LINDA VERIN OFF THE BEATEN TRAK Linda Soundtrak burst into Oklahoma’s TV consciousness like the beast in “Jaws” crunched into the deck of the Orca: She was loud, in your face and unstoppable from the mid-Seventies until the Soundtrak stores closed in 1993. Hyperactively flapping her wings in a yellow chick outfit, she peeped about “cheep, cheep, cheep” prices! Celebrity guest stars like wrestler “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan and OU football great Lee Roy Selmon joined in on her intentionally campy antics. She was laid up “crazy sick” and delirious in a hospital bed, popping up to shout with a huge smile, “Keep your money! Have a TV!” As her Linda Soundtrak persona, owner Linda Verin flooded central Oklahoma TV. She did remote live shots from the store during “Saturday Night Live.” She once made 14 commercials in one hour. Today, she lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and is president of Ads That Work. The name fits: Her Soundtrak audio/video business spread to Texas, Kansas and Alabama.
Linda Soundtrak started out as a gimmick idea called “Mr. Soundman.” She and husband/owner Rick Clay (they’re still mar- “Don’t you know Soundtrak … ried) had employees try out for the role. “But because I’m from Chicago and I can ain’t just another store, we got the talk really fast, I could say what I needed in hi-fis, the sounds 30 seconds,” she said. “I got the job because I you’re lookin’ for, could talk faster than anyone else.” we’ll bring you She cajoled a Hitachi executive from music, at home or in your car, Japan to fly to Oklahoma to do a commercial. Soundtrak’s on He spoke in Japanese, which was translated in subtitles. In a bubble shot at the top of the the right track.” screen, Verin verbally mistranslates, only talking about sale prices. At one point, the executive’s subtitles read: “Who is this lady? I don’t think she knows that I speak English.” People thought she had clout. One person complained about a TV station that moved wrestling from 9 p.m. to 11. The caller wanted the earlier time back. “I said we really don’t have anything to do with it, but OK, I’ll mention it to the TV station.”
THE LEGEND OF TALL PAUL Tall Paul, the singing-cowboy animated character selling Paul Meade Insurance, was so ubiquitous that Blake Shelton – Grammy-winning country star, panelist on “The Voice” and Ada native – says Tall Paul’s banjo and guitar jingle was his favorite growing up. He even ranks it above the venerable B.C. Clark jingle. Tall Paul was a pencilnecked, grinning, feel-good cowboy who could solve all your insurance woes with cars and trucks and mobile homes. The TV character began life off-screen, though, in a six-panel cartoon in the Daily Oklahoman’s “TV News” programming guide in 1970. Ken Colcla46 SLICE // SEPTEMBER 2013
THE JINGLE
THE JINGLE
sure, owner of Colclasure Advertising, invented the white-hat character he called “Guy,” according to his son, artist David Colclasure. His father “Protecting all the things passed away in 1991. you own, “My dad was really a creative force in the sense like cars and that making money to him was secondary,” David trucks and mobile homes, said. “He took those creative people and said, well, you know we can do something here. We can make accidents or something from nothing. There’s no avenue for it in tickets too, call and we’ll take a local market … we’ll create an avenue for it.” care of you, After his name change, Tall Paul evolved into 524.1541.” a cartoon character, a live-action mascot in a foam suit and, most famously, a stop-motion animated figure. In one commercial, he’s driving a stagecoach accompanied by a Winchester-wielding bunny sidekick. He rode tall in the Oklahoma TV saddle from the mid-Seventies to the late Eighties, hosting Christmas and Halloween specials and movie shows. In the end, though, TP was a victim of his own success. The insurance company jingle ended with the most famous phone number in Oklahoma: 524.1541. Ray Meade, the brother of the nowdeceased Paul Meade for whom Tall Paul was named, said years of repetition on radio and TV led to the company (still in business, by the way) to end the ads in the late 1990s. “The phone wouldn’t stop ringing,” he said. “We had too much business.”