Friday 25 December 2015

It's Curtins



Have you been good little girls and boys this year? You have! Then Santa Yowp has something for you for Christmas. And not just the beautiful Dick Bickenbach drawing from 1958 you see above (courtesy of the Bill Wray collection).

It seems to have become a tradition around here to post Hanna-Barbera underscore music on the 25th of December. Unfortunately, Krampus Yowp has been at work on this one. I ran out of Capitol Hi-Q stock music from the cartoons a long time ago; whatever I can find is on posts for the individual cartoons, though there are some missing cues. About the best I can do is post this old picture of the Capitol Records building where Bill Loose and John Seely had their offices.



The next best thing to the Capitol headquarters on the picture above is near the light pole. You’ll notice that right behind it is the ugliest car ever made, the 1951 Nash. Neighbours of ours had a dark green one. As Astro would say, “Blecchh!” (The ad on the right is from the late ‘60s after Loose and Seely left and electronic music was added to the library).

Another year has gone without being able to identify about a dozen of the Jack Shaindlin stock cues in the cartoons that came from the Langlois Filmusic library. I must confess that I have copies of several of them given to me by Earl Kress, who asked me not to put them on the blog. Earl’s gone but I’m respecting his wishes. Earl said he should have acquired cue sheets for all the cartoons when he had the chance, but didn’t think he needed to because he saw the same cues over and over on the sheets he did acquire. He didn’t realise how many others there were (ones that are now unidentified). So, in lieu of no Shaindlin cues, let’s post a couple of pictures of the fine composer and conductor from old trade magazines.



However, the blog does have some music for you from the best composer to work in TV cartoons, Hoyt Curtin. These cues are actually a gift from reader J.J. Pidgeon. You should recognise most of them from Top Cat or The Flintstones. My favourites, though, are the ones that underscored commercials for Kellogg. T-98 is terrific. It’s a reworking of the Snagglepuss Main Title theme incorporating the Kellogg’s “Best To You Each Morning” jingle. I’m pretty sure Q-6 was from a Cocoa Krispies spot. Click on the title to play.


Q-6

Q-31

Q-32

T-49

T-50

T-97

T-97B

T-98

T-99C

T-100

T-103

T-109

T-201

T-202

T-203

T-205

T-212

T-212A

T-214

T-215

You can check out some old Christmas posts by clicking on the links for 2014 and 2013.

I’ll leave you wish a non-seasonal drawing that came up recently on one of the internet auction sites. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the finished drawing somewhere. All the Hanna-Barbera TV stars have gathered to help promote the studio’s newest show—Top Cat. This may be our final Yuletide post so I’d like to thank you for reading over the years. There’s one more post to go before the end of the year.

15 comments:

  1. Yes, Capitol's iconic "Record Stack" building at Hollywood and Vine is still a landmark for tourists. And I've seen cars that were uglier than that Nash.

    Shaindlin certainly had some dramatic portraits, didn't he? There's an equally intense photo of him in action as a conductor in Raymond Fielding's book on "The March of Time." The public library in a town I used to live in had not only that book, but most of the MOT films on VHS; Shaindlin did wonders with his 20-piece orchestra.
    Merry Christmas, Yowp (and Steve)!

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  2. Love your blog and keep coming back every couple days to see what you've posted. I appreciate all the hard work you put into this and hope you have a happy holiday season! :-)

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  3. I love the blog; and yes, who's leaning on the post in front of the Capitol building is something to see! SC PS rnigm: I'd rather drive that Nash or whatever than a Prius, Focus,etc.(with all due respect to drivers of such) made today.

    THanks respecting Mr.Kress's wishes, as I have similiarly done with others on file sharing sites (you will note - pun - on my Gumby blog no pks are shared by me.)

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  4. I heard most of these cues on "Top Cat."

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  5. That Bickenbach drawing of Ruff & Reddy trying to hitch a ride with the Huck Hound Show crew is terrific--it appears to be intended for a company Christmas card--but I can't figure why, if that's the case, Bick drew Yogi with his cereal-eating neckerchief instead of his more formal collar and tie, when he just as well could have given him a winter-related muffler instead. It couldn't be a prelim for a Kellogg's promo, since Ruff & Reddy were Post Cereal all the way. (Maybe he was in the midst of working on the upcoming Quick Draw McGraw Show, and accidentally attired him with one of Quick Draw or Baba's leftovers.)

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  6. LOVE the Top Cat art work with Huck, Yogi, Fred, etc. 20 years or so later, the studio would issue several "limited edition" cels featuring "the whole gang" in a variety of scenarios, all with considerably less appeal than this.

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  7. Thanks Yowp. As always, I love your yearly December music cue blogs.

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  8. OH. MY. GOD. - Cue T-202 - its the track I've been looking for my whole life!! Used to great effect in The Flintstone's season 5 Episode 8 "Dr. Sinister" during the kidnapping flight. Also, T-50, heard in the Jetson's eposide 20 "Miss Solar System" when Gina Lolajupiter demostrates how to walk for Ed Solarvan. Thanks, Yowp! You just make my 2015 for me!!

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  9. Love the Top Cat and HB pencil sketch. Have a request do you have the music from that world famous violinist, Lazlo Lazlo from the Top Cat episode "The Violinist"? Always enjoy this blog and learn a lot from it. Have a Happy New Year.

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  10. I just rediscovered your blog and love the sketches, too. They do my heart good. Happy New Year, and keep up the good work!

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  11. T-99C is a cue used exclusively in "integrated" Kellogg's commercials (and probably in one featuring Hokey and Ding-A-Ling).

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  12. I just found this blog. Thank you for all your work.

    I can’t seem to play these files. Were the links removed?

    I am particularly looking for the Top Cat underscores that weren’t a part of the Hanna Barbera’s Pic-A-Nic basket collection (CD 2 had the Top Cat underscore). In particular, in the episode “Farewell Mr. Dibble”, the start of the episode has a beautiful piece of music.


    Any ideas where I can find this?

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    1. Ron, the problem is Blogger no longer allows my Flash players to work on this site for security reasons, so the links have all vanished. You have to somehow go into the address bar and allow Flash to run.

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    2. Thanks again for the reply. I went searching for your content online and found it on archive.org. Here is the link that you might want to post out to your readers so that they can find the songs and download them if they wish:

      https://archive.org/details/@yowp&tab=uploads

      And the underscore I was looking for was "Dinosaur Love" from your Christmas post in December 2014. I have been looking for that underscore for 18 years.

      Thank you so much for this. I wonder if CD quality / remastered versions of those Top Cat underscores exists. Again, thank you.

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