The jinglestudio of PAMS at the 4141 Office Parkway in Dallas.
The source of legendary sounds.
From a tiny building, just north of uptown Dallas.
In a quiet cul-de-sac
The two recording studios (being the high structure) are behind the PAMS offices.
Even a better view from this angle.
The building in the Texas winter (Courtesy Steve England).
The famous ‘4141’ numbering next to the door. Don’t think Office Parkway is a long street, it is only 400 metres with no more than six offices and some appartment buildings .
The adres was immortalised in the famous PAMS disclaimer (illustration is a copyrighted feature by Norman Barrington and may not be reproduced).
Writer / producer / director Dough Thompson in 1972 near the PAMS sign. (Copyright Dough Thompson)
The ‘M’ in PAMS actually was wrong on the sign – just compare it the logo on a PAMS business card.
A few Texan oak trees, not much traffic at all
This is how it looks like from te reception.
The building from the back side. Studio B was situated behind the big window (merely for sonovox sessions)
This is actually how small the building was.
Zooming in just a little.
The groundflour of PAMS’, it’s accurate – it is based on the exact contruction drawing from 1961.
This is the first building sketch.
This bird eyes’ view illustrates yet again how small the building in fact is.
PAMS at night.
The corridor leads to studio A (in the back of the building).
This is the spot where thousands of jingles were sung: the PAMS singers in 1965 (unknown source)
And the PAMS gang in 1970: left to right: Libba Weeks, Mary Jo Grogran, Jackie Dickson, Jim Clancy, Marv Shaw & Billy Ainsworth. ©2010 Pat Appleson Studios – All Rights Reserved, Used by Permission www.appleson.com
Bass singer Jim Clancy in a corner of Studio A. ©2010 Pat Appleson Studios – All Rights Reserved, Used by Permission www.appleson.com
And a jingle session in 1969 (from Ken R. Deutsch’s archive)
Studio A nowadays again, The arrow shows where the studio window was, behind it the control room.
And then they made an extra ceiling to make room for a Studio B
This is the inside of the former Studio B, mainly used for resings and sonovox jingles.
This was one of the hooks of the reverb plate, that gave the jingles a wide-country-echo: W.A.B.C-eeeeee-eeee-eee
This was the one….
An EMT 140, German stuff…
Back on the groundfloor and on the way to the control room of Studio A
It was the domain of sound technician Bruce Collier. ©2010 Pat Appleson Studios – All Rights Reserved, Used by Permission www.appleson.com
©2010 Pat Appleson Studios – All Rights Reserved, Used by Permission www.appleson.com
Here’s a picture of the studio from his facebook account before the ten track recording gear.
After the demise of PAMS the console was sold to Accurate Sound Studios in Garland Texas.
This photos was taken from the studio part of Studio A. Just behind Bruce Collier the 10 track recorder. The room was that small that he had to turn around to put the recorder off or on. © Pat Appleson Studios – All Rights Reserved, Used by Permission www.appleson.com
This must have been their first console, in early 1962, photographed by Dean Johnson (then of KWMT)
There’s nothing left of the former control room. What is a wall nawadays used to be the studio window.
On the left picture you see Bob Peeples, the photo was taken in 1975. The man with the blond hair and the moustache is Ren Groot of Top Format, who managed to sell PAMS jingles for the Dutch NCRV (Copyright Ren Groot)
This is de control room again, by now equipped with a 24 track recorder.
After the demise of PAMS in 1977 a religious organisation used the building for recordings weekly sermons. (Photo Fred Hardy).
Studio C (built in 1971) is still quite original.
Thompson Creative turned it into kind of a living room.
This is where the singers usually do your job.
Same spot, different angle.
This is the part of the studio where the intrumental tracking is being done.
The sixties and seventies are very much alive in an environment like this.
The control room in the back wasn’t diamant shape in the old days, like it is now.
This is a look from the control room in the studio.
No one ever photogrpahed the ceiling, well…we did.
OK, hope not.
The control room in the Thompson era.
Larry Thompson did us a big tour in 2008, LISTEN and SEE 
Digital equipment in a building that is very much analogue.
Who did this then?
PAMS was formed by Bill Meeks, here in the middele of one of the WWII bands: the Circle Five Hands (thank you, Steve Eberthart)
They had some famous session pleayers too, like Glen Campbell, he went to record in Dallas, even after he got famous.
This hung on the PAMS wall years after.
In earlier years Alvino Rey contributed to the PAMS sound quite a lot with his steel guitar sound.
It’s him again during his heighdays in his postwar glory years.
His guitar is in museum now.
he had a ’talking device’, a sonovox, as as in 1944, used for ‘Stringy, the talking guitar.
This sonovox would became one of the PAMS classics in 1961.
But is was already 22 years old / invented as it was by Gilbert Wright in 1939. Here´s a very young Lucille Ball, strangely enough on the British Newsreal to demonstrate it. WATCH.
In 1963 PAMS used the voices of the twins: Carol and Lauri Raymond as a gimmick on their series 25 The Happy Difference
They started their own business later, SEE Lauri talk about it.
Sass sauces, we wonder if they still sing jingles, for their own product now.
The gimmick in series 26 was a set of small toned bongo drums: the boobams, made by Gone bobs, you can still HIRE them for a private jingle evening.
And then, on series 27 there was Gleni Tai. She was an American native girl (her original Creek Indian name was: Bright Eye Longknife). She added high vocal ‘pabs’to the brass on many PAMS jingles, she gave series 27 Jet Set it’s destinctive sound. (photo from a 2009 school reunion).
Trella Hart was on of the oher famous singers at PAMS.
She was a jazz-singer too, but jingles gave her more fame than the records she produced.
And she’s still going strong, still performing in the Dallas area.
Trella was married to musician Whitey Thomas, who experimented with the moog synthesizer from it’s early cenception in 1968 (courtesey PAMS.com)
He was working on series 42 here, with the commercial released Mini moog 1
He perfected his skills outside 4141 Office Parkway, leading to the album Thunder in 1974.
Another PAMS star was Peyton Parks, here at the far right, playing clarinet.
A white guy with a profound black sound.
This is him, singing in Dallas in the 1980s for Alfasound (courtesy Steve England), listen to some of his great soul
jingles.
He was in the music business for years.
And this was Fred Lowery, adding a whistle to the 1960s jingles of PAMS (like listen to the mockingird). He also whistled to theme tune of the Andy Griffith show.
PAMS even recorded one of his albums in Dallas.
And here’s another PAMS talent, (Big) Al Dupree, he was featured on series 28 Happiness, listen here, and listen to some of his old blues renditions.
At the front: Brian Beck and the Noman Quarted, Brian was a jingle singer for over half a century.
Billy Ainsworth was another of the PAMS veterans (in the middle) and a long time musician too.
IN 1977 PAMS was sold by CCC programming, but soon it would go bancrupt all together
Some DJ’s would give their left leg for a brandnew PAMS demo in Europe, strangely enough only a few of them had the idea to write and simply ask for a new demo, in the days before the internet Europe and America were far apart. But Tom Blomberg, radio dj to be, tried his luck in 1973.
He got this response …. and a stack of tapes too.
Demotapes like this where send around the world and many stations where industrious to pirate them .
So, a tape like this was gold.
Even the artwork was good, very sixties’ and seventies’ style (thanks to Hans Hogendoorn, who took them from Dallas)
This is the place where the demo was copied 1 to 1 on reel to reel tape, which made the PAMS demos of a very good quality.
©2010 Pat Appleson Studios – All Rights Reserved, Used by Permission www.appleson.com.
And sometimes they released demos on disc as well, like the ill fitting Opus 71 programming concept.
This triggered the jingle business quite a lot. The first real concept jingles had been made for KLIF of radio innovator Gordon McLendon, who tried to syndicate the jingles of Tom Merriman (of the later TM fame) in Billboard Magazine (1959).
It spurred PAMS to advertise too and to go from regional to a national supplier of jingles.
Some more of their early ads in Billboard (1960).
And the continued as when they were groing: some of the PAMS ads in Radio & Records and Billboard Magazine of the later packages from Dallas.
Here’s another one, for one of the worst packages they made in 1960.
The front of Series # 18, Sonosational – one of the PAMS highlights (Hans Hogendoorn)
Radio London was one of the customers to buy it, introducing Europe to the PAMS sound (jingles and sonowaltz were put on CD by East Anglian Production).
Let’s balance that with one of the all time lowlights: dreadful highschool songs.
Star of Sonosational was the Sonovox. Not a divice PAMS invented. Fifteen years back novelty records already were made with this strange sounding gimmick.
One of the best series ever, released in 1963 (Hans Hogendoorn).
This was series 40…..
The box wasn’t as nice as this one (Hans Hogendoorn)
In the Dallas studio this demo tape of Tuned Young was still there.
PAMS had an other success – a guitar course.
Ray Hurst developed PAMS Colourway, in which colourful stickers for every chord were used.
It was a big success.
We found one in a second hand shop in Dallas.
Part of the series # 16 (‘The sound of the city’), was ‘My Home Town’, a chauvenistic city song. Over 400 of them were recorded by PAMS. Terry Lea Jenkins sung a lot of them.
This looks like a collector’s one
Wonderful Radio London had its own version, as sung by the Chantelles, a girls’group that was connected to Radio London’s own booking office.
This is them.
They also cherished their own version of the famous PAMS Sonowaltz.
Which had some similarities wirth a jazz-hit record from 1961: Sister Salvation.
Euel Box, who wrote the Sonowaltz later won an Oscar for his soundtrack to Benji.
And he later sold the Golden Globe that his song won in 1973.
One of the small offices.
The hallway
PAMS in Billboard magazine in 1967. At the right hand side an article about Radio Veronica, who stole the PAMS jingles by editing the original station names in. Nobody knew at that time!
Two PAMS ads from Broadcasting, 1962 (left) and 1974.
And in 1972, sharing their thoughts with the competion: TM
PAMS wanted to be as big as TM and chose to drift away from jingles by selling automation systems and programming material, which proved to be a tactic misstake.
In 2010 you could have bought the building for just under one million dollars.
After PAMS went broke in 1978, founder Bill Meeks continued making jingles and a music library in a company he called Meeks Music. This was his office in 1992, when Hans Hogendoorn paid a visit. (Photo © Hans Hogendoorn).
This was his modest working space. (© Hans Hogendoorn).
They tried to revive PAMS in the eighties, without a lot of success.
Bill and his PAMS building.
Rickey the K. interviewed him in the nineties in a rather hectic manner. Let him talk about it in his own words.
The building in 2008.
And 2011, after they chopped the Texan oak.
In 2012 they spoiled the original building concept from 1961 by putting windows in the first floor above the studios.
And the building was painted white.
This is how it looks in 2014 (thanks to Google maps)
Today PAMS is here, at the JAM Studios at 5454 Parkdale drive, where they have all the master tapes, all the copyrights and all the skills to make PAMS sound like ever!to make PAMS sound like ever!
The two jingle blends at the reception desk.
And some of the actual masters on the shelves.
OK, time for coffee now. “Coffee and music with…”
If you want to know even more about PAMS, just read the PAMS bible, compiled by Ken R. Deutsch.