We’ll be very honest with you here, dear readers: When we woke up this morning, we were not expecting to spend several hours of our day tracking down the identities of the guys who sang one of the most irresistibly annoying ear-worm jingles of our generation, a song that’s been used as audio poison by such intentional pop culture irritants as The Office’s Michael Scott and Austin Powers’ Fat Bastard. But then we came across the above behind-the-scenes footage of a recording session for Chili’s ubiquitous “Baby Back Ribs” jingle, and it was just so damn energetic and interesting that, well, here we go. First off: The video—which has been making the rounds on the internet today, but which was actually posted online late last year by singer Alvin Chea—is not taken from the recording of the original version of “Chili’s (Welcome To Chili’s)” that first debuted on TV in 1998. That version was written by ad guy Guy Bommarito, who’s gone on the record stating that he hates jingles, hates the song, and doesn’t much care for Chili’s itself. The vocals and music on that version were apparently done by Bommarito’s pal Tom Faulkner, while the deep-bass “Barbecue sauce”—the linchpin of the entire musical odyssey—was (we think) provided by Willie “Wolf Johnson” McCoy. McCoy died in 2013, and was apparently so enamored of his work on the commercial that his funeral—broadcast as part of TLC’s uber-tasteful Best Funeral Ever—featured pall-bearers singing the song, a barbecue sauce fountain, and a… [Read full story]
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