Jingles

Every radio station in the 1980s identified itself on air with a set of sung jingles, and Radio West was no exception. During its short life, it used no fewer than three packages. The original package was produced in-house and was created by commercial production manager Tony Kelly . I don’t know whether copyright still exists for these sounds.

Fortunately the end of news jingle was soon dropped. This package continued to be used until January 1984, but in early 1983 some new jingles were bought from TM Century in the USA and were used alongside. These were resings of a package called Airworks, which seemed to have been sold in North America to the last few AM stations with hit music formats, such as WHAS Louisville and CKLW Windsor, Ontario. See what you think. Copyright (if any) rests, I think, with TM Century.

The rather nice theme, but what is the name of the station? Radio WEH?

W E S T would be a possible American station name...this one’s rather nice

The music’s coming on ninety-six point three. This one’s rather nice too

Here’s a challenge to programmers: where would you use this jingle?

The name jingles were quite fun. Here’s the one for Mark Stevens. If you didn’t get his name the first time, it is repeated for the hard of hearing

Here’s a jingle from the package as used on “The Great 8”, CKLW, Windsor, Ontario

I didn’t think much of these. I don’t know who did the singing, but I don’t think it was one of their better efforts. Tom Clapton reused a few for Saturday SuperSquares.

Anyway, in mid-1983 the original news jingle gave way to a rather jazzier version.

Here’s Roger Day using the new news jingle at the end of his Saturday show

The TM Century jingles were only used for about nine months. At the end of 1983 a new package was produced for the station by David Arnold Music who, along with the now-defunct Alfasound, provided ID packages for most of the UK’s independent stations at that time. Although I’m not sure that all the presenters were keen on the package, it certainly tightened up the station sound, which was probably the intention. The strapline was “Radio West for you”. Copyright rests with David Arnold Music.

Here’s David Arnold’s main theme

The magnificent news intro...

and the equally magnificent news outro

The sport theme

Radio West for you...Tom Clapton used this one to introduce Saturday SuperSquares

The best entertainment, especially for you...

Lazy river beyond the sea, make those memories come back to me...

Sweepers

In its early days, Radio West made much use of Bill Mitchell sweepers. Bill, a Canadian who lived from 1934 until 1997, was the best-known voiceover artist in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s, voicing Carlsberg and Denim commercials as well as providing sweepers for dozens of radio stations. For Radio West, he may only have said “Radio West”, “W E S T” and a few things for Dave Glass, but he popped up scores of times in the broadcast day.

You can just hear Bill announce that Wednesday’s wild, at the end of this Dave Glass Rumour of the Day

There were also plenty of fun sweepers from Shag Connors and the Carrot Crunchers. They were a Gloucestershire band who were frequent visitors to Radio West in its early days. Shag recorded sweepers such as “From the rocky rolling Mendips/the River Avon flows/On down past Glastonbury/steady as she goes/Shipham, Shepton, Cheddar, Chew/Radio West is coming through” and “Radio West, dun’um play some tidy music” and the station played their 1982 single “Watch it!”

I didn’t hear the sweepers used after the end of 1982. Shag sadly died of cancer in 1987. The band is still going, in the hands of Shag’s son Mart.

Mart Connors and the Carrot Crunchers: MySpace page

The music you want, the information you need

Jingles