I love KFC, but nowadays, I’m trying to slim down from fried chicken (Don’t worry! I’m not obese! I’m just a tiny bit husky!). However, if I want to go to KFC, it should be just for stuff like their chicken tenders and chicken sandwiches (the not-so-greasy stuff), but that would be when I lose weight.
Let’s not talk about KFC, and talk about the background music, and the jingle, for a classic KFC ad, back when it was called Kentucky Fried Chicken, back in 1969.
The background music gives the commercial a very nice ambience, which makes sense because the commercial shows Colonel Harland Sanders sitting in a family’s living room discussing how the Colonel’s fried chicken is made in his restaurants. I would describe this music as Southern country blues furniture music. The music consists entirely of a simple acoustic guitar melody along with harmonica, with simple-sounding electric bass appearing later on. At the end of the commercial, when it shows a KFC location, a man with a very rich, very golden voice, sings “Kentucky Fried Chicken, if you want Kentucky Fried Chicken, you have to visit me.”, ending with a gentle chord as the commercial fades to black. Contrary to what the lyrics announce, the man is not Colonel Sanders singing.
The sound quality on the jingle is rather rough, but it is actually fine by television standards at the time, as the commercial was shot on film, not videotape. The jingle reminds me of the country-sounding title song off of the first suite of the Residents’ 1970 demo tape Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor, but with two more instruments other than just an acoustic guitar (although later in that particular demo track, it develops into a jam with distorted Hammond organ and sloppy electric bass). I remember the Residents did similar-sounding country folk music, like in the KFC jingle, on undocumented tapes dating back 1969, the year that this commercial aired on television, such as the tracks “I Hear Ya Got Religion” and “Moonman”, how both of those tracks have a living room atmosphere and acoustic guitar.
The acoustic guitar, by the way it sounds, could’ve been produced on an old-fashioned acoustic guitar, one that was prominently used by many African-American blues musicians in the 1920’s, 1930’s, and so on, such as the very popular Gibson L-5 model, which was first produced in 1922. This may be so because it is an acoustic guitar that is built to look like a later hollow-bodied electric guitar, giving the guitar a very rich sound. The electric bass, which sounds very simple, could’ve been an electric bass produced by Fender because those type of bass guitars were very popular in the 1960’s, and was commonly used by many psychedelic and progressive rock bands of that era. The man who was singing the jingle (again, not Colonel Sanders) could’ve been a famous voice-over artist, but I’m not sure which one, because I know a very few voice-over artists. Two of them include Ken Nordine, who famously recorded the Word Jazz albums for Dot Records, a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures, back in the late 1950’s, and Brian Cummings, who was most famous for his work with Disney.
I have a big soft spot for old-fashioned country blues music, especially the ones that have a nice atmosphere. So far, I have 2 old-fashioned country blues albums in my vinyl collection, and those are: (1) the early-1960’s Maude Humbard album Camptown Meeting, which is a gospel album, and (2) the psychedelic-sounding Powerglide, an album from 1972 by New Riders of the Purple Sage. Maybe, I’ll put Powerglide up for a review on this blog.
The full advertisement, complete with the music, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwURoueDzFo
The Crazy Mind of Tré Roland 