Voice of Jolly Green Giant passes away

Len Dresslar has passed away. He was mostly known as the voice of the Jolly Green Giant, although he did other voice over work and was also the voice of Snap. He also did jingle work for Marlboro cigarettes, Amoco oil and Dinty Moore canned beef stew.

Seattletimes

In 1959, Chicago singer Len Dresslar stepped into a Windy City recording studio and, in his deep baritone, sang three words for a commercial jingle that continue to echo: “Ho, ho, ho.”

Mr. Dresslar, who died of cancer Oct. 16 in a Palm Springs, Calif., hospice at 80, was the familiar voice of the Jolly Green Giant.

The leaf-clad Jolly Green Giant has been acknowledged by Advertising Age magazine as one of the three most recognizable American advertising icons of the 20th century — after Tony the Tiger and the Marlboro Man.

Mr. Dresslar’s melodic rendition of his jingle line comes in the middle of “From the valley of the jolly — ho, ho, ho — Green Giant.”

“I’m the king of the minimalists,” Mr. Dresslar told the Detroit Free Press in 1999. “I do ‘Ho, ho, ho’ — that’s it.”

He periodically re-recorded the “ho, ho, ho” for Green Giant commercials, most recently in 1999 when the Jolly Green Giant was reintroduced in regional TV spots.

For Mr. Dresslar, “It was a little choice plum that just dropped in my lap.”