7
Jingle Writing
!!Although the termjin-
gleis distasteful to some
composers, songs for com-
mercials are referred as jin-
gles throughout the book.The recorded history of advertising music
began when music printing became eco-
nomical. During the nineteenth century,
the street cry was transmuted into the jin-
gle on trade cards and in newspaper and
magazine advertisements. Some compa-
nies advertised on sheet music and in
music collections; others published their own music. In early twentieth-
century England, Beecham’s Pills issued a series of portfolios that included
popular songs, folksongs, numbers from operettas and other light classical
selections, and excerpts from Handel and Mendelssohn oratorios, all inter-
spersed with advertising copy and music specifically intended to promote
Beecham’s product. Although lacking obvious jingles, the portfolios
included dances such as the ‘‘Guinea-a-Box Polka’’ (alluding to the price
of Beecham’s Pills), the ‘‘St. Helen’s Waltz’’ (that being where they were
manufactured), the ‘‘Beecham’s Chimes Galop’’ and ‘‘Beecham’s March to
Health’’ (www.grovemusic.com).
Musical Commercial Saves
Wheaties from ExtinctionWheaties made advertising history as the first product to feature a singing
commercial on network radio. Its first airing took place on Christmas Eve
- Four male singers known as ‘‘The Wheaties Quartet’’ sang the soon-
to-be-famous ‘‘Have You Tried Wheaties’’ jingle. The commercial was a
barometer on how popular Wheaties was with the people. Sales increased
in areas where the people heard the commercial. Unfortunately, the musi-
cal commercial was heard in only a very limited area of the United States.
In those regions where the musical commercial wasn’t heard, sales floun-
dered badly.
With the product’s sagging popularity, General Mills, the makers of
Wheaties, came within a whisker of discontinuing the production and sell-
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