Wednesday 23 June 2010

A Huck Ghost Story

One of the fun things about The Huckleberry Hound Show was the little vignettes that led into each cartoon. Huck would set up something and all the series characters would come out and do a little gag. They were cute and charming. Of course, what was a good idea was completely run into the ground in the 1970s when the characters were all lumped together in one lame series after another.

The characters got together in children’s records as well. The best ones were released by Colpix. In a stroke of originality, it was named for Columbia Pictures, which released the Hanna-Barbera cartoons through its Screen Gems Division. The reason these were the best of the bunch is they featured the real voices of the characters, unlike the Golden Records recorded in New York City with fair to awful approximations of the characters by NYC actors.

Here, for your listening pleasure, is Colpix release 210, ‘Huckleberry Hound and the Ghost Ship.’ This isn’t a really a comedy like the cartoons, it’s more of a 20-minute adventure with comedy. The script is pretty clever in places. It’s cool to hear Daws Butler, Don Messick and Doug Young do their thing, especially when they sing a funny song a capella. Oh, and one of the ghosts sounds like a certain cereal Cap’n. And the bad guy has got one of Daws’ familiar incidental English voices from the H-B and Jay Ward studios. More interesting for me are the notes on the back of the album.



It appears from the liner notes that Daws and Don co-wrote this. The musical bridges are a mystery. They’re not from the Capitol Hi-Q library; I don’t know if it could be licensed for re-recording. It’s not Hoyt Curtin’s music, either. My wild guess is it’s from the Major library out of New York. And while there are sound effects, they aren’t the ones Hanna-Barbera is famous for.

Besides Yogi, Boo Boo, Jinks and the Meece, Snooper (without Blabber), Hokey and Ding-a-ling, we get a bad guy pirate. If you look at the album cover, you can see his design is based on Crossbones Jones from the second Ruff and Reddy adventure, and was re-used in Pixie and Dixie’s Pistol Packin’ Pirate (1958).

Anyway, at your leisure, take a listen to it, if nothing for the voice work. It’s nice hearing some old friends in a different format.


SIDE 1A
SIDE 1B
SIDE 1C
SIDE 1D
SIDE 2A
SIDE 2B
SIDE 2C

9 comments:

  1. Thanks! Great voice work. It is also refeshing to hear Daws, Don and Doug actually doing their own characters instead of the substitute voice actors that used to frequent these children's records. Enjoyed it

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  2. My guess is that this story must have been a collab between Daws Butler and Don Messick - not only did Daws use the "mud in the milk" gag from his guest starring role from "Truth or Consequences" (thanks to Joe Bev's Cartoon Carnival for that!) but I also remember downloading and listening to another HB Columbia Record some years back: "Quick Draw McGraw & The Treasure Of Sarah's Mattress".

    Otherwise, I to am thankful to hear those familiar tones of Daws, Don and Doug in their respective roles. Heavenly...! :)


    Many thanks for sharin' out another, Yowp.

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  3. I'm listening to Side 2, Huck looking for Jinks, and the music sounds familiar, like that from "The Night of the Living Dead", so the Major library [which the Capitol Hi-Q musicv for NTTLD may have been licensed from;they cross-leased a lot of that stuff]
    so it may have been used..I have downloaded a lot of other classic stock music movies from old horror movies including EVERYBODY's favorite..."Plan 9 from Outer Space", [LOL] plus "Black Scorpion",and several by Raoul Kruashaar, of OMAR, from "Blue Gardenia" and "Dracula Meets Billy the Kid"..and that music from the album sounds like it may be from those..I DEFINITELY recognize those..Probaly the JW Media Music Library imported from England. I've been on their site and heard many familiar cuts.[And I don't live in england.] The cut being played, by the way, as I'm writing, is:"Side2A"; Right now Mr.Jinks and the Pirate are having a cat-a-astrophic alter-cat-ion..Yogi waxed patiroit earlier..

    BTW I still can't place it..but I now reconize a lot of these as being used in [I THINK} 1960's "Courageous Cat" on YouTube.Mr.Jinks now dropping the dumb sock bomb on the pirate and discussing walking planks.Some of those at that part sound like Jack Shaindlin pieces but I can't be sure [assuming from CINEMUSIC and a few pieces I got from eslewhere--all of the cues and soundtracks I mention as having are from Soulseek from various sources that I'll keep confidential:-)LOL now Side 2-2 "Watch your language" at 5:17

    Pokey

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  4. Hokey WOlf is on now fianlly, and is much funnier than on TV, and it's Daws again [agreed with Erroll] but the voice sound a slight higher. I'm guessing Yowp whereever the music from "Crusader Rabbit"'s 1957 version is the from the libaries used here as the same person credited there, an Art Becker, is the guy credited as editor. Hokey's presence makes this 1961 or later.The pirate voice is the same one tyhat Daws uses for the "gay" Jay Ward "Fractured Fairy Tale" prince. Hokey and Ding actually were quite funny on the show even with all said about qaulity jumping [John K. thought so, seperating it from Scooby, a MUCH different kettle of fish together.]

    Nice to see Hokey and Ding, used as the propieters of it..and the Dinghy joke..btw I guess Young, still around then playing Doggie Daddy, was too expensive as Hanna-Barbera already had Don and Daws, unless it's a 64-65 record when Doug left which woul;d have made it an HBR, and this is a Columbia Pictures/Colpix records...Fun to note Daws and Don having written this.

    Pokey

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  5. Fianlly, self-correction..after seeing your mentioning Doug Young, I take back the assumption as to why he left, after noticing that Doug IS present on that record, since it's obvious that he was still at the studio and all of the original actors did the characters [though Ding's the only one that Doug does here..thank god no Yakky..:)]

    Finally, that Dingy pun between those wolves at the start cracks me up, too. Besides Golden, HBR, and ColPix, I wonder if any other records existed made with Hanna-Barbera characters in the 50s-60s? Probaly not, other than that trilogy of company, and my triology of posts here [for a while, anyway] concludes.

    Pokey

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  6. Yowp, this is probably one of your best posts yet. Butler, Messick, and Young were all great on these records.

    I noticed something about your blog though. I know you focus primarily on cartoons like Huck and Yogi, but could you do some posts about Ruff and Reddy? Maybe even some breakdowns of the cartoons individually like you do with Yogi and such.

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  7. Roberto, I'm not planning on doing Ruff and Reddy for several reasons. I don't have decent quality copies of the cartoons and they're laden with TV channel bugs. The continuing adventure format makes it difficult to do an individual cartoon review. I don't have a lot of the music; the Hi-Q 'D' series was fairly prominent. And, to be honest, I'm not a big fan of the show.

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  8. It is the WRITING that makes this record so great... one of the few times DAWS BUTLER was allowed to write the script! I mixed the appropriate CAPITOL HQ music into this and played it on CARTOON CARNIVAL! You can hear MY version here:
    http://www.joebev.com/joebev-audio/cartoon-carnival/cartoon-carnival-23a.mp3

    http://www.joebev.com/joebev-audio/cartoon-carnival/cartoon-carnival-23b.mp3

    http://www.joebev.com/joebev-audio/cartoon-carnival/cartoon-carnival-23c.mp3


    --
    Best to you,

    Joe Bev.
    http://www.joebev.com
    http://www.joebev.com/cartooncarnival.htm

    CARTOON CARNIVAL with Joe Bev.
    "The first radio cartoon show ever!"

    Weekly series airing:

    1) ONLINE DAILY at 3 PM (PT) Shokus Internet Radio
    http://www.shokusradio.com

    2) Omni Media Networks:
    SUNDAYS at 6 PM (PT) all channels(Classic Car Gold, the Stream, the Beyond
    Channel, and Hound Dog) and AM 1610 FM 89.3, Albany, OR
    MONDAYS at 2 PM and 1 PM and TUESDAYS at 6 AM (PT) Golden Hours Radio Network
    THURSDAYS, 3 PM (PT) The Powerful World of Sound
    ONLINE: http://www.omnimedianetworks.org/listen.htm

    3) FRIDAYS at 6 PM (PT) on KITC, 106.5 FM, Gilchrist, OR: http://kitcfm.com

    4) Saturday at 9 AM (CT) on North Texas Radio for the Blind (NTRB)
    Reading & Radio Resource, Dallas, TX
    www.readingresource.org

    5) SATURDAYS at 8 PM (CT) on Wisconsin Public Radio WGTD HD3:
    http://www.wgtd.org

    6) SATURDAYS at 8 AM (ET) on The 1920s Network, WHRO HD-3, Norfolk Va Beach
    http://www.the1920snetwork.com

    Stations airing specials:

    7) KREV-LP 104.7 FM Estes Park, CO

    8) KEOS-FM, 89.1, College Station/Bryan, TX.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Listneing to it, it';s fun. I downloaded that latest offeirng, from raido actor Frank Milano imitating Daws Butler, and it's kind of fun but this with the AUTHENIC H-B actors, is excellent.
    BTW, I though at 3:08 it was Jinks doing the "Delicat-tessan" [due to Pixie and Dixie previously talking right before], but listneing again, it's Yogi. Hilarious dialogue.


    In conclusion: fun as the soundalike recently posted last week [July 21, in "But He Could Do a Great Psychotic Motorboat", July 24, ] was, there's nothing like the real thing, as the song once said.

    ReplyDelete