Scott M. Thede posted this audio clip December 28, 2013 in the Facebook Group “You know you are from Sebewaing, MI when …”. He said “This may bring back some memories from the golden age of radio (my best guess)! Click here to listen.
Here are the comments from the post:
John Schneider thanks alot scott…..can’t get that tune out of my head now……skip skip…..
Jo Ann Parsell That’s a hoot! What year was it recorded?
Mark W Rummel I’ve never heard that! I had no idea they had made a CBWing Beer radio spot. WOW! I’d guess it was from 1964 or so, since the “Detroit owners” probably paid for it. Our local owners never would have spent that kind of money.
Doug Rook Seeb-ah-wing beer, eh? Skip to my loo……. A loo is restroom in England. So does Sebewaing beer really make you skip to the loo?
Robert Calkins Pretty cool add. Singers were right on the money pitch wise and the jingle words were quite appropriate. Excellent guitar too. Anyone know who the ensemble was made up of??
Julie Meyer Kaczorowski Cool! Thanks for sharing!
Scott M Thede I don’t know any of the details of the song yet. It sounds like it came from vinyl that someone must have. The label may provide additional details. In regards to timing, there was a heavy ad campaign from August 1945 to August 1947 for Sebewaing Beer. I attached a sample of one ad in the Blade that ran on 3/28/47 and 6/13/47. There were other ads that looked the same but with different messages. Early in the campaign on Aug 24, 1945, they ran the same size ad but instead of the bottle, the words “Good Beer!” and “Sebewaing” in a large point size. What I noticed is that shortly before these ads appeared, Fox Brewery out of Grand Rapids was running an aggressive ad campaign with huge ads in the Blade and I believe the Sebewaing ads were to help people remember Sebewaing Beer and not be lured away. For now, this time period is my best guess for the song that may have been running on the radio. I do tend to agree with Mark that this would have been abnormal marketing dollars spent for the board at that time and maybe it is from the 1960’s.
Mark W Rummel Just fascinating, Scott. Maybe Fox Brewery wanted to buy out Sebewaing and was trying to under-price them, since no national beers were dominant then as Bud and Miller are now. That 12 oz. long-neck bottle would appear almost full-size in print, so it probably looked pretty tasty (there were few news photos then, maybe one or two a week, so that bottle really stood out.) Keep this stuff coming, Scott!
Mark W Rummel This is from the Grand Rapids Press files: Fox Deluxe Brewing Co. built a “castle brewery complex” in 1935, right after prohibition ended and ran it until 1951, when the company closed the Grand Rapids brewery and moved the business to Chicago.
Fox Deluxe had bought the assets of Michigan Brewing Co. in 1940, which in turn had bought the assets of Grand Rapids Brewing Co. after it was forced to make “near beer” products during Prohibition. The company made a brief comeback by merging with Furniture City Brewing Co., but it was mostly a shell for a Muskegon brewery owned by Frank D. McKay, an infamous Grand Rapids businessman and state Republican Party boss. Sounds like they were trying to get big before the Buds and Millers took over, but didn’t succeed.
Thanks to all of those who took the time to comment in Facebook.
