Complete reel (8 mins)
Smoke Ring:
Background
Tobacco manufacturer Liggett & Myers of Durham NC first began sponsoring radio broadcasts of musical shows in 1932 and used music aggressively in their early campaigns. The Chesterfield jingle, composed in 1937 by songwriter John Klenner with radio music directors Ted Steele and Lloyd Shaffer, painted the airwaves with smoke. (As music directors often did in the radio era, Klenner, Steele and Shaffer later re-worked this jingle into a hit song, Smoke Dreams.) By the time The Chesterfield Supper Club debuted on NBC in 1944, Liggett & Myers had become the industry leader in cigarette advertising trends. True to form, the new radio show introduced to a nationwide radio audience three crooners who would come to dominate mainstream pop music in the late 1940s and early 1950s: Perry Como, Jo Stafford, and Peggy Lee.
This project, Smoke Ring, was initially sparked by a search for a good recording of the Chesterfield jingle for use in a class on audio recording history. Radio broadcasts prior to 1948 would have been recorded simply by placing a disc recorder in front of the radio speaker. There were relatively few practitioners because the process was expensive, the results usually of poor audio quality, and because they were recorded on disc they were practically impossible to edit. The typical radio broadcast recordings that survive from this period are mostly short "airchecks" — samplings of broadcast quality which rarely included complete musical performances. Not surprisingly, only one period recording of the Chesterfield jingle turned up, a 15-second excerpt from an aircheck ca. 1944. The audio quality is typical — due to broadcast noise, disc noise, and inconsistent platter speed on the recorder, significant digital audio "cleanup" was needed just to hear this short excerpt in a consistent key.
After transcribing the music from this aircheck, I re-created an arrangement of the product theme, adding close-harmony vocals, then edited together several 20-second "stingers" using footage from 1958 and 1961 campaigns. A deeper dive into the Tobacco Settlement archives unearthed a wealth of material for additional videos.
This project, Smoke Ring, was initially sparked by a search for a good recording of the Chesterfield jingle for use in a class on audio recording history. Radio broadcasts prior to 1948 would have been recorded simply by placing a disc recorder in front of the radio speaker. There were relatively few practitioners because the process was expensive, the results usually of poor audio quality, and because they were recorded on disc they were practically impossible to edit. The typical radio broadcast recordings that survive from this period are mostly short "airchecks" — samplings of broadcast quality which rarely included complete musical performances. Not surprisingly, only one period recording of the Chesterfield jingle turned up, a 15-second excerpt from an aircheck ca. 1944. The audio quality is typical — due to broadcast noise, disc noise, and inconsistent platter speed on the recorder, significant digital audio "cleanup" was needed just to hear this short excerpt in a consistent key.
After transcribing the music from this aircheck, I re-created an arrangement of the product theme, adding close-harmony vocals, then edited together several 20-second "stingers" using footage from 1958 and 1961 campaigns. A deeper dive into the Tobacco Settlement archives unearthed a wealth of material for additional videos.
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Smoke Dreams -- Original Radio Jingle (1944)
:15R 1944 |
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Snow Job is a heavily edited composite of six Chesterfield ads from the early 1950s; most of these spots were created to be run during episodes of the long-running cop show Dragnet. In one spot, George Fenneman reads from a purported "medical study" — likely generated by an ad agency.
In four other spots, Dragnet star Jack Webb appears in character as detective Joe Friday, alerting viewers to a new "report" about Chesterfield cigarettes, even referencing George Fetterman's "report". Blurred lines — between medicine and advertising, legality and ethics, even between the program and the ads created by its sponsors. Musically, the score follows conventions of "film noir" and 1950s television shows like Perry Mason, Dragnet, and The Twilight Zone. |
Snow Job
(90 seconds) Created from filmed spots ca. 1950-55.
Video and audio quality reveals defects in the original sources. |
Early television production techniques were meager — often just a few shots with no music. This also applied to commercials, which included celebrity endorsements, "host-selling", overhyped claims, shady sources, emotional manipulation, and Fourth Wall-breaching cross-references between the product and the show. In the 1950s, television sponsors even asserted creative control over scripts of the shows they were sponsoring — often using their power to gain product placement in the programs, essentially a form of free advertising. All these tactics were especially common in tobacco advertising, which dominated American radio and television until being banned at the end of 1970.
In 1998, as a condition of a massive legal settlement with 46 states, tobacco companies released all proprietary documents from their marketing operations (including the ads themselves), and surrendered all their copyrights to the public domain. This document dump exposed longtime patterns of deliberate, systematic deception, fraud, and other sordid corporate behaviors, as well as the run-of-the-mill manipulative tactics that form the basis of advertising.
Given the centrality of music in the tobacco companies' marketing strategies, it is odd that many of their early television ads had no music at all. It seemed to my ears this was a missing element...so I provided it. Given the obvious vintage of the video, it seemed logical to compose music generally in the style(s) of the 1950s. Rather than "complimenting" the commercial message, however, I instead composed music intended to subvert the direct messaging and instead draw the viewer's attention to the absurdities, shadowy tactics, and shocking claims made in advertising campaigns.
In 1998, as a condition of a massive legal settlement with 46 states, tobacco companies released all proprietary documents from their marketing operations (including the ads themselves), and surrendered all their copyrights to the public domain. This document dump exposed longtime patterns of deliberate, systematic deception, fraud, and other sordid corporate behaviors, as well as the run-of-the-mill manipulative tactics that form the basis of advertising.
Given the centrality of music in the tobacco companies' marketing strategies, it is odd that many of their early television ads had no music at all. It seemed to my ears this was a missing element...so I provided it. Given the obvious vintage of the video, it seemed logical to compose music generally in the style(s) of the 1950s. Rather than "complimenting" the commercial message, however, I instead composed music intended to subvert the direct messaging and instead draw the viewer's attention to the absurdities, shadowy tactics, and shocking claims made in advertising campaigns.
Created from vintage, public domain footage.
All music composed and produced by Gates Thomas,
except for the Chesterfield jingle, composed by John Klenner, Ted Steele, and Lloyd Shaffer.
No cigarettes were harmed during the making of these videos.
All music composed and produced by Gates Thomas,
except for the Chesterfield jingle, composed by John Klenner, Ted Steele, and Lloyd Shaffer.
No cigarettes were harmed during the making of these videos.
Copyright ©2023 by Gates Thomas. All rights reserved.