WEMJ Radio Jingles 1967

[Groovy1490]

Does anyone have the set of jingles that were used in 1967 at the BigJ in Laconia,NH?
Thanks
Gary

 

[samw54]

Does anyone have the set of jingles that were used in 1967 at the BigJ in Laconia,NH?

Gary, I actually might have what you're looking for, although
I believe that the set of eight PAMS series 34 cuts are from 1968 and not 1967.

First though, let me present to you a jingle that I remember hearing on WEMJ starting around the summer of 1966 and they were still playing this jingle by the summer of 1968. Unfortunately I did not live in the Laconia area although at age thirteen, believe it or not I actually told my parents that I wanted to move to Laconia because I thought that Laconia was the most exciting place that one could possibly live, and this was completely based on the sound of WEMJ at the time. Back then I was living in Shelburne Vermont so the only time that I got to hear the station, was when I accompanied my dad who was working for Gulf Oil at the time on his trips to New Hampshire. Since I attended the Perkins School for the blind in Watertown Massachusetts during the school year so I didn't have too many friends at home in Vermont, even though he wasn't technically supposed to do this, he would let me accompany him to work on his trips throughout both the granite and the green mountain states, and I heard all kinds of wonderful little radio stations whose memories are very nostalgic for me.

Gary, I too always had a definite soft spot in my heart for WEMJ, and even then, I wanted to somehow obtain the station's jingles. Back in the fall of 1967, I had written to WKBR in Manchester, asking them if they could possibly dub a copy of their jingles for me because I loved them so much more than those horrible Drake series A a capellas that WRKO in Boston was running. The station actually answered me, and explained that they could not copy the jingles for me because they were copyrighted. But they suggested that I write to PAMS Production Company in Dallas Texas, and maybe I could get the jingles from them. With no more of an address than that, right in the middle of the Christmas rush of 1967, I typed out a letter to PAMS which I was sure they'd never receive because I didn't have a proper mailing address for them. I even forgot about the letter. But on Saturday March 2, 1968, I actually received PAMS series 31, Music Explosion, and series 29 Radio A-Go-Go for WKBR in Manchester. I thought to myself, "Wow. Is this ever neat" and thus began my jingle collecting hobby.

Well, since it had worked with WKBR, I decided I'd write to WEMJ as well and ask them not to record their jingles for me, but if they could give me the name and address of the company where they had bought their jingles from. Unfortunately the station never answered any of my letters to them over the many years that I wrote them.

But luckily, Ed Brouder at his Man From Mars Productions in Manchester New Hampshire did have some WEMJ jingles in his collection. This first jingle is perhaps the one that I remember hearing the most on WEMJ. As I mentioned above, I remember hearing this jingle as early as 1966, and they ran it right through the summer of 1968. The box had the date of April 9, 1961 on it, and the package was called Music Makers, and it was recorded by Mitch Lea, and distributed by Richard H. Ulman and company. So Gary or anyone else that is interested in this vintage WEMJ jingle, click here to
download this jingle
or if you prefer,
click here to stream it.

Now, there was a much longer version of this jingle which had the following lyrics:
"It's the fun sound,
Number 1 sound.
The sound that will brighten your day.
Keep in time with the tunes,
Keep in tune with the times,
Fabulous fun radio."

Then at that point, you hear the shorter jingle that you've just heard here.
The station ran another jingle with the lyrics "WEMJ Laconia" but the tune was very different than the jingle that I let you hear above.

However Gary, I don't think
that this is the jingle that you remember hearing on WEMJ that you are looking for. Now, the story that I've heard about these jingles is that someone squealed on both WKBK in Keene and WEMJ in Laconia, and informed PAMS that these small stations were lifting portions of their jingles from PAMS demos, and were using them on the air. So PAMS told both stations that they had to buy some legitimate PAMS jingles, and both stations chose these eight cuts from PAMS series 34 called The Power Of Love. I guess the package did come out in the fall of 1967, and I know that CHUM here in Toronto was running these jingles as early as December of that year, but many stations bought the package in 1968 or later. So here Gary, are the eight PAMS series 34 cuts for WEMJ for you.

Again as before,
click here to download these pAMS series 34 jingles for WEMJ
or if you prefer,
click here to stream them.

Now, I understand that you've been trying to contact me Gary. I'm really sorry that I haven't checked into the forum much over the past week. This was just one of those really busy weeks when I had a couple of system problems, a lot to do with both my website and my music mailing list, and I had a birthday blast last Thursday which kept me from answering too many E-mails that day. But when I read the private messages from you, believe me I was absolutely ThRILLED to hear from you. By the way Gary, I love that groovy1490 handle and you are absolutely right, there were a lot of great small town radio stations on 1490 that had their own very unique sound. They weren't exactly major market radio but some big names came out of 1490 stations, like Dale Dorman at KFRC San Francisco and WRKO in Boston for example. Before all that, he worked at 1490 WOLF in Syracuse. Anyway Gary, I do have my own
Audioldies website

and if you hunt around for my Audioldies contact form, that will establish the beginning of our communication and I will reply to your contact form message and then I will give you my E-mail address. I'm really sorry for the delay in getting back to you and believe me, I am extremely interested in any audio material that you might have from WEMJ. I would also like to thank MickeyD for contacting me and alerting me that Groovy1490 was trying to get in touch with me.
Thanks to you both. I hope Gary that you enjoy what little WEMJ jintle material I do have, and naturally I am always looking for more, especially that longer version of the jingle that I do have whose lyrics I quoted to you above.

Sam

 

[samw54]

Well folks, Groovy1490 and I have been exchanging some great WEMJ material over the past couple of weeks and I'd like to publicly thank him for everything he's sent me of WEMJ, both snippits of his own airchecks and some WEMJ jingles as well. Most of them were not recorded in the clear, they were simply taken from his own airchecks. However, Gary has found someone else that worked at the station that did have some of their seventies jingles in the clear, and although these were not quite as interesting to me as their sixties material, I am still extremely pleased to have them. For some reason, WEMJ is just one of those radio stations that I want every legitimate jingle that they bought. By the way, the reason I use the word legitimate here is that like most small stations, WEMJ often used the few jingles that they had, and tried to create a larger variety of jingles by editing their own jingles into many PAMS and Peppersound studio cuts that were recorded for other stations. The results were predictably pretty bad.

Anyway, some really interesting information about jingle packages that WEMJ bought have recently come to light, and naturally this means that the number of WEMJ jingle packages that I'm looking for has expanded. First of all, WEMJ bought a Peppersound Studios jingle package around 1964 or '65, but unfortunately I don't know what the name of the package is. Way back in the 1970's Fred Vobbe told me that the package was called The Fun One, but I recently found a demo of that package on Norman Barrington's jingle website
and that's not the name of this package. The Fun One came out in 1970 and sounds much newer than this package does. WKBK in Keene and WVMT in Burlington bought this package as well, and perhaps one of the largest stations to buy this package was WHBQ in Memphis. I know this because I've heard Alex Ward play a few of the cuts on his Serius-XM Fifties on 5 channel's Pink And Black Days show. Interestingly, I hadn't even thought of this but one of my friends kind of clued me into the fact that most of the jingles in this package start with the first notes of the old Woody Woodpecker novelty song, and when he mentioned that to me, I thought to myself "God, you're right." So, for those of you that know your early Pepper packages, you can
click here
to listen to the WKBK version of this Peppersound package. Incidentally, this link will take you right to the special announcement on my own
Audioldies website where there will be links for you to either download or stream this jingle package. I would love to know the actual name of the package, and to find it for WEMJ and WVMT.

Another package that WEMJ bought, was the Riochard H. Ulman New Adventure package. This is another package that WVMT bought, and also WHDH in Boston. In fact, the WHDH cuts are featured in the demo of this package. Anyway, WEMJ also bought this package as well, and one of the cuts in this package is a song length jingle called Wonderful Town, in which an entire song is sung about all the wonderful cultural and educational facilities that the town where the radio station is located has to offer everyone. Naturally in Boston, this wasn't hard to do, and with a 50,000 watt signal on 850, WHDH reached a lot of communities in the greater Boston area both day and night. But when this Wonderful Town song was written for both WLTN 1400 in Littleton and WEMJ 1490 in Laconia which only had 250 watts of power at night on terribly crowded graveyard frequencies, some of the towns listed in the song, were not even towns where the radio station could be heard. Somewhere, on a reel-to-reel tape that is currently at a friend's house, I do have the entire Richard H. Ulman New Acventure package for WLTN in Littleton. But I would love to also get the package for WEMJ as well, especially the Wonderful Town song. Groovy1490 found an edited version of the song on one of his airchecks and it is certainly understandable why by 1967, this jingle was deemed too long to play on the air, but now we are both curious to see what lakes region towns in central New Hampshire are mentioned in the WEMJ version of the song. So, if any of you that worked at WEMJ in the mid sixties happen to have any of the jingle packages mentioned, available in your collections, the Mitch Lea Music Makers package, the Peppersound package whose name I don't know and the Richard H. Ulman New Adventure package, please get in touch with either groovy1490 or myself. We are both extremely interested in finding even more WEMJ jingle packages from the station's past.

Sam in Ontario Canada

 

[samw54]

Back in October of 1992, I phoned the then Program Director of WEMJ because I was still hoping to somehow find that 1961 Music Makers package that the station had run, and that I always heard between 1966 and 1968 any time I was in range of the station's signal on 1490. I just wish I could remember his name, because he was an awfully nice guy! The problem was, back then, I had no idea what the package was called, or what company had created it. If WEMJ had answered my letters back in 1967 and 1968 when they were still airing the package, I might have known.

Anyway, the program Director sent me a cassette of WEMJ's morning talk show like I had asked him to, and he also sent me a cassette with some jingles, and some of them were most interesting. One of the reels consisted of believe it or not, PAMS series 27, the Jet Set package for WEMJ. But these were obviously audition cuts created so that WEMJ could choose its logo. The same series 27 cut, the "Where The Action is" cut was sung with four or five different logos, so this makes me wonder if in fact WEMJ ever ran PAMS series 27 in 1964 or '65. There was also the Richard H. Ulman New Adventure Time And Temperature jingle, but the surprising thing, is that just that one jingle from that package was on that reel of tape, which the Program Director said, the box was just covered in dust. Obviously that wasn't the entire New Adventure master. Anyway, the sad part of this story is that this padded envelope from WEMJ ended up sitting on the top shelf of my closet, and when my wife and I separated in early 1993, I was not allowed to retrieve some of my tapes including that one, and also the diary of going to a guide dog school in the Toronto area and training with Blazer, my first guide dog. Does anyone that worked at WEMJ, know for sure if the station ever bought PAMS series 27 once they got to hear those different logos, or was series 34 the first package that the station ever bought from PAMS?