Steve Karmen

Steve Karmen, born January 31, 1937, in the Bronx, New York, is an American composer, performer, and advertising jingle writer who appeared on Broadway in 1961 in The Advocate. The son of a civil engineer mother and a father named Hyman, a Russian immigrant who spent more than four decades working as a civil servant, Karmen grew up in a conservative household. His older brother Arthur was a physician who contributed to the discovery of alanine transaminase. Karmen attended Bronx High School of Science, where he met Bobby Darin, and the two later performed together as a duo in Manhattan clubs. After Darin secured a record deal, the friendship dissolved, though the two eventually reconciled nearly two decades later. Karmen documented their relationship in his 2003 memoir Me and Bobby D., published by Hal Leonard Corporation.

Before establishing himself in advertising, Karmen pursued several other paths. He completed one semester of medical school at New York University before abandoning plans to become a brain surgeon. In 1957, he released the single "She Had Wild Eyes and Tender Lips," which he promoted on American Bandstand, and that same year appeared on Talent Scouts as a Calypso singer. Although he did not win the competition, host Arthur Godfrey was sufficiently impressed that Karmen performed on Arthur Godfrey Time twice daily for three weeks. On the advice of Art Davis, he traveled to Trinidad to pursue Calypso performance further and spent two months working on a cruise ship. He subsequently trained as an actor at American Theatre Wing and is also a self-taught guitarist and saxophonist.

Karmen relocated to Los Angeles to pursue acting but returned to New York within ten months. He then began composing and editing music for low-budget films, a process that allowed him to develop his compositional skills on the job. He appeared on screen in one film, Jukebox Racket, and orchestrated a total of 30 film scores, among them Teenage Mother and Smorgasbroad. His credited film scores include The Candidate (1964), Teenage Mother (1967), What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? (1970), and Paternity (1981).

His entry into advertising came in 1966 when he was hired to write music for a Girl Scouts commercial while still working on films. His breakthrough in the jingles industry arrived with the Salem cigarette campaign built around the line "You can take Salem out of the country, but..." In 1970, he wrote Hershey's first-ever advertisement after giving Hershey's bars to a group of children, resulting in the jingle "There's nothing like the face of a kid eating a chocolate bar." By 1976, he had established his own company, Steven Karmen Productions, Inc. Over the course of his career, Karmen wrote more than 2,000 advertising jingles and received 16 advertising Clio Awards, including a 1971 Clio for the "You've Said It All" Budweiser commercial and the Tijuana Smalls campaign, and a 1979 Clio in the Best Music with Lyrics category for "I Love New York." His other well-known jingles include "Call Nationwide, 'Cause Nationwide Is On Your Side" (1969), "Here Comes the King" for Budweiser (1970), and "The Land of Pleasant Living" for National Bohemian (1971). He has been informally referred to as the King of Jingles.

A distinctive aspect of Karmen's business practice was his insistence on retaining copyright over his work, which entitled him to residuals and gave him the right to sell his compositions to the record industry. This arrangement was highly unusual in the industry, where writers were typically paid a single flat fee for unlimited use. He told The New York Times in 1989 that roughly 90 percent of agencies declined to hire him on those terms, though repeat clients included Hershey, Budweiser, and Michelob. By 1978, he was considered the highest-paid jingle writer in advertising, charging a minimum initial creative fee of $10,000. His reputation rested on the quality of his work, a reliable turnaround time, and a commitment not to write for his clients' competitors. In the 1990s, district courts ruled in both 1992 and 1993 that Karmen was not entitled to higher royalty rates, and the Appeals Court for the Second Circuit affirmed those decisions in 1994.

Karmen's wife Mary, whom he married around 1961, died of colon cancer in 1974. The couple had three daughters. Following her death, Karmen took a professional hiatus to be with his children before returning to work and writing his own album, We've All Been There, intended for people coping with loss. In 1976, he was living in Bedford Hills, New York, approximately 50 miles from New York City. By 2007, he had relocated to Westchester, New York. He identified as a Liberal Democrat in 1996 and generally avoided writing music for political campaigns, stating that he turned down requests from Richard Nixon in 1972 and Gerald Ford in 1976. In 1995, however, he wrote two songs at no charge for a hospital association opposing proposed Medicaid and Medicare cuts, explaining that the healthcare issue outweighed his usual reluctance to engage with political messaging.

Karmen has also written extensively about the jingle industry. His 1980 book The Jingle Man was published by Hal Leonard Corporation, followed by Through the Jingle Jungle in 1989, published by Billboard Books as a guide covering the process from pitching to securing composers' rights and residuals. He later published Who Killed the Jingle? How a Unique American Art Form Disappeared in 2005, also through Hal Leonard Corporation. In 2012, Binghamton University awarded him an honorary degree.