This is an excerpt from Ken Deutsch's "The Jingle Book." For more behind-the-scenes stories from the radio and jingle business, check out the Ken R Book Bundle Bonanza

Texas is a "right-to-work" state, meaning that members of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) had more freedom to set their own rates than their counterparts in New York and Los Angeles.

From a radio station's point of view, this often made the difference between being able to afford a big ID package or having to do without. Thus, Dallas became a beehive of jingle activity as about a dozen production houses sprang up during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Most jingle employees in the Big D didn't mind performing several tasks within a company. Often one person would get to sing, write music, play an instrument and even help out in the shipping room. A spirit of cooperation and a relaxed atmosphere made it a pleasure for program directors to work with these companies.

Because freelance Dallas talent would jump from one firm to another on a daily basis, ideas were cross-pollinated and shared among studios. For example, recordings made there had a certain crispness. The rhythm sections were crystal-clear, with a great bottom end. Vocals balanced nicely with the tracks. The brass was bright but not brittle. The strings were full and sweet. And the overall sound just seemed to jump out of the radio.

One unsung hero who helped develop those techniques was a shy gentleman named Tommy Loy who started at CRC in the late 1950s, moved to PAMS in the early '60s and came over to TM for most of the '70s. An accomplished player of the trumpet, French horn and keyboards as well as one of the early vocal-group singers, Loy lives quietly in a town near Dallas and unfortunately is not in the jingle business at this time.

When I asked him how he got his start in the industry, he told me a story that illustrated his humble roots in radio.

When he was about 17, Loy was in high school in Denison, Texas. A local radio station, KRRV(AM), ran a contest, the winner of which would get a job on the air.

"It was a little thousand-watt coffee pot with no budget," Loy said of the station, "and they wanted a warm body to do a lot of work for basically no money."

Because Loy had a little speech experience, he won the job. After training for four weeks reading news and announcing, he finally faced his first live broadcast.

"I flipped the switch and started reading my wire copy," he said. "I was sweating bullets. About three minutes into it, the studio door behind me opened and the station manager quietly walked in. I didn't know what to think! He calmly reached over my right shoulder, threw the one essential switch I forgot that actually put me on the air, and said, 'Now, let's try that again.'"

After that auspicious beginning, Loy picked up a lot of experience in radio production. He attended college and gained some music education before entering the service.

"It was during the Korean conflict, and I went from the National Guard into the Air Force, where I played trumpet in the band. We were stationed near San Antonio. By default, I was selected to be the recording engineer for a weekly half-hour program of music the band broadcast over several radio stations."

Equipment was rudimentary. A script had to be written, too.

"I was unfettered by a great deal of knowledge, so I didn't know how difficult this was," Loy said.

He would write the script for the show, set up the microphones for the recordings, start the prehistoric PT6AH Magnecorder and quietly walk over and take his place in the band's French-horn section. If a mistake was made during the show by anyone, the entire program would have to be started over from the beginning.

"I didn't know much about editing tape in those days," he said.

Tom, meet Tom

Loy was in a local Dixieland band called The Cell Block Seven, a name later adopted by Bob Romans for his band in Lodi, Calif.

"We took to the studio to make a 45-rpm demo recording," Loy said. "While there I became fascinated with all the gear. When I went upstairs into the control room, I was hooked. I knew that it was something I would enjoy doing."

In 1958, Loy heard about a new recording studio in Dallas that specialized in jingles. The name of the studio was Commercial Recording Corp. Loy went over to see if he could get a job at CRC.

He met arranger Tom Merriman, who let Loy watch sessions from the control room and learn how things were done. Eventually he hired Loy as a French-horn player and singer.

"The vocal group included Susie McBride, Libba Weeks, Charlie Thompson, myself and Dick Cole, who also played trombone," said Loy. "But my biggest job was to go out and haul back the big container of bottled water that they bought each week. I was a sort of a go-fer at first."

The engineer at CRC was a gentleman who didn't exactly have a good reputation for honesty, decency or even writing checks that could clear the bank. As luck would have it, this gentleman was compelled to leave town quite suddenly the night before a big recording session for an important commercial client.

"This guy had been training me a bit to edit and to leader or 'stripe' tape, as it was called then, and I had run the board for soloists and other groups I was not in," said Loy. "So I didn't go in completely cold. But it was quite a surprise to find myself recording a piano, bass, drums, three trumpets, three trombones and a five-man sax session at the same time, with no preparation time. And all of this on a homemade board with just 12 inputs."

Hola, señor!

A word about the studio that housed CRC in those days: it wasn't one. It was in fact a Mexican movie theatre, in an old stage space that had been converted for movies. Films were shown by day; sessions took place at night.

The cable run from the balcony control room to the stage on which the musicians performed was about half of a block. And because the equipment was high-impedance (basically non-pro home gear), buzzes and hums abounded.

"The board was something made by this local guy who ran a TV and radio repair store. It had no EQ or any other amenities," he said.

But technical limitations weren't the only obstacles faced by the studios then.

"We were always getting in trouble with the musicians' union because we weren't supposed to overdub vocals," Loy said. "But the musicians liked to work and knew we were creating an industry in Dallas, so they did everything they could to keep it quiet."

Because of the favorable rates musicians charged for their services in Dallas, jingle clients now had a choice. They could go to New York or Los Angeles, where they would encounter expensive union talent who by contract were prohibited from singing overdubs; or they could go to Dallas and get an excellent product at a lower price and without the hassles. The Dallas producers were willing to provide additional mixes and as many layers of vocals as were required.

There were a few early skirmishes between the Dallas AFM leaders and their rank and file over these points. However, when the union realized that there was a lot of business headed to town simply because of a willingness to relax the rules, the jingle industry was allowed to flourish.

Engineer/musician

The first CRC clients were two breweries in San Antonio. But Merriman had a strong interest in creating ID jingles for radio stations. Soon he convinced station owner Gordon McLendon to order custom material for some of his top-40 stations including KILT(AM) in Houston. The McLendon stations gave CRC credibility with other broadcast groups.

When Merriman needed to upgrade equipment, he sent Loy to Los Angeles to observe recording sessions with an engineer and friend at Dot Records. Loy came back with ideas about what gear to buy to improve the sound and speed of production.

In order to afford the ambitious upgrade, Merriman sought some investors for CRC. A group was formed under the direction of John Coyle, who held the proxy votes for the oilmen investors in late 1960.

"Eventually, after appointing himself business manager, coach and Great Poobah," said Loy, "John Coyle caused Merriman to resign from what had been his own company."

According to Loy, Merriman went across town, hired a studio and some singers plus a few instrumentalists and produced the first Mitch Miller-sound-alike radio ID series. Upon hearing the demo, Coyle was convinced that he didn't want Merriman in competition with him, so they worked out a new deal for Merriman and put the Miller package in the CRC stable of jingles.

"I spent a couple of days working on getting that authentic Columbia Records/Mitch Miller male vocal-group sound," said Loy. "And when Merriman sold the package in that market, I was sent to New York to record the vocals. The Williams Brothers, Andy and Dick, were on the date. In fact, a producer for Columbia Records who heard the jingles called me to compliment me on our sound."

At that time, CRC was equipped with a solid-state console of 15 inputs into three channels out, plus a mono combined channel for doing simultaneous mono/stereo. It was the first studio so equipped in the southwestern United States.

"We also had two EMT electronic reverberation chambers, an Ampex two-track stereo mastering machine plus an Ampex three-track, half-inch mastering recorder for instrumental tracks," said Loy.

The biggest project Loy tackled at that time was a package designed for Dallas Channel 8, WFAA(TV), owned by Belo Corp.

"The orchestra went from a three-piece combo to full string section, full orchestral brass and full legitimate woodwinds plus percussion and auxiliary percussion," Loy said. "All that was recorded at once into a three-track machine using the 15-input mixer plus one four-input outboard mixer. It was a monumental job."

Merriman's writing was up to the standards of any Hollywood movie score, and the sound was just as good, in Loy's opinion.

"The solid-state console, built by John Stevens and flown to Dallas in the back seat of a Cessna 157 aircraft, was terrific," he said.

Stevens, Loy and chief electronic technician John Powell installed the console over Thanksgiving weekend in 1960, working at night because those Mexican movies were still showing during the day.

"We did something here that they didn't do on the coasts," said Loy. "We were the first to use capacitor mics on trumpets and trombones, while they were still using ribbon mics. It made an enormous difference in the high end, and we became known across the country for our 'Dallas brass sound.'"

The studio used its two Ampex decks as follows. The instrumental tracks were played back on deck A for the singers, who added their vocals "live" as the engineer combined the track and singers to deck B.

"We could splice takes together but usually tried to have everyone sing the whole thing straight through, even on 60-second commercials," said Loy. "We had no limiters, no reverb at first, no board EQ."

Fortunately the singers were competitive and worked hard. With Loy's ear for music, the process worked well. When one listens to jingles recorded at CRC during those days, everything sounds quite good.

By 1961, CRC had entered a business relationship with the Peter Frank Organization, which gained exclusive rights to sell CRC's product.

"CRC couldn't sell anything without going through these guys; and Peter Frank had his own jingle company too, so he didn't sell any CRC product. He basically choked CRC to death," said Loy.

This was an excerpt from Ken Deutsch's "The Jingle Book." For more behind-the-scenes stories from the radio and jingle business, check out the Ken R Book Bundle Bonanza