Endless Thread - Snacktime: Pizza Is My Life

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

In 2008, college student Kevin Toomey was cruising around Columbus, Ohio, listening to AM radio, when a jingle for Rotolo's Pizza came on. It was love at first listen, and it set him on a 13-year quest to find out who wrote and performed the jingle. In this Snacktime episode, Amory tells Ben about Kevin and his pizza jingle quest, which -- finally -- has a delicious conclusion.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR Boston. Benjo! What's your name again? It's been too long, Emo. It's been too long. I've got a snack for you. Okay. Well, actually, this is a little larger than a snack. Isn't it like a personal pan pizza sized snack? Like a 10-inch? That is a Exactly right. This is a 10-inch pie. That's exactly what this is. And this has to do with three of my favorite things, Ben. Okay.

Mysteries. Okay. Pizza. Yep. And jingles. Oh, no. Ben, was there a radio or a TV jingle for some local business from your childhood that stayed with you? Oh, my God. And can you perform it? Go. Sail away on the Block Island Ferry Take a trip and you'll get good times Leave today Block Island awaits you

Just leave your troubles behind It was like the Caribbean-themed Block Island Rhode Island Fairy Yeah, see? Jingles are the best. I've always loved jingles. I love singing them.

I love making them up about anything. They're like exactly how I want to be marketed to. Mm. Perfect length. Perfect ridiculousness. Yeah.

So I really found a kindred spirit in Kevin. Discount drug bar says you to run around. You'll find everything you need. Yeah. And then during Christmases, we have all your holiday needs. Oh, my God. This is Kevin Toomey, Ben. He's a TV producer and a filmmaker.

he lives out in L.A., but we could quiz each other on the jingles of our youth because he, like me, is from Believe Land, the Cleave, the 216, the land of dreams. The cleave? There's something about that that I don't like. It just sounds dirty to me, but it's fine. Well, back in 2008, Kevin's in college at Ohio State University in Columbus, the Ohio State University in Columbus. Is that Buckeyes? Is that what that is?

Go Buckeyes. That's right. And he's driving to work one day. And I heard a song come on the radio. And I say a song because it is a song. Of course, you know, it's a commercial, obviously, but it's also a song. Okay, Ben, I'm going to let you be the judge of that. You ready? Yeah. Okay, here we go. It's good. That's good. Like, basically, I want to air drum to that song. I want to be the air drummer. You know what I mean? And I also want to see.

spin the stick in my fingers, spin the drum stick. You know what I mean? Well, if he's doing the snare hits with his left hand, I want to spin the stick in my right hand before the symbol crash, that's how I feel about it. It's definitely a song. It's a sick jam. I'm so glad. Yeah, I'm so glad it moved you. Kevin was moved as well on a couple of levels. This guy sounds cool. That was my initial, just sort of, in my brain, initially, I just thought, this guy is cool. There's a story here. He is So he is somebody. And being a local in Columbus, I thought, maybe this is a chance that I can meet a legend. Okay, I don't know that I would call this guy's voice legendary.

But Kevin and I did agree on this particular point. One of the reasons was because of the lyrics. The lyrics are so personal. The lyrics are, pizza is my life. That's the lyrics in the song. I think if the lyrics might have been pizza is our life or pizza is life, it might be different. You know, I might not be here talking. You know, it might be totally, I might have just continued about my day and just continue on being, you know, quote unquote, a normal person, I guess.

But this sort of set me on a different path. And Kevin, he gets obsessed. He's hungry for more information about this jingle and specifically about the guy who sang it. I had a million questions, like, what's it like to have a voice like that and a talent like that and use it to make a 30-second song about pizza? And honestly, selfishly, in my mind, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I just found him and just begged him to let me just follow him around, you know, like, just where does he sleep? What is he? I call it, like, making a sandwich.

It's like sometimes the funnest thing to do and the most interesting thing that you can watch a person do is just make a sandwich, you know, just watch them go about their day. So he had the sandwich effect on me, I think. Ben, I feel like sandwiches have the sandwich effect. Yeah, the sandwich effect. I'm using that. I'm definitely using that. Sandwiches are your life. Yep. Cut it, print it, send it into the world. The sandwich effect. Yeah. So Kevin is like dreaming up who this Ritolo's singer is. So can I just say that the person that I imagined when I first heard this song when you just played it for me was like the wedding singer from I think the movie Wedding Crashers, which I'm pretty sure doesn't like hold up. in 2021.

But if you've ever seen that movie, do you know the guy he's like, and I need you more tonight? That guy who's like, he's like kind of like a cover band guy, but he's like really ridiculous and wild and he's like throwing F bombs into his songs at the wedding.

Do you know what I'm talking about? You ever seen that? I've seen it. It's been a while, but now I have to go back and rewatch it. It's very similar, similar like singer vibes. You know what I mean? Just like,

ridiculous exuberance. Okay, well, here's the image that Kevin had in his mind for this singer. Maybe long, flowing hair. He would be someone that wouldn't be afraid to wear bold clothing choices, perhaps even speedos. Leopard Prince would be fair game. And he's singing the jingle to all of his friends. Go to Ritolo's. They use the best ingredients. So he's probably also becoming a regular at Ritolo's at this time, right?

I still haven't eaten their pizza to this day. Yeah, no, no. You've never had Ritolos. You know, I've never had Ritolo's pizza. Pizza, not his life, Ben. I'm more of a buffalo wing man, actually. So you'd think at this point that Kevin would just walk into Ritolos and he'd ask them about the jingle.

But he doesn't. He graduates from OSU. He moves to L.A. to start his film and TV career. Mm-hmm. But he just can't let it go. It just kept rearing its little head to say, like, this person's still out there, and we still don't know an answer. And I needed it as my duty to fully see this thing through wherever it went.

So he asks around. He Googles around. And then he finally. picks up the phone. It was harder than I thought to get in touch with the owners of this pizza shop. Okay, do you know about the region by any chance? So, Ben, this is from a short film that Kevin made recently about the Ritolo's jingle mystery. Short, short film.

He is a filmmaker after all. It's very well done. Very high production value. And this is how I heard about it. He posts this video on Reddit and someone tagged endless thread in a comment, ET fans for the win, once again. Yep.

So I reached out to Kevin and I wondered if he'd gotten anywhere in his search since posting the video. And despite numerous voicemails and Facebook messages that he had sent to the owners and really to any

Ritolo that he could find, nothing. How does something that's like made for, you know, commercial use and, you know, in theory was commissioned by a business, how did they completely not even know where it came from.

But he mentions in the video at one point that he had reached one of the night managers at Ritolo's. And this manager had a tip from the owner. I think the person he was a backup singer to like Gloria. Really? If anyone knows it's the night manager. You know what I mean? Is the guy, is the guy who is like, smoking a joint behind the pizza place for his shift.

He's like, man, he's like, man, is a backup singer for Gloria Estefan. Well, he loved the jingle, too. So he had asked Dominic Ritolo. But finally, Kevin is feeling like he has a little something to work with. So, Ben, if you had this tip, what would you do? What's your move? Oh, man. I would find the, I would find a friend who is a glorified.

Gloria fan and like an older Gloria fan, I would go through all of those CD liner notes and find all of the backup singers credited. Or maybe I would like find, when did the song come out? Do we know? We don't. We don't know. At this point, at this point, we do not know. Right.

So then like I would go. We have a sense of like early aughts. Okay. So then I would like kind of look at where. look at where Gloria was recording in the early aughts, or maybe like the late 90s, and then I would like find those recording studios, and then I would start calling them.

Okay, we're getting there. We're getting there. But in terms of the Gloria lead, you and Kevin are on the same page. So I just thought, well, what I can do is go through her whole entire back catalog and just find a singer, maybe try to get examples of that singer's voice,

because that would be the fingerprint, right? And then put them at the scene of the crime. You know, put them in, put that person in Columbus somehow. If I could find the person who has a similar voice, I find the fingerprint. And then if they have some sort of tie in with Columbus, then that's like, that would be the bombshell, right? That would be the smoking gun. But alas, there was no smoking gun in the Gloria Estefan Deep Dive.

He just couldn't find a voice that sounded enough like the Ritola. guy. So he's like, okay, enough with the phone calls. I have to get an investigator on this. And by investigator, I mean, a friend of his who still lived in Columbus, he asks her to just go into Ritolo's and ask them point blank about the jingle. So she does. And who happens to be there, but the person you'd think is certain to have the answer. And so she walked in there and the Mofalda, the matriarch of the Ritolo's Enterprises, Inc, was in there. And she asked

Mafalda about the jingle and Mafalda had no idea what she was talking about. Okay, now Ben, here's the funny thing about the pizza place that claims to not know anything about their jingle.

Do you have a computer in front of you? Do you have the worldwide web? I can get it. Yeah. Okay. Go to Retolo's Pizza.com. Okay. Ritolos.com.

No. Ritolo's Pizza.com. Okay, all right. Different Ritolo's. Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay, read me the options that are at the top of the screen from left to right. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on.

Dot com. Oh, my God. I'm doing it on my phone. Give it a minute. Okay. Read me some options at the top of the screen. Okay, this is the mobile web. Okay.

Enter, should I look in the hamburger menu here? No. I'm looking for like menu. about us. Okay. That kind of stuff. We'll get there. But the hamburger menu is, I think, how I get there.

Very Italian. It's really aggressively telling. This website is aggressively asking, okay, gift card. Listen to our jingle. Listen to our jingle. Right? So on the one hand, they supposedly know nothing about the jingle. And on the other, they're proud enough of this jingle that it's at the top of their website.

Right. What up with that? So I guess the dirty secret about investigative work of any kind is that it's very unsexy. It's long and slow and you spend a lot of time chasing leads that don't go anywhere. And even when you get a tip, like, ooh, Kevin, the owner seems to think the jingle was done by an ad agency in L.A. in the early aughts. You realize, well, great, now I have to call up all the ad agencies in L.A. and see who was around 20 years ago. So Kevin makes this mini documentary of his Ritolo saga thus far.

He posted on YouTube and read it just in early February of this year. And he waits, hoping that someone is going to see it and have more information. A friend of a friend who is a very well-known composer in Los Angeles, a guy by the name of Dan Foliart. He composed the music for Home Improvement and Roseanne. He caught wind of it. And he said, you know, any, any pursuit of an unknown writer or performer is a noble pursuit in his eyes. And he threw out a name to me.

The name was Jess Harnell. Looked at his voice, he sounded exactly like the guy, exactly like the guy. He's in L.A. He's the main voice of the Animaniacs characters. You know, he's been around doing voice work forever. Oh, Animaniacs. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. And because Jess Harnell has been done. doing voice work forever and he's a known entity. He's on Cameo. Are you familiar with Cameo, Ben? Oh, yeah. I've used Cameo more than once. Oh, yeah? Okay, explain it to the good people. It's basically like the most cynical description of cameo is like if you're a washed up celebrity, you can basically go on Cameo and say, pay me relatively small amounts of money to do some sort of, make a video of myself doing something ridiculous for one of your friends. Okay, so Kevin makes a cameo request to Jess Harnell, asking him to go to YouTube,

listen to the Ritolo's jingle, and see if he remembers recording it like 20 years ago. And so then I sat by the phone. I sat by the phone because they tell you in the cameo app, they say, like, oh, you'll get a notification. Like, you know, once, like, Jess posts your cameo, you'll get a notification. So I thought at some point, this baby's going to roll in here. I'm going to have, it's going to be a yes or a no. Do you want to hear it or should I? Yes, yes.

Okay. Ben, we get a yes or a no from Jess Harnell in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of what. Whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew.

Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnership, Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, Ben, Jess Harnell, prime suspect in the Ritolo's Pizza Jingle Mystery, has sent a cameo back to Kevin. And Kevin sent it to me.

Hey, Kevin, this is Jess Harnell, man. And I got to tell you, I think you win the award for most unusual cameo I've ever been requested to do. and I've done a lot of them. Man, first of all, dude, you heard this on AM Radio in Columbus, Ohio, in 2008, and you're still thinking about it. This, you know, the object of a jingle is to get inside your head and make you remember it. This one apparently really worked for you, didn't it?

I went to YouTube and I listened to it. It is not me, although I admire the style of the guy singing it, and I've sang in that style many times. I think it's possible that it could be a friend of my name Joe Pizzu-U-L-O. If you want to Google that, I know Joe very well, but I haven't talked to him in a while, so I couldn't check it with him. But he kind of sounds like that guy.

If it's not... Oh, my God, this is like the beginning of the weirdest rabbit hole of like backup singers referring to other backup singers in L.A. Yeah, it's helpful that they all know each other, but in this case... They all go to the meetings. That's right. Well, in this case, spoiler alert, Ben, despite the fact that the first four letters of Joe Pizzulo's last name

are the same first four letters of the word pizza. Pizzulo didn't do Ritolo's? Pizza is not his life either. And there are, I should say, a lot more red herrings along Kevin's journey. We're not going to get into all of them, but here's just a little taste. And there's also a gentleman by the name of the Jingle King. Strader's Garden Center, they had a jingle, and it has a similar discord and feel. They called him the Jingle Gypsy, and he would go city to city.

When he first called me, he said, off the record, I know. who this is. Really? Not really. Or at least, not the answer to this mystery. But Kevin gets a tip from a former manager of Ritolo's who thinks that some higher up at Wendy's was in charge of marketing for Ritolos at the time the jingle came out. Because there were talks of like expanding Ritolos into more of a chain.

And this Ben is the very small role that I played in this mystery. I tracked this guy down, the Wendy's guy. Okay. He was the former president of Wendy's International, it turns out. He's now the CEO of Sabaro Pizza. Do you know Sabaro Pizza? Yeah, I mean, have I ever been in a train station slash bus station slash airport? Yeah, I know Sabro.

There you go. And so I reached out to him with my very official sounding WBUR credentials. Oh, boy. And I said, look, I know this is silly, but we. We really appreciate this jingle, and we just, we can't believe no one has information about it. So Mr. Sabarro CEO writes back very quickly, to my surprise. We get a little back and forth going about Ohio because Sabarro is based in Ohio. Of course it is.

So he writes back at one point, I'm pretty confident that an employee at one of the radio stations developed the jingle as part of a small radio buy. Oh, that makes total sense. Yeah. So I want you to remember that. Okay. So I sent this over to Kevin immediately. And he wrote back, we're getting close. And sure enough, less than a week later, I get an email from him in all caps that just says, solved. So we arranged a time to talk the next day. Kevin, here we are. A weight has been lifted. Now, in order to get to this moment of relief and glory,

Kevin had to basically start over. He goes back, step one, the ask around phase. And he presses all of his friends and his colleagues and his contacts to share that Ritolo's video that he made, that mini documentary, share it with anyone and everyone who might have connections in the Columbus radio industry. He's like someone has to know something. The Columbus Radio Industry. That's a great, that's a great term.

How big is that? That can't be very big. You are such an Ohio hater today. No, no, listen, I love, don't get me wrong. I'm down with Columbus. Columbus is not a small city, but I'm just saying the Columbus radio industry has to be pretty small. That's all I'm saying. I think you're wrong about that.

Clearly, clearly, because he wasn't getting, he wasn't finding the information fast enough. But he does get a call one day from someone who says this. It's interesting that you. said you were driving through Columbus and listening to an AM station and heard the Ritolo's jingle. Chances are, I would say, excellent that the station that you were listening to was 610 WTVN. Okay, this is a guy named Joe Bradley. He used to co-host an afternoon show on 610 WTVN. Okay.

And he confirmed that his station was the one that aired the Ritolo's jingle. Oh, snap. Yeah. Which like this is kind of a missing thread in all of this that I wasn't even thinking about. Like he didn't remember what station he heard it on. I guess that makes sense if it's like 13 years ago now. But this is key information. So you remember what we learned from Mr. Sabaro CEO,

that there's like a small radio buy on a particular station. So Kevin thinks that someone at the radio station, this 610 WTVN, was involved in either making the jingle, or hiring the people who made the jingle? So I go back to Joe and I said, Joe, you got to go, you got to dig deep for me here and contact anyone who might have been involved with that radio by. Who could that have been, you know? And then one morning, Kevin wakes up to a text message from Joe Bradley

with the names of two jingle companies that WTVN supposedly worked with in the early aughts. There's two names. One of them is more promising than the other. And the more promising one is a company by the name of BRG Music Works. It's a little company outside of Philadelphia. And so I went immediately beeline right towards that company, right? I went right for the jugular. Going right for the jugular in this case meant going right to Twitter.

Kevin tweeted at someone who works for BRG Music Works. And an hour later, he got a response. The tweet says, hey Kevin, yes, BRG did this jingle. but I didn't personally. I believe that was an outfit out of Vegas that did it for us. Can't remember the name of the producers, but I'll try and find out. Oh, my God. This is ridiculous.

I'm sorry. So close. People talk about brain drain. This is like, man, this is what you've been working on? Yes. I, JK. No, this is, I'm with you on the hunt. It's good.

It's good. So the three longest days of Kevin's life go by. And then he gets an email. from this guy at BRG MusicWorks. And that email has a name. And that name... Hello. Hello, is this Linwood Bell?

Yes. Hi, this is Kevin Toomey calling you. How are you? Hey, Kevin, it is me. I'm your Ritolo's guy. He's like, I saw your email about a jingle. I just Googled your name. I saw some search for the Ritolo's singer.

I turned to my wife and said, Hey, Linda, do you remember us doing something for Rolos Pizzeria? And she said, yep. And she said, Pizzo. is my life. He said she writes all the lyrics. I do all of the instruments. I record it, do all the instruments.

She writes the lyrics. Linwood and Linda Bell, Ben, the dynamic duo. A veritable Mr. and Mrs. Tom Waits of jingles. That's right. So they met decades ago at Caesar's Palace, like you do. Linwood was playing keys in a band six nights a week and Linda was working the front desk and the singer of the Ritolo's jingle is neither of them

it was a good friend of theirs named Tony Davich who sang hundreds of their jingles Of course his name was Tony Also they should have met at Little Caesars Not Cesar's Palace but it's fine And just for a little voice comparison Here is another jingle that Tony sang for them This one was for the Rattlesnake Ranch Cafe in New Jersey

Okay, and just for a little fresher. Hearing those two back to back, there's no question they have found the guy. So there's just one thing left to do. You are the singer of this jingle, right? Yeah, I am. I guess, yeah, it sounded like me. I'm guilty. Do you remember doing it at all?

No, no. I don't even know how long ago it was. And I do so many jingles. I forget most of them right after I even leave. Don't even remember you doing that one. So it turns out, Ben, that it was from 2006. That's when the jingle was recorded. So it's 15 years old this year.

Tony had never even heard the finished jingle before Kevin sent it to him. He's just been living his life, recording more jingles, and he performs with a few bands still out in Vegas. I told him, I said, listen, man, you're awesome. I'm your biggest fan. You're a legend.

Do your grandkids and your kids know that you're a legend? Because you are to me. Plus, Ben, if you look up a picture of Tony Davich, I think Kevin may have hit the nail on the head in terms of what he was envisioning for this singer to look like. That's all I'm going to say. But someday Kevin will get to see for himself because Tony told him that if he's ever in Vegas,

he's got to hit him up. So Kevin didn't mention that he wanted to like watch him make a sandwich. But, um... I mean, if he sings while he makes a sandwich, I'm definitely in, I mean, I'm all in. Yeah, they can ease into that. But in the meantime, Linwood, Bell, the composer, sent Kevin the jackpot. Do you want to take a guess what he sent him?

Outtakes. Oh, that would be good too. Outtakes are like solo vocals. The stems. He sent him the complete stems, which I guess it's like an industry term, but that's every, every instrument, every track of the recording now is in Kevin's hands. So he doesn't know what he's going to do with stems yet or or he's not ready to reveal it. But he promised to keep me posted. Of course. You can count on that. And we'll have a slice of Ritolo's together someday, somehow. I hope so. I don't think it'll hold up going from, you know, Columbus to Vegas. I'd like to bring some over for those guys. Oh, man. We'll find a way. We'll find a way at some point. We'll just get some other pizza, because at this point, you know, hey. We'll tell him it's Ritolos. Nobody needs to know.

Nobody needs to know. Amen to that. So Ben, what do you think? Wow. I mean, I'd say great job on your part and on Kevin's part. Oh, I did so nothing compared to what he compared to the years. Right. You know, you were along for the ride. That's good.

And I think it's, it's a reminder that there's a whole massive army of, talented musicians out there that don't get credit. That's right. For making straight hits. That's right. I'm like a credit investigator. On your AM dial. Straight hits on your AM dial.

And we should say this episode is coming out on the same day that Kevin has released part two of his Ritolo's jingle documentary on YouTube. So there's a link to that as well as Kevin's OG Ritolo's video on our website, WBUR. slash Endless Yes, they really are. They are incredible.

They're hilarious. They're super well done. Please go check them out. You're doing God's work, Kevin. We appreciate you. And we'll be back in two weeks. We'll see you then. Pizza is my life.

That's pretty good. Right? Is that how it goes? Yeah. Something like that. Pretty close. All right. Cool.