Sunday! Sunday!! Sunday!!!

 Where Did Al Roker Get That Crazy Catch-Phrase?

If you watch the “Today” show, you know that starting mid-week Al Roker will add an echo-chamber catch-phrase to his forecast: “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”

If you’ve been perplexed by this odd expression, it’s probably because you didn’t grow up listening to Chicago’s powerhouse rock ‘n’ roll radio station WLS back in the sixties.

I did and I remember the “Sunday-Sunday-Sunday” commercial well – or pretty well. I got a few words wrong in my recollection.

The phrase came from a much-repeated radio commercial for a local drag racing track.

In my memory it went something like this:

“Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! At beautiful Oswego Dragstrip just west of the Oswego bridge on Route 34…There’ll be flame throwers and red-hot blowers. It’s ground pounding, heart stopping quarter mile mayhem as Big Daddy Don Garlits and Don ‘The Snake’ Prudhomme shake hands with the devil!

“BE THERE!”

The now-legendary “Sunday-Sunday-Sunday” phrase has its genesis in 1967.  Chicago deejay Jan Gabriel, who made the phrase legendary, told the Chicago Tribune in 2001 that “the phrase was born because former U.S. 30 Drag Strip owner Ben Criss really wanted radio listeners to understand that races were held on Sunday.”

He needed a commercial that stressed the dragstrip was open on Sunday. Criss hired Steve Cronen of Starbeat Recording Studios in Deerfield, Illinois to create and record the spots. It was Cronen who settled on Gabriel as the voice of the dragway, because of his deep, resonant voice and his way with words.

The reverberating “Sunday Sunday Sunday” began because of a microphone error, according to Gabriel’s obituary in the Arlington Heights Daily Herald of Jan. 18, 2010. “In an ad for a drag race at a Gary, Indiana strip, Jan’s mike had an echo effect on it. Producers liked it and the result was a call that would become his legacy.”

Gabriel recognized that.

"I should have copyrighted my delivery," Gabriel told the Tribune. "There are three signature lines in broadcasting. A Chicagoan named Al Dvorin said 'Elvis has left the building.' Michael Buffer did ‘Let's get ready to rumble!’ And I had 'Sunday! Sunday!! Sunday!!!'”

As fate would have it, Gabriel died on a Sunday - January 10, 2010. And, as per his wishes, his funeral was held the following Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

 

Want to hear one of Gabriel’s legendary “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!” commercials.

You Tube has preserved one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_YmA0cd3kg

 (You can copy and paste the link into your browser.)

If you can’t get the link to work, it goes like this:

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

It’s ground pounding, heart stopping quarter mile mayhem…

As “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and Don “The Snake” Prudhomme and three-time Top Fuel Eliminator World Champion Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney on the quarter mile of death in their 7,000 horse power nitro burning suicide machines.

As they shake hands with the devil while they scream through the burning gates of hell.

We’ll sell you the whole seat but you’ll only need the edge.

Be There!