WATCH: (Scroll Down For Video) It was 1960 – or maybe 1956, he couldn’t really recall – when Lester “Les” Waas was let loose in New York City with a 12-inch bell and an order to record a three-minute radio ad for a small ice cream company. As legend goes, he created a lyrical, chime-filled tune in one take and named it “Jingles and Chimes.” The client, a Philadelphia-born, Jersey-based business called Mister Softee, loved it.
Fifty years later, generations of Americans will never be able to get his jingle out of their heads. It became one of the best Pavlovian marketing tools and, consequently, one of the most abhorred pieces of music to a parent’s ears. Countless ice cream trucks blare an endless loop of Waas’s lyric-less tune through summer’s steaming streets, cul-de-sacs, parks and playgrounds, attracting children in swarms and noise complaints in the thousands. The song was almost banned in New York City in 2004 due to a concentrated noise-reduction effort led by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but was saved by Mister Softee’s economic arguments (and a large nostalgic outcry).
Waas was tickled by its longevity. In an interview with Philadelphia’s Broadcast Pioneers in 2015, he could still sing the lyrics:
Here comes Mister Softee
The soft ice cream man.
The creamiest, dreamiest soft ice cream,
You get from Mister Softee.
For a refreshing delight supreme
Look for Mister Softee
My milkshakes and my sundaes and my cones are such a treat
Listen for my store on wheels ding-a-ling down the street…
Look for Mister Softee
S-O-F-T double E, Mister Softee.
