By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Inside a local radio studio in the early 1980s, Chuck Ingle turned on a classic polka track, dialed in a thick German accent and belted out a few lines that would be stuck in Rockfordians heads for decades.
“Rockford’s only authentic German restaurant – yah, yah, yah – 1132 Auburn Street – yah, yah, yah,” the signature line of long-playing radio jingle for Der Rathskeller went.
If you lived in Rockford long enough, you can probably hear the tune in your head. It played at key driving times on Rockford radio for more than three decades, making Ingle’s German character one of the most recognizable voices in the city.
“People would see me at Coronado or at games and they would sing that song,” said Betty Giesen, who owned Der Rathskellar with her husband, Dick, for 43 years before her son took over when she retired. Dick Giesen died in March at age 77.
Ingle reflected on his role helping the restaurant sell homemade sausage, beef rouladen, lyonnaise potatoes and other German food this week after the restaurant closed for good on Saturday.
Related: ‘Sad but proud’: Rockford Rathskeller closes roughly 1 year after opening
The ads were played so frequently that at one time, Ingle figures you could stop every other person on a Rockford street and they could tell you the restaurant’s address.
“When you sing an address in somebody’s ear, they may not be memorizing it, but when they let the music go back in their head they could drive right up to that building,” said Ingle, a Minneapolis native who now lives in Roscoe.
Der Rathskeller initially closed briefly in 2019 before new owners reopened as Rockford Rathskeller in October 2020. But, they said last week, trying to open during the pandemic proved too tough a battle.
Ingle, a 73-year-old Army veteran who served in Vietnam, became a staple of the ad almost by accident. He worked mostly behind the scenes as an engineer during his 48-year career in radio before he retired in 2015. But, from time to time, he’d be asked to do voicework on a commercial.
Ingle has acted in local community theater, primarily the Beloit Civic Theater, and has the chops for character work.
“I didn’t do it as official talent, I did it as another voice that they needed to put on commercials,” he said.
Then one day sometime in the first half of the 1980s, Ingle recalls, Der Rathskeller ordered an ad.
“Give this one to Chuck,” he recalls a coworker saying. “See what Chuck can do with this.”
There weren’t any specific instructions for how to read the ad, or what music to use. The German accent was Ingle’s idea. His normal speaking voice has a deep gravitas, but he spoke and sang in a higher pitch for the commercial.
“I loved it from the beginning,” said Giesen, who ordered ads to run continually for years.
“I very seldom did TV, but I did radio and I always wanted the driving times,” Giesen said. “I would do that and the newspaper, the Friday Go.”
The original tune for the ad was a bit of miscellaneous polka, but the tune we know today was from a cut of Liechtensteiner Polka by Frank Yankovic. The version was all acoustic with the exception of “yah, yah, yah” as a chorus.
“I thought, well, this is interesting, is there a way I can do something with that,” Ingle said.
It became the signature of the ad. The beginning and end would change, depending on the season or the special that week, but the jingle remained.
Ingle, who is of Swedish ancestry, did other commercial work for radio, but none more recognizable than his German character for Der Rathskeller.
The restaurant, which was opened in 1931 by Wisconsin native Fred Goetz, remained a staple for decades and was the city’s oldest restaurant before it’s closure.
“If the run of that commercial contributed to either the longevity or the success of Der Rathskeller in any way that’s just an honor for me,” Ingle said.