Dallas News Blog

As Tom's former station ID jingle partner along with his close associate and drmmer the late Tom Gwin (Gwinsound)I really "feel" this great loss to our one and only Dallas station ID jingle community. Tom had led the firstr generation of local Dallas jingle producers, and passes the torch on to my fellow top national station ID jingle producers, Jon Wolfert, Johnny Hooper, Marshall Such, Bud Guin, Frank Hames, Bruce Upchurch, and let's not forget the input from a great man in the 1980s who invested so much into promoting the station ID jingle business - Mr. Dave Scott. AND Of Course, the major jingle collectors and or producers besides myself, Tracy Carman, Jon Wolfert, Tony Griffin and Ken Justiss.
Yes, I knew well and worked for the founder of what was known as the Top 40 format, the great Legend (and you knew it when you heard his amazing mellow yet strong rich voice - the late great inovator - Mr. Gordon McLendon owner of KLIF who brought radio greats into this new era like Ken Dow, Charlie Van Dyke, Big Jim Davis and other legend radio programmers and DJ's. (wait, we need to identify DJ's properly - including the main man in Dallas Mr. Ron Chapman - Yes, they MUST be called uptempo music Radio Personality Announcers.

And one final tribute to the other amazing Dallas radio stations who confributed so much to the pormotion of music in the area besides KLIF. Let us acknowledge KBOX, KFJZ, KXOL and what became the "offshoot of KLIF - KVIL (boy I sure miss waking up to KVIL even though their torch has been passed on to 98.7 KLUV GREAT JOB EVERYBODY!!

So I say goodbye to Mr. Tom Merriman knowing that his musical works - throgh our efforts, fancy digital recorders to capture the original high quality of the Tom Merriman station ID jingle music and new 7 voice vocal adaptatins wiht the still just as famous Dallas ID jingle singers - all this with custom sings now performed for thousands of stations in the USA and hundreds and hundreds of stations world wide in many foreign languages sung throgh phoenetic assist - will live on and on.
hopefully forever.

Ben Freedman Radio ID Jingle Studios/Plano TX
www.jingleguy.com
www.youtube.com/jinglerevolution
www.gwinsound.com
www.jingleuniversity.com
www.radiopromodvd.com

owner/Gwinsound Promotions

ben@radiotraffic.com
ben@jingleguy.com
thejingleguy@tx.rr.com

Very sorry to hear the news - Tom was such a pioneer and responsible for so much greatness that came out of Dallas. My condolences to all the jingle pro's in Dallas at Tom's passing.