Terry And The Melody Laners
The Melody Laners
8366 - Kalamazoo, My Home Town
produced for the people of Kalamazoo by
WKMI
1360 Melody Lane
Lyrics: Howard D. Steere
Lyrics copyrighted 1962 Steere Broadcasting
Musical rights publications Meeks Publications
Recorded by PAMS of Dallas
Arranger-composer : Euel Box
For air use on Radio Station WKMI (Dial 1360)
July 1962
Bill Meeks started the PAMS Advertising Agency in the mid-fifties.
While the concept of using catchy tunes to promote a product was nothing new, the idea of using a full length song to promote a radio station was. In 1960, Meeks came up with the idea of creating a standard 1:30 music bed, entitled “My Home Town” (in the “Sound of the City” – Series 16 jingle package). The song bed, written by Euel Box, was pitched to radio stations from Abilene to Winston-Salem. Localized lyrics would be penned by the jocks, or other staffers. However, more often than not, the amateur songwriters would cram as many words as they could into the canned music bed.
It’s estimated that there are over 100 different versions of “My Home Town.”
While Terry was consistently the main voice on the "My Home Town" PAMS jingles series, her name credit on the singles is anything but. Variations on her name have included “Terry Lea," "Terry Lee,” “Terry Lea Jenkins," and "Terry Lee Jenkins."
For as long as Marie Therese Leahy could remember, she was always performing.
“I first sang at the Capitol Theatre, in Austin, on the kiddie show,” she said. “If you were asked to perform, you got in free to the movie that day, and got two passes for later in the week. America was in the middle of a depression so I went to the kiddie show every Saturday and got on, and got my tickets.”
By 1941, she would find herself entertaining on another stage – in front of the troops, at one of the several bases around Austin. “Mr. John Peninger, who was a friend of my dad’s, was head of the USO in Austin and asked if I could be on the USO shows – I was only 14 at the time,” she said. Terry, as she was starting to be called at the time, would find herself singing before thousands of soldiers at Camp Swift in Bastrop, or at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin. “I would perform on a flat bed truck, driven out into a field, and there would be five thousand young men waiting to be entertained.” She would later be crowned Queen of Melody of Camp Swift. “What a treat that was, but I well chaperoned as my dad was quite strict.”
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