Loren Binford

The first Chicago recording studio we remember doing single sessions was United Recording. This facility was located somewhere in the Streeterville neighborhood. Bill Putnam opened the first Universal studios in about 1947 on the top floor of the Civic Opera House. He used army surplus equipment from Fort Sheridan and hd a big hit recording on “Peg of My Heart” with The Harmonicats. (This studio was called “Agency” by 1958.) In 1948 Universal moved to 100 East Ontario Street just west of Michigan Avenue. (In the mid 1960s this studio was called “Joy”.) In 1956 Putnam opened Universal at 46 East Walton near Rush. Its first engineers (besides Putnam) were Bernie Clapper, Mason Coppinger and then Bruce Swedein. Other early studios included Boulevard (on Dearborn at Ontario, run by Hal and Eleanor Kaichuck), Columbia (at the back of CBS on McClurg Court, where the engineer was Bob Kidder) and RCA (on an upper floor of the North Pier Terminal Building, with Bruce Sweiden as engineer for a short time), as well as Agency (in the Opera House, with John Garamoni as engineer). An occasional demo session was done at the studios Hadley School of the Blind in Winnetka. A few things were done at Webb Recording.

Instrumental musicians doing jingle sessions in the 1950s included:

Violins: Sol Bobrov, Emil Podsada, Dave Chausow, Frank Borgononi

Cello: Emil Mitterman, Karl Fruh,

Bass: Phil Agnes, Al Saber, Johnny Frigo

Drums: Frank Rullo, Bobby Christian, Jerry Schlossberg

Guitar: Earl Backus, George Allen

Reeds: Howard Davis, Hal Dessent, George Neuquist, Bob Tootilian, Hobie Grimes

Trumpets: Rocky Cassiello, Rudy Stauber, Leon Ruby, Burt Tobias

Trombones: Les Fulle, Cy Touff, Ed Poggensee, Bil Corti

French Horn: Ethel Merker

(As I recall, Johnny Howell, Warren Kime, Kenny Soderblom, Harry Lepp, Mark McDunn and Art Sales were working

steady studio or theater jobs before 1960 and couldn’t do jingles. Mel Schmidt and Porky Panico were at CBS-LWB)

Singers included:

Betty Bryant, Elaine Rogers Jackson, Jeannie Weigel, Jane Haley, Ann Trendler, Jamie (Arlene Dina Silvia)

Billy Leech, Buddy Charles, Len Dresslar, Don Moreland, Ralph Sterling, Marshall Gill, Maury Jackson, John Hunt, Louie Langille, Joe eich, Dick Noel, Win Strake, Bill Scott, Jack Halloran, Bill Cole, Loren Binford

The first organized vocal groups included:

The Jack Halloran Singers

(Jack was the choir director at a church in Evanston and hired choir members for sessions. His male quartet was Jack, Bill Cole, and two more singers. John Hunt, Louie Langille and Wayne Roelofson sang for Jack at the church and did a few sessions. The Jack Halloran Quartet left Chicago in 1958 to do the Pat Butram Show in Los Angeles.)

The Mello-Larks

(Jamie and Tommy Hamm, Joe Eich & one more member)

This group broke up when Jamie and Tommy were divorced in about 1957.

The Js

(Jamie and Joe Silva, John hunt, and Loren (aka Jerry) Binford and by 1959, Louie Langille and Joe Eich) The group was formed in the spring of 1958 shortly after Joe and Jamie got married.

Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers

A great majority of national products benefited from the talents of Chicago writers, singer musicians and engineers. Many of the people are still alive, although scattered throughout the country in retirement. We hope to recapture their memories and to establish an archive of information about the jingle industry in Chicago before 1960. Most of the leaders of the industry after 1960 are still around and active. We’ll leave it to them to write the history of the really busy days of the 1960s and 1970s.

–LOREN BINFORD

The following is an article written by Loren Binford discussing the history of the music for radio and tv commercials in Chicago. This is one of several articles he gave me around 2008. Loren passed a way in 2013 and was a well respected trombone player, singer, and arranger.

Loren was born and raised in Iowa but came to Chicago in the early '50s to study music at Northwestern University. He earned degrees in Music and Geography, then left academia for an active career in the Chicago jingle industry, the busiest in the country at the time. He once estimated he performed in over 6000 jingles in the late '50s, '60s and '70s before much of the production moved to California. His name is known by all Chicago musicians, commercial producers, and harmony singers, but not by members of the public, although they heard his voice virtually every day on their radios and televisions for years.

-Ron

On Monday, September 12, 2005, at the Cambridge House restaurant at Ohio and St. Clair in Chicago, Sol Bobrov, Dick Boyell, Al Saber, Ron Steele and Loren Binford met for lunch. We anticipated that Johnny Frigo would have joined us, but a scheduling oversight prevented him from being there. We began a discussion which we hope will reconstruct memories of when and how radio and TV commercial advertising music recording (“the jingle business”) got started in Chicago.

As you know, during the 1930s and 1940s the radio studio orchestras were among the best paying jobs for musicians and a great number of musical giants worked there anonymously because they could make more money there than anywhere else. But now, the studio personnel records have been destroyed, most of those wonderful musical artists and theorists memories have passed away and no one is left to write a history of the radio studio orchestra.

Prior to the early 1950s most radio and TV commercial announcements were delivered live by staff announcers and singers and accompanied by musicians from the staff orchestras. However, tape recording enabled advertisers to present their messages in a more effective form and with precise timing. Certainly, by the mid 1950s a large number of commercials were prerecorded.

We don’t know exactly when the jingle business got started in New York or who were its first pioneers. We do know that, in the 1950s, Los Angeles was not nearly as important as Chicago and New York for jingle production. Other cities, such as Nashville and Detroit, were also less important.

A few spots may have been done by Jim Jewell and by Eddie Fritz (a ragtime piano player) in the early 1950s, but we have always been told that, in Chicago, the first major producers musical advertising jingles were Bill Walker and Bernie Saber. Bill Walker was a piano who had worked at the Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel. Bernie Saber was a saxophone player and band leader. Both were established in writing and producing jingles by the mid 1950s. Walker may have got started in the early 1950s. Dick Boyell had also played piano in the Pump Room. He began doing arrangements for Bernie Saber and also help Bill Walker when he was busy. Dick Marx played piano at the Pump Room and then at Mr. Kelly’s and Johnny Frigo worked with him. Marx first worked as an arranger for Bernie Saber.

In 1958 (when Loren Binford began singing commercials) Walker and Saber were the leaders, but Boyell, Marx and Frigo were sometimes producing their own sessions. Other established jingle producers in 1958 and 1959 included Jerry Abbott (aka Charles Englehardt), Adversonic (Henry Brandon, Phil Bova and Jack Sherred), Sid Siegel, Fred Niles Productions (Llyod Normal and Fred Smale who did mostly industrial films), Marvin Frank (with Dick Boyell as arranger), and David Carroll (aka Nook Schrier, who was mostly a producer for Mercury Records). Artie Fields would come in from St. Louis to do Budweiser spots.

"A great number of giants worked there anonymously..."

"We hope to recapture their memories ..."

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