The man who rolled a 700-foot mountain of whipped cream into Lake Michigan and topped it with a 10-ton maraschino cherry didn't actually drain the lake and replace the water with hot chocolate. Rather, he did it the easy way by using radio's "theater of the mind."

Stan Freberg's stimulation of the imagination via radio is legendary among people in the radio industry. His series of commercials for radio called "Who Listens to Radio?" was a memorable treatment of situations that could only be achieved in language and sound and visualized in the mind of the listener-the whipped cream, the cherry (dropped by the Royal Canadian Air Force), and the addition of 25,000 cheering extras. In his most sardonic tones, Freberg would end each spot, saying, "Now, you wanna try that on television?" describing radio as a very special medium "because it stretches the imagination." The goal was simple: convince print and TV advertisers to reallocate their budgets to radio.

After the Lake Michigan spots came others: a skit about a pterodactyl taking a bite out of the Superdome; another about a robber who stole nothing but radios. Each was tagged with a jingle called "Who Listens to Radio?" Freberg's lyrics demonstrated his unique brand of humor, including rhyming "in the morning with your toast and marmalade-e-o" with the word "radio." The song was sung by jazz stylist Sarah Vaughn and orchestrated by arranger Quincy Jones. More than 35 years after Freberg first produced "Who Listens to Radio?" the Radio Advertising Bureau received multiple requests each week for copies of the work.

Early Influence

Freberg grew up the son of a Baptist minister in Pasadena, California. His first experience in show business came at age 11 when he was an assistant to his uncle, a magician. In high school, he became enthralled with radio. He wrote, produced, and performed student radio shows and became his high school speech champion, winning a statewide competition. He was awarded a drama scholarship but turned it down to work with Mel Blanc, the actor who created the voices of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters.

In the mid-1940s, Freberg became a regular on The Jack Benny Show and worked as a voice actor on The Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show, The Man Called X, and Suspense. He spent two years in the Army and then joined an orchestra, Red Fox and his Musical Hounds, as comedian and guitarist. Freberg wrote and performed an early TV show for children called Time for Beany, which won an Emmy award. His co-writer and performing partner on the show was Daws Butler, later the voice of TV's Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound and a voice actor on many of Freberg's popular skits.

In 1951, Freberg signed with Capitol Records for the release of "John and Marsha," a spoof of soap operas. The only "lyrics" to "John and Marsha" were the two names of the title, repeated throughout the record with a variety of dramatic intonations. "It was an exercise to see if I could run the gamut of emotions and not say anything except the names of the two leading characters," Freberg said.

A friend saw Freberg perform "John and Marsha" as part of a night-dub routine and took a tape to Capitol. Freberg re-recorded "John and Marsha" in the Capitol studios with syrupy music in the background, and the single reached #21 on the Billboard chart. Some radio stations refused to play the record, fearing it was too suggestive. Theater of the mind had triumphed again, for the only suggestions were in the tone of Freberg's voice.

Success led to more spoofs on record. Freberg wrote and produced parodies of Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" and Johnnie Ray's "Cry." In 1953, Freberg scored a number one single with "St. George and the Dragonet," a parody of the Dragnet television series.

The advent of rock and roll gave Freberg new fodder for parody. He satirized hit songs like "Heartbreak Hotel," "Sh-Boom," and "The Great Pretender." In liner notes to a collection of his skits on Capitol Records, Freberg pointed to "The Great Pretender" as one of his favorites because, "In addition to coming out fairly funny it lampoons a musical trend that I personally loathe."

In notes for A Child's Garden of Freberg, 1957, Freberg asserted himself as satirist:

In all my records I have tried to operate not as a record

comic but as a satirist. There's a difference between

pointless ridicule and earnest satire. A satirist is inher-

ently a critic who seeks to improve society by pointing

up its affectations and absurdities through the use of

humor. His chief weapon is exaggeration. Satire is

healthy.

Satire also creates controversy, as Freberg discovered more than once. His 1958 single "Green Chri$tma$" brilliantly attacked the commercialization of Christmas ("Deck the halls with advertising, what's the use of compromising?"). Many radio stations banned the seven-minute production. In 1960, Freberg irked radio again with his production of "The Old Payola Roll Rlues," a satire on the pay-for-play scandals that rocked the industry at the time.

His most successful recording venture was the 1961 album Stan Freherg Presents the United States of America, in which Freberg lampooned people and events in American history. At the discovery of the new world, Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella sang, "It's a Round Round World." George Washington hired an advertising agency to promote the newly formed United States, and Betsy Ross' design for the American flag was celebrated Hollywood-style with "Everybody Wants to Be an Art Director."

On the Air

During the 1950s, Freberg was heard on a variety of radio shows, including That's Rich on CBS and a series of programs on New York's WCBS. In 1957, he was signed to The Stan Freberg Show, a live radio program on CBS, replacing The Jack Benny Show, which had moved to television. Critical response included raves from Time magazine about "a fresh, bright new sound that will wrench people away from the TV set." The New York Daily News claimed, "Radio's tired blood is being revitalized by Dr. Stan Freberg."

In spite of positive reviews, the series lasted only 15 weeks. In addition to his frequent run-ins with CBS censors, Freberg wanted the show to run with a single, overal sponsor (like Benny's show had), but he would not allow CBS to sell to a cigarette manufacturer. CBS preferred selling individual spot announcements, and Freberg felt that would mean "every three minutes I'd have to drop a commercial in." The program ran without a sponsor. Freberg won no radio awards for the short-lived series, but the collected recordings won a Grammy Award.

Freberg's body of work grew with his Los Angeles-based advertising agency, called "Freberg, Limited" ("but not very" was added as a parenthetical on the letterhead). He produced memorable television commercials for Jeno's Pizza Rolls and Chun King Chinese foods. For radio, he developed more theater of the mind to sell Contadina tomato products ("Who puts eight great tomatoes in that little bitty can?"), tourism in the state of Oregon ("A territory's great, but you've gotta have a state!"), and the California Prune Advisory Board ("Today the pits; tomorrow the wrinkles!").

He took on commercial projects for two of America's biggest advertisers, General Motors and Mellon Bank. Freberg recalled one client, Dupont, asking him, "We know about the prunes and the pizza rolls, have you ever taken on a really serious client?" His answer: "Other than God?" referring to a series of commercials which needled Americans about not attending church regularly. They were used by the Southern Baptist Radio-Television Commission, the Detroit Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, and the Presbyterian Church of the United States.

Latter Day Freberg

In the 1990s Freberg was heard on radio again with a daily commentary called Stan Freberg Here. His subject was anything topical, from learning to use a new computer to his take on the Gulf War. He was signed as host of the weekly radio series When Radio Was, a retrospective of old time radio shows.

In 1996, he continued the United States of America series by adding a long-awaited Volume 2, which took on subjects such as Morse's first telegram, Custer's Last Stand, and Edison's invention of the light bulb and the phonograph. Freberg coaxed bandleader Billy May out of retirement for orchestration and enlisted actors John Goodman, Tyne Daly, David Ogden Stiers, and Sherman Hemsley for spoken parts.

Freberg was writing Volume 3 of "United States" when, in 1999, Rhino Records asked him to assemble a retrospective box set titled "Tip of the Freberg: The Stan Freberg Collection, 1951-1998." The set includes remastered editions of his early Capitol recordings and a VHS tape of commercials Freberg produced for television.

Throughout the 1990s, Freberg was active as a voice actor, lending his talents to advertising and animation. He was regularly heard as the voice of Junyer Bear in "Bugs Bunny" cartoons and as Bertie in "Cheese Chasers" cartoons. In the feature animated film Stuart Little, Freberg was heard as the race announcer.

Freberg noted with pride in a 1999 interview that Paul and Linda McCartney mentioned him in a Playboy article when they were asked where the Beatles got their sense of humor. Writer Stephen King said that Freberg's maraschino cherry commercial influenced his imagination, though King misremembered the scene as Puget Sound, not Lake Michigan. Playwright David Mamet referred to the same commercial and remembered the lake correctly, but magnified the cherry to 30 tons and added skyrockets along the shore. Freberg called the mistakes a tribute to the medium of radio that the scenes were remembered as even bigger than they were.

Underscoring his self-description as satirist, Freberg quotes Al Capp, the artist who drew the "Li'! Abner" comic strip: "The fifth freedom is the freedom to laugh at ourselves." To which Freberg adds: "Mr. Capp makes sense. When we stop laughing at ourselves, the decline and fall is not far off."