Robert Crumb lawsuit "Keep On Truckin' Cafe" musical bakery commercials Sioux City
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- Опубліковано 13 вер 2024
- Regional musical bakery commercials from the seventies narrated by "Convoy" singer C.W. McCall and featuring various baked goods offered by the Old Home brand via the winkin' waitress ("This gal's built like a burlap bag fulla bobcats") at the Keep On Truckin' Cafe. The commercials aired in Sioux City up until reps for Zap Comix co-founder Robert Crumb, who drew the original Keep On Truckin' cartoon, shut down the Cafe and stopped the (pretty funny) music with an infringement lawsuit.
BetaGems are culled from an archive of over 1000 beta video tapes recorded between from 1983 into the 1990s. Most feature live music performances broadcast on television in San Diego CA, though there are also rarely seen commercials, comedy clips, and other material that doesn't seem to be anywhere else on UA-cam or online. Most of the tapes were recorded on a Sony SL-HFT7 Super Beta Theater Hi-Fi Stereo - the same model was refurbished and is being used for these digital transfers and uploads.
In rare occasions where a BetaGems clip does appear elsewhere, we're only uploading if our own beta master is better quality or contains material not seen previously. Much footage comes from public television and public access broadcasts that the taper, who worked for a local cable TV production company in the 1980s, monitored nightly for several years. Some of the programming is strictly regional, mostly from the San Diego area.
In 1972~1975 I lived in Omaha and played drums in a country band. One of the guys in the band knew the people who owned the Old Home Filler Up and Keep on Truckin' cafe and they booked us in to play for them three or four times. I still have a front bass drum head with their bumper sticker on it.
Am I the only one that finds it funny, that someone named Crumb, is suing a bread company?
They don't make commercials like this anymore. When was the last time you were happy to see a new commercial? In Tennessee it was Kerns Bread Company.
They even used the same face actors for Mavis and the trucker.
William Dale Fried JR and Chip Davis wrote those Commecrials and the Old Home Filler up and Keep on a Truckin Cafe song grew from that .. the commercials came
out in the Mid 1970's like 1973 or so
MMy wife I and several others were extras in Old Home commercials .Bill F was a nice man and enjoyed visiting with us. The Mavis character was in a bad mood when CW dripped her in a dip. She stormed away, and it took a long time to get her to continue. They paid us a dollar for our work.
Buck 28 for all that food including tax. Gotta get me to the old home filler and talk to old Mave!
I would love a go on Mavis.
Probably mid 80's now...
R.I.P. C.W.McCall
Louis "Chip" Davis was responsible for the music in these commercials. He took some of the money he made from C.W. McCall's "Convoy" single and album and used it to create what he's known best for: the modern classical group Mannheim Steamroller.
Wow, great info - thanks!
What the heck harm did this do to Robert Crumb? If anything, it helped his brand and promoted his work. It's a pity that this mean-spirited lawsuit could have succeeded in any case. Does anyone else find it appropriate that this guy's name is Crumb? That said, this is brilliant material, thanks for posting it.
The problem is copyright. Crumb had a major revenue stream from “Keep on truckin” posters and other merch, and the way it works is if he didn’t defend it, he would lose it. Lose the copyright, and the revenue stream goes away as everybody and his cousin starts making copycat posters. This is why the NFL is so nasty about people using the term “Super Bowl”
Okay, thank you. So, if you don't go after one guy, it negates your right to go after the next, or anyone? I would think that "truckin'", figuratively as a sprightly gait, would be sufficiently different from "truckin'", literally as hauling freight, that letting it go would not have such effect. Maybe a token lawsuit, or an agreement for a small royalty, to protect rights. That said, Bill Fries as an advertising professional should have known he was on thin ice. Great ads, though!
I can’t believe R. Crumb had any grounds to sue. There’s no conceptual overlap at all between his comic and this tv campaign. “Keep on truckin’ “ are three words strung together. There is so much more going on in Bill Fries’ commercials than just those three words. How maddening that is. Thank you for posting these! If these were culled from 1980’s cable tv archives, are there any others from that period of “Uncle Ernie’s True Adventure Trails”? I’ve posted my collection here:
ua-cam.com/play/PLmzx1-lw-rp_9CmnGCWTKD1wq7wyM4l5c.html
Uncle Ernie was a midwesterner who drove all around the country in the 80’s dropping off tapes of his home movies at cable stations which he had edited and narrated to turn his various 8mm films into life lessons for kids. I would love to have more of them come to light from others who surely must’ve saved more of these!
Narrator sounds like C.W. McCall.
It is.
CW McCall was his stage name
His real name was Bill Fries
He just recently passed away at 93 years old 🙏