By the mid-Sixties, Shelly Manne had signed with the makers of UniRoyal Tires to do a series of commercials using only the sounds of percussion. The creative juices flowed in this kind of challenge, and the famous "CAT'S PAW" commercials were the result. The TV viewer would see these stark black and white commercials and remember them for their originality As the car screeched to brake on a rain-slicked highway, the animated figure of a cat and its surefooted paw came suddenly into existence and "saved the day" Shelly would study the story boards and sketch out the sounds he wanted in each frame. By now he had collected a variety of percussion instruments that included the boobams and a "waterphone" he had picked up in San Francisco that looked like a hubcap on stilts with varying lengths of steel rods reaching towards the floor. He built wooden cabinets in the garage at home so he could store the scores of crude tom-toms, scrapers, scratchers, rattles, and other "instruments" he found interesting.
