[topcat]

It was fun reading Ken's description of his first Dallas adventure. People always ask me if I was ever at the “original” PAMS. What they fail to remember is that the company went out of business in 1978, while I was a senior in high school.

My first adventure in Dallas was in May 1988. I went down for a session being sung for WMT in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My friend, Rick Sellers, was the GM for the station and a long time jingle collector (and personal friends with Bill Meeks and many others in the industry).

The session was done at Cheka Sound, Charlie Pride's studios. Brian Beck led the group rounded out with Jim and Greg Clancy, Judy Parma and Abby Holmes. To me, it was more of an educational experience than anything. Having already been collecting jingles for twenty years since the young age of seven, I justified the expense of last minute plane travel by “amortizing” the expense over 20 years in my mind.

I picked up Rick at the airport and off we headed to the studio. I can remember the whole day… and beyond… as if it was yesterday. It's hard to believe it was twenty years ago already.

I chose three tracks from the “massive” PAMS library of cuts and knew exactly how I wanted them sung. Frankly, they could have sung about feminine hygiene and I wouldn't have known the difference.

A bunch of cuts were sung for WMT along with WTRY. A commercial cut for “Flannigans” was sung over a 3WE track. The session lasted four hours, but I probably could have sat there observing for forty hours without blinking. I flew up to Buffalo the next day to mix down the masters. My “master reel” of mixes runs fifteen minutes for what were about thirty seconds of backing tracks.

Here I am in 2008. I was in Dallas a few weeks ago and the singers were singing at TM. Greg and Abby, who sang on my original session, were sitting around the microphones singing Studio Dragonfly cuts along with materials for the Tom Merriman Tribute I'm attending next month. It's one of several sessions I've sat in on since that original visit twenty years ago.

A lot of time has past, and the technology has changed, but it's still a blast watching the singers precisely run through cuts at lightening speed. I'm no longer the “wide-eyed kid” I was when there twenty years ago, and I've been around long enough to see behind Oz's wizard's curtain, but I will always enjoy watching the singers at work. Of course, I video taped the 15 minutes I sat in on before I had to attend to other business as I felt the Merriman sings should be documented for posterity.

-Tracy

[Barras]

Absolutely fascinating stuff…thanks Geoff and thanks to TopCat for his account and insight into jingles too. IMHO this is where Jinglemad still shines regarding the history of jingles and knowledge of jingles from posters. The website remains fantastic bringing a mix of not just jingle audio but a sharing knowledge and personal history of radio ID jingles too, tops !

Barras

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