Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Joe Dowell – Three commercial jingles for Elias Bros. Restaurants (late '60s/early '70s)





A while back I uploaded some of Joe Dowell's commercial jingles from the 1970s

Dowell, as most readers of this blog know, was a teen idol who scored a #1 hit with "Wooden Heart" in 1961 and then went on to record mostly religious music and commercial jingles in the 1970s and '80s.

I've also posted a discography of his recordings and a lengthy three-part interview with him that starts here. I conducted that interview while writing the liner notes of the 2004 Bear Family CD Wooden Heart, which collected most of Joe's Smash Records recordings from the 1960s and is still available.

The video link above contains three more of his long-lost commercial jingles. Recorded for Elias Brothers Restaurants in the late 1960s or early 1970s, these jingles would have played on the radio in the Michigan, Ohio, and/or Ontario area where Elias Bros. operated. (Elias Brothers was a franchisee of Big Boy Restaurants from the 1950s until 2000.) 

These rare jingles were copied from scratchy acetates in Joe's personal collection that were, to my knowledge, the only copies in existence. They're presented here for posterity and for the enjoyment of Joe's fans.