My boss, Jerry Liliedahl, had a dilemma. He was too busy writing the new Pizza Hut music to take another job, and this job was too good to turn down, so I got the chance to produce my first music track.

Jerry had worked with Leo Burnett Group Creative Director Jack Smith to create the "Mother Country" campaign for United Airlines in the early '70s and Jack had a new idea. Jack had played the drums in the Mizzou Tiger band, wrote a script for United around a businessman cutting a swath through an airport terminal and wanted a cookin' drum track to accompany "The Boss."

Jack gave me a tape of him reading the script while pounding out a beat on his desk. (I wish I still had that tape.) Jack's idea was to get some of his favorite drummers -- like Buddy Rich, Ed Shaughnessy, and Ginger Baker -- together in a studio to play the track. Logistics and money aside, I was worried about getting anything done with a roomful of egos clashing, so Jerry and I decided to get Chicago's first-call drummer -- Tom Radtke -- to play all the parts.

Tom rented a concert bass drum, tenor field drums, marching snares, concert snares, tympani, bongos and boxes full of cymbals and percussion. We recorded the track at Chicago's Paragon studio -- the "old" one on the third floor of 9 E. Huron (where Styx and the Ohio Players recorded) with Bill Bradley engineering. We built a tempo track for the editor, then added some finishing touches -- like the seatbelt buckle -- a few weeks later.

Five brass players -- including Bobby Lewis and Bill Dinwiddie -- overdubbed their parts, and five of Chicago's best studio singers -- Bonnie Herman, Barbara Noel, Bob Bowker, Don Shelton and Jerry, sang the tag, which is from a great song that Jerry wrote that United never used. Harold Gould -- a veteran character actor (Rhoda's father, among others) -- is the announcer.

Thanks to Pizza Hut, Jerry, Jack, Tom, Bill, five brass players and five singers, I had my baptism of fire.