Here is an interesting item, which is also a fun snapshot of 1979. JAM Creative Productions is a production house for jingles, background music, and much more, and has been dominating from their Dallas headquarters for over 50 years! (By the way, the name comes from the initials of the founders, a married couple.) They've had an incredible career of supplying high-quality jingles and music around the world.
These promotional sorts of LP's are always fun, if for no other reason than because you were never supposed to hear them, as they were never available in stores. Instead, this extremely well-made album serves as a portfolio for everything the company could do. It would've gone to program directors and heads of radio stations, for them to evaluate their advertising needs. You know as well as I do from your youth that jingles and call-letter identification could make or break a radio station, as it gave them a sense of identity.
Another compelling part of this record is how "1979" it is. That was a weird time. Disco was trying to be put to pasture, and the New Wave hadn't yet set in, so the culture in America was trying to figure out what the eventual 80's would sound like, and there was an extension of the mellow "singer/songwriter" vibe that was so big in the earlier part of the 70's. As such, the album would fit in nicely in the "WKRP" era in sound.
Another fun thing is one of the narrators, whom people of that generation will recognize. It's Mason Adams, who had that homespun, Jimmy Stewart's Dad type of voice that you could never believe was lying to you, no matter what he said. We even had an LP of Halloween stories on this blog that he read. I always knew him as the voice on commercials: "With a name like Smucker's, it's GOT to be good." I kept thinking about how ironic that was, because, you know....JAM. And jellies.
Anyway, I have said enough times that this is an enjoyable listen. I relish the days where real singers sung with real instruments and real string sections and real everything. The average 8-year-old ear doesn't care, but to anyone with sense, it sounds warm and real and like it exists in the actual world. Sure, it was doing it the hard way, but the hard way is usually the best way. Unless you are doing brain surgery or something. Use the robot for that.
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