In the 70s when I managed Southern Broadcasting Company’s Phoenix stations KOY and KRFM, I also handled national sales. Our rep was Eastman Radio and I’d make several trips a year to their major offices to conduct sales meetings and was always looking for creative ways to energize the reps at these early morning pep rallies. In 1974 I had an unusual idea for an Eastman sales meeting. Why not produce a jingle for Eastman? A jingle that was all about Eastman. I had heard a promo song from TM Productions called “At TM We Listen to You” and thought it could be rewritten and become a production singing the virtues of Eastman Radio. I called my old friend at TM, Jerry Atchley, and he said “Sure, come on down to Dallas and we’ll re-sing it for your rep firm.” I negotiated what I thought was a reasonable price for the jingle, $500. Little did Jerry and TM honcho Jim Long realize how difficult this project would become. You see, I wanted every call letter from the Eastman station list to be sung in those stations’ actual musical logos. It was several hundred stations and that many different musical signatures. I went to Dallas and was assigned to the late Bob Piper, a lawyer-turned-musician. He was a gentle and patient producer. It must have taken over six hours of TM studio time to complete this jingle. You don’t sing this long a jingle in one take. It was done in many pieces and then mixed together. Eastman Radio Chairman Frank Boyle with Gary Edens at a 1979 Phoenix retreat for the firm. The ice carving, SBC, stood for Southern Broadcasting Company. Eastman was the exclusive national rep firm for Southern. After this five and a half minute jingle was completed, the next morning I was at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at the New York Eastman headquarters premiering this production for their sales staff and rep brass, Carl Butrum, Jerry Schubert, Bill Burton and Frank Boyle. I think they all liked it. They gave me a standing ovation. They should have given the ovation to TM, for surely Jim Long and Jerry Atchley lost money on this $500 deal. In addition to the then Eastman station list being featured in the jingle, there was some intended inside humor in the production. Some aimed at spoofing Eastman President “Tiger Bill” Burton who was fond of taking doughnuts to time buyers on sales calls and telling everybody to “Be Fabulous.” The jingle became known as the Eastman Anthem because of the church choir-like acapella style used at the ending. Eastman Radio in its independent life was known as a scrappy sales firm representing many of the nation’s leading Top 40 stations. Today, as part of Clear Channel Communications, Eastman is consistently one of the top three billing national rep firms in the USA. And still, the only rep firm I know of with its own jingle.