I’ve been clearing out my locker at work and found many iced gems on reel-to-reel audio tape. Perhaps oddest of all was a reel of American advert jingles from the 60s and 70s that I have no memory of – they must have belonged to my brother. I need to do more research on these, but a quick Google suggests some of them may have been written by Steve Karmen. I’d love to share them but as I clearly don’t own the copyright, I don’t see how I can.
I’m going to risk this one, though. It’s the oddest of the bunch by miles, and it’s for a long-dead brand of peanut butter. The lyrics and the music are just insane. I wonder why the brand died out…
I am thrilled that you saved and posted the Circus Peanut Butter Jingle. That song stuck in my head for years. It was such a clever little song and I have been looking for a recording of it for years. Glad to know someone saved it and enjoyed it as much as I did. There are a couple of other jingles I am looking for. You might have them??? One was Juicy Fruit Gum…It starts out “Hey let’s pick-a-pack of Juicy fruit gum”. The other is for Sunny Delight… It starts out “Orange Tangerine and Lime….” Can’t remember any of the other words of either of those singing commercials. Interestingly I did recall most of the lyrics in the Circus Peanut Butter Jingle, although not totally correct. Some of those old jingles were as good as any songs written at the time.
Thanks for curating this! Here‘s an image to go with it.
In a sense, though, this is an example of how not to write a jingle. Because it falls on an off-beat and on the lowest pitch in the whole melody and near the bottom of the singer’s range, the hardest word to make out (particularly on a mid-1960s pocket radio) is the brand name “Circus” itself!
Great. Been looking for this for the longest time. It brings back great memories.
Is there any chance you can find and post the actual ad for this? I recall it had a great cartoon. Thanks for posting the jingle, I still sing this now and then. No one seems to remember it but me. Glad to see I’m not alone!
Hi Joyce – I only ever had the audio of this alas! I’ve never seen the advert on TV.
best wishes
Giles
I lived in Indiana and this jingle was on WLS radio
It is a mix of Herman’s Hermits vocals and Eleanor Rigby strings
Back in the day the influences were obvious!!