When four males sing they sound like they mean it [Description by Jonathan Wolfert , President, JAM Creative Productions and PAMS Productions, Inc .] During the late 1960s, PAMS made a concerted effort to recruit fresh, young talent into the radio jingle industry. It was the vision of PAMS founder Bill Meeks to be able to serve the younger end of the top-40 market with jingles that had more of a youthful rock sound, while maintaining the classic PAMS sound for the more traditional top-40 and easy listening clients. Jim Kirk ( not the captain of the Starship Enterprise ) was one of this new generation of singer/writer/musicians. Between the years of 1968 and 1972 he wrote and was heard on many PAMS jingles, including portions of Series 38, 39, 40 and 41. Fred Hardy , who had a radio background but always loved jingles, joined the staff at PAMS in 1970. He handled sales for the Southeast US. In 1974 Fred left PAMS and started his own company to work with stations and ad agencies. He knew he could handle the sales, but was looking for someone to take care of the creative end. By this time, Jim Kirk had gone to Seattle, where he was doing commercial jingle work for Kaye-Smith . But he wanted to come home to Dallas. So the partnership of Hardy-Kirk was born. The new firm needed to have a demo reel to send out, just to prove to stations that it could do IDs. So Fred contacted people he knew who might buy something from him on faith. One of these clients ran KJIM (AM 870), a 250 watt daytimer in Fort Worth. They didn’t really know what kind of jingles they wanted, so Hardy-Kirk decided to make them a jingle all about the different kinds of jingles there were to choose from. The idea was that it would be novel, and of course there would be short mixouts to use as basic cuts. The piece was called ” The MOR Overture” . The music for ” The MOR Overture ” was written by the late Wayne Harrison . I don’t know whether Wayne or Jim came up with the lyrics. The result was certainly interesting, but no station (including KJIM) knew what to do with it, and most of it was never used anywhere. The Hardy-Kirk Demo Includes : The MOR Overture The cuts “in the clear” Mixouts Vocal styles : Mixed Duet, Stacked Male Duet Four Males Five Voice Mixed Seven Voice Mixed For a variety of reasons the partnership of Hardy and Kirk didn’t last more than a couple of years. Jim returned to freelance status, and contributed to several early JAM packages. In 1978, Jim Kirk joined the staff at TM Productions. In 1982 he co-headed a new “communications division” to design and create shows for corporate meetings and presentations. In 1986 Jim and Buddy Scott purchased the division from TM and began operating under the name Corporate Magic . Jim has been there ever since as “chief creative officer”. Fred Hardy came to work at JAM early in 1976 and was part of our sales team until he passed away in January 2002. JAM did buy some of the Hardy-Kirk tracks, including the Overture. In 1978, when we were creating the original ” I’d Rather Be In Denver ” campaign for KIMN , I decided to use the individual sections of the MOR Overture as part of the package. I wrote completely new lyrics and vocal arrangements, and remixed all the cuts. We had to create :29 versions too, so that they’d be usable under TV spots. The JAM ” I’d Rather Be In Denver ” series was very successful and was used worldwide. Our thanks to Jon Wolfert of PAMS Productions, Inc. and JAM Creative Productions, Inc. for the story behind this Hardy-Kirk Demo!