The Hanna-Barbera Pic-A-Nic Basket of Cartoon Classics.

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Hanna-Barbera Pic-a-Nic Box

Anyone who knows me is aware of my music habit, and close readers of this blog will pick up on my affection for cartoon music in particular.

So it was extremely gratifying when my friend, Rhino Records founder Richard Foos, agreed to indulge me in the 1990’s with a (now out-of-print) four CD boxed set of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons themes, underscores, sound effects, and other audio ephemera and artifacts of our historic studio. It was compiled and produced with passion and knowledge by cartoon writer/producer Earl Kress.

I’ve posted about my worship and respect for the under appreciated HB music director and composer Hoyt Curtin but, a few years ago, I finally got around to scanning the great booklet Earl put together for the set. It not only includes a listing of all the sound in the box, but has great essays by Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera, David Burd, Bill Burnett, and Barry Hansen (Dr. Demento). Plus Marty Pekar conducted an interview about the studio’s unique sound effects library with Joe, Bill, Greg Watson, and Pat Foley. (As we get around to it, you can look at separate transcripts of the essays here.)

For a quick preview, here’s a Quick Draw McGraw track from the box set, composed, arranged and conducted by Hoyt:

Hoyt Curtain & The Hanna-Barbera Studio Big Band >Quick Draw McGraw (Underscore & Syndicated End Titles)

All the Oblivion records.

My Oblivion Records partner Tom Pomposello and I were incredibly proud of our discography of releases. We were two young guys in the thrall of the world’s music explosion everywhere around us and we wanted to be part of it. (Just click on the covers  and you’ll be able to play the complete collection.)

Mississippi Fred McDowell Live in New York OD-1 (1972)

Not only our first record, but our most celebrated and successful. Fred McDowell had become a country blues world touring sensation in the late 60s and early 70s, and Tom, budding suburban bluesman, became his pupil and bassist. This was Fred’s last recording before his untimely passing.

…..

Johnny Woods Mississippi Harmonica o#2 (1972)

Our only single came during Tom’s last trip to Mississippi when he asked Fred McDowell to locate harpist Johnny Woods, Fred’s sometimes duet partner. They found Mr. Woods at his farmhand living quarters, and in true field recording style, Tom took out his trusty Panasonic cassette machine, gave Johnny one of his Hohner harmonicas, and recorded two songs. Then he whipped out his Kodak Instamatic, posed Johnny in front of Fred’s Pontiac. Now we had enough for a record.

…..

Marc Cohen, John Abercrombie, Clint Houston, Jeff Williams Friends OD-3 (1973)

When Marc Cohen (now Copeland) first showed up at my college radio station he played an awesome mainstream alto saxophone. So he shocked me the day he came in with a trio wired up and echoplexed I felt like I’d seen a future first defined by the Tony Williams Lifetime. We made a deal and he brought back a quartet, and before it was branded we called his music ‘electronic jazz.’ No jazz-rock here, just plugged in supercharged jazz.

…..

Charles Walker & the NYC Blues Band Blues From The Apple OD-4 (1974)

Tom really wanted to discover a bluesman. Which was really hard to do in New York City. So a talented blues hustler called Charles Walker kept turning up musicians and songs and we kept recording them, for more than a year. Our smallest selling album, with one of my favorite tracks.

…..

Joe Lee Wilson Livin’ High Off Nickels & Dimes OD-5 (1974)

Never paying much attention to mainstream jazz singers, I initially paid no attention to the hubbub surrounding a session I missed one summer in 1972 at WKCR. But then I heard the tape. Joe Lee Wilson was great.

The record caused a sensation and became a turntable hit at the biggest New York jazz station, but we were too inexperienced and broke to work it properly. A great record faded again into oblivion.

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Honest Tom Pomposello OD-6 (1975)

Tom Pomposello, my great friend and the artist that inspired our record company. And our final release. Recorded in bits and pieces over four years in dozens of locations, with Tom’s truth telling slogan •file under: Suburban Blues.

My mentors: Michael Mantler

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Photograph of Michael Mantler by Tod Papageorge, 1968

Another in my ongoing series of horrified-to-be-identified-as-my-“mentors:”

Trumpeter and composer Michael Mantler.

Mike was first hand proof that talent, planning, vision, drive, hard work, and sheer force of will could combine to accomplish dreams beyond anyone’s expectations. He didn’t have any particular interest, I think, in showing me much of anything really, but he was an incredible role model, trying to keep his family’s heads above water, struggling against all odds to be viable fringe artists in a highly commercial world. It was a time in my life that would never be repeated, and one that made a huge difference to me.

Mike would probably recoil at the whole idea of mentorship —by now, we’re probably more like friends or something— but I don’t know what else to call it. He was already a young legend in avant-garde jazz when, as a naive 18 year old, I crashed my first professional recording session he was producing, his then wife Carla Bley’s “Escalator Over the Hill,” He patiently figured I was a friend of one of the superstar orchestra’s if he even noticed my presence. I went on to play their records on college radio, and then he and Carla trusted me right out of school to work at their innovative artist record distribution service (itself an outgrowth of their incredible, idealistic collective, the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, JCOA). I wasn’t too impressed with the job I did, but a few years later Mike asked me to be the sound man and assistant roadie on Carla’s first big band tours. It was an unforgetable experience not only for the music, but for the pride with which Mike managed the unruly, artistic bunch they’d gathered. I repayed them after a year by ducking out days before our first European tour (a real loss on my part), but it didn’t stop us from staying friendly for the 30 years since.

Thanks Mike, you made a real difference in my struggle to become a professional adult.

……
It wouldn’t be right to talk about Mike without mentioning some of his stunning work. His music isn’t for everyone (on his website he quotes one reviewer saying “’Silence’ is possibly the least listenable record I have ever heard”) and requires a dedicated listener, but the rewards are great. Aside from his playing and composing, Mike was no slouch as a producer either. He always knew to not only get the very best musicians, but that it didn’t hurt if they had name value for sales (check out Robert Wyatt, Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Jack DeJohnette, Pharoh Sanders, Cecil Taylor, and Don Preston, among many others). Here’s a few worth checking out:

One of my favorites of Mike’s pieces features a jazz avant-garde superstar orchestra, from the 1968 “The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra”:

The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra > Preview

(Composed & conducted by Michael Mantler;
Soloist: Pharoah Sanders)

“Name Three Composers Who Defined Cartoon Music”

Click here for all 15 Hanna-Barbera essays.
Or, click here for my full Hanna-Barbera index.

A trick question:

NAME THREE COMPOSERS WHO DEFINED CARTOON MUSIC?
(Hint:  You can’t.  There are only two.)

Ask any reasonably well-informed movie buff who the major film composers are and you’re likely to get a pretty long list of names.  You’ll hear Mancini, Williams, Barry, Goldsmith, Bernstein, Steiner, Hermann… 

But cartoons?  Even the most obsessed cartoon-o-phile comes up short when the subject turns to music.  Which is pretty strange when you think of how important music is to the manic power of cartoons.  (Try watching a few of your favorites with the sound off and you’ll begin to see what I mean.)  Still, the fact remains: In 50 years of cartoon history, only two truly identifiable musical voices have emerged.

There’s  Carl Stalling at Warner Bros., who wove together brilliant orchestral pastiches—often rivaling the mad montages of Charles Ives— to accompany the antics of Bugs, Daffy and the rest.

And then there’s Hoyt Curtin at Hanna-Barbera.  Like Stalling, Curtin called upon the dominant musical form of his day—in Hoyt’s case, the big band sounds of the forties and fifties—and translated it into a series of themes and scores that are maddeningly catchy, effortlessly funny, and utterly unmistakable.  You can tell a Hanna-Barbera cartoon from across the street, just by hearing a few strains of music.

Hoyt Curtin’s music jumps out at you and wraps itself around that part of your brain where the giddy, childlike pleasures live. It nudges and jolts and eggs the action on.  It’s as bright and instantly recognizable as the Hanna-Barbera  color palliate.  That’s called style.

To hear what I’m talking about, try and find a copy of Rhino Records’ Hanna-Barbera’s Pic-a-Nic Basket of Cartoon Classics, or click here for sample. Just put that collection on your player, and then sit back and get ready to enjoy a prolonged involuntary grin.  (How long has it been since you’ve had that experience?)

“Name Three Composers Who Defined Cartoon Music” 
Essay #4 (of 15)
Original essay written by Bill Burnett, Creative Director, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, 1993-1996