Roy Eaton

Anyone over 30 will recognize music written or produced by Roy Eaton. “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star.” All together now, “We’re having Beefaroni. It’s made from macaroni.” Eaton’s Beefaroni served the brand for over 20 years. And, in September 2007, Advertising Age named that Texaco jingle from 1962 as the foundation for one of the twentieth century’s top 100 creative campaigns.

Indeed, Eaton’s music has made an indelible mark on advertising.

Eaton was not born to write ad jingles. His father and mother, a mechanic and a domestic worker from Jamaica gave birth to Eaton in 1930. Despite losing part of a finger on his right hand in an accident when he was three years old, Eaton took up classical piano when he was six. He first played Carnegie Hall in 1937. After New York’s High School of Music and Art, Eaton graduated from CCNY (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and the Manhattan School of Music. Completing degrees from two colleges simultaneously “required perfecting the art of eating lunch in five minutes or less,” a teenaged Eaton commented to the New York Times upon winning a scholarship to study at the University of Zurich. Back in New York, he went on to win the first Kosciusko Foundation Chopin Award in 1950. More study, this time on a musicology fellowship at Yale, accompanied concert debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and at New York’s Town Hall in 1952.

Drafted into the Army during the Korean conflict, he wrote and produced programs for Armed Forces Radio. As he tells it, he was watching an episode of “Goodyear Playhouse” on NBC when he heard a haunting two-piano theme. He wrote to NBC inquiring about the music. Y&R, Goodyear’s advertising agency, replied (it was a Ralph Vaughn Williams concerto). Assuming mistakenly that Y&R produced the television program, Eaton dropped by Y&R’s offices unannounced seeking a position producing music for the show. When Harvey Fielder, the associate personnel director, told him that Y&R only produced advertising, Eaton agreed to write a few sample commercials. He wrote ten spots over the weekend. Impressed by this, Charley Feldman, Y&R’s creative director, asked Eaton to write some jingles too. The next morning, Eaton brought back seven.

When Young & Rubicam hired Eaton as a copywriter and jingle composer in 1955, he became “the first black at a major agency, with a creative function on general accounts,” according to Stephen Fox’s, Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. Eaton’s undeniable talent and drive cracked the color barrier at last. He worked on just about every kind of campaign Y&R produced: for Jell-O, Cheer, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Piels Beer, Spic and Span and Beech Nut Gum. He positioned a new super-premium gasoline not just for luxury cars, but as a tonic for all cars (“Gulf Crest every 1,000 miles keeps your engine clean.”) And more. Jason Chambers’ book, Madison Avenue and the Color Line cites one of Eaton’s earliest creative successes at Y&R—music for a new kind of filter (“Micronite!”) for Kent cigarettes: “[Eaton] recognized the filter’s innovation and sought music to convey the sense of newness and creativity through the advertising. He crafted a jingle based on the modern jazz then being introduced by Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Thelonius Monk… [Eaton’s] music was different from anything else in use at the time, and it conveyed the sense of uniqueness inherent in the filter. The public response to both the product and the jingle was tremendous.”

By 1959, having barely survived an automobile accident that tragically, took the life of his new bride—Eaton had moved to Benton & Bowles as music director. His creative experimentation continued. “I draw on music of any style as long as it goes along with the commercial’s message,” Eaton said in an interview with the Times’ Phil Dougherty marking his appointment to vice president at B&B. Al Hampel, the legendary creative head of B&B during the ‘70s (“It’s not creative unless it sells,”) writes, “The musical genius of Roy Eaton made many radio and TV commercials more memorable and more effective. Who can forget the animated Sugar Bear who sang like Dean Martin (“Can’t get enough o’ that Sugar Crisp,”) music for GI Joe and Mr. Potato Head, “Hardee’s. Best Eatin’ in Town.” “Deep, Dark, Delicious Yuban.” Eaton also pioneered the association—so common today—of well-known music and artists with commercial brands. Organist E. Power Biggs’ 30 second version of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue” for Cool Whip. Milt Jackson of the Modern Jazz Quartet for Harvey’s Bristol Cream (“Never serve the coffee without The Cream.”) Gladys Knight and the Pips for Unguentine. The Jackson Five’s “ABC” for Alpha Bits. “[Eaton] became recognized throughout the advertising agency business as the foremost creative musical composer for many, many great campaigns,” writes Jack Bowen, another Advertising Hall of Fame member.

Eaton left Benton & Bowles in 1980 to open his own music production company. Michael Jackson earned a citation from President Reagan for music produced by Eaton’s company for the dramatic Anti-Drunk Driving campaign. Eaton’s sound design on “Crashing Glasses” from this campaign also won multiple awards. Soon he returned to the concert stage. Of “The Meditative Chopin,” Eaton’s 1986 solo concert in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Times’ Tim Page wrote: “The cumulative effect was deeply satisfying. One came much closer to the heart of Chopin—and by extension, to music itself.” Since then, Eaton has toured internationally, recorded albums featuring the work of Chopin, Joplin, Gershwin, and others (Amazon lists six), and is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. Not only does he tour internationally, but he regularly plays pro bono for nursing homes, churches and charities. Olivier Dahan, the Academy Award winning director, recently chose three Chopin Preludes from one of Eaton’s albums for the background music on his upcoming film “My Own Love Song” starring Renee Zellweger and Forest Whitaker.

Eaton tells a story about his mother. She taught him from a young age that, to overcome prejudice, he “needed to do 200 percent to get credit for 1percent.” “So,” Eaton says, “that became my lifetime mantra.”

Indeed.