<Robert Klein> “Now you can buy…every record ever recorded! Every record that was ever made!! Records beginning with the letter “C”;
records by women; records by every artist you ever knew, alive or dead! We drive a truck to your house - and deliver EVERY RECORD EVER RECORDED…Lithuanian language records…every record ever recorded!. Act now…and get a free ice crusher!!” </Robert Klein>
All I remember is this exchange (I think it was for Motown songs):
“Turn that music down!”
“But Dad, its Smokey!!!”
Also I have a vague recollection of “Chill to the Chant” when the Gregorian Monk chanting fad passed through.
Judas, yes! “So much of today’s popular music was actually written by the great masters!” That commercial was always on during Shock Theater, channel 18, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In the late 70s, some mail-order record club had an ad campaign featuring “your secret number.” The mail-order form had this line of eight bubbles, and if you filled in the bubbles with the eight-digit code on your order form, you could get an extra Lp FREE OF CHARGE!! The TV ads always had a bunch of talking heads scribbling the row of eight bubble somewhere and saying “My number? Shhhh! It’s a secret!”
Then there was ‘the All-Time Greatest Recordings of Jim Nabors.’ Ehhh…the less said about that, the better.
“It’s good to touch
the green, green grass of home…”
Sorry…somewhere in my head where useful information should be stored, I have about every one of these commercials from 1975-1988 stuffed. And the names just release the snippets of the songs…
“Hey, mind if I borrow your Hey Soul Classics?” “Noooooo, my brother. You’ve got to get your OWN!”
I believe the end of that commercial actually appeared in the movie Jackie Brown. The compilation gets a pass for having the Delfonics’ “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind (This Time)”, which also appeared in Jackie Brown.
One that sticks in my mind for more than a decade, due to a funny coincidental juxtaposition:
Ad for a collection of Christian music, available only through the TV offer, yadda yadda…
The phone number…1-800-666-Whatever the rest was.
After about 2 weeks, the same ad was running with a different phone number. 
I remember the entire audience in Mars Attacks howling at the revelation that Slim Whitman is lethal. I can only attribute it to the afternoon commercials in the collective memory. Surprisingly though I read that Whitman sold MILLIONS of albums through those commercials.
That’s the most hiliarious thing I’ve read in a long time!
“Wouldn’t you like to raise the level of your home? Bring the family closer together around the Hi-Fi? Listening to such immoral classics as Bidet’s The Fountain? Or the Duke’s Duet from Il Schizophreno?”
“Titles like ‘In A Persian Melon’, ‘My Spanish Suitcase’, ‘The Happy Plunderer’, ‘Waltz For Three People’, and, ‘The Hawaiian Hallucination Song’. A cultural landslide to fill your home entertainment center!”
– from “40 Unclaimed Melodies”, album offered by Don G. O’Vanni, via the Firesign Theater.
Actually, for gag commercials, it’s hard to top Yablo, Master of the Ocarina, a phony album from a Sprite commercial.
HORRORS! Please tell me it’s Dennis De Young and not Tommy Shaw.
I remember Richard Carpenter shilling for a Carpenters collection after Karen’s death, which featured old clips of her interspersed with more recent clips of the maestro by himself. Creepy. Which the** Young Fresh Fellows** noted in their song Hank, Karen and Elvis:
She starved herself to death
With no brother to stop her
But he helps remember her now
In a Special TV Offer…
Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda…It was an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini…Oh yes they call him The Streak (wheeeeeeeeeeee)…Silver Bells hangin’ on a string, she told me it was my ding-a-ling-a-ling.
I think it’s actually the REO Speedwagon guy that pepperlandgirl is thinking of (of course, there could be two).
I can’t remember which collection this song is from, but it is burned in my memory -
Daddy sang bass
Mama sang tenor
Me’n my little brother we joined right in there!
Oh God…that’s the one I came in to mention. I must’ve seen that commercial once/week for 2 years in the 1970s. I never listen to C/W music, but I can hear a snippet of “I’m the Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.” – which immediately segues into “Funny Face”. The two will forever be paired in some non-erase portion of my brain.
Anyone remember the name of the pitchman?
Andre Baruch (pronounced “Ba-roosh”)!
For some reason, I remember that a particular state wasn’t allowed to participate in many of these “special offers”, and the announcer saying in a sing-song voice,
“Sorry, Tennessee!”
Every school day breakfast for me was spent listening to that very music because my parents just had to have WMZQ playing in the kitchen. During the 70’s and 80’s, no less.
I know exactly what CD you’re talking about, and in fact I came in here to mention it. If I remember correctly, a couple other songs on it were “Shake What Yo Mama Gave Ya” and “Too Much Booty”. I submit that this was perhaps the greatest single compilation of the booty genre.
I think that was for some investment/savings plan - the full quote is “Available in 49 states - Sorry Tennessee!” This ad ran at the same time with the same frequency as a lot of these music ads, so it fits in pretty well here.