Serene Dominic presents….Jimmy Jay & The First Responders!

According to the legend, “Jimmy Jay was a Chicago fireman whose band consisted of fellow firefighters he met from other engine houses all responding to a 20-story blaze. After the fire, the men who worked so well together decided to form a firehouse band and raise temperatures with their hot brand of bubblegum music.” Of course, none of this is true, Jimmy Jay and the First Responders is actually the brainchild of jingle writer Morty Guildenstein looking to break into the world of pop music in 1968.

“I played everything on the record and made the whole firefighter thing up, basically,” he says. “I was hoping to tie it in with a story song I had written about The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 but DJs flipped the record and started playing the bubblegum b-side, “Your Heart Ain’t Sayin’ (What Your Mouth is Thinkin’)” instead. When it took off in Chicago and parts of St. Louis, we had to find a Jimmy Jay and the First Responders to go out on the road and promote it. So me and my partner Artie Shapiro went to the nearest bowling alley and looked for five clean cut kids who might want to leave home for awhile.”

That started a trek that lasted ten years, long after the Jimmy Jay fire died down and this song was safely ensconced on hundreds of Oldies But Goodies collections. At one point Peter Brandel, the blonde young man who was Jimmy Jay on the road for all these years ( and who still plays the occasional casino and amusement park gigs), sued for the rights to his own stage name. “You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Morty barked back. “But, hey, I gave the kid $279 right outta my pocket, I was gonna use it to buy a portable TV. It was more money than Peter had seen in a while.”