When the band struck up the jazz classic Muskrat Ramble over Los Angeles' KTTV, Lyricist Ray Gilbert winced to hear his own words replaced by others: "You're gonna love this coffee, man oh man ..." Last week Gilbert sued for $300,000 from the sponsor (Hills Brothers Coffee), the ad agency (N. W. Ayer), and his own music publisher (George Simon), who explained that he had sold the singing-commercial rights to the music —minus the lyrics—for $500. Gilbert charged that the jingle had injured his reputation "by reducing him in the eyes of the music profession, publishers and the public to the level of a jingle writer."
But for all Gilbert's distress, the lowly singing commercial—once denounced by Herbert Hoover, and banned from the air "in the public interest" by Detroit's WWF —now commands the talents of bigger names than his. Last month Frank (Guys and Dolls) Loesser entered the jingle-writing lists with a new firm, Frank Productions Inc., which boasts a creative stable dwarfing the credits of any Broadway musical: Hoagy (Stardust) Carmichael, Vernon (April in Paris) Duke, Harold (Fanny) Rome and, for lyrics alone, Ogden Nash. On his heels came Raymond Scott, composer of Lucky Strike's Be Happy, Go Lucky, who announced that he was forming "The Jingle Workshop" to concentrate on musical plugs.
"Native Art Form." The little jingle is now bigtime. Admen long ago realized that not since Young crossed the Rubicam has advertising found a more hypnotic pitch. In the 18 years since Pepsi-Cola hit the spot with a jazzy version of the English ballad John Peel, the singing commercial has become as entrenched in U.S. culture as the madrigal in the Italian Renaissance. Says Scott: "There's a definite challenge to writing jingles. To me, they've become as much a part of the American scene as any native art form." Says Columbia Records' spade-bearded Arranger-Producer Mitch Miller, who has plunged enthusiastically into the new art: "I remember asking Rodgers and Hammerstein how they decided what to put to music, and what to leave to dialogue. They replied that they used music only when it became impossible to convey an' emotional feeling by words alone. The same should apply to commercial musical spots."
The simplest way for an advertiser to get music for his commercials is to take it free from the public domain, e.g., Rheingold Beer's current use of the Banana Boat Song. The sponsor may also buy commercial rights to hit melodies. The fees run into thousands of dollars in the case of composers such as Cole Porter, who leased his It's De-Lovely to De Soto. At first, songwriters resisted this practice, but now many of them welcome it. They not only share the fees with their publishers, but they get regular ASCAP or
BMI royalties for each performance of the commercial.