'Empire Carpet Guy' Dies at 89

[Mark J.]

Adman Lynn Hauldren was talked into putting on the installer uniform
and becoming the mellow-voiced pitchman for Chicago's Empire Carpet in
1973 and is still seen (in CGI form) today--even before the company
went national, Hauldren's face and the infamous jingle he wrote
performed by the barbershop choir he was a member of ('Five-Eight-
Eight/Two-Three-Hundred/EMPIRE!") was well-known by viewers of WGN's
superstation feed (now known as WGN America):

http://chicagoist.com/2011/04/27/lynn_empire_carpet_guy_hauldren_pas.php

It was a minor shock to the system when on a trip to New York I heard
the Empire jingle and realized that it was a New York station I had on.

[Joe Hass]

It is an apocryl story that Eddie Vedder was on stage in Chicago early in Pearl Jam when he said that some people challenged whether he was from the city. The band played the jingle as proof, and the crowd went nuts.

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[Jim Ellwanger]

Joe Hass wrote:
> It is an apocryl story that Eddie Vedder was on stage in Chicago early in
> Pearl Jam when he said that some people challenged whether he was from the
> city. The band played the jingle as proof, and the crowd went nuts.

I'm sure it was as good as Faith No More's rendition of the Nestle Alpine
White chocolate bar jingle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfIuST1f6HA

--
Jim Ellwanger <trai...@ellwanger.tv>
<http://www.ellwanger.tv>

[David Lynch]

I wonder how many of these old phone number jingles have survived to
the modern day. I imagine that ten-digit dialing did away with a few
of them.

The only one I can ever remember from growing up in Austin is for
pizza delivery and was re-recorded with a slight change and a very
different sound (male rock vocal and instruments rather than a female
with a jazz piano) a couple years back. Thanks to it, I occasionally
put 459-2222 down on various web forms when I don't want to give my
real phone number to whatever organization is collecting the info.

The best/worst that I remember from my childhood was a rather rythmic
chanting of "four" behind Pizza Hut ads for a couple years after they
managed to acquire the number 444-4444. It was darn catchy and not
always in a good way.

--
David J. Lynch
djl...@gmail.com