High Note

I had the pleasure of seeing this as well as other great Chuck Jones' cartoons on the big screen. Linda Jones Clough, Chuck Jones' daughter, introduced each film with a memory that related to the film. Interesting trivia: Linda stated that High Note has never been shown on TV because it involves drunk notes that censors felt where not suitable for children.

In one of the occasional instances where they took a break from using their normal cast, the crowd behind the Looney Tunes cartoons made "High Note", about music notes assembling themselves for "The Blue Danube", only to have one note get drunk, leading the conductor note to chase him all over the sheet.

It's one of their many shorts introducing children to high culture (at the very least, it seems that they were doing that). It also shows that cartoons don't need words to be great; in fact, it makes them more comprehensible to other cultures if they consist of only images. Whether it's just quick entertainment or something else, this is a cartoon for the ages. I definitely recommend it.

I did see this as a child on TV in the early 1970s it was probably on a local station before the PC police got started censoring everything good. It is available on a laser disc called "Looney Tunes Curtain Calls" yes it is currently on ebay & usually goes from $5.00 to $15.00 & it is even listed as a buy it now right now. The quality is the same as a DVD how do i know because i own it on laser disc & watched it last night it may have been the late 1960s or early 1970s when i first saw it on TV also the CBS station back then showed these on a Saturday afternoon where the characters came on with the song on with the show. It is a great cartoon & with cable today its hard to believe that it is too risqué to be shown.

Some reviews have noted on this site that this particular Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon was not shown on TV. I certainly don't remember seeing it then so I'm guessing this was truly my first time of wacthing this which I just did on the DVD of Cash McCall. It depicts the musical sheet of "The Blue Danube" and the various musical notes moving about trying to assemble on the scales to have the note conductor conduct. But when that note conductor does, he finds out that one of the notes is missing, in fact, he's in the "Little Brown Jug" sheet getting drunk (which you can tell because the head is colored red...) What I just described is enough to tell you that this was a more unusual cartoon, even from Chuck Jones, than what one is used to from Warner Bros., that's for sure! But it's quite funny and creative and it deserved its Oscar nomination. So that's a high recommendation for High Note.

I thought I remembered seeing this on T.V. growing up, but other reviewers claim it stopped airing sometime after the '70s or it rarely ever aired again. Now I'm not as sure as I thought I was. I still thought it seemed familiar to me somehow despite that. Anyway, this WB cartoon definitely accords with me. This would be on my favorites list and what I consider as one of the best of the '60s, especially before the DePatie-Freleng and W-7 Arts eras. I haven't listened to classical music as much as I have some, other genres. The closest I've come to that was through ragtime/novelty ragtime and prog rock, the latter particularly by the British band, Renaissance. One of the best music-themed shorts in the series and being a big music person, I'm into several of them involving music.

High Note is a highly innovative and entertaining short that features various things made out of musical notes, like them being turned into live stick figures, and anything else that's written on staff paper. The note/stick figure that's the conductor is trying to get the playing of the piece, The Blue Danube, going, is unable to do so due to a missing musical note who's drunk, which is the reason this cartoon got banned, depictions of alcoholism. Much of the rest of the presentation is spent trying to get the drunk musical note to return to its place in the opus so that it can be played completely and without interruption. But in the end, it still doesn't go as planned. A few, other, well-renowned songs are featured as well, such as "Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone".

Even when I was little/younger, I believe I would've appreciated this break out of the norm. That's why this, along with The Dot And The Line, are so special. An example of high class fine art at its highest and finest. Another Chuck Jones-directed favorite. I wasn't always so big on classical or classical-influenced music, but maybe that's because I haven't found those songs that truly grabbed me. The compositions are nice, as is everything else about this. I've been a little more appreciative of it since. I can't wait till this finally makes its way onto DVD release. Recommended. Edit: I found out that this short has been available on DVD for over a couple years now, since I found out on the Looney Tunes Wiki that it's been released as part of Looney Tunes: Musical Masterpieces, in case anyone else besides me is interested.