Backward Commercial

One of the most popular songs on the Rocky Mountain air for the past fortnight has been a jingly little piece that Disk Jockey Ronnie McCoy of Denver's KFEL calls Tout Contraire. It sounds something like a Slavic folk tune sung by a crooner with the hiccups. McCoy describes it as a "new foreign import." Listeners, trying to identify it, have variously guessed it to be French, German, Russian.

It is none of these. It is, in fact, the work of an advertising agency copywriter named Walter Kranz. He composed a singing commercial for a Denver clothing store, tape-recorded it, accidentally played it backward. It sounded better that way. Kranz made a transcription, took it to McCoy, and McCoy put it on the air.

At week's end, listeners were still wondering about McCoy's "import," unaware that the main message of the song--played front-to-back--is:

You don't need cash You don't need cash When you buy clothes at Grayson's.

Says Jockey McCoy: "The most popular tune I've ever introduced."

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