I remember whenever that commercial came on, everyone in the house would stop to admire the singing—my mom, my four brothers, but especially my dad, who was known to have a Schaefer beer every now and again. Listening to it now, I can still picture us all sitting in the living room watching it together.
It starts out like any job site scene. The new guy gets put on the spot, a little pressure from the older guys. “Sing the Schaefer jingle.” You’re expecting him to stumble through it… and then out of nowhere, he just nails it. Not just good—really good. That’s what grabbed everyone.
What most people didn’t realize is that the “new guy” was actually Larry Kert, the original Tony from West Side Story. He wasn’t just an actor—they slipped in a real Broadway performer. Kert had already made his mark on stage and even won a Tony Award for Company in 1971, just before this commercial was airing. So when he starts singing, that voice is the real deal.
And that jingle? You didn’t forget it.
“Schaefer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one.”
Back in 1972, Schaefer Beer was right in the middle of a big transition. For years, it had been a Northeast favorite, but in the late ’60s and early ’70s the company made a serious push to go national. They expanded brewing capacity, including opening a massive new brewery in Pennsylvania, and invested heavily in advertising—those memorable jingle-driven commercials were a big part of that strategy. Distribution widened, and suddenly Schaefer wasn’t just a New York beer anymore—you could find it across much of the country.
At its peak in the early ’70s, Schaefer was selling millions of barrels a year and ranked among the top beer brands in the U.S. It still had that working-class, no-frills identity, and that commercial captured it perfectly.
But like a lot of regional brands that tried to scale up, the competition got tougher. The big national brewers started dominating shelf space and advertising budgets. By the late ’70s and into the ’80s, Schaefer began to lose ground. The company was eventually sold, production shifted, and the brand slowly faded from the spotlight. It still exists today, but it’s a shadow of what it once was.
For me though, it’s not about the beer.
It’s about that moment… sitting in the living room, everyone stopping what they were doing, and just appreciating something simple that was done really, really well.