Music to Sell Weyerhaeuser Hardwood Paneling By

In 1964, Weyerhaeuser Company began an advertising campaign to sell wood paneling to homeowners. The concept was developed by the Cole & Weber advertising agency of Seattle. The ads, which ran in national magazines, conveyed the idea that paneling was a luxury the middle class could afford by using tag lines like "Give yourself a Weyerhaeuser wood wall that looks like a million for just $39." To make the photos, the agency had stumps hauled out of the Oregon woods, cut it in half, and then nailed pieces of paneling to them. The background photo is actually of an East Coast hardwood forest.

As part of the campaign, the agency provided paneling dealers with an instrumental album called Music to Sell Weyerhaeuser Hardwood Paneling By. This promotional album included "eight musical selections to give you a pleasant reminder of the ways Weyerhaeuser is going all out to help you make more dough, re mi." It’s not known whether dealers were expected to play the album in stores or on their hi-fi stereos at home.

The album had a little something for most every middle-class musical taste of the era, from a polka to waltz, from easy-listening jazz to a Bossa Nova tune that would have fit in on the João Gilberto–Stan Getz record released in 1964. "The Hard Maple Rock," with its saxophone-driven melody and nary an electric guitar in earshot, sounds like a leftover tune from a 1950s Sock Hop. It was released the same year that The Beatles exploded on the pop music scene. The album from the Weyerhaeuser Company archival collection in the FHS Archives.