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Richard Trentlage, who recently turned 80, has been thinking about the appropriate final resting place for a musical instrument he has owned for around 50 years.
It’s not just any instrument, either.
It is a banjo-uke, a combination of a banjo and ukulele that has four strings, a small banjo-type body and a ukulele neck.
But Trentlage’s banjo-uke is more than that. It holds a singular place in the history of modern music. Or at least the history of music in radio and television commercials.
It was used in the first recording of what is arguably the best known and most successful commercial jingle ever produced.
Richard Trentlage, you see, wrote the Oscar Mayer wiener jingle.
At this point I encourage all readers to sing along:
"Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener/That is what I’d truly like to be/’Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener/Everyone would be in love with me."
The jingle has aired in 29 countries and all 50 states, and has been performed by some of the world’s great symphonies.
Trentlage, whose jingle won final approval at a meeting at Oscar Mayer in Madison in 1963, lives outside Chicago, in Fox River Grove.
When he turned 80, in December, Trentlage said he began "setting my affairs in order." He recalled his mother, late in her life, writing the names of heirs on items in her home as a way to prevent future squabbling.
Trentlage began doing that himself, but when he came to the banjo-uke with the storied history, he paused.
He thought he could leave it to his son, David, who as a 10-year-old sang the jingle on that initial recording. But might that not upset his daughter, Linda, who as a 9-year-old was also on the recording?
Trentlage also considered putting it up for auction on eBay, though he didn’t like the idea of it ending up at a private residence where no one else could see it.
On further thought, Trentlage wondered if the best place for the banjo-uke might be the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, which already has a loop of the original TV commercial running nonstop on closed-circuit TV.
If not there, perhaps Oscar Mayer’s home office in Madison, where it might be displayed in the lobby or some other prominent place.
The other day, Trentlage asked my opinion.
We’ve known each other for a little more than five years, from the time I read a Boston Globe story that said that while the original commercial jingle was fast becoming a lost art (marketers are using established pop songs instead), one jingle survived: the Oscar Mayer wiener jingle.
The Globe wrote: "The Oscar Mayer wiener theme has been in constant rotation since 1963, and good money says everyone reading this newspaper can sing it start to finish."
The Globe story, however, did not mention who wrote the jingle. I eventually tracked Trentlage down, and got him to tell me the story behind his writing it.
In 1962, Oscar Mayer’s Chicago-based ad agency, J. Walter Thompson, held a contest soliciting new jingles. Trentlage only learned of it the day before entries were due. He typed it at his own Chicago ad agency office, drawing inspiration, he said, from his kids’ dirt bike racer friends, whom the kids called hot dogs. Everyone wanted to be like them.
That night, at home, he gathered his wife and kids and they recorded the jingle. Trentlage played the banjo-uke himself. His kids sang. There were more than 200 entries and it was nearly a year later when Trentlage learned his jingle had won. Oscar G. Mayer himself presided over the deciding meeting.
The rest is history. The jingle sold millions of hot dogs. It put Trentlage’s kids through college.
On Monday, I told Trentlage I like the idea of giving the banjo-uke to Oscar Mayer. It should be in Madison. I think he’ll go along. He has stayed close with the company. "When I go there," he said, "I feel like family."
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