There is a commercial, currently airing on TV, whose music features a song heard in early television.
The commercial, I will note, is related to a brief part of my book about early TV.
The new commercial, for Chevrolet, had its debut on NBC the night of the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, and it has been airing since.
The song in the commercial is "See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet," and is sung by country music performer Brooke Lee. Ms. Lee, playing a guitar, is seated at the back of a 2026 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck; she and the truck are positioned at the top of the landmark 400-foot-tall Castle Rock formation, in Utah.
I frankly can't imagine what it was like to produce a commercial at such a height, and in such a relatively small space (the formation's summit, I have read, is approximately thirty by forty feet). Ms. Lee, the crew for the commercial, and the Silverado, were airlifted by helicopter to the site.
Chevrolet, incidentally, had used the Castle Rock location previously, for Chevrolet Impala commercials and print advertisements--in the 1960s, and in the 1970s.
Here is the new commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-6nRs4BqXQ
In a behind-the scenes video of the making of the commercial (seen here), one can see the crew in front of Ms. Lee; the images of the crew were edited out of the commercial. In addition, other instrumentation, and vocal harmonies, were obviously included after-the-fact.
The commercial's lyrics begin:
See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet,
America is asking you to call.
Drive your Chevrolet through the U.S.A.,
America's the greatest land of all.
Many people familiar with early TV will recall that the commercial jingle was made famous by singer Dinah Shore, whose TV program, The Dinah Shore Show, was seen on NBC from 1951 until 1957; it was a fifteen-minute show, airing on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Ms. Shore became closely associated with the song, which she sang at the end of her telecasts. At the song's conclusion, Ms. Shore--in what became well-known as her visual signature--would blow a kiss to the TV audience.
In 1957, she also began making monthly appearances on the hour-long The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, also on NBC. In 1957, after her original program ended, her Chevy program became a weekly show, and it aired until 1963.
Here is a video of Ms. Shore singing the Chevrolet theme song, from the 1950s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhR8GZ_WWMM
I've recently seen various references, online, to the Chevrolet jingle, in which Ms. Shore is, quite properly, given credit for making it famous--yet some of the references also indicate that the jingle first appeared on her NBC program. It actually did not.
As noted by Wikipedia, the song, with lyrics and music by Leo Corday and Leon Carr, had been (two years prior to the 1951 debut of Ms. Shore's program) the commercial theme of the CBS-TV music, variety, and comedy revue Inside U.S.A. with Chevrolet; the program aired every other week from September, 1949 until March, 1950. The show starred Peter Lind Hayes; its co-star was Mary Healy. Mr. Hayes and Ms. Healy, husband and wife, would star together on other network programs over time. The show also featured dancer Sheila Bond, actress Mary Wickes, dancer Danny Daniels, and the Ray Charles Singers, the vocal group which accompanied the program's stars (and guest stars) in production numbers. Mr. Charles's singers were also featured in the show's "See the U.S.A." Chevrolet commercials.
My mother, who earlier in 1949 had appeared on two DuMont Network shows, was one of Inside U.S.A's Ray Charles Singers, from the program's debut in late September until November, when she left the show to become one of the vocalists on bandleader Kay Kyser's new program on NBC. (Later, in 1951 and 1952, when she was a featured singer on NBC's Your Hit Parade, she would work again with Ray Charles. Beginning in 1950, he was the Hit Parade's vocal arranger, writing the arrangements for both the show's starring vocalists, and for its choral group, the Hit Paraders (which was, in essence, a Ray Charles ensemble, under a different name; he hired the singers who made up the Hit Paraders, and arranged and oversaw the group's vocal performances. He remained with Your Hit Parade for much of the 1950s).
I have a number of pieces of sheet music, from my mother's TV career in New York. One of them is from Inside U.S.A., and is of the show's Chevrolet jingle.
Though my parents had married in August of 1949 (the month before she joined Inside U.S.A.), she continued to use her maiden name, Sue Benjamin--which is written at the top of the sheet music, below--as her stage name. She would change her surname to Bennett upon joining the cast of Kay Kyser's program, which had its debut the first week of December, 1949. Mr. Kyser asked her to come up with a new name; he evidently thought that Benjamin did not have enough of a show business flair to it. She chose the surname Bennett (which was, as it happens, the first name of her father-in-law).
Here is the first page of her "See the U.S.A." sheet music, from Inside U.S.A.:
("See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet," lyrics and music by Leo Corday and Leon Carr, © General Motors Company)
