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Saturday, March 3, 2012

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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This is a Chicago furniture store jingle as released on a promotional 7 in. vinyl single in 1970.



My general memory from the late 1950s into the 1970s is that music for broadcast commercials and radio jingles was based either on styles that were mainstream when the ad agency guys were in school---half a generation out of date to a teenager or young adult---or else an agency's smarmy exploitation version of youth-oriented music. The good people at Ember Furniture seem to have farmed out their work to a very smooth soul operator named Sidney Barnes. I have a version of this on CD---an anthology on the Numero Group reissue label. Numero's releases cover a wide spectrum, from interesting, fully listenable minor-league recordings by regional soul (and other styles of) groups to sides that sound like they came from a 1960s and '70s parallel pop music universe. And I guess that's actually the case: there is only so much room on national charts at any one time, and it tends to be allotted according to mystical protocols involving transfers of materiel and sexual favors.

Meanwhile, here in the 21st century, I'd certainly poke into a furniture store that commissioned a commercial jingle like "The Ember Song." As if (as annoying teenage girls used to say).

The Ember Song, Sidney Barnes (1970, available on "Eccentric Soul: The Nickel & Penny Labels" [2011], Numero Group N039), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.  

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