Tuesday 20 April 2010

The In-Compleat Cartoon Shaindlin

Yowp note: The music in this post is NOT public domain and is provided as a public service for audition purposes only.

Music evokes memories. Music in cartoons included. Play Raymond Scott’s Powerhouse for someone and see if they can Name That Bunny in four notes.

The music of the Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons is no different, despite being originally designed to linger in the background while setting moods for TV westerns and sitcoms, industrial films and low-budget movies. But because the composers were so adept, the music not only does its utilitarian job, it sticks in people’s minds (especially after endless viewings of the cartoons).

If I had to name a melody that epitomises the early H-B cartoons, I’d have to actually name two. It’s difficult to picture Yogi Bear in action without hearing the tippy-toe xylophone and laughing clarinet of ‘Zany Comedy’, credited to Bill Loose and John Seely. The other instantly conjures the sight of Pixie and Dixie running past the same wall socket for the eighth time—‘Toboggan Run’, credited to Jack Shaindlin.

While Loose and Seely were the masterminds behind the Capitol Hi-Q library, whence Hanna-Barbera found much of its music, Shaindlin was the man responsible for the other library, Langlois Filmusic, which also made its merry way into countless Huck, Yogi and Quick Draw escapades. Not coincidentally, it was distributed by Capitol.

Shaindlin’s story is a little less complicated than that of his library. According to Music and Dance in New York State, edited by Sigmund Gottfried Spaeth, Shaindlin was born April 14, 1909 in Russia. He attended the Crimea Conservatory of Music and then studied piano privately with Glenn Dillard Gunn in Chicago. The International Motion Picture Almanac (1948 edition) further reveals he went to high school in Chicago, then the Chicago Conservatory of Music; from 1926 to 1929 he was the conductor of the N.Y.U. Orchestra and conducted orchestras at movie houses; worked as a scorer for RKO and Universal from 1929 to 1936; was Director of Music for Columbia and Universal (eastern productions) in 1937, then moved on to The March of Time in 1941. It also mentions (unlike later editions) he produced musical shorts and operated a musical scoring service from the Fox Movietone offices in New York.

The book Conductors and Composers of Popular Orchestral Music by Naomi Musiker and David Adès, page 244, adds the following:


Shaindlin was born in Yalta but moved to America after the Russian Revolution. Shortly after landing in America, he won first prize in a newspaper-sponsored piano contest. He began his professional career by playing piano in small clubs and landed his first movie job at the age of sixteen, playing an organ at a theater. At the age of eighteen he joined a large orchestra and became a conductor. He subsequently performed at the Palace Theatre playing the piano, writing and acting in skits.
At the age of twenty-two, he started working for Universal Pictures and thereafter for RKO, Columbia and Louis DeRochemont as well as a twelve-year association with OWI films as musical director. In 1947 and 1948, he received critical acclaim for his conducting of pops symphony concerts at Carnegie Hall. He also lectured on movie music and was associated with the Ford Foundation’s television series. He was credited with the music of films such as Lost Boundaries, Teresa and Cinerama Holiday.

This only hints at Shaindlin’s involvement in the music library business. Stock music expert Paul Mandell, in a chapter of a book published by the U.S. Library of Congress, reveals:

Shaindlin (1909-1983) began scoring the March of Time newsreels [released by RKO] in 1942 and served as music director of Fox Movietone News in New York. Around 1950, Shaindlin and his composer-partner Robert McBride organized their news-reel and documentary tracks and started Filmusic, “the largest sound-on-film library in the US with over 2000 moods for dramatic, news, and comedy films.”

As a side-note, Shaindlin replaced Lou De Francesco on The March of Time. De Francesco wrote music for the Sam Fox library and one of his cues, Ski(ing) Galop, was used in some of the first Huck and Yogi cartoons. Before McBride arrived in 1945, Shaindlin worked with Ernest Fiorito, another composer for Sam Fox.

With all the music Shaindlin and McBride composed for newsreels for three studios (including the Bill Stern World of Sports one-reelers at Columbia) and the De Rochemont shorts, they had a ready-made library.

We now have to back up for a second and make a side-trip along the path of old time radio. A couple of guys, Cyril Langlois, Sr. and radio announcer Ralph Wentworth, branched out from the radio ad agency business in 1935 to create Lang-Worth Feature Programs, Inc., which supplied radio shows and music on transcription. Wentworth sold out to Langlois in 1942 and the business carried on. Among the orchestra leaders who supplied musical material for Lang-Worth in the later ‘40s was Jack Shaindlin. It was perhaps inevitable the two joined forces in the library music business.

Business Screen Magazine in 1954 unveiled the big announcement:


Formation of Langlois Filmusic, Inc.
Provides a Major Music Source

The combined music scoring facilities and all sound track of FILMUSIC Company and LANG-WORTH Publications, Inc. have been merged under the new name of LANGLOIS FILMUSIC, Inc., with headquarters in the Warner Brothers Bldg., 619 West 5th Street, New York 19.
The merger of two of the largest companies in the field of picture scoring makes available a service to film producers that provides the largest library of sound track in the world, produced specifically for television, theatrical, industrial and sound slidefilm use.
Jack Shaindlin, formerly operator of Filmusic Company, has withdrawn from active participation in picture scoring from library track to devote himself to original scoring with "live" musicians [Shaindlin became a live-action producer as production head of Triumph Films on West 54th in New York, with McBride as his musical director]. He has turned over all customer accounts and facilities to Langlois Filmusic, Inc. Mr. Shaindlin will continue to serve the new corporation in an advisory capacity for "live" picture scoring.
Jumping off to a fast start, Langlois Filmusic furnished music scores for over five hundred film productions, including business motion pictures, t.v. films and commercials and slidefilms during its first month of operation in January.

This was the library that was tracked by Hanna-Barbera for the Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw shows—and by syndicators such as ZIV.

Paul Mandell’s meticulous research explains more about Langlois Filmusic:


The fanfare for the “torch lady” logo at the end of every Screen Gems television show was a celebrated piece from this collection.
What made the library famous were the sneak-alongs with spooky clarinets and brass stingers used in Mr. And Mrs. North, Boston Blackie, Science Fiction Theatre and the final year of Superman. “In Cold Blood,” “Closing In,” “Crime Lab,” “Manhunt,” and “Sweating It Out” were typical cue titles. McBride wrote most of them and Shaindlin orchestrated them. They were shrewdly crafted works, remarkable for their economy, with repeated pauses and abrupt hits to facilitate the seemless editing of one with the other.
As Shaindlin's key tracker Frank Lewin observed, “Jack never wrote anything himself. He always had a stable of writers working for him.” Among them were Louis Applebaum, Rick DuPage, George Chase, Lan Adomian, and German composer Richard Mohaupt. Charles Strouse of Annie and Bye Bye Birdie fame ghostwrote much of Shaindlin’s show music. Even Morton Gould lent a helping hand with the light comedy cue “Toboggan Run.”

Mandell’s research shows Langlois Filmusic folded about 1960, though industry catalogues still list it into the ‘60s. But this didn’t end Shaindlin’s involvement in the library music business. Somehow, he maintained or retrieved the rights to his old music and in 1965, Cinemusic was born (though trade ads insist it was founded in 1949; that may be the year of Shaindlin’s original company). He began to repackage—and occasionally re-record, it seems—some of the Langlois library. 20 LPs containing 385 cues of different lengths in 34 moods were advertised in 1965, with a second set in 1966 and a third in 1968. Further volumes followed with a more up-to-date sound than some of the themes designed for fashion shows, sports contests and war footage on newsreels.

Now, let’s take a listen to some of the Shaindlin music that you’ve no doubt heard behind the Yogi, Huck and the Meeces. This is not, alas, The Compleat Cartoon Shaindlin. I have about another half-dozen music beds which are unidentified and, frankly, I don’t have the permission of the person who sent them to me to post them. But they don’t represent all of Shaindlin’s work on cartoons, either; there are cues I simply don’t have. What you can hear in this first batch comes from three different sources and the last two cues are not great in quality.

Langlois Filmusic provided cues on film (hence “filmusic”) and on 78s. Click on the title and whatever you use to play MP3s on your computer should pop up.


MAD RUSH No. 1
MAD RUSH No. 2
MAD RUSH No. 3
UNTITLED TUNE
EXCITEMENT UNDER DIALOGUE
ASININE
CAPERS
PIXIE PRANKS
FUN ON ICE
CRAZY GOOF
FISHY STORY
GROTESQUE No 2
COMEDY SUSPENSE
TOBOGGAN RUN
RODEO DAY
RECESS

Because I promised this post so long ago, I will try to make it up to Jack Shaindlin fans with some bonus Langlois tracks. These were not used by Hanna-Barbera but I know at least a couple were in industrial cartoons produced by John Sutherland.

CHILDREN’S SCAMPER
THOROUGHFARE
LIGHT ‘N’ AIRY
MOTOR BOATING
MILD ACTIVITY
WALKING BRISKLY
HARDWARE

Finally, I’m going to leave you with a little story about Jack Shaindlin. This is from the book The Art of Writing Music by John Cacavas and Steve Kaplan. Cacavas was, among other talents, a composer for the Sam Fox library.

About proofing music....
I remember one time at a recording session in New York, the well-known film conductor Jack Shaindlin was recording Morton Gould’s score to Windjammer for the soundtrack album. I had been working for Gould as an orchestrator at that time, so I went along with Morton to the studio. This was in the early 1960s, when stereo was in its infancy, and the sound coming from the orchestra was glorious. During a break in the recording, a woodwind player raised his hand and shouted, “Hey Jack, I gotta wrong note in bar 46.”
“Well, play the right one, for God’s sake!” shouted Shaindlin in response.

The first and last screen caps are from a kinescope of an appearance on The Wendy Barrie Show where Shaindlin received the 1956 Clef Award for his work on Cinerama Holiday. The middle one is from the mid-1950s game show Make the Connection hosted by Gene Rayburn.

Jack Shaindlin died in New York on September 22, 1978.

35 comments:

  1. Congrats! Looking at Shaindlin's cowriters, I guess Morton Gould cowrote most of the ones above. I noted Paul Mandell didn't give the usual 1978 but a 1983 death date. I would help to know which were ghostwritten by whom like was the case with the Hi-Q piece..

    Only a few Augie/Quick Draw/Snooper pieces, due to your now having liberty, speaking of which,m the Columbia Liberty Logo theme is definitely in Jack's Cinemusic library in CINE[whichever has the Newsreel themes] in APM as noted above. I would guess Morton Gould and George Chase wrote most of the above..I also had presumed none other than a certain other cartoon composer, one Winston Sharples by name, did some arranging...

    [Of course there may be still the Raoul Kraushaar story and a few remianing Sam Fox cues left..]

    And nice again to see yet more from the P.Madell book, on library music than just the Hi-Q story...

    Those last definitely were not in any cartoons, HB or otherwise, or any other animation or franchises that I recall, kind of interesting..then there's those you';ve always had like my favorite Whistling NUn..

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  2. I LOVE these music posts! Many thanks.

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  3. As always, GREAT feature! Thanks for adding Shaindlin to your excellent Capitol Hi-Q blog from December. We hear so little from the Langlois library. To me, when I hear " Toboggan Run ", or " Rodeo Day ", it is the epitome of some action scene with " Yogi " or " Huck " in their first seasons. Interesting thing I remember about actress Wendy Barrie( Hound of the Baskervilles ). Her Godfather was JM Barrie, aka " Peter Pan ". She supposedly took the stage name " Wendy " from the character in his story. Also great Shaindlin recollection from the recording session. Being a former musician that played in a few orchestras, those priceless things happen.

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  4. (outraged) You mean to tell me Morton Gould wrote "Toboggan Run"???????

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  5. Dave, that's what Paul Mandell says. He doesn't provide a source for his statement.
    Paul's full essay on stock music raises the point that it was common for people to take credit for others' work. However, in the interests of clarity, and the fact we'll never know who really wrote every single stock music cue in history, I will continue to go with the normal credit.

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  6. I LOVE all these themes! Makes me want to break out a big bowl of Kellogg's Rice Krispies...

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  7. Yowp, I think this is your best post ever, and you've done a lot of great ones. Thanks so much for playing "Toboggan Run", "The Reluctant Elephant" and "Recess"! These three tunes are welded to my DNA and still play endlessly in my head all the time, along with the LeRoy Shield music from the Hal Roach comedies. This music was my bike riding music when I was a kid, I always heard "Tobaggan Run" every time I went down a hill to coast. Every time I hear this music, it sends me back to a most peaceful and joyous spot in my conciousness, and YOU have made it possible! Thanks a thousand times. By the way, "Throughfare", which you included as a bonus, was used many times in the Commonwealth TV sound re-issues of the Paul Terry 1920s Aesop's Fables cartoons. They probably used a lot of other Shaindlin cues as well in those scores. Your blog brings me so much joy, a rare thing to find on a computer!

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  8. Oh, by the way, that was Mark Kausler in the previous post, forgot to identify myself, gawrsh!

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  9. Great write up, thank you. The 1978 date of death is correct, fyi.

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  10. Mark, I think it was blogger Your Pal Doug, who reads here, who told me 'Thoroughfare' is actually a cue by Roger Roger. It sure sounds like Roger's stuff.
    The Commonwealth soundtracks don't sound like anything from Langlois; they have that great 1940s English library sound to them. The music could very well be from Chappell, Boosey & Hawkes or whoever their American rep was (Valentino?).

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  11. Congratulations Yowp! Spectacular to finally have a Jack Shaindlin page on the internet! Yesterday, I was just listening to "Thoroughfare" by Roger Roger on a Valentino Major Records LP. However, most of the Shaindlin tunes have a similar sound or feel, so I prefer to believe that Mr. Shaindlin composed and conducted most of them. Don't burst my happy bubble Pokey.
    Doug

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  12. Doug, if you have Roger's 'Himalaya', let me know. Apparently that was used twice in the second season Jinks cartoons. I have some odds and sods I'd like to post and that's one.

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  13. Alright, I will get a little more accurate about the use of "Thoroughfare" and Aesop Fable cartoons. I have a Snappy Cartoons 16mm print of "The Adventures of Adenoid" which uses "Thoroughfare" on the soundtrack, and I also have a Snappy print of "The Jungle Bike Race", which uses the cue as well. There are other cues on those cartoons that sound like Shaindlin, but could be other music. Snappy was probably not Commonwealth TV, I'm not exactly clear on the make-up of Snappy Cartoons. They released quite a few Aesop cartoons under their own logo. Mark Kausler

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  14. I don't have the Major Records with Himalaya. I listened to a snippet of it at http://www.valentinomusic.info/safesell/evergreen%20volume%205/192k/Evergreen%20Volume%205.htm

    Sounds like a good one.

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  15. Doug, thanks for the link. Someone must have got their information crossed up. I don't recognise 'Himalaya' but Roger Roger's 'Chopsticks' was used in 'Missile Bound Cat' (there are a couple of other unfamiliar cues in that one, too). Unless it was also in Hi-Q via the Sam Fox Library, it looks like H-B used the Valentino Library, too.
    Mark, it seems Commonwealth used the Valentino library. If you go here and click on the audition version of 'Komic Kapers', you'll hear the opening music for the "Farmer Grey" cartoons. "A Cat's Life" featured 'Thoroughfare' as the first cue.

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  16. Thanks for that link, Yowp. That's the title music! They also used "Clown Capers" in some of the Aesop's tracks. By the way, could you teach me or tell me what file sharing service you use to keep your sound links? I use Zshare, but they erase the files after 60 days. Any help would be very much appreciated.
    Thanks again, Mark Kausler

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  17. thnxx yowp Great Post!
    hmmmmm Still no word on the background music in that 1950s educational film huh

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  18. MoneyMizzle, which one? The John Sutherland ones?

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  19. Mr Pokey ,,, Not sure at all its a strange 1950s educational film with some familiar sounding production music, not sure if some where used in cartoons but i have been killing to find where they come from for some time now especially the first three played in the beginning. ummmm i had yowp identify one from planet 9 a while ago but never could find any info on the remaining , heres the youtube link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmqNiFJyI28

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  20. Hy, Doug, don't worry about your happy bubble, I won't burst it. Shaindlin still had lots of input such as orchestrations and such. I'm not sure exactly how to interpret
    Frank Lewin's comment about Shaindlin NOT writing his own stuff, like "not at all" or "by himself"? [Like how Philip Green sometimes collaborated as with Emil Cadkin & Bill Loose and later with Ken Thorne and Geoffrey Love--just to go PLAY PRODUCTION MUSIC or APM.com and go to CARLIN, to the CPM [PLAY only] and CAR later entries.

    Pokey-SC

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  21. Hey, Guys Anyone Know if there's someplace where i can Download & hear the old 1950s Hal Seeger/ Winston Sharples background cues? Can Somebody Please Upload them?, That would be great! - Asim.

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  22. Oh, I Forgot, I See You've Updated the Blog Page, Yowp and Oh I Love that Font when you typed above "Yowp the stuff about early hanna barbera cartoons" It Was also used on the first two seasons of the flintstones and i belive the earliest of the season 3 episodes, there was a site way back that had half of all the original specific credits of the first three seasons of the flintstones, but does anyone exactly remember or have the complete credits to the first two seasons of the flintstones, that would be also great- Cheers, Asim!

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  23. Asim, I doubt anyone would have the Sharples cues. Someone would have had to dub those off a seperate track of film decades ago when they were used. It's not like they were on LPs in a production library.

    Someone can correct me, as I don't have the discs, but I think the Flintstones DVDs don't have the original credits; all the first season shows have gang credits from one episode.

    The typeface isn't quite the same .. some of HB's letters are a different width and these ones don't line up evenly. But it's as close as I can find.

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  24. "It's Not Like they were on LPs in a Production library" - Whoops I Forgot that the Winston Sharples/Hal Seeger Tracks Were, In Fact, Culled from Many Famous Studio cartoons, Mostly Releases from 1952-1963. In Fact, The One Way to Locate these tracks Is To Listen Closely at the Underscores Of A Couple of Famous Studios Films from the 1950s, Then Record them using a Music Dubbing Software [if one exists that is]
    In Fact Here is a Small list of Cartoons in which the cues were taken from;

    Patriotic Popeye
    Mr Money Gags
    Owly To Bed
    Child Sockology
    Big Bad Sinbad
    One Funny Knight
    Heir Restorer
    Cock a Doodle Dino
    Sky Scrappers
    Felenious Assault
    From Dime to Dime
    Scouting for Trouble

    Thats All i can think of at the moment
    Additional Information on the Origin of the Sharples Tracks are Highly Welcome.
    PS; In The TV Popeye Cartoon Strange things are Happening In the Very Beginning When Popeye Decides To Go Fishing, I Have a Very Hard Time Identifiying A Certain Sharples Cue In that Scene, What Cartoon Is It From, If Someone Else Can ID that, It Would Be Gladly Appreciated. Asim.

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    1. Here's yet some more, both Modern Madcaps

      Fit to be Toyed
      Trouble Date (Scouting for Trouble and Trouble Date both had the dogs Jeepers and Creepers)
      many Modern Madcaps espeically had future iconic Sharples cues!

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  25. Yowp, you are correct that the Flintsatones discs don't have the right close credits, or opening..I have the first four volumes so I can speak from experience.

    As far as I'm concerned regarding Winston Sharples tracks, it's not like, if one can find them, that they can't be stored on records, or more for today's times, CD's or on compouter since Shaindlin [the films mentioned in the entry],Darrell Calker [the Walter Lantz 1940s Woody Woodpeckers, of which surprsingly he'd done some early 60s ones], and other other composers did cues for origimal productions that wound up in various stock libaries, so it's not like it was impossible to archive them in a more convient way. However such composers as Darrel Calker & Winston Sharples [and these are for theatrical 1940s cartoons] don't have anything archives currently [i.e, on any music production library site that I know of].

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  26. Forget It, I Finally Know the Beggining cue from Strange things are happening was taken from From Mad to Worse (1957) featuring herman and katnip. It Seems the only way to hear the Winston sharples cues is to watch the films I Mentioned without the sound effects and voices, But it Requires a Special Recording software.

    P.S What does everyone here think of the Winston sharples cues, I, For Instance, Think they are Very Catchy, Melodic and Very Happy and Get stuck in your head for months.

    Asim.

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  27. Asim., incidentlally Strange Things are Happening's title may have been influenced by 1950s-60s comic Red Buttons's 1950s novelty song.

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  28. Asim, you asked about Sharples. Dave Mackey, who reads here, mentioned once on a cartoon message board:

    Winston Sharples and his son had a business partnership with Hal Seeger (specifically a music publishing concern called Scroll Productions).

    Whether that means there was an actual music library of Sharples' music available for lease, I don't know. George Steiner wrote at least one score for the company.

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  29. Man, how'd we get on to Winston Sharples? Yes, there was a library available to other producers, and it was indeed a partnership between Sharples and Seeger. TV Spots used them for "King Leonardo", "Tooter Turtle" and "The Hunter", and Total Television used the Sharples library for "Tennessee Tuxedo". Seeger himself used them for "Milton The Monster" and its derivative series. Seeger and Sharples later created another library from more contemporary Paramount cartoons for Seeger's "Batfink" series. Aren't you all glad you asked? ;)

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  30. Thanks for the re-post. I share the sentiment of:

    RobEB said...
    I LOVE all these themes! Makes me want to break out a big bowl of Kellogg's Rice Krispies...

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  31. Whitney Shaindlin Neeves9 July 2016 at 19:03

    Fully enjoyed this article. Jack Shaindlin is my paternal grandfather. It's always fun to come across those who have a true appreciation for his amazing talent!

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  32. Out of curiosity, how were "Toboggan Run", "Recess", "Rodeo Day" and the three "Mad Rush" cues ID'd? Only wondering as they aren't on APM.

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    1. By people who had the Langlois discs they came from.

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