The Augie Sounds of Cadkin and Bluestone

NOTE: The music in this post is not public domain. One can find the same audition-quality versions on the rights-holder’s web site. Yowp.

Mike Maltese summed up a career in the commercial world of arts and entertainment through the beak of Daffy Duck. As Daffy demeans himself for cash by accepting a continual stream of pies in the face, he turns to the audience, shrugs and remarks with resignation: “It’s a living,” before returning to his emasculated lot in life.

Daffy in Daffy Dilly is a metaphor for the many talented artists who spent their lives up and down the ladder of success, sometimes having no option but to accept a spot on the lower rungs through circumstance because it paid the bills. The H-B studio was full of them. But so were/are other parts of the show business world. Thus you have journeymen in the world of music who travel from fronting orchestras and arranging for legends like Frank Sinatra to writing background music for child safety films and soft porn (Bill Loose).

Two musical talents who journeyed hither and yon with an unknowing whistlestop in the sound room at 1416 North LaBrea at Sunset (home of The Quick Draw McGraw Show) were Harry Bluestone and Emil Cadkin. There isn’t a lot of biographical information about either of them on the net, so I’m going to cobble together some snippets and then talk about their music that you can hear on Augie Doggie cartoons.

Harry B. Bluestone
Harry was born Harold B. Blostein in England on September 30, 1907 and apparently came to New York as a boy. He took up the violin at a young age, and the liner notes on his Artistry in Jazz album reveal “he performed the Bruch G-Minor Violin Concerto to critical acclaim when only 7 years old.” As a teenager, he travelled to Paris with a small jazz group to back up expatriate singer Josephine Baker.
Harry graduated from the Institute of Musical Art (later renamed Juilliard), and freelanced on numerous radio programmes in the 1930s with the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. He played with Bix Beiderbeck, Bunny Berigan and Red Nichols (who had in his employ a future cartoon sound genius named Treg Brown).
Harry moved to Hollywood in 1935 with the Lennie Hayton orchestra, which had been known as the Ipana Troubadors on Fred Allen’s Show in New York, when it became the first orchestra on Your Hit Parade (eventually replaced in 1939 by the legendary Raymond Scott). Bluestone had his own 15-minute radio show, recorded for Brunswick and was hired by Paramount Studios as its concertmaster.
He enlisted in the Air Force in 1942, rose to the rank of Master Sergeant and organised both the Army Air Force Orchestra and the Army Air Force Training Command Orchestra that replaced Glenn Miller, who went overseas to his eventual death.
After the war, Harry set up his own orchestra which backed Jo Stafford and Dinah Shore. He also got a first taste of the music library business as production manager for Standard Transcriptions. Among his discoveries while recording in France (to get around Jimmy Petrillo’s union) was singer Robert Clary, who later co-starred on Hogan’s Heroes.
Harry spent the rest of his life setting up various music publishing houses, writing and getting out his violin or his baton to work on albums by the Beach Boys, Peggy Lee and the Beatles (on Sgt. Pepper’s). He also wrote books in the ’80s on playing violin, guitar and trumpet.
He retired in 1987 and died in Studio City, California on December 23, 1992.

Emil M. Cadkin
Emil is still with us, with his son running his music production house. He was born in 1920 in Cleveland to parents who had emigrated from Russia, spent two years in college and was in Los Angeles writing and teaching music by the time he enlisted in the Air Force in 1942. His song I Have Everything I Want But You was copyrighted in 1938. After being discharged, he scored films like “The Big Fix” for bottom-of-the-barrel studio PRC.
Emil was an associate editor of ASCAP’s ‘The Score’ when it was created in 1948, and got a job in 1958 as musical director at Ritco Productions, a low-budget company that churned out westerns starring Forrest Tucker. He graduated to become musical director and arranger for Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems. He also got into the business of supplying taped music programming for radio stations, as Billboard of May 23, 1970 reveals he had been appointed music director of popular products (as opposed to classical) for American Tape Duplicators.
But he spent a decade writing music along with Bill Loose, which ended up in various libraries, including Capitol Hi-Q. Billboard of December 23, 1967 reveals:

Emil Asher Inc. has acquired distribution rights to the music library of composers William Loose and Emil Cadkin ... formerly contracted to Capitol Records ... The deal gives Asher the rights to distribute three libraries produced by Loose and Cadkin: Public Music Service (PMS), OK and PM.

The OK library featured music by Loose, Cadkin and Jack Cookerly; Loose and Cadkin are also credited on the EMI Photoplay series with co-writing melodies in the 1960s with Phil Green, whose cues also appeared on H-B cartoons. Unfortunately, the Cadkin-Loose partnership that began in 1959 resulted in litigation between the two sides years later, with Cadkin claiming Loose’s widow, her late husband’s trust and their publisher had removed Cadkin’s name as the writer or co-writer of 5,000-plus pieces of music. Cadkin also launched a separate case against Bluestone’s widow Leora and several others. Anyone interested in the legalities of all this can do an on-line search of court rulings, as we’re here to talk about the cues on Augie Doggie. So leave us to do some Snooper and Blabber-type detective work.

Bluestone and Cadkin may have met while serving together in the Air Force, but we do know the two were writing songs together as early as 1944. In 1954, the two formed the C and B Music Library to compete against the growing number of stock music companies selling audio for television production. Production music expert Paul Mandell says some of these cues ended up on The Lone Ranger and Jungle Jim. Bad sci-fi fans gleefully point out their work can be heard in The Killer Shrews (1959). The music was distributed by Capitol, the makers of the Hi-Q Library. The way I read Mandell’s essay on the subject, C and B (or “C-B” as he calls it) was distributed by Capitol. But at least four reels—L 1A through 4A—ended up in the Hi-Q Library itself.

The future of all this Bluestone-Cadkin music gets a little confusing after that. A newspaper story in 1961 reveals Bing Crosby’s publicist Maury Foladare and Bluestone (who played violin for The Old Groaner) put together some old cues of Bluestone’s for a library called Musi-Que, designed for soundtracks of home movies. But there already was a Musi-Que, founded in 1958 by Bluestone’s old employer, Standard Transcriptions. Whether the two are the same isn’t clear, but it appears possible Musi-Que released the Bluestone-Cadkin cues used in H-B cartoons. Regardless, those L-1A to L-4A cues, and the beds in the Musi-Que library, were purchased several years ago by another company, and given fresh names.

Below are the eight C and B cues used by Hanna-Barbera, mostly in the Augie Doggie shorts. I have included the Hi-Q alpha-numeric code, but the names are ones given to them by the current rights-holder. Click on the title in green and the music should play.

1. CB-89A Romantic Jaunt
2. CB-83A Mr. Tippy Toes
3. CB-87A Come and Get Me
4. CB-90 Happy Home
5. CB-92A First Steps
6. CB-85A Stealthy Mouse
7. CB-91A Playful
8. CB-86A Hide and Seek

You can find more H-B cartoon music here (Phil Green), here (more Phil Green), here (Geordie Hormel) and here (Spencer Moore).

Oh, Bluestone, by the way, has one other cartoon connection, once removed. As a violinist, he worked with Billy May on the beloved Capitol children’s records of the late 1940s, records which featured cartoon favourites like Bugs and Daffy, with voices by Billy Bletcher, Pinto Colvig and Sara Berner, all of whom made appearances at Warners and other studios.

Not a bad way to make a living. Better than a pie in the face. Daffy would agree.