I've got a record of one of the Jack Benny's 1944
radio shows
in which he has the Mills Brothers as guests doing a
hilarious advertising moment. They do "If I Didn't
Care" and a couple other (now) famous classics, but
they do a 'parody' commercial. You see Jack was
always playing like he was grumpy toward the sponsers,
especially because they would 'sneak' in their
advertising jingles/propaganda*, so the guests would
sometimes substitute right in the middle of their song
a plug for the sponser (Lucky Strike cigarettes).
Everyone in the studio audience would start laughing,
and in the case of the Jack Benny episode I think he
even interrupts and dismisses them. Basically, they
did the sponser shout-out, but it was a chance for the
guests to get Jack's goat, so to speak, and was making
fun of corporate sponsers having the gall to insert
their content right into the entertainment (lyrics).
With the Mills Brothers, they start doing "If I Didn't
Care" straight for several verses, then they have the
signature baritone-voiced guy doing the low spoken
part in the middle, and he starts doing the Lucky
Strike commercial and the audience slowly starts
laughing.
"Baby, if I didn't care what cigarettes you smoke.."
*Fibber McGee and Molly, another 40's radio show in
the US,
had a character who 'lived in the neighborhood' who
would visit and *always* *somehow* segue into a
conversation about (Johnson's) floor wax. McGee would
always dread this guy coming over and would wearily
start holding a conversation just waiting for the
dreaded moment when he would somehow turn the subject
to floor wax. "McGee, yes your new car is so modern
and shiny, almost as Shiny As You Could Get Your
Kitchen Floor If You Used...(etc)"
It seems that in 40's radio shows, the
"sponser"-hawking character was always a friendly pest
that everyone wanted to finish his interrupting
schtick once he finally butted in, and then Go Away...
It would be funny if on the radio now they just
replaced the 'guest' mc used-to-be-'middle-8' parts of
hip hop tracks with some recurring 'MC 7-Up-Yours'
character that comes into half the songs. They could
be really obnoxious at attempting to turn the
narrative of the rap toward the subject of their
product, but then get shooed off by the original mc
when the main chorus comes back---then it would be
just like 60 years ago...self-parodying sponser
intrusions.
dj broke wind now
--- Steev Hise <steevATdetritus.net> wrote:
>
> aside from rap- does anyone else remember "We Built
> This City on
> Rock and Roll", by Jefferson Starship (or were they
> just
> "Starship" by then?). during the middle 8 there's a
> little
> babbling station id by a DJ, i think originally it's
> a san
> francisco DJ, but i remember hearing a version with
> local
> station's call letters spliced in.
>
> Actually radio is coming around full circle, it
> seems. in the
> early days, the 20s till i don't know when, every
> program on the
> radio was heavily identified and woven in with the
> sponsors of
> that program. "The Acme Soap Company Jazz Hour" or
> whatever, etc
> etc....
>
> smh
>
> Steev Hise, Subversive Radical Hippy Hacker
> steevATdetritus.net http://detritus.net/steev
> *Recycled Culture: detritus.net *Recordings:
> phonophilia.com
> *Want Peace? Stop Paying for War:
> warresisters.org/wtr_menu.htm
>
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> "He's so profound without all the profundity."
> -Kimonade
>
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