Smile of the Day Sunday, January 24, 2021

Sunday Jan 24, 2021’s Smile of the Day: The Eskimo (now Edy’s) Pie

On this Day:

In 1922,  Eskimo Pie was patented by Christian K Nelson of Iowa (who was not an Eskimo).

An Edy’s Pie (formerly Eskimo Pie) is an American brand of chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream bar wrapped in foil. The Edy’s Pie was the first such dessert sold in the United States. It is marketed by Dreyer’s, a division of Froneri. The dessert received its current name in 2020 when Dreyer’s chose to drop the Eskimo Pie name, saying that Eskimo is a derogatory term.

Danish immigrant Christian Kent Nelson, a schoolteacher and candy store owner, claimed to have received the inspiration for the Eskimo Pie in 1920 in Onawa, Iowa, when a boy in his store was unable to decide whether to spend his money on ice cream or a chocolate bar. After experimenting with different ways to adhere melted chocolate to bricks of ice cream, Nelson began selling his invention, under the name I-Scream Bars. In 1921, he filed for a patent, and secured an agreement with local chocolate producer Russell C. Stover to mass-produce them under the new trademarked name “Eskimo Pie” (a name suggested by Mrs. Stover), and to create the Eskimo Pie Corporation. After U.S. Patent 1,404,539 was issued on January 24, 1922, Nelson franchised the product, allowing ice cream manufacturers to produce them under that name. The patent, which applied to any type of frozen confection encased in candy, was invalidated in 1928.

Stover sold his share of the business. He then formed the well-known chocolate manufacturer Russell Stover Candies. Nelson became independently wealthy off the royalties from the sale of Eskimo Pies. In 1922 he was selling one million pies a day.

Nelson then sold his share of the business to the United States Foil Company, which made the Eskimo Pie wrappers. He retired at a young age.

CoolBrands International, a Markham, Ontario-based company, acquired Eskimo Pie Corporation in 2000. Originally a yogurt maker, CoolBrands at one point owned or held exclusive long-term licenses for brands including Eskimo Pie, Chipwich, Weight Watchers, Godiva, Tropicana, Betty Crocker, Trix, Yoo-hoo and Welch’s. The company encountered financial difficulties after losing its Weight Watchers/Smart Ones license in 2004. By 2007 it was selling off core assets, and in February 2007 it sold Eskimo Pie and Chipwich to the Dreyer’s division of Nestlé.

On June 19, 2020, Dreyer’s announced that it would change the “Eskimo Pie” brand name and marketing, to Edy’s Pie, saying the term is “derogatory.” (per Wikipedia).

First, a Story:

What is a math teacher’s favorite dessert?… Eskimo Pi!

Second, a Song:

George Glenn Jones (September 12, 1931 – April 26, 2013) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He achieved international fame for his long list of hit records, including his best-known song “He Stopped Loving Her Today”, as well as his distinctive voice and phrasing. For the last two decades of his life, Jones was frequently referred to as the greatest living country singer. Country music scholar Bill Malone writes, “For the two or three minutes consumed by a song, Jones immerses himself so completely in its lyrics, and in the mood it conveys, that the listener can scarcely avoid becoming similarly involved.” Waylon Jennings expressed a similar opinion in his song “It’s Alright”: “If we all could sound like we wanted to, we’d all sound like George Jones.” The shape of his nose and facial features earned Jones the nickname “The Possum”. George Jones has been called “The Rolls Royce Of Country Music” and had more than 160 chart singles to his name from 1955 until his death in 2013.

Born in Texas, Jones first heard country music when he was seven, and was given a guitar at the age of nine. 

Jones tirelessly defended the integrity of country music, telling Billboard in 2006, “It’s never been for love of money. I thank God for it because it makes me a living. But I sing because I love it, not because of the dollar signs.” Jones also went out of his way to promote younger country singers that he felt were as passionate about the music as he was. “Everybody knows he’s a great singer,” Alan Jackson stated in 1995, “but what I like most about George is that when you meet him, he is like some old guy that works down at the gas station…even though he’s a legend!”

Shortly after Jones’ death, Andrew Mueller wrote about his influence in Uncut, “He was one of the finest interpretive singers who ever lifted a microphone…There cannot be a single country songwriter of the last 50-odd years who has not wondered what it might be like to hear their words sung by that voice.” In an article for The Texas Monthly in 1994, Nick Tosches eloquently described the singer’s vocal style: “While he and his idol, Hank Williams, have both affected generations with a plaintive veracity of voice that has set them apart, Jones has an additional gift—a voice of exceptional range, natural elegance, and lucent tone. Gliding toward high tenor, plunging toward deep bass, the magisterial portamento of his onward-coursing baritone emits white-hot sparks and torrents of blue, investing his poison love songs with a tragic gravity and inflaming his celebrations of the honky-tonk ethos with the hellfire of abandon.” In the New Republic essay “Why George Jones ranks with Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday,” David Hajdu writes:

“Jones had a handsome and strange voice. His singing was always partly about the appeal of the tones he produced, regardless of the meaning of the words. In this sense, Jones had something in common with singers of formal music and opera, though his means of vocal production were radically different from theirs. He sang from the back of his throat, rather than from deep in his diaphragm. He tightened his larynx to squeeze sound out. He clenched his jaw, instead of wriggling it free. He forced wind through his teeth, and the notes sounded weirdly beautiful.”

David Cantwell recalled in 2013, “His approach to singing, he told me once, was to call up those memories and feelings of his own that most closely corresponded to those being felt by the character in whatever song he was performing. He was a kind of singing method actor, creating an illusion of the real.” In the liner notes to Essential George Jones: The Spirit of Country Rich Kienzle states, “Jones sings of people and stories that are achingly human. He can turn a ballad into a catharsis by wringing every possible emotion from it, making it a primal, strangled cry of anguish”. In 1994, country music historian Colin Escott pronounced, “Contemporary country music is virtually founded on reverence for George Jones. Walk through a room of country singers and conduct a quick poll, George nearly always tops it.”

In the wake of Jones’s death, Merle Haggard pronounced in Rolling Stone, “His voice was like a Stradivarius violin: one of the greatest instruments ever made.” Emmylou Harris wrote, “when you hear George Jones sing, you are hearing a man who takes a song and makes it a work of art – always,” a quote that appeared on the sleeve of Jones’ 1976 album The Battle. In the documentary Same Ole Me, several country music stars offer similar thoughts. Johnny Cash: “When people ask me who my favorite country singer is, I say, ‘You mean besides George Jones?'”; Randy Travis: “It sounds like he’s lived every minute of every word that he sings and there’s very few people who can do that”; Tom T. Hall: “It was always Jones who got the message across just right”; and Roy Acuff: “I’d give anything if I could sing like George Jones”. In the same film, producer Billy Sherrill states, “All I did was change the instrumentation around him. I don’t think he’s changed at all.”

During his career, Jones had more than 150 hits, both as a solo artist and in duets with other artists. Robert Christgau has called him “honky-tonk’s greatest honky” (per Wikipedia).

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a video of George Jones performing “Eskimo Pie”.  But here is a recording of George performing the song.  I hope you enjoy this!

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dvPMaFcIQY)

Thought for the Day:

“Ice cream brings people together.” – Doug Ducey

Cheers!

Have a great day!

Dave & Colleen

© 2021 David J. Bilinsky and Colleen E. Bilinsky