of other modes of demographic analysis, see Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

10. Arnold Mitchell, The Nine American Lifestyles: Who We Are and Where We’re Going (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 5.

11. Ibid., 8.

12. Ibid., 15.

13. See Mitchell, Nine American Lifestyles, 63, 176–79. Subsequent data have become even more detailed and sophisticated. “Innovators” are sophisticated, in charge, curious; “Thinkers” are informed, reflective, and content; “Believers” are literal, loyal, and moralistic; “Achievers” are goal-oriented, brand-conscious, and conventional; “Strivers” are contemporary, imitative, and style-conscious; “Experiencers” are trend seeking, impulsive, and variety seeking; “Makers” are responsible, practical, and self-sufficient; and “Survivors” are nostalgic, constrained, and cautious. All of these groups are categorized by a number of factors such as age, percentage of the population, employment status, marriage status, contributions to public broadcasting, and more. Strategic Business Insights, “Sample Demographics and Behaviors,” last accessed 31 July 2011, http://www.strategicbusinessinsights.com/vals/demobehav.shtml.

14. James Vail, “Music as Marketing Tool,” Advertising Age, 4 November 1985, 24.

15. Ed Fitch, “Ad Music Composer Humming a Happy Tune,” Advertising Age, 28 February 1985, 38.

16. On the former case, see Gary Levin, “Holiday Inns Book Sinatra,” Advertising Age, 25 May 1987, 1. Sinatra re-recorded his well-known “Here’s to the Winners” for these television commercials.

17. Leslie H. Zeifman, “The Sound of Music,” Advertising Age, 9 November 1988, 62.

18. Bernie Drayton, telephone interview by author, 14 August 2009. For more on the rise of African American advertising agencies, see Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); and Janice Ward Moss, The History and Advancement of African Americans in the Advertising Industry, 1895–1999 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2003).

19. Hilary Lipsitz, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 19 April 1985, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

20. A. Ross, “Monday Memo,” Broadcasting, 24 September 1979, 16.

21. Ibid.

22. “Muy Rapido,” Television/Radio Age, 10 December 1984, 30.

23. See, for example, Harry K. Renfro, “Country and Western Consumer: Forgotten Man in Jingle Market,” Broadcasting, 7 July 1958, 105; “The C&W Sound Captures U.S. Heart & Purse,” Sponsor, 20 May 1963, 31; “The New Appeal of Country Music,” Broadcasting, 1 August 1966, 53–68; and Edward Morris, “Commercials’ Newest Star Is Country,” Billboard, 30 May 1981, 9.

24. Scott Elias, interview by author, New York City, 19 April 2004. See also Pamela Sherrid, “Emotional Shorthand,” Forbes, 4 November 1985, 214–15, for agency professionals speaking on the new importance of visuals with music after MTV.

25. See, for just one example, E. Ann Kaplan, Rocking around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 1987).

26. Susan Spillman, “Commercials Dance to Video Beat,” Advertising Age, 10 January 1985, 48.

27. Ibid.

28. “How MTV Has Rocked Television Commercials,” New York Times, 9 October 1989, §D, p. 6.

29. Jennifer Pendleton, “Chalk Up Another Victory for Trend-Setting Rock ’n’ Roll,” Advertising Age, 9 November 1988, 160.

30. David W. Freeman, “Honda Rides Music Videos into Advertising,” Advertising Age, 19 July 1984, 46.

31. “Jerry Garcia, Others Sing Levi’s 501 Blues,” Marketing through Music, September 1987, 5; emphasis in original.

32. As reported by Robert Goldman, Reading Ads Socially (New York: Routledge, 1992), 185. Goldman discusses these commercials at some length.

33. “Jerry Garcia, Others Sing Levi’s 501 Blues,” 5.

34. “Current Collaborations,” Marketing through Music, July 1988, 2.

35. James P. Forkan, “Pepsi Generation Bridges Two Decades,” Advertising Age, 5 May 1980, 41.

36. Allen Rosenshine, Funny Business: Moguls, Mobsters, Megastars, and the Mad, Mad World of the Ad Game (New York: Beaufort Books, 2006), 91.

37. This comment resonates with one reported by Thomas Frank from an agency head who said in a presentation that “a brand’s mythis everyday experience for consumers . . . and ‘if you can understand experience, you can own it.’ ” Thomas Frank, One Market under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (New York: Anchor, 2000), 266; emphasis in original.

38. Allen Rosenshine, interview by Scott Ellsworth, New York City, 10 December 1984, Pepsi Generation Oral History and Documentation Collection, 1938–1986, no. 111, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

39. Ibid.

40. Roger Enrico and Jesse Kornbluth, The Other Guy Blinked: How Pepsi Won the Cola Wars (New York: Bantam, 1986), 92.

41. Ibid., 94.

42. Ibid., 99; emphasis in original.

43. Ibid., 11.

44. Phil Dusenberry, Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising (New York: Portfolio, 2005), 232–33.

45. Enrico and Kornbluth, Other Guy Blinked, 270.

46. “Pepsi’s ‘Bad’ Breaks: Two New Jackson Spots,” Marketing through Music, December 1987, 1, 6.

47. Enrico and Kornbluth, Other Guy Blinked, 270.

48. Nancy Giges, “Pepsi and Jackson in New Link,” Advertising Age, 5 May 1986, 1.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. “Jackson’s Pepsi Spots Showcase New Music,” Marketing through Music, March 1987, 1–2.

52. Nancy Giges, “Pepsi-Jackson ‘Spectacular’ Set for Spring,” Advertising Age, 16 February 1987, 2.

53. Bob Garfield, “Cola War’s TV Extravaganzas: Jackson Gives Pepsi Bad Rap,” Advertising Age, 2 November 1987, 3.

54. Bob Garfield, “George Michael’s Spot for Diet Coke Lacks Pop,” Advertising Age, 13 February 1989, 68.

55. Bob Garfield, “Pepsi Should Offer Prayer to Madonna,” Advertising Age, 6 March 1989, 76; emphasis in original.

56. Zeifman, “Sound of Music,” 162.

57. See Marchelle Renise Barber, “Commercial R-a-p,” Advertising Age, 25 May 1987, 22.

58. Cyndee Miller, “Marketers Tap into Rap as Hip-Hop Becomes ‘Safe,’ ” Marketing News, 18 January 1993, 10.

59. Bill Backer, telephone interview by author, 4 May 2004.

60. Artie Schroeck, telephone interview by author, 28 July 2009; and Linda November, telephone interview by author, 28 July 2009.

61. Nick DiMinno, telephone interview by author, 9 September 2009.

62. Anne Phillips, telephone interview by author, 9 October 2009.

63. Anne Phillips, “Why Isn’t My Business Fun Anymore?,” photocopy, ca. 1981. Thanks are due to Anne for providing me with this.

64. Jon Lafayette, “Burger King Be Jammin’: Agency, Client Work with Top Artists for $20m-Plus Radio Effort,” Advertising Age, 9 October 1989, 28.

65. Lafayette, “Burger King Be Jammin’,” 28.

66. Ibid.

67. Gary Levin, “Salem Turns Up the Sound,” Advertising Age, 24 April 1989, 1.

68. Mitchell Berk, “Kenny Rogers Tour Sponsorship Proves Fruitful for Dole Food Co.,” Marketing through Music, August 1989, 5.

69. “Michael ‘Pepsi’ Jackson: Battling Coke Overseas,” Advertising Age, 28 September 1987, 80; and Julia Michaels and Patricia Winters, “Music Reintroduces Pepsi to Brazil,” Advertising Age, 28 September 1987, 80. For more on the intertwined nature of popular culture and advertising, see Jib Fowles, Advertising and Popular Culture (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996).

70. Judith Graham, “Sponsors Line Up for Rockin’ Role: Top Stars to Attract Top Marketers,” Advertising Age, 11 December 1989, 50.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid.

73. “Fuji & Enigma Ink Sponsorship/Mktg Pact,” Marketing through Music, June 1989, 1.

74. “Adidas Launches Run-D.M.C. Sportswear Line,” Marketing through Music, July 1987, 5.

75. “MTV Inspires Pontiac’s Ad Effort in ’88,” Advertising Age, 21 September 1987, 84.

76. Ronald Alsop, “Ad Agencies Jazz up Jingles by Playing on 1960s Nostalgia,” Wall Street Journal, 18 April 1985, 33.

77. “Music Tops Teen Study,” Marketing through Music, April 1989, 6.

78. Judith Topper, “Creatives Try to Change Score,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 58.

79. For more on the rise of licensing and advertising agency practices, see Bethany Klein, As Heard on TV: Popular Music in Advertising (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009).

80. See Paul Grein, “TV & Radio Ad Usage of Pop Hits Up,” Billboard, 22 May 1978, 3, 96, 110; Dick Nusser, “Radio-TV Jingles Go for Standards,” Billboard, 22 April 1978, 102; “Old Songs Brew Jingles Gravy,” Billboard, 4 December 1978, 77; and Roger Rosenblatt, “The Back of the Book: I Re-write the Songs,” New Republic, 11 February 1978, 36–37.

81. Grein, “TV & Radio Ad Usage,” 96.

82. “Setting Commercials to Music a Growing Part of Pop Culture,” Television/Radio Age, 1980 Production Guide, 12.

83. Pamela Sherrid, “Emotional Shorthand,” Forbes, 4 November 1985, 214.

84. “Spotting the Music,” Television/Radio Age, 10 December 1984, 128.

85. Michele Conklin, “Parody Fever,” Madison Avenue, December 1985, 36.

86. This list of titles is from Carrie McLaren and Rick Prelinger, “Salesnoise: The Convergence of Music and Advertising,” Stay Free!, Fall 1998, last accessed 11 August 2010, http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/15/salesnoise.html. See also Kim Kinter, “ ‘Stop in the Name of Rock,’ DJs Say,” Adweek, 18 January 1988, 40; John Motavalli, “Turning Old Hits into New Jingles,” Adweek, 11 January 1988, B.R. 35–B.R. 36; and “Rock Lovers Decry Use of Classics in Commercials,” Marketing News, 1 February 1988, 21.

87. Sherrid, “Emotional Shorthand,” 214.

88. James P. Forkan, “Turning ’60s Music into ’80s Ads,” Advertising Age, 25 April 1985, 40.

89. “SBK Entertainment Offers Free Catalogs,” Marketing through Music, March 1988, 6.

90. “The Jingle Biz: From Music House to Writer’s Co-op,” Marketing through Music, June 1988, 5.

91. “Newsline,” Advertising Age, 9 March 1987, 8.

92. “Nike Breaks ‘Revolutionary’ Spots,” Adweek, 9 March 1987, reports ten million dollars; “Newsline” reports seven million dollars.

93. “Nike Uses Beatles’ Song to Launch ‘Revolution,’ ” Marketing through Music, April 1987, 6.

94. Barbara Lippert, “Roll Over, John; the Song Fits, and Nike’s Wearing It,” Adweek, 6 April 1987, 23.

95. Sharon Edelson, “They Say They Want a Revolution: New Progressives Kagan & Greif Style Spots with a Music-Video Sensibility,” Advertising Age, 1 June 1987, C26.

96. Ibid.

97. “Beatles Still Mean Business” (editorial), Advertising Age, 18 May 1987, 16.

98. Timothy G. Manners, letter to the editor, Advertising Age, 15 June 1987, 20.

99. Jon Wiener, “Beatles Buy-Out,” New Republic, 11 May 1987, 13–14.

100. Jon Wiener, “Exploitation and the Revolution,” Advertising Age, 29 June 1987, 18.

101. Tim Donohoe, letter to the editor, Advertising Age, 27 July 1987, 20.

102. “Beatles Company Sues over Use of Song in Ad,” New York Times, 29 July 1987, §C, p. 22.

103. “Apple Records Sues over Nike’s ‘Revolution’ Ads,” Marketing through Music, September 1987, 1, 5.

104. Marcy Magiera, “Nike to Keep ‘Revolution’ despite Suit,” Advertising Age, 3 August 1987, 3.

105. “For the Record,” Advertising Age, 10 August 1987, 53.

106. “Other Late News,” Advertising Age, 31 August 1987, 8.

107. “Nike Pulls Beatles Song; Revolution to Continue,” Marketing through Music, April 1988, 1, 5.

108. “Nike Says It Hasn’t Sett led,” Adweek, 29 February 1988.

109. Paul McCartney, interview by Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone, 5 November / 10 December 1987, quoted in Marcy Magiera, “Discord on ‘Revolution’: McCartney Hits Nike, Jackson for Use of Song,” Advertising Age, 26 October 1987, 36.

110. “New Role for Classic Rock” (editorial), Advertising Age, 14 September 1987, 16.

111. For more on composers’ complaints about the licensing practices in this era, see Stephen Meyer, “Everybody Must Get Cloned,” Advertising Age, 5 October 1987, C28.

112. “MTM Datafax,” Marketing through Music, July 1988, 1.

113. “MTM Datafax,” Marketing through Music, October 1988, 1.

114. Fran Fruit, “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma,” Advertising Age, 21 April 1986, 18.

115. “Claim That Tune,” Advertising Age, 6 March 1989, 28S.

116. J. Max Robins and Chuck Reece, “Using Hard Rock for Soft Sell,” Adweek/East, May 1985, M.M. 20.

117. Ibid.

118. Larry Armstrong, “Janis Joplin, Material Girl,” Business Week, 20 March 1995, 40.

119. See Irv Lichtman, “Comeback Kids,” Billboard, 13 June 1998, 45, and “Catalog Evergreens Pop Up as Jingles in Increasing Numbers,” Billboard, 31 October 1998, 38.

Chapter 8

1. Christine Demkowych, “Music on the Upswing in Advertising,” Advertising Age, 31 March 1986, S-5.

2. Bob Garfield, “Too Much Ad Music Leaves Little Room for Hitting the Right Note,” Advertising Age, 4 January 1988, 46.

3. Bill Meyer, “Is Music Drowning Out the Pitch?,” Adweek, 14 September 1981, 17.

4. Ibid., 18.

5. Judith Topper, “Theories, Thoughts and Reasons on Why Agencies Score Their Own,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 6B.

6. Debbie Seaman, “The Serious Business of Writing Commercial Jingles,” Adweek, 31 August 1987, 34.

7. Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

8. See Peter DiCola, “False Premises, False Promises: A Quantitative History of Ownership Consolidation in the Radio Industry,” 13 December 2006, last accessed 14 March 2010, http://www.futureofmusic.org/article/research/false-premises-falsepromises.

9. Clear Channel claims that there has been an increase in diversity of radio formats—kinds of programs—but a 2002 study by the Future of Music Coalition revealed that there is as much as a 76 percent overlap in playlists among radio formats. Jenny Eliscu, “Why Radio Sucks,” Rolling Stone, 3 April 2003, 22. See also Jeff Leeds, “Small Record Labels Say Radio Tunes Them Out,” Los Angeles Times, 16 September 2001, C1.

10. See Eric Boehlert and John Hogan, interview by Terry Gross, Fresh Air, National Public Radio, 23 July 2003.

There is also an existing “legal payola” system. It has long been illegal for radio labels to reward radio stations for playing their songs, so an industry of intermediaries known as “indies” performs this function. Major labels hire indies to represent their interests to radio stations. Money is exchanged for “promotional support”—giveaways, free tickets, etc.—but not directly between radio stations and labels. Eric Boehlert, “Pay for Play,” Salon, 14 March 2001, http://www.salon.com. See also Boehlert’s “One Big Happy Channel?,” Salon, 28 June 2001, http://www.salon.com, and “Radio’s Big Bully,” Salon, 30 April 2001, http://www.salon.com; Chris Doerksen, “Same Old Song and Dance,” 28 February 2003, www.washingtoncitypaper.com; and Greg Kot, “Rocking Radio’s World,” Chicago Tribune, 14 April 2002, 1.

11. David Segal, “Pop Music’s New Creed: Buy a TV Commercial,” Washington Post, 27 February 2002, A1.

12. Greg Lindsay, “Ad as Breakout Song Launchpad,” Advertising Age, 11 July 2005, 26.

13. Peter Nicholson, “Branded for Success: McDonald’s, Others Reveal Agency World Clout When It Comes to Music,” Billboard, 18 August 2007, 4.

14. Allyce Bess, “That New Hit Single Might Hide a Jingle,” Christian Science Monitor, 9 December 2002, 11; bracketed term in original.

15. Josh Rabinowitz, “With the Brand: A Public Picking: The Process of Choosing a Song for Ad Placement,” Billboard, 16 February 2008, 16.

16. Recording Industry Association of America, “2008 Consumer Profile,” http://www.riaa.com/keystatistics.php?content_selector=MusicConsumerProfile; “The CD Slide: It’s Way Worse Than You Think . . . ,” Digital Music News, 2 June 2011, http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/06021cds.

17. Licensing has received a good deal of coverage in both the trade and mainstream presses. See Ronald Alsop, “Ad Agencies Jazz Up Jingles by Playing on 1960s Nostalgia,” Wall Street Journal, 18 April 1985, 33; Eric Boehlert, “Bittersweet Synergy,” Rolling Stone, 19 March 1998, 25–26, and “Singles Meet Jingles,” Rolling Stone, 11 November 1999, 27–28; Valerie Block, “Jingle Biz Rocked by Licensed Pop in Ads,” Advertising Age, 3 February 2003, 6; Ann-Christine Diaz, “Them Changes,” Creativity, July 2003, 26–28; Paul Farhi, “With a Song in Their Spot,” Washington Post, 4 January 1998, H1; James P. Forkan, “Turning ’60s Music into ’80s Ads,” Advertising Age, 25 April 1985, 40; Debra Goldman, “Two-Part Harmony,” Adweek, 10 November 1997, 62; Stefano Hatfield, “Music to Watch Sales By,” Creativity, July 2003, 34–35; Bob Kaplan, “POV,” Creativity, July 2003, 6; Joey Levine, interview by Beatrice Black, National Public Radio, Marketplace, 26 February 2003; Carrie McLaren, “Licensed to Sell,” Village Voice, 28 April 1998, 36–37; Russ Pate, “Those Oldies but Goodies,” Adweek/ Southwest, 9 April 1984, 12; Tom Vanderbilt, “Taste: That Selling Sound, the Strange Musical Accompaniment to Cruise Lines, Cookies, Cars,” Wall Street Journal, 12 July 2002, W13; John Wall, “Madison Avenue Learns to Rock,” Insight, 14 April 1986, 54–55; and Richenda Wilson, “Commercial Sounds,” Marketing Week, 6 May 1999, 47–52.

18. Frank, Conquest of Cool, 11.

19. Wayne Friedman, “Music Labels Court Brands,” Advertising Age, 16 September 2002, 19.

20. Jeff Silberman, “2000 and Beyond,” Billboard, 4 November 2000, 10.

21. Cyndee Miller, “Marketers Find Alternative Way to Appeal to Young Music Lovers,” Marketing News, 12 October 1992, 18.

22. John Leland, “Selling Out Isn’t What It Used to Be,” New York Times magazine, 11 March 2001, 50.

23. Greg Kot, “In the Promotion World, Video Ads Killed the Radio Star,” Chicago Tribune, 6 October 2002, 7.

24. Sandy Brown, “Licensing Music for the Masses,” Boards, 2 April 2002, 42.

25. Joan Anderman, “Commercial Instinct: Boston’s Modernista! and Other Creators of TV Spots Have Become the Hippest DJs Around,” Boston Globe, 24 June 2001, L1.

26. Leland, “Selling Out Isn’t What It Used to Be,” 50. Moby was at the vanguard of licensing; some reports say that the tracks on his 1999 album Play have been licensed up to six hundred times. Terry Lawson, “Ad Execs Do Music Acts, Fans a Favor,” Detroit Free Press, 20 May 2001, http://www.freep.com/entertainment/music/lawcol20_20010520.htm. See also Ethan Smith, “Organization Moby,” Wired, May 2002, 88–95; and Evan Wiener, “For Sale: Moby (and Every Other Hip Recording Artist on the Planet),” Business 2.0, December 2001, http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,35037,00.html.

27. Michael Paoletta, “Dance & Electronic Music: Soundtrack to the World?,” Billboard, 22 March 2003, 39.

28. “BBH’s New Music Model,” Advertising Age, 28 July 2003, S-7.

29. Joshua Ostroff, “Commercial Music: Where It’s At,” Boards, 1 April 2003, 45.

30. Patricia Winters Lauro, “Forget Jingles. Viewers Prefer Familiar Tunes in Commercials,” New York Times, 8 November 1999, C1.

31. Ostroff, “Commercial Music,” 45.

32. On the proliferation of the underground into mainstream advertising, see Anne Elizabeth Moore, Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (New York: New Press, 2007).

33. Phil Patton, “Like the Song, Love the Car,” New York Times, 15 September 2002, §12, p. 1.

34. David Bloom, “Music Biz Takes to the Road,” Variety, 16–22 September 2002, 6.

35. David Kiley, Getting the Bugs Out: The Rise, Fall, and Comeback of Volkswagen in America (New York: Wiley, 2002).

36. Chris Morris, “U.S. TV Ads Tap into New Music, as Stigma Fades,” Billboard, 25 April 1998, 1.

37. This is the commercial used to advertise the Cabrio in 1999.

38. Leland, “Selling Out Isn’t What It Used to Be,” 51.

39. Liner notes to Street Mix, vol. 1, 2001.

40. Volkswagen, http://www.vw.com/musicpillar/listen.htm; uppercase in original. (This URL, active in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is no longer operational.)

41. Tracy L. Scott, “Music Highlights Mitsubishi TV Ads,” Washington Post, 9 June 2002, Y6.

42. Ibid.

43. Wiener, “For Sale.”

44. The video for this song, available on YouTube, shows Touche shuffling through his vinyl collection, followed immediately by images of real musicians executing what is actually sampled in the Wiseguys’ track.

45. Michael McCarthy, “Mitsubishi Campaign Starts Commotion,” USA Today, 24 December 2001, B6.

46. Ibid.

47. Stefano Hatfield, “The Long & Winding Road: Mitsubishi,” Creativity, May 2003, 30.

48. Mike Huckman, CNBC, Business with CNBC, 21 February 2003.

49. “Mitsubishi Motors and Deutch Launch Advertising Program to Introduce Endeavor SUV,” 24 March 2003, http://www.theauthochannel.com/news/2003/03/24/158069.html.

50. Jean Halliday, “British Band Makes U.S. Debut in Car Commercial,” Advertising Age, 11 March 2002, http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=34194.

51. Donna DeMarco, “Pop Artists Go Commercial,” Insight, 24 June 2002, 27.

52. Cary Darling, “Car Ads Get an Electronic Tune-up,” Montreal Gazette, 6 March 2003, §D, p. 1.

53. Patton, “Like the Song,” §12, p. 1.

54. Paoletta, “Dance & Electronic Music,” 39.

55. Wiener, “For Sale.”

56. Paoletta, “Dance & Electronic Music,” 39.

57. Tobi Elkin, “TiVo Inks Pacts for Long-Form TV Ads,” Advertising Age, 17 June 2002, 1.

58. Stuart Elliott, “In Branded Entertainment, ‘It’s the Wild West’ as a Marketing Strategy,” International Herald Tribune, 30 March 2005, 16.

59. Hank Kim, “Just Risk It,” Advertising Age, 9 February 2004, 1.

60. Lindsay, “Ad as Breakout Song Launchpad,” 26.

61. Marc Graser, “Creativity Bonds Mad Ave., Showbiz,” Daily Variety, 25 November 2002, 14.

62. Nicholson, “Branded for Success,” 4.

63. Jason Koransky, “The Drive behind Neill’s Automotive,” Down Beat, February 2003, 20.

64. Ben Neill, Automotive, six degrees 657036 1077–2, 2002. For more on Neill and Automotive, see his website, http://www.benneill.com.

65. Ben Neill, liner notes to Automotive.

66. Bess, “That New Hit Single,” 11.

67. Huckman, Business with CNBC.

68. Scott Donaton, “Sting-Jaguar Deal Still Serves as Model for the Music World,” Advertising Age, 22 September 2003, 22.

69. Bradford Wernle, “Jaguar S-Type Evokes Feeling of Style and Success, Says Rock Star Sting,” Automotive News Europe, 27 March 2000, 18.

70. Ibid.

71. Donaton, “Sting-Jaguar Deal,” 22.

72. Ibid.

73. Chris Ballard, “How to Write a Catchy Beer Ad,” New York Times magazine, 26 January 2003, 14–16.

74. Jean Halliday, “Toyota Links with Phil Collins,” Advertising Age, 14 October 2002, 14.

75. Jean Halliday, “Carmakers Pick Up the Beat,” Advertising Age, 14 April 2003, §S, p. 4.

76. See Mark Anthony Neal, “ ‘Real, Compared to What’: Anti-war Soul,” PopMatters, 28 March 2003, last accessed 11 August 2010, http://www.popmatters.com/features/030328-iraq-neal.shtml.

77. Scott Donaton, “Steve Berman Hears Music in Alliances with Advertisers,” Advertising Age, 7 April 2003, 18.

78. “Human and Sprite: Jingle All the Way,” Creativity, July 2007, 28.

79. Ibid.

80. Marc Altshuler, “Effective and Sustainable Branding Starts with Music,” Advertising Age, 5 November 2007, 23.

81. Randi Schmelzer, “RPM’s New Urban Marketing Tool: The DJ Made Me Do It,” Adweek, 13 March 2005, 14; see also Rebecca Flass and Katy Bachman, “Pepsi Experiment Gathers Momentum,” Adweek, 3 February 2003, 10.

82. Schmelzer, “RPM’s New Urban Marketing Tool,” 14.

83. Marc Graser, “McDonald’s on Lookout to Be Big Mac Daddy,” Advertising Age, 28 March 2005, 123.

84. See the Maven Strategies website at http://mavenstrategies.com.

85. Graser, “McDonald’s on Lookout,” 123.

86. Quoted in “10 Most Successful Product Launches,” Advertising Age, 22 December 2003, 26.

87. Kate MacArthur and Jack Neff, “Sprite Shifts Gears in Quest for Street Cred,” Advertising Age, 26 January 2004, 1.

88. Rob Walker, “Sprite ReMix,” New York Times, 28 March 2004, §6, p. 24.

89. See Andrew Hampp, “A Reprise for Jingles on Madison Avenue,” Advertising Age, 6 September 2010, 1.

90. “If There Were a Jingle, We’d Know the Commandments,” St. Petersburg Times, 11 October 2007, 6A.

91. “Big Mac® Chant-Off,” last accessed 16 July 2011, http://www.myspace.com/bigmacchant. See also Charlie Moran, “McDonald’s Asks Aspiring Musicians to Bring Their Own Special Sauce,” Advertising Age, 25 June 2008, http://adage.com/songsforsoap/post?article_id=128001.

92. Charlie Moran, “Jason Harper: King of Big Mac Chants,” Advertising Age, 22 July 2008, http://adage.com/songsforsoap/post?article_id=129823.

93. Ibid. See also Stephanie Clifford, “2 All-Beef Patties Are Back,” New York Times, 17 July 2008, §C, p. 1.

94. Stuart Elliott, “Musicians Market Brands to Sell Their Latest Music,” New York Times, 24 May 2005, §C, p. 5.

95. Mike Tunnicliffe, “The Brand Band Love-in,” Campaign, 7 November 2008, 27.

96. Chris Lee, “This Music Is Sponsored By . . . ,” Los Angeles Times, 7 March 2010, §E, p. 1. Thanks are due to Joanna Love-Tulloch, who told me of this article.

97. Eleftheria Parpis, “Profile: Steve Stoute,” Adweek.com, 25 August 2008.

98. “Wrigley Suspends Brown from Ads,” Adweek.com, 10 February 2009.

99. Kamau High, “Arcade Creative Group: Agency of Record,” Billboard, 4 October 2008, 12.

100. Kamau High, “Listen to the Brand,” Billboard, 19 July 2008, 24–25.

101. Charlie Moran, “The Record Label That’s Also a Creative Agency,” Advertising Age, 27 October 2008, 16.

102. For a discussion of the rise of corporate sponsorship of tours, see Cotton Seiler, “The Commodification of Rebellion: Rock Culture and Consumer Capitalism,” in New Forms of Consumption: Consumers, Culture, and Commodification, ed. Mark Gottdiener (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield).

103. This “convergence of content and commerce” has not affected only popular musicians, as the quotation from a New York City music production company owner above indicates; major film composers such as Danny Elfman, David Newman, and Rachel Portman have signed to a company called Groove Addicts, which seeks to connect such figures with commercial opportunities; famed minimalist composer Philip Glass (described in the advertising trade press as “primarily known for work outside the commercial arena”) has signed on as well. Tom Soter, “Clear as Glass,” Shootonline, 24 September 2004. In 2004, Glass scored the music for a Samsung commercial that was aired during the Summer Olympics that year; previously, Glass had written the music for two Altoids commercials. Glass’s prestige transfers not only to the advertising world but also to the other composers who toil in it every day; one such composer told me that now they can aim to compete with the best pop artists, classical composers, and so forth. If a client says it wants a “minimalist” sound and it’s also talking to Philip Glass, perhaps this composer’s firm can win the contract.

104. Patricia McGinnis, “The Jingle Generation,” Marketing Communications, January 1979, 71.

105. Mae Anderson, “On the Crest of the Wave,” Adweek.com, 13 September 2004.

106. A good deal of what counts as “ethnography” among marketers is enough to make academic ethnographers cringe; one author characterizes ethnography as the observation of “consumer behavior in a natural environment”; ethnography is described as a “discipline” that “borrows its techniques from the science of anthropology and allows marketers to study consumers in their everyday habitats.” Todd Wasserman, “Watch and Learn,” Adweek, 3 November 2003, 21.

107. Such as Hy Mariampolski, Ethnography for Marketers: A Guide to Consumer Immersion (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006); John F. Sherry Jr., ed., Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior: An Anthropological Sourcebook (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995); and Patricia L. Sunderland and Rita M. Denny, Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007). For a critique of these uses of anthropology and ethnography, see Patricia L. Sunderland and Rita M. Denny, “Psychology vs Anthropology: Where Is Culture in Marketplace Ethnography?,” in Advertising Cultures, ed. Timothy deWaal Malefyt and Brian Moeran (New York: Berg, 2003).

108. Alison Dumas, “The Limits of Market-Research Methods,” Advertising Age, 8 October 2007, 27.

109. ZandlGroup, last accessed 18 July 2011, http://www.zandlgroup.com; and Lev Grossman, “The Quest for Cool,” Time, 8 September 2003, 44–50.

110. For another report on this industry, see Malcolm Gladwell, “The Coolhunt,” New Yorker, 17 March 1999, 78–88.

111. Thom Duffy, “Songs’ Selling Power Examined,” Billboard, 3 July 1999, 57.

112. Anderman, “Commercial Instinct.”

113. Ibid., 1.

114. Stuart Elliott, “Burger King Moves Quickly to Take a Product from TV to the Table,” New York Times, 21 January 2005, §C, p. 4.

115. Nicholson, “Branded for Success.”

116. Josh Rabinowitz, “With the Brand: Jingle in Your Pocket,” Billboard, 19 January 2008, 17.

117. Charlie Moran, “Rapper Common Learns to Make Music with Microsoft,” Advertising Age, 13 October 2008, 22; see also Hilary Crosley, “Common: Creative ‘Control,’ ” Billboard. com, 6 December 2008.

118. Andrew Hampp, “Will.I.Am Is with the Brands—and Damn Proud of It,” Advertising Age, 28 February 2011, 10.

119. Joyce Kurpiers, “Reality by Design: Advertising Image, Music and Sound Design in the Production of Culture,” PhD diss., Duke University, 2009, 46.

Chapter 9

1. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1998), and The Culture of the New Capitalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

2. John Ehrenreich and Barbara Ehrenreich, “The Professional-Managerial Class,” in Between Labor and Capital, ed. Pat Walker (Boston: South End, 1979), 12. See also Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution, trans. Derek Jeffers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

3. Scott Lash and John Urry, Economies of Signs and Space (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994).

4. Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (New York: Seabury, 1979).

5. Herbert J. Gans, “American Popular Culture and High Culture in a Changing Class Structure,” in Prospects: An Annual of American Culture Studies 10, ed. Jack Salzman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Richard A. Peterson and Roger M. Kern, “Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore,” American Sociological Review 61 (October 1996): 900–907; and Fred Pfeil, “ ‘Makin’ Flippy-Floppy’: Postmodernism and the Baby-Boom PMC,” in Another Tale to Tell: Politics and Narrative in Postmodern Culture (New York: Verso, 1990).

6. Robert Reich, The Work of Nations (New York: Vintage, 1992); and Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

7. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 360.

8. Ibid., 384.

9. Georg Bissen, Victoria Gross, and Shahin Motia, interview by author, New York City, 7 April 2004. I should make clear, however, that there is a distinct difference in the advertising world between the “creative” and “business” sides. The creative side produces ads; the business side manages clients and accounts. Judging from my interviews, the creative side is much more populated by people in this group described by Bourdieu; the business side seems to be populated by people who enter the field with less cultural and educational capital.

10. Bourdieu, Distinction, 326. See also Mike Featherstone on “new cultural intermediaries.” Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007).

11. Tracy L. Scott, “Music Highlights Mitsubishi TV Ads,” Washington Post, 9 June 2002, Y6.

12. Bourdieu, Distinction, 326.

13. Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott (New York: Verso, 2005), 444. It’s not just that the advertising industry is controlled by young people; it is quite ageist. Richard Sennett writes in his book on work that, in the New York City advertising agency where one of his interlocutors worked, “everything in the office focused on the immediate moment, on what was just about to break, on getting ahead of the curve; eyes glaze over in the image business when someone begins a sentence ‘One thing I’ve learned is that . . . ’ ” (Sennett, Corrosion of Character, 79–80). One advertising executive acknowledges this orientation, telling a researcher, “If you’re in advertising, you’re dead after thirty. Age is a killer.” “Flexibility equals youth, rigidity equals age,” Sennett concludes (ibid., 93). For more on ageism in the advertising industry, see Joyce Kurpiers, “Reality by Design: Advertising Image, Music and Sound Design in the Production of Culture,” PhD diss., Duke University, 2009; and, for the British case, which offers many parallels to the American, see Sean Nixon, Advertising Cultures: Gender, Commerce, Creativity (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003).

14. Bourdieu, Distinction, 366.

15. See Arthur Bellaire, TV Advertising: A Handbook of Modern Practice (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 161; Marilyn Harris and Mark Wolfram, Getting into the Jingle Business (a Source Book) (New York: Sound Studio Publications, 1983), 7; Al Stone, Jingles: How to Write, Produce and Sell Commercial Music (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1990), 30; Antonio Teixeira Jr., Music to Sell By: The Craft of Jingle Writing (n.p.: Berklee Press, 1974), 7; and “Woloshin Taps Classics to Fashion Jingles,” Back Stage, 20 April 1984, 42B.

16. Bruno Del Grando, “The Art of Selling Out,” interview by Pat Kiernan, CNN, 10 February 2003.

17. John Leland, “Selling Out Isn’t What It Used to Be,” New York Times magazine, 11 March 2001, 50.

18. Nick Gadsby, a British-based market researcher, has discovered that today’s consumers want to “control the agenda.” Nick Gadsby, “Researching the 4th Dimension,” Brand Strategy, 4 February 2003, 3. Interestingly, Gadsby singles out contemporary electronica music as a new kind of “brand” (or perhaps “b[r]and”) naming the British band Aphex Twin as a group that commands the loyalty of underground fans—famously sensitive to questions of selling out, unlike the mainstream groups I have been describing—even as it permits its music to be used for commercial purposes.

19. Nara Schoenberg, “Ad Chic,” Chicago Tribune, 4 April 2002, 5. An article in Adweek in 1985 noted the “deep-rooted suspicion of the corporate sell” possessed by baby boomers, which the use of music from the 1960s was meant to circumvent. J. Max Robins and Chuck Reece, “Using Hard Rock for Soft Sell,” Adweek/East, May 1985, M.M. 20. Some baby boomers were appalled by the use of licensed music. A particularly notorious ad was Nike’s use in 1987 of the Beatles’ “Revolution,” largely seen as one of the most influential acts of licensing, discussed in chapter 7. As a response to this and other uses of 1960s music, Neil Young wrote an antiadvertising song called “This Note’s for You” in 1988.

20. Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 121.

21. See, for just two examples, Martyn J. Lee, Consumer Culture Reborn: The Cultural Politics of Consumption (New York: Routledge, 1993); and Douglas B. Holt, “Postmodern Markets,” in Do Americans Shop Too Much?, ed. Juliet Schor (Boston: Beacon, 2000).

22. Joan Anderman, “Commercial Instinct: Boston’s Modernista! and Other Creators of TV Spots Have Become the Hippest DJs Around,” Boston Globe, 24 June 2001, L1.

23. Barry Walters, “2002: The Year in Recordings: The 10 Best Dance Songs,” Rolling Stone, 26 December 2002, 112. For more on this Dirty Vegas song, see Jean Halliday, “British Band Makes U.S. Debut in Car Commercial,” Advertising Age, 11 March 2002, http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=34194; Michael Paoletta, “Capitol’s Dirty Vegas Gains Popularity as ‘Days Go By,’ ” Billboard, 1 June 2002, 44; Kelefa Sanneh, “Music to Drive By: Their Smash-Hit Single Is a Commercial,” New York Times, 30 August 2002, E2; and Rob Walker, “Dirty Vegas,” Slate, 19 September 2002, http://www.slate.com.

24. A number of my interviewees made the same analogy.

25. Allyce Bess, “That New Hit Single Might Hide a Jingle,” Christian Science Monitor, 9 December 2002, 11.

26. See Timothy D. Taylor, “Advertising and the Conquest of Culture,” Social Semiotics 4 (December 2009): 405–25.

27. See Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vols. 1–3 (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1996–98); David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989), and A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Scott Lash and John Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987); Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, trans. Joris de Bres (New York: Verso, 1978); and Sennett, Corrosion of Character, and Culture of the New Capitalism.

28. Jean Baudrillard, “The System of Objects,” in Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster, 21–22 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).

29. Kurpiers, “Reality by Design,” 207.

30. Lash and Urry, Economies of Signs and Space, 64.

31. Allen J. Scott, Social Economy of the Metropolis: Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism and the Global Resurgence of Cities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 65.

32. Andrew Wernick, Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology and Symbolic Expression (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1991).

33. Sennett, Culture of the New Capitalism.

34. See Scott, Social Economy of the Metropolis. “Creativity” seems to be entering the public lexicon more generally as well, as evidenced by a recent cover story in a national news magazine. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, “The Creativity Crisis,” Newsweek, 19 July 2010, 44–49. For considerations of creativity under the rubric of the literature on creative industries, see John Hartley, ed., The Creative Industries (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005); and Dave Hesmondhalgh, The Cultural Industries, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2007).

35. Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

36. Edward Buxton, Creative People at Work (New York: Executive Communications, 1975), 219–20.

37. Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 218.

38. “Tip Top Jingle Money Makers,” Sponsor, 30 April 1962, 50.

39. Teixeira, Music to Sell By, 49.

40. Andy Bloch, interview by author, New York City, 20 April 2004.

41. Anthony Vanger, interview by author, New York City, 15 April 2004.

42. Josh Rabinowitz, interview by author, New York City, 21 April 2004. Rabinowitz is referring to a 2003 commercial for Sony Electronics aired during the Superbowl; the track could be downloaded for ninety-nine cents. See John Leland, “A Chance to Carry On for 130 Million,” New York Times, 19 January 2003, §9, p. 2. For a discussion of those who make their living choosing music for television programs and films, see Timothy D. Taylor, “Late Capitalism, Globalisation, and the Commodification of Taste,” in The Cambridge History of World Music, ed. Philip Bohlman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

43. David Ogilvy, interview by unknown interviewer, undated, Pepsi Collection no. 111, Series 4, Subseries a, box 33, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC.

44. Bernie Krause, telephone interview by author, 4 August 2009.

45. Fritz Doddy, interview by author, New York City, 14 April 2004.

46. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 79.

47. Ibid., 80.

48. Ibid.

49. Derek Sayer, Capitalism and Modernity: An Excursus on Marx and Weber (London: Routledge, 1991), 30; emphases in original.

50. Battersby, Gender and Genius, 2.

51. Max Weber, Sociological Writings, ed. Wolf Heyderbrand (New York: Continuum, 1999), 172.

52. Weber, Protestant Ethic, 181–82.

53. William Bernbach, quoted in Fox, Mirror Makers, 252; emphasis in Fox.