Friday 25 December 2009

Capitol Hi-Q — Cartoon Music For Huck and Yogi

2022 note: some of the music has been removed by a third party, likely due to a copyright claim.

Life is full of surprises. When I bought Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice and Magic and then happened upon a copy of Friedwald and Beck’s The Warner Brothers Cartoons, I had no idea anyone else had the same interest in who made those funny old cartoons. And when the internet piped itself (at first from a BBS at 300 baud) into the Yowp residence, I discovered there are people—lots of them, it turns out—who have an interest in commercial and industrial film music from the 1950s into the ‘60s.

The library music industry exploded with television. Most producers couldn’t afford to hire composers or union musicians. So they turned to less expensive stock music libraries. Anyone could use them who paid the fee. That’s why you can hear the same stock music in old cartoons, commercials and sitcoms.

One of the biggest libraries in North America was the Capitol Hi-Q library. It was divided into five categories—“D” for “dramatic,” “L” for “light”, “M” for “melodic,” “S” for “short” and “X” for “extra,” where cues were placed that didn’t fit anywhere else, eg. international, ethnic and Christmas music. Capitol got cues from other libraries for Hi-Q, so you’ll find stuff from the C & B, Sam Fox, EMI Photoplay and even KPM libraries. New music was added. Some was subtracted, so cues that were in one year were replaced with different ones in future releases.

 You’ve read the names of some the composers on this blog—Bill Loose, John Seely (who had written for Sam Fox), Phil Green (EMI), Harry Bluestone and Emil Cadkin (C and B), Geordie Hormel (Zephyr) and Spencer Moore. Later entries were co-written by Loose, Cadkin and Jack Cookerly (OK). There are ‘D’ series cues from others—Jack Meakin, Joseph Cacciola and even Nelson Riddle. And there are a variety of composers who wrote for Sam Fox (Cacciola included) whose cues can be heard.

But there’s one composer—well known at the time—who never received a stick of credit because of the common practice of the day of someone slapping their name on someone else’s music—by legal or illegal means. Such a thing happened with the Hi-Q library. So let’s give you some history, thanks again to a surprise on the internet.

Paul Mandell wrote an insightful chapter on the history of stock music for the book ‘Performing Arts: Broadcasting,’ published by the U.S. Library of Congress in 2002. It’s available in snippets on Google Books. I won’t put the whole thing here, but I’ve snipped together the snippets about the topic at hand.


The Capitol Hi-Q Library
Long before Capitol records moved into its spaceage tower off Hollywood and Vine, it serviced radio stations through its broadcast division with transcriptions of rights-free music recorded in Europe. The service went out of business in 1951.
In 1952, production chief Ken Nelson and library manager John Seely created the Capitol Q Series by leasing the Mutel library from David Chudnow and distributing it on 175 double-sided 78 rpm vinyl records. Q supplied music for radio shows Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, True Detectives, and bumper music for television station breaks. Contractually, however, Capitol was forbidden to track Q as background music for television.
In 1955, Capitol decided to create its own music library and approached Nelson Riddle to write it. Riddle was busy with his groundbreaking arrangements for Frank Sinatra, so Capitol hired Bill Loose, a pop composer-arranger with a good melodic sense. In January 1956, Loose turned in an astounding 5,500 pages of sheet music. The sessions were recorded by Phil Green's orchestra in London and brought back to Hollywood. John Seely cataloged it by mood and packaged it on 110 reels of quarter-inch tape and fifty-five corresponding audition discs. The twenty-two-hour package was christened Capitol Hi-Q, a reference to the new buzz on high fidelity. The entire library was made licensable to film and television producers for as little as 350 dollars.
A major part of Hi-Q was Theme Craft, a name invented by Seely to house powerful mood music by David Rose. “Bill Loose and I paid Rose a bunch of cash,” said Seely. “He had to sell it rights-free and composer-free. It was all on reels of quarter-inch tape. We spent 100 dollars a minute for it. Everybody thought we were crazy, but I insisted that it was worth it. Then Bill agreed to write as much as David did and we put our names on the entire package.”
Rose’s music packed a wallop. TC 2 (“Heavy Chase”) was an ear-splitting horror theme with cascading trombones and sizzling clusters. His “Dreaming Ghost” and “Sparkling Ghost” cues (TC 16-24) with ethereal strings, gossamer harps, and otherworldly woodwinds were used for underwater tension in Sea Hunt.
Theme Craft cues by Bill Loose caught on as signature themes. A light comedy piece with a xylophone “nose twitch” became the theme for Dennis the Menace. TC 430 (“Happy Day”) became the theme for The Donna Reed Show. Loose’s cowriter Jack Cookerly recalled, “We wrote a bunch of cues we jokingly called ‘Music to Wash Windows By.’ We called them ‘domestics’ and the industry really ate them up! The Donna Reed people picked that particular theme; it wasn't written for the series at all! Irving Friedman of Screen Gems made the deal to restrict its use. It could be tracked into an industrial film, but not for broadcast.”
Capitol became the largest distributor of canned television music in America. A 1965 memo to Hi-Q subscribers listed twenty-two supplementary libraries with over two hundred hours of music. There were packages by Fred Steiner, Mahlon Merrick, Jack Meakin, Phil Green, Nick Carras, and outer space music by Ib Glindemann. Also distributed were the KPM, TRF, Synchro, and Omar libraries, Les Baxter’s pop themes and Latin rhythms, and the C-B library written by Emil Cadkin and Harry Bluestone. Producers no longer had to woo independent packagers—they got their music from Capitol and reported the usage on forms supplied with the tape reels.
Some hotshots of Capitol were able to grab performance royalties by bankrolling music packages. George Hormel, a pianist related to the Hormel meatpacking empire, laid claim to Hi-Q music which he financed but did not write. Spencer Moore was another. Composer Nick Carras recalled the scene: “Moore made his money by bringing his investors to Capitol and putting his name on our music. It got to be kind of a joke! We were young and green. I didn’t even know what a cue sheet was! Often you’d see cues listing Spencer Moore and George Hormel as authors in the Hi-Q catalog. Some people in the business might say ‘That looks legitimate.’ It all depended what side of the fence you were on.”

One thing omitted in Mandell’s chapter can be found in a Billboard magazine story, dated November 19, 1955:

Capitol this week acquired a library of music cues from composer-conductor Henry Russell for film use in television. Capitol continues to expand its cue library, one of the largest serving the needs of industrial and TV film producers.

Russell’s stock music ended up on a number of late 1950s TV shows and the Warner’s cartoon Hip Hip Hurry. But I have yet to come across his name in my admittedly-incomplete search of the Hi-Q library. It could be his cues were later replaced with newer material, which happened to a number of the reels/discs, including material by Gene Poddany.

Now, let’s get to the music. Click on the title to play.

 The first batch of cues is from reels L-1 and 2. ‘TC’ stands for ‘Theme Craft.’ It would appear these are among the cues ghost-written by David Rose. ‘Pixie Comedy,’ the two ‘Zany Comedy’ cues and ‘Eccentric Comedy’ should instantly bring to mind the early antics of Yogi Bear. ‘Light Movement’ is a great Western cue that will make you think of Quick Draw McGraw. And ‘Rural’ should be recognisable as the theme to the Knockout Mouse cartoon in the Pixie and Dixie short Cousin Tex. Devoted reader Errol points out that Red Skelton used that one his TV show; his musical director was David Rose.

TC-200 WISTFUL COMEDY
TC-203 WISTFUL COMEDY
TC-204A WISTFUL COMEDY
TC-308 WISTFUL COMEDY
TC-302 WALTZ
TC-201 PIXIE COMEDY
TC-202 ECCENTRIC COMEDY
TC-303 ZANY COMEDY
TC-301 ZANY WALTZ
TC-300 ECCENTRIC COMEDY
TC-205 LIGHT MOVEMENT
TC-42 RURAL

Next are Theme Craft cues written by Loose and Seely. ‘Fox Trot’ was used on Ruff and Reddy. ‘Domestic’ is also known as ‘Shining Day’, ‘Light Movement’ is also ‘Holly Day’ and ‘Light Activity’ (TC-437) has the alternate name of ‘Shopping Day.’ There are on reel L-40 along with the Donna Reed theme.

They’re followed by three of the ‘Domestics’ that Jack Cookerly (who is still alive, I understand) mentioned in the history above. ‘C’ is for ‘Capitol’ and these were penned by Bill Loose for reels L-7 and 8.


TC-304A FOX TROT
TC-436 DOMESTIC (SHINING DAY)
TC-437 LIGHT ACTIVITY (SHOPPING DAY)
TC-432 LIGHT MOVEMENT (HOLLY DAY)
C-3 DOMESTIC CHILDREN
C-6 DOMESTIC CHILDREN
C-14 DOMESTIC LIGHT

Finally, there are odds and ends from different reels. The first three are Sam Fox cues. SF-10 may also be known as ‘Ski Galop’ or ‘Skiing Galop’ (I’m still trying to confirm the first word) and is by Lou De Francesco, an Italian whose work on films went back to 1923 with Victor Herbert. Wish him a happy 121st birthday on Boxing Day. He scored the Movietone Adventures for 20th Century Fox in the mid-40s. SF-14 is by David Buttolph, a chorister and operatic who played in Europe in the 1920s, returned to New York to work in radio before going to Hollywood in 1933 to score for movies. Finally, there’s the old chestnet ‘Winter Tales’ by Alphons Czibulka. It was later arranged as ‘Hearts and Flowers’ by Theo Tobani, showing that borrowing music and slapping your name on it isn’t a 20th century concept. The solo stand-up piano version is by Victor Lamont, who did the same kind of tinkly arrangements on other 19th century melodies for Sam Fox. This can be found on Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie.

TC-22 is one of a number of cues with “Ghost” names in reel L-39. With irony, let us note it was ghost-written for Loose and Seely by David Rose.

C-19 by Bill Loose (all cues labelled ‘C’ were composed by him) came from reel L-9 and is one of a number of similar sounding cues. It opens Huckleberry Hound’s Cop and Saucer.

The last four were also composed by Rose for the Hi-Q ‘D’ series, which is famous among some collectors as the home of the soundtrack for ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1969). The first three are from reel D-20, the last from D-8. TC-215A was on Ruff and Reddy only. Finally, TC-221A can be heard on Yogi’s High Fly Guy. There are cues without the ‘A’; are all slower-tempo versions.


SF-10 LIGHT MOVEMENT (SKIING GALOP?)
SF-14 THE COCKEYED COLONEL
SF-? WINTER TALES
TC-22 SUBLIME GHOST
C-19 LIGHT ACTIVITY
TC-215A CHASE-MEDIUM
TC-219A CHASE-MEDIUM
TC-217A CHASE-MEDIUM
TC-221A HEAVY AGITATO

Eventually, out of necessity, Hi-Q had to evolve in the 1960s, simply because of the state of the music business in general. The sound was changing in the world of pop music, thanks to the end of big bands and the rise of rock. The Hi-Q music sounded old fashioned. New, less orchestrated music was added (under various pseudonyms) by Ib Glindemann and Ole Georg, who took over from Bill Loose at Capitol in 1964. Eventually, Capitol divested itself of all the pre-Georg era music and the library became known today as ‘Ole Georg Music’. And television changed, too. Producers had the money or inclination to hire composers for programme-specific themes and/or bumpers. Hanna-Barbera was among them, asking Hoyt Curtin to write his own library of incidental music; first for Loopy De Loop in 1959, then The Flintstones (1960), the Snagglepuss and Yakky Doodle elements of the Yogi show (first aired in 1961) and then for all remaining new cartoons.

One final note: Capitol distributed music that was not in Hi-Q but used in Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Most of it is Jack Shaindlin’s material in the Langlois Filmusic Library. Raoul Kraushaar clipped together old movie music for his Omar Library; Huck and Yogi used two cues from that service, sometimes edited together. The ASCAP database says there was a Clarence Wheeler cue called ‘Woodwind Capers’ used in Huck and Yogi cartoons; it appears to been a short flute effect. And a Vancouver native named Edgar Eugene “Eddie” Lund wrote a pile of Polynesian/Hawaiian cues for a library that ASCAP says were in Snooper and Blabber, likely for Hula-Hula Hullabaloo (1960).

Some of Hoyt Curtin’s work is really great, but Snooper, Quick Draw and the others seem to be missing something when you hear the generic Curtin cues instead of the Hi-Q work of Bill Loose, Phil Green—and the man who sold away the rights to his music, David Rose.

46 comments:

  1. Hey, thanks a lot..btw Nick Carras...Nick Carra.s.I wonder if he's any arelaiton as I have the same last name and relatives who were in show biz..


    BTW 215-TCA WAS in a very early Pixie and Dixie, Yowp [and MErry Christmas, btw]--"Pistol pakcin' Pirates", right before TC-217A
    [in the time when some Ruff and Reddy music turned up on Pixie and Dixies.]. I recognize it from a late 60s Gumby episode [its producer Art Clokey, and outside Jerry Faurbanks really used that older stock music well into the late 60s-early 70s], "Bully for Gumby". Hope to see a Jack Shaindlin entry soon..

    Pokey.,.,aka Steve C.Merry Christmas & Hanakah[sp?] tol all. And it was interesting reading about Ed Lund and the other lesser knwon composers,too.

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  2. Wow! This is your greatest post! I hope it is around for generations to come. Thanks for all of your efforts. Amazing!

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  3. So let me get this straight about the first batch---all of them Themecraft:
    David Rose wrote a number them;
    Bill Loose did others,
    Bill and John Seely produced and were cocredited FOR them,
    and Phil Green conducted and arranged them in addition to composing for his own concern [whose music, EMI Photopllay as already discussed ALSO wound up in the US library.]

    BTW as for the mystery composer behind Spencer Moore and Geordie Homrle, I wonder if the composer Henry Russell [NOT the 19th century one] may have been among them..

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  4. What a great post! Looks like it has some great music on there.

    BTW, after the next cartoon, and then 2 more, I post a list of what cartoons have you posted so far.

    Merry Christmas!

    Ryan

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  5. Pokey, thanks for the fact about TC 215A. I just went through my notes and realised I had nothing on Pistol Packin' Pirates, probably because I don't recognise a bunch of the music.

    Green conducted the TC cues to get around restrictions imposed by Petrillo on AFM members but that's another story. I didn't want to get off on that tangent. Yes, Loose composed some TC cues and Rose others that have Loose-Seely credits. I'll take John Seely and Jack Cookerly's word for it.

    I have no idea who composed the Moore and Hormel stuff, but some of it sounds like the same guy. A wild stab is it might have been Hormel's arranger at Zephyr.

    Doug, thanks very much for your help this year. The portion of the post I wrote is really a culmination of more than ten years of conversations with Steve Carras and many others. There are people far more well versed on this music than I; someone here once commented about Moore's publishing companies; only someone intimately familiar with the library would have known that kind of thing.

    Ryan, thanks for your wishes.

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  6. Couldn't ask for a better christmas gift! :) Thanks Yowp!

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  7. I'd figured you would have had those ones, TR2. The challenge is finding the Shaindlin cues. I've got a list of maybe nine, most of which I can't identify. Earl Kress was gracious enough to name 3 1/2 of them for me.
    It seems Shaindlin re-arranged and re-recorded some of his cues (for the 1965 Cinemusic release, I'm guessing). I have two different versions of 'Asinine'.

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  8. TC-22 was a staple in the early 1960s on WPIX in New York, as the bumper music for their Laurel & Hardy films (which also saw use when Ch. 11 used Stan and Ollie films during the spring and summer weekends for "Rain-Out Theater" when their broadcast of the Yankees games were, well, rained out).

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  9. Thanks a MILLION for this incredible feature. I've been listening to these cues for over 40 years in Hanna-Barbera cartoons and sitcoms from the 50s and 60s. The insights you have given on this subject the past year has been
    both informative and very entertaining. You mentioned above Petrillo. I believe Petrillo had far more enemies than friends. From Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye to Bugs Bunny..everyone took a swipe at Petrillo. Thanks for this wonderful Christmas present. Looking forward to some more great insights next year.

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  10. Yowp, I'll too take John Seely and Jack Cookerly's word for it, and same as Ryan, Merry Christmas. [Please post this..] Also you didn't have a feature [ironically] on Jack Shaindlin at all..despite having some of his cues on the sidebar!:)

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  11. I, too in the first post gave Ryan's wishes..soin th second could just as well thank us all for them.Happy new ear from all of us,too.

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  12. I'm a big YOWP blog fan. Truly YOWP is a labor of love! Have been following and downloading all the shared library tracks. I'm wondering if you could make some notation for future links, if the track is a "first time" sharing? It's hard to keep track of which track have been shared before, leading to many duplicates. I think this would be appreciated by your many followers. My best to you!

    Questions?/Comments? * This Has Been e-mail From:
    "Dr. Mark" Hill * The Doctor Of Pop Culture /*/ drmark7@juno.com

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  13. Dr. Mark, to be honest, I have no idea if these have been shared. I didn't get them from share webpages or download sites.

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  14. Dear Yowp, I meant it would be nice if you had a notation if a file you posted was the *first time* it appeared ON THIS SITE- not elsewhere! Cause I download every wonderful file you share and often they have appeared HERE before... in various cartoons and your posts on the history of library tracks and their authors- leading to time spent on many duplicate downloads. I hope that clears up what I meant.- Dr. M

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  15. Dr. Mark, my apologies. I understand now. Here's the deal.

    The cues are posted for the first time in the roundups describing the composer or the library. I figure that's the best way to showcase them. So the first time the Hormel cues were posted were in the Hormel biography, the Moore cues in the post about Moore, the Loose-Seely cues in this post, etc.

    If you can click to a cue in a post breaking down a cartoon, that cue has already appeared on the blog.

    I have only one other set of cues to go and that is in a post about Jack Shaindlin and his Langlois Filmusic Library that will come some time in the new year. I've been holding out hope that someone can point me in the direction of maybe ten of his cues but I've had no luck so far.

    Sorry to misunderstand what you had to say. I know there are all kinds of blogs out there with links to wonderful obscurities .. the Your Pal Doug site has directions to other blogs with some amazing exotica and other fun music .. and that's what I thought you were getting at.

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  16. Capitol Records. Music from EMI.
    We cannot forget that Capitol is an EMI subsidiary on the USA.

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  17. TRF Library? I noticed Paul mentioned this as one of the libraries, and that Les Baxter work was there. Looking forward to the Shaindlin article. You might want to consider folks like Roger Roger as BMI and ASCAP have him listed but probem was he was freelance and not much of his stuff may have turned up on HB.

    in the 60s, Hoyt Curtin and very early Ted Nichols [Abbott and Costello, whose full version resurfaced on YouTube recently] was excellent as Yowp said, but the early shorter cartoons, of which Ruff and Reddy's the first, and also the only one not to use the Curtin or later music due to its curtailing production in 1960, somewhat miss something without the early music. For me, though Quick Draw had enough genre-type stuff to lend itself to early Curtin [the western cues heard when Wilma and Fred mention the west as used on Quick Draw, the Top Cat metropolitan Curtin cue as could have been used on Snooper and Blabber, and early "happy home domestic" cues under Fred or Loopy De Loop for Augie[1961062 season of QD].

    :)

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  18. Frankly, the Curtin stuff still sounds out of place on Quick Draw. I keep waiting for the Goofy Guards to walk in. Even Curtin's short bassoon cues for The Flintstones are utilitarian at best. His music for Top Cat, The Jetsons and Jonny Quest, along with his early theme songs, are his best. Each set of cues enhances the action; the Quest music especially. I don't know where the Magilla music was recorded, but the producer compressed the crap out of it; that was noticeable as an eight year old.

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  19. Yowp, I still agree with you, in spit of my previous post [that Goofy Guards comment was funny!] I still much rather would hear the original music on there as well.

    SJC

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  20. "Yowp-Yowp" Dodsworth,

    The John Seely's track Heavy agitato was originally played on The Ruff & Reddy Show (Hanna-Barbera/Columbia Pictures, 1957-60).
    When John Kricfalusi directed the two new Yogi Bear shorts in 1999 - A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith and Boo Boo Goes Wild -, he used the John Seely's music tracks recorded by EMI/Capitol (very used on The Ruff & Reddy Show and The Huckleberry Hound Show [Hanna-Barbera/Columbia Pictures, 1958-62]) on these two shorts.
    Alias, on the fight scene between Yogi and Ranger Smith (at the moment in which Mr. Ranger was attempting to kill that freak in who Boo Boo turned into, and Yogi attempting to do something to save the Boo Boo's life) in Boo Boo Goes Wild, Johnny K. used the Heavy agitato track on this same fight scene. It made me thrills!

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  21. And Rod, when John K. made that third, INTERNET, Yogi short, again like the others more of a "spinoff" since a supporting character, Boo Boo in this case, was utilized, 2003's "Boo-Boo and the Man", the actuasl EMI Photoplay cues [the ones used on the Quick Draw trilogy]. Also, Hoyt CUrtin and early Ted Nichols "Johnny Quest/Abbott and Costello" music is briefly heard. BTW Yet another show using these was the 1960 "Happy", the B&W talking baby one, which I prefer to all of the later ,movies and TV shows using that concept. It's on here-select from pull menu but oddly not on YouTupe, except for an ad, and not [to my knowledge!] on the one place that you'd EXPECT-correct me if otherwise-on Prelinger Archives. You'd think that Happy the talking baby would be in Classic TV or something [ITS Capitol cues are more likely to to be heard in Clokey shows than the HB ones,though,being by Jack Cookerly.]

    Steve

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  22. Yowp said:"Some of Hoyt Curtin’s work is really great, but Snooper, Quick Draw and the others seem to be missing something when you hear the generic Curtin cues instead of the Hi-Q work of Bill Loose, Phil Green—and the man who sold away the rights to his music, David Rose. "

    Not to mention others, and the Jack S. Filmmusic discs.

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  23. Yikes.....Yowp, you are ONE swell dog. That Henry Russell story from 1955 was a great update and addition. Thank you so much for intrepeding sniffing out info [let's see a certain overmerchandised group of meddlin' kids and their dawg try THATG!] Henry Russell can be found on imbd.com as .. the composer of a WB tune heard in such 1930s shorts [but none after] as the 1936 cartoon, and the first in the post-1948 Warner package after those 1930s shorts got the cheapy retracing treatment, and that cartoon would be "Plane Dippy". His song? "When...I Yoo-Hoo"!

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  24. HI -- I just ran across this site, although I had known of (and forgotten about) the Capitol High Q cues in the past. Many of these cues were also used on the 14 seasons of the Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, if I'm not mistaken. One O&H cue I have been searching for for sometime seems no where to be found, though it was common on the program. Any thoughts?

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  25. Hi, Anon. I'd have to hear what cue you're talking about.
    Ozzie used a bunch of cues co-written with Jack Cookerly. And one of the later opening themes was actually a piece written by Phil Green that was on reels L-93/94.

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  26. Thanks for a fantastic run-down on CAPITOL HI-Q. Until tonight, I knew next to nothing about it, only that Carlin / CPM somehow evolved from it.

    In mid-2010, 2 members of the SPIDEY-JAZZ Yahoo Group managed to identify a number of tracks used in Seasons 2-3 of SPIDER-MAN (1967-70) as being composed by William Loose & Emil Cadkin. These tracks turned up on the KPM website in the Carlin section, in CPM-2, CPM-4 & CPM-5. (Strangely enough, these have since disappeared from the site.)

    Since that time, I've managed to identify some of these tracks as having been used on THE UNTOUCHABLES, THE FUGITIVE and 8TH MAN. THE UNTOUCHABLES definitely put the date as early as 1959, 8 years before the 2nd season of SPIDER-MAN, when the "Library Tracks" made their debut on the cartoons.

    There's still a TON of tracks used on the show that so far no one has been able to identify, but it's crossed my mind that there may well be an old LP or two crammed with this "film noir" music, and if we could locate the tracks we already know, the "missing" ones may also be there together with them.


    Of course, there's this business (mentioned on the "Bryan's Lounge" blog) about track titles being RE-NAMED... what's WRONG with these people??? I myself like to add "alternate" titles to many of these tracks, but only within the context of the SPIDER-MAN series. (Good examples being-- "L.S.D." by Alan Hawkshaw, also known as "DOWN THE HOLE", and "Diskothik" by Bill Martin & Phil Coulter, also known as "UNDERGROUND SWING". Martin & Coulter, I only figured out a few years ago, are the SAME guys who wrote & produced for The Bay City Rollers, including their big hit, "SATURDAY NIGHT".)

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  27. Hi, Henry. The Loose-Cadkin cues were part of another library called Capitol Production Music. It's mentioned in another post on the blog.

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  28. Dave Sheild's excellent theme music site has articles on Mahlon Merrick and Lou Kosloff listing them as composers themes that wound up with the other composers above listed on various shows and indeed, Dvae's research buddy AND the quoted source in this blog Paul Mandell cites Merrick as one of those with numerous music packages (though I found that the Nick Carras isn't even a relatrion of mine..)


    There should be an XM Satellite Sirius XM station ONLY of 1940s-1950s production stock music...yeah, right....:(

    (Trots out stage left to the final notes of 6-TC-205 [WESTERN PRAIRIE] LIGHT MOVEMENT by Seely & Loose.SC

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  29. I agree that the 1961-62 new cartoons added to the established package from 1958-1960 lack the aural dimension of the more full orchestral cues. While the Curtain cues are amusing, his cues used in the later cartoons of the established series made them seem that more cheap. Had they been established with the Curtain cues, this comparison would not be so obvious.

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  30. In addition to the Capital Hi-Q Library, Screen Gems also licensed some Thomas J. Valentino music. It appears that Hanna-Barbera started making the break from the library music in 1960, and Screen Gems for their television series about a year later. Of particular interest is that the DENNIS THE MENACE program had a mixture of original themes combined with library cues during its first two seasons.

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  31. They used the music of John Seely in some cartoons due to the strike.

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  32. Some of that music later showed up onto "The Ren and Stimpy Show" (like "Sublime Ghost"), but typically those kind of cues were used as a joke, like "You've heard this in a number of old cartoons, so let's play it in a modern one!"

    As for when Hoyt Curtin began writing original music for Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw in 1961, the problem was that a number of it was simply recycled "Flintstones" and "Yogi Bear" music. During the 1960s, H-B did have quite a habit of recycling music between shows as one of their famous cost-cutting techniques, and this even continued into the early 1970s (I remember hearing a "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" chase track heard in the 1971 TV special "The Thanksgiving that Almost Wasn't.")
    Curtin was also known for the synthesized music that accompanied the 1979-1992 Hanna-Barbera "Swirling Star" closing logos.

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  33. Hi. I have a lot of these THE Capitol HI "Q" SERIES reel-to-reel tapes (7 1/2 ips). Any ideas how I can get them to people who would want them? Thanks.

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  34. Hi, Anon. People have been selling them on e-Bay.
    I no longer have a reel-to-reel recorder but I can get access to one. I've got most of the reels I'm looking for but you can drop me an e-mail.

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  35. Are any of the Hi-Q stock music tracks under copyright?

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  36. The rights are owned by the composers' estates.

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  37. The Capitol Production cues to me are surreally a lot like classic orange colored banana flavored Circus Peanuts candies - not just so-called "guilty pleasures" but hard to track down as far as creators are concerned what with all this ghostwriting and repackaging....stock cues with names contractually changed....seems only David Rose totally agreed for keeps to let John Seely go through, with the others's charging lawsuits, and that's not to mention whether or not the estates allow at all or at least for a cheap price (remembering Earl Kress's explanation of why only a few Phil Green cues show up in that 1996 Rhino CD).SC

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  38. Hello, I've just acquired a Capitol Q 12" 78 transcription record. It has four cues that were used frequently in The Adventures of Superman TV show. Is this of any great value? Thank you.

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    Replies
    1. Mike, I wish I had an answer to your question, but I don't.

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  39. In its later years under Capitol ownership (about 1969), the Hi-Q library changed its name to Media Music. I have two samples thereof, one from 1969 and the other from 1970.

    But as for Ib Glindemann, another piece of his from another Hi-Q disc/reel (VM-174, I believe), titled "Construction Site" (written under the alias "Dan Kirsten"), was familiar to a generation of New Yorkers: The first few seconds (heavy on xylophone and horns) were used as the sounder at :00, :20 and :40 on all-news station 1010 WINS from about 1974 to 1993 (after which re-recordings based on that number would be used). A bit more of that instrumental served as the opening and closing theme to the syndicated health advice series Viewpoint on Nutrition with Dr. Arnold Pike, from the 1970's into the '80's (in New York, it was a Saturday morning staple for much of that time period on WOR-TV [Channel 9]). Would anyone know from what time period would that VM-174 have been, and which other places (if not Hanna-Barbera) would have used this or other music from it?

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  40. Just last night I got some scans from a confidential user at Soulseek of a LOT of old Capitol Hi-Q labels. Rural Fox Trot by Philip Green can be found on L-42 and it is 8-PG-202 RURAL FOX TROT.

    Interestingly, the cues originally titled "Old Lavender","Daffodil Yellow" (favorite or mine and Yowp),
    and the Ozzie and Harriet theme "Blush Rose" all called light melodics are on the copy I saw on the pic, their original names that I gave and others. L-95/L-96.

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  41. Cadkin and Cookerly's "Fox Trot" was also included in a Benny Hill sketch early on in his run with Thames Television. I wonder if it was in "The Short Happy Life of Maurice Dribble" sketch; I can't rightly tell as it was played on the show at 78 RPM. In what "Ruff and Reddy" installment would that number have been featured, to compare?

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  42. The musics are not avabible :(

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  43. Links are dead; please tell us someone found new links or put them on another blog!

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    Replies
    1. They were evidently taken down at their source at the request of the rights holder, the same reason more cartoons with them will not be released on home video.

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  44. I noted in some Quick Draw entries the composer of the familair hoedown music is listed, a familiar Sam Fox composer named J.Louis Merkur. And I noted Jack Shaindlin finally got his credit for the familiar sad music.Take care.

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