Hot off the back of finding the dude who wrote the Bunnings jingle, Gruen has now tracked down the guitar legend behind the Cottee’s cordial tune. Once again, he’s a wholesome angel who must be protected at all costs.
Peter Martin, who may as well be considered a national treasure, said he wrote “My Dad” (that’s what the song’s actually called, apparently) while in he presence of another national icon.
“The melody came quickly as I crossed the Harbour Bridge,” he said.
It seems good things don’t always take time. Have a listen to Martin play a bit of the “early workings” of the jingle:
This man is single-handedly rehabilitating the acoustic guitar from being a “Wonderwall” machine to an instrument in which one can hone – and in this case perfect – true artistry.
Gruen host Wil Anderson called him an “underappreciated Aussie music icon” and he’s bang on. It’s a tragedy that there’s no ARIA for TV commercial jingles, because Martin would have a stack of them by now.
This jingle has been around in some form or another since the 1990s. It’s something as old, if not older, than many of us.
How’s this for a dose of nostalgia?
Side note: it turns out the lyrics are not, in fact, “my mum picks her bum” as I was led to believe in primary school.
But that said, perhaps the potential for the lyrics to continually be adapted over all these years (and for primary school children such as myself to be mislead by false claims as to their true meaning) is a testament to the jingle’s versatility.
It’s not every day you come up with a tune which can be sung so easily, by so many, in so many different cordial commercials.
You can catch the full episode of Gruen here, but don’t forget to pour yourself a cool cup of cordial beforehand.
