Jake Holmes

Jake Holmes is an American singer-songwriter and commercial jingle writer. In 1964, he was part of a short-lived comedy trio with Jim Connell and Joan Rivers, called "Jim, Jake & Joan", who played coffeehouses in Greenwich Village. After that, Holmes' first music was with his wife Katherine in the folk pop parody duo, Allen & Grier. After a stint in the military, he went back to music, putting lyrics to Bob Gaudio's music on [link-nm1797921]'s experimental album, 1969's Genuine Imitation Life Gazette, and the pair went on to compose Frank Sinatra's 1970 album, Watertown. In 1985, Nina Simone recorded a cover version of "For a While", from the Watertown album, for her Nina's Back album. Solo, Holmes had recorded two albums in the 1960's. One of them, 1967's The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes, contained his song "Dazed and Confused". British band The Yardbirds were playing in New York City in early 1968 and one of their members had seen Holmes at a club. The next day, he bought Holmes' album and played it for band guitarist Jimmy Page. The band played a reworked version for their live performances and when the Yardbirds evolved into Led Zeppelin, no songwriting credit was given to Holmes, who wrote Page but received no reply. In June 2010, Holmes filed a lawsuit against Page for copyright infringement in US federal court, claiming Page knowingly copied his work, and the case was settled out of court. In the 1970's, Holmes went on to be a commercial jingle writer, composing the music to the US Army recruitment jingle, "Be All That You Can Be". He also wrote the Dr. Pepper "I'm A Pepper" jingle and voiced many commercials for Philip Morris, General Motors, Union Carbide, Gillette, DeBeers, Winn-Dixie, and British Petroleum. He set up a publishing company for jingles and music, called Three Tree Productions, which was bought by Frank Gari's Gari Media Group, which continues to publish commercial music.