“Dittrich, Dittrich – dependability …”
With the recent announcement that Detroit’s oldest business, Dittrich Furs, will be closing its doors after 133 years, the classic Dittrich Furs television commercial has been galloping through the brains of many Detroiters.
“Dittrich, Dittrich – since 1893 …”
With the iconic jingle freshly back in mind, the Free Press spoke with its composer, Dan Yessian, who gave the backstory on this Detroit cultural touchstone.
“Back in 1985, I got a call from the late Hal Dittrich,” he explained. “It was an unexpected call, because I didn’t solicit him. He solicited me because he had heard of our work, and asked if I could come into his office to discuss the possibility of doing a jingle for the company. When I got there, he sat me down and described to me what he was looking for, and he gave me three bullet points. This jingle should be very, very repetitive – get ‘Dittrich Furs’ in there as much as you can within 30 seconds. I was able to get it in there I think seven times or so.
“The other issues were, we needed to talk about the evolution of the company, that it started in 1893 and this was now the fifth generation for Dittrich Furs. And then he asked if I could put in there something about being dependable. So, with those three points, I went home and thought, ‘This thing is writing itself because of all the things he’s given me.’”
With no knowledge of the imagery that would accompany his music, Yessian plunked out a simple melody set to a slow waltz tempo. When he presented it to Dittrich, the businessman was thrilled.
“He said, ‘Oh my gosh, you hit all the points! It’s terrific!’” said Yessian. “It doesn’t usually work out that way, because you’re doing a back-and-forth with a client. If it’s not right the first time, you’re going back to the drawing board, doing whatever you have to do to sell the account. He was very much approving; he made it very easy for me.”
With the music in place, singers Larry Santos and Marj Haber were brought in to record the vocals. The ad premiered to overwhelmingly positive reaction, and remained in rotation for decades, particularly during the winter holiday season.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Jingle jangle
Yessian, a native Detroiter and alum of Cody High School and Wayne State University, is founder of Yessian Music, a production company in Farmington Hills. His 52-year career has launched countless other recognizable jingles including “Think Ford First,” “Little Caesars Pizza” and theme songs for the Red Wings and Detroit Tigers.
His work is also national and international: clients along the way have included numerous Fortune 500 companies including Coca-Cola, Disney and United Airlines (it was Yessian’s idea to use George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in what became a highly successful campaign for the airline).
“I’ve done a lot of work through the years,” he said. “I’ve done Big Boy, I’ve done American Airlines, I’ve done Spirit Airlines. We did one for the World Trade Center. We did the One World Observatory in New York City, where you can go up and listen to our music there.
“That having been said, (Dittrich) was very special, because nothing garnered that kind of attention. Many of those spots I did were national, but they did not gather the kind of attention that this thing gathered.”
The legacy
“This (Dittrich jingle) is a phenomenon,” Yessian said. “People have it on their phones, as their ringtone. I went to one event with my producer, Ohad Wilner, and he said, ‘Dan, let’s go down to an Adcraft event. There’s going to be a couple hundred people there, and they want to talk about commercials.’ I said, ‘Okay, that makes sense,’ so we went. They talked about the Dittrich spot, and they brought up the idea of having people remember if they could sing it. So, here we have a couple hundred people singing the Dittrich jingle. It was kind of, well, strange, because that never happened to me, where you’ve got a whole audience singing something that you’ve done.
“After it was done, they said, ‘The person who (wrote) this is sitting in the audience,’ and Ohad is hitting me on the shoulder and saying, ‘Stand up, stand up!’ I didn’t want to stand up, because I thought, ‘This is almost embarrassing,’ you know? But he had me stand up, and I got applause – for a commercial!”
Yessian continued working with the furrier and, over the years, recorded about 60 versions of the famous song.
“He probably only used one or two,” Yessian noted with a chuckle. “But that 30- and that 60-second spot were enough that it played into the consciousness of the public in our Detroit culture and made it very special for me.”
2017 Comedy Central sitcom “Detroiters,” about a pair of best friends toiling at a low-budget ad agency in the city, parodied the Dittrich commercial. In early 2017, co-creator (and Detroit native) Sam Richardson appeared on Conan O’Brien’s TBS talk show and discussed his love for the original spot, even singing the jingle himself. (Richardson also noticeably bristles in his seat when O’Brien sidekick Andy Richter takes a jab at Detroit.)
The Dittrch Furs YouTube channel’s 2015 upload of the classic ad has garnered more than 136,000 views, and Yessian’s own YouTube channel features a 16-minute video of Yessian and Wilner discussing the jingle.
Meanwhile, Yessian, 81, continues writing and producing music along with his sons, who now run his company.
“We’ve had Bob Seger in our studio,” Yessian said. “We’ve worked with him, recording some of his material. I used to work with Jose Feliciano and the Four Tops and the Righteous Brothers. It’s been a real ride. I’m not tired yet. I’m still willing to take chances.”
Dittrich Furs is currently holding a retirement liquidation sale through April 30, offering its entire inventory – valued at over $9 million – at 70% off.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dittrich Furs jingle composer reflects on its lasting popularity
Reporting by Duante Beddingfield, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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