Lyres for Hire

That Madison Avenue has a tin pan ally has long been an open secret. When singing commercials first began to sound better than popular songs, most listeners concluded, reasonably enough, that popular songs had become worse (rock 'n' roll had come along). But a year or so later, the advertising arias began to sound unmistakably better than the TV programs they interrupted. Here was unquestionable evidence. TV programs could not have got any worse; therefore, the singing commercials had improved.

There was, of course, a good reason for the improvement: the commercials were being written by some of the best songwriters in the country (TIME, May 6, 1957) Cole Porter licensed It's Delovely to DeSoto, then Richard Adler (Pajama Game) wrote seductive tunes for Newport and Kent cigarettes. Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls) composed a ditty for Piel Bros. beer.

No One Would Know. Other composers have followed. Some agreed to write commercials as soon as they were asked, and others, it appears, held Faustian dialogues with themselves for as long as ten seconds. Adler describes his temptation: "They kept asking me, and I finally decided 'Why the hell not?' Rock 'n' roll was eating up all the air time anyway, and I was offered a good big piece of money [his take to date for five jingles: $250,000]. Besides, it never occurred to me that anyone would ever know I had done it."

Before long, Loesser's Frank Music Corp. had the new labor force organized. Admen could buy high-test jingles written by the firm's herd of known and unknown songwriters. Some of the knowns: Adler, Harold Rome (Destry Rides Again), Charles Strouse and Lee Adams (Bye Bye Birdie), and Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh (Wildcat). Authorship is not revealed until the tune has been sold. "It's embarrassing," explained the firm's vice president, Stuart Ostrow, "for an important writer to go to bat for Pepsodent and be turned down." Average price, not including sizable royalties: $3,500.

Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean. Ostrow is dubious about the noncommercial value of commercials ("I don't think they can become part of the literature"), and Songwriter Rome, who once wrote something for Sanka, is even less enthusiastic: "I can't get any emotion into Sanka coffee."

Ostrow and Rome are, naturally, wrong. Society Bandleader Lester Lanin noticed not long ago that the well-bred teen-agers at his deb parties had begun to ask him to play the Mr. Clean song (composer: Adman Thomas Cadden) or the Newport cigarette cha cha cha. Last week Lanin, who has made a career of knowing where the money is, announced the title of his next long-playing record: Lester Lanin on Madison Avenue, jingle tunes without words, played at our-song tempo.

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