There are many stories about the world being a lousy place. I could tell some. You could tell some. But this is a story about the world being a less lousy place because there are still kind and generous people out there.

This blog was started because of an affection for the stock music heard in the backgrounds of The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Quick Draw McGraw Show. To make a long story short, after a search that took several decades, I discovered the origin of the cues, acquired copies where I could and started documenting which ones were heard on specific cartoons, moving my efforts to this blog in 2009.

The easier way, of course, would be to have copies of the cue sheets that Screen Gems had to submit to ASCAP and BMI so royalties could be paid to the composers.

One of the greatest cartoon music scholars out there, if not the greatest, is Daniel Goldmark. He has written several books and, wonderfully, penned a thesis where the appendix contained a list of the music (except that composed in-house) heard in every single Warner Bros. cartoon (except the “Seely Six”) from 1930 to 1969, compiled from cue sheets. This is such an incredible resource. He was also the music coordinator on the Spümcø cartoons “Boo-Boo Runs Wild” and “A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith.” Music by Capitol Hi-Q! (the Smith cartoon opens with ZR-49 LIGHT UNDERSCORE by Geordie Hormel).

After years and years, I finally had the courage to ask Dr. Goldmark—we have corresponded about one his projects—if maybe he had any Hanna-Barbera cue sheets from the Capitol Hi-Q days.

He did. And, to my astonishment and extreme delight, he e-mailed me 135 pages of cue sheets for the first three seasons of the Huck show, before Hoyt Curtin took over. Not for all the cartoons, but a good percentage of the first two seasons.

At last, I could learn the identity of some of the music I have not been able to find.

Here are a few discoveries.

The sheets are for each half hour show. That means they list music for themes and bumpers in addition to the cartoons. The opening themes always run 24 seconds, meaning each cartoon had credits. The sheets also note the order in which the individual cartoons aired. They confirm what many people have said—there was a rotation each week, with Huck being the first cartoon one week, Yogi the next, and Pixie and Dixie the next.

The sheets for the first two years say “revised.” I don’t know why. I do notice some cues on the sheets are different than what you hear in the cartoons from the Huck DVD or any Huck cartoons that aired on American cable TV. I don’t have a copy any more, but a version of “The Runaway Bear” (E-29) was on-line that had a substitution for a Jack Shaindlin cue. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cue sheet for that cartoon.

Guyla Avery, according to the sheets, was part of the studio’s music department. Guyla was actually Bill Hanna’s secretary, and Iwao Takamoto told a story about how Bill would shout at her from inside his office until it was agreed to protect eardrums by installing an intercom. Hanna never quite figured out to operate it, so he continued to yell out at Guyla. She later married artist/designer Alex Toth.

Until June 3, 1960, the studio’s address on the sheets is 1416 N. LaBrea, which was the old Kling/Chaplin studios. The sheets for the third season, starting in September, reveal the company was now operating out of the window-less cinder-block building at 3501 Cahuenga (not to be confused with later new building down the street on Cahuenga we all associate with Hanna-Barbera).

Somewhat maddening is the fact the sheets only list names of music if they don’t contain an alpha-numeric. That means the sheets don’t actually tell us most of the names. For example, a sheet will read “6-ZR-50” and not tell us the name is “Light Underscore.” With that in mind, let me try to clear up the identities of some the music as revealed by the cue sheets.

● Not one, but two short pieces by Raoul Kraushaar were heard on the Huck show. They have an MR prefix: 7-MR-183 COMEDY MYSTERIOSO and 8-MR-377 COMEDY. They were on the Hi-Q reel L-58 published in 1959 and came from the Omar library, co-founded by Kraushaar in 1956 (he is the “R” in “Omar”). They both sound like they were recorded in the back of a room, with a clarinet, strings and muted trumpets. In some cases, they were edited together to sound like one cue. Hi-Q removed them from the library.
● The sad trombone music heard as the sneaky dog limps with a crutch in “Nuts over Mutts” is Jack Shaindlin’s LAF-72-3.
● “Oh Susanna” heard as Cousin Batty chats with Pixie and Dixie is Shaindlin’s LAF-88-7.
● George “Geordie” Hormel is responsible for ZR-21E SUSPENSE when the alien’s spaceship lands in Jellystone Park in “Space Bear.”
● In the same cartoon, the cue that the late Earl Kress said contained the name “Fireman” is LAF-1-2. He never could remember the complete name.
● The light symphonic music, memorably heard as the skunk is flying on a paper airplane in the Augie Doggie cartoon “Skunk You Very Much” is LAF-113-3. The cue sheet lists as the composer “Langworth” instead of Jack Shaindlin, and it doesn’t remind me of any of Shaindlin’s work.
● LAF-6-16 is a mystery. The cue sheets assign the code to two completely different pieces of music; Dr. Goldmark warns that cue sheets are not always accurate. One is the medium circus march that opens “Goldfish Fever.” But it’s also the code assigned to the brief piece in “Rah Rah Bear” where the players enter the field. That cue starts off the same but ends differently than Shaindlin’s “Boxing Greats No. 2.” On top of that, the medium circus march is reported as LAF-1-8 at the end of “Boxing Buddy.” The same cue is at the start of “Mark of the Mouse” but I don’t have a cue sheet for that. I don’t know what to think; I only have the sheets for the three cartoons mentioned above. For now, I will assign both codes to the march and leave the boxing cue without an LAF number.
● Mr. Jinks is sitting in a basket in “Party Peeper Jinks” while LAF-93-2 plays underneath. It starts with a flute and has quacking muted trumpets.
● A cue in the same cartoon between choruses of a birthday song to Jinks is LAF-93-15. It features woodwinds and strings.
● A fast circus-type chase cue called LA-74-4 is heard in a pile of cartoons, in some cases only the second half is used when the melody goes F-G-A-Bb-C and comes back down. Part of it is in the final scene of “Nottingham and Eggs.”
● Shaindlin provides the seagoing medley which opens “Pistol Packin’ Pirate.” It is LAF-65-7.
● The dramatic cue during the showdown between Sheriff Huckleberry (in the cartoon of the same name) and Dinky Dalton is L-31 SOMBER MOVEMENT by Spencer Moore.
● “Brave Little Brave,” with its specialty cues, doesn’t follow the Capitol Hi-Q numbering system. The music for about the first 4½ minutes is a Geordie Hormel piece labelled 11-ZR-K7C. The rest of the music is Q-743 by Spencer Moore. The closest cue I can find is L-744 MELODIC WESTERN UNDERSCORE. Same tempo, same orchestration, same double tom-tom beat, but the melody doesn’t quite match. My guess is the “Q” cues were in the original Capitol “Q” library, which was replaced by Hi-Q in 1956.
● “Show Biz Bear” features silent film serial style music played on an upright piano. These are Shaindlin cues entitled “Silent Movie Piano”; Shaindlin recorded a commercial album of these.
● Clarence Wheeler’s “Woodwind Capers” turns out to be a solo flute, four seconds long. It’s heard in “Hoodwinked Bear.” At least, that is all that was used.
● The version of “La Cucaracha” in several cartoons is an Omar library cue labelled OK-787 by Bill Loose and Jack Cookerly, who later played keyboards for Hoyt Curtin.

Whew! I think that’s it.

All this wonderful information is going to take some time to update the cues on the blog, as I’ll have to change some Quick Draw shows and other Huck cartoons for which I don’t have cue sheets.

People who like lists and lists of cartoons can stand by for just a moment.

You can see most of the music referred to was composed by Jack Shaindlin. We’ve posted about Shaindlin before, but a brief summary of his stock music career is he recorded with the March of Time orchestra for the Lang-Worth Mood Music library in the ‘40s, then formed a library music company in 1947 called Filmusic. The November-December 1952 edition of Film Music revealed:

The Hollywood office of Filmusic Co. of New York is making 1500 recorded selections available for TV and non-theatrical producers. The company, the largest independent music-on-film library in the country, is headed by Jack Shaindlin and features his sound tracks. Mr. Shaindlin has been musical director for the March of Time, Louis de Rochemont and the major studios in the east since 1937. His Filmusic sound track is used exclusively by NBC-TV.

The problem with trying to identify names of his cues (you won’t find my favourite Shaindlin cue, “Toboggan Run” in a copyright catalogue or in the BMI database) is simple. Shaindlin told Business and Home Screen magazine once that “the music was never published and hasn’t been ‘kicked around.’” Filmusic combined with Lang-Worth to become Langlois Filmusic in 1954 and Cinemusic in 1960. Shaindlin seems to have copyrighted only select cues for the sake of royalties, and certainly not the 1,500 mentioned above, including a good many of the ones heard in the Huck and Quick Draw shows.

Here are the Shaindlin cues that have been partially ID’d and a couple that have not been. These were sent to me years ago by Earl. I have held off posting them until I knew what they were, except for one cue he asked me not to post.

One cue I like has been half identified. It is two cues edited together. The first part of it is “Chump Chimp Title.” I have it on a Langlois collection, arranged a little differently but unmistakeably the same music. But my two-part Langlois cue includes “And Some Doings.” That part of the cue is different than what’s heard on the cartoons; that part you can hear at the end of “Baffled Bear,” as Yogi runs a gas station. Included is a vaudeville or circus dance cue that got a workout on the Quick Draw McGraw series; all Earl could remember was it contained “fireman” in the title. I cannot help but wonder if it comes from a different chimp short, The Rookie Fireman, shot in New York in 1936. As noted above, Shaindlin worked on the Shorty the Chimp series, but I can’t find the film on-line. LAF-25-3 is a fun cue, reminding me of little busy animals skipping through the woods. I’ve also attached “Six Day Bicycle Race,” heard several times in the Snooper and Blabber caper “Puss N’ Booty.” If I don’t have the real names, you’ll see quotation marks around fake ones. Don’t accept these as valid.

Two bonus cues are below, thanks to reader Evan Schad. With his help, I acquired a Synchro library 78 rpm disc containing the two Hecky Krasnow cues heard on several Augie Doggie cartoons.


LAF-1-2 "fireman"


LAF-6-16 "circus parade"


LAF-25-3 "dance of the forest squirrels"


LAF-74-2 LICKETY SPLIT


LAF-74-4 "race to the finish"


LAF - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE


LAF - "the greatest show on earth"


LAF - CHUMP CHIMP TITLE "and other cue"


HAPPY COBBLER


SWINGING GHOSTS


L-71 SOMBER MOVEMENT

Again, I am extremely appreciative to Daniel Goldmark for his generosity and selflessness in providing this valuable documentation.

Since people love lists, here are the cartoons for which we have a list of the cues with production numbers and episode numbers in brackets. Alas, only one of the three Yowp cartoons is present.

E-1 Pie-Pirates (003)
E-2 High Fly Guy (008)
E-3 Tally Ho-Ho-Ho (007)
E-4 Pistol Packin’ Pirate (005)
E-5 Judo Jack (002)
E-6 Little Bird Mouse (007)
E-7 Yogi Bear’s Big Break (001)
E-8 Big Bad Bully (004)
E-9 Slumber Party Smarty (002)
E-10 Kit-Kat-Kit (003)
E-11 Big Brave Bear (006)
E-12 Scaredy Cat Dog (006)
E-13 Baffled Bear (009)
E-14 Cousin Tex (001/012)
E-15 Foxy Hound Dog (005)
E-16 Jinks’ Mice Device (004-021)
E-17 The Ghost with the Most (009)
E-18 The Buzzin’ Bear (013)
E-19 Jiggers It’s Jinks (008)
E-20 The Brave Little Brave (010)
E-21 The Stout Trout (012)
E-22 The Ace of Space (010)
E-27 Jinks the Butler (013)
E-31 Sheriff Huckleberry (005)
E-32 Sir Huckleberry Hound (004)
E-33 Lion-Hearted Huck (002-013)
E-34 Rustler-Hustler Huck (006)
E-35 Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie (001/010)
E-37 Tricky Trapper (003)
E-38 Cock-a-Doodle Huck (008)
E-39 Two Corny Crows (009)
E-40 Freeway Patrol (007)
E-41 Dragon Slayer Huck (012)
E-47 Birdhouse Blues (021)
E-49 Prize-Fight Fright (021)
E-52 Brainy Bear (022)
E-53 Nice Mice (022)
E-54 Postman Huck (022)
E-55 Robin Hood Yogi (023)
E-56 King-Size Surprise (023)
E-60 Robin Hood Yogi (023)
E-61 Scooter Looter (025)
E-62 Mouse-Nappers (025)
E-63 Little Red Riding Huck (025)
E-64 Hide and Go Peek (026)
E-65 Boxing Buddy (026)
E-66 The Tough Little Termite (026)
E-70 Papa Yogi (030)
E-71 Ten Pin Alley (027)
E-74 Show Biz Bear (027)
E-76 King Size Poodle (030)
E-77 Nottingham and Eggs (032)
E-78 Rah Rah Bear (032)
E-79 Hi-Fido (027)
E-80 Stranger Ranger (031)
E-81 Somebody’s Lion (030)
E-82 Batty Bat (033)
E-84 Mighty Mite (031)
E-85 Bear For Punishment (033)
E-87 A Bully Dog (031)
E-89 Bird Brained Cat (032)
E-90 Huck the Giant Killer (033)
E-97 Hoodwinked Bear (037)
E-98 Piccadilly Dilly (037)
E-99 Goldfish Fever (037)
E-100 Snow White Bear (038)
E-101 Wiki Waki Huck (038)
E-102 Pushy Cat (038)
E-103 Space Bear (039)
E-104 Puss in Boats (039)
E-105 Huck’s Hack (039)
E-107 Booby Trapped Bear (041)
E-109 High Jinks (043)
E-110 Legion Bound Hound (041)
E-111 Price For Mice (041)
E-112 Gleesome Threesome (042)
E-113 Science Friction (042)
E-114 Plutocrat Cat (042)
E-115 A Bear Pair (043)
E-117 Spy Guy (044)
E-118 Nuts over Mutts (044)
E-120 Knight School (043)
E-122 Party Peeper Jinks (044)

Sheets are missing for Huckleberry Hound Shows K-011, 014 through 020, 024 in the first season, and K-028 through 030, 034 through 036 in the second, and K-040, K-045 to 52 in the third. .

A perhaps-familiar little friend rejoined the land of Yogi Bear 50 years ago this month in the pages of newspapers subscribing to the McNaught Syndicate’s version of cartoondom’s favourite pilfering bruin. And there’s a not-so-subtle plug for the Yogi Bear movie.


I think I’ve asked this before, but does anyone know the origin of the nuts-equals-Napoleon gag? Was it based on something that happened in real life? Winsor McCay used it in one of his intricate Sunday Rarebit newspaper cartoons before World War One. Here it is in the May 3, 1964 Yogi comic. Nice balance on the bear in the opening panel. Remarkable, isn’t it, that the tourists would know Yogi by name? Well, then again, he’d been on TV since 1958.


Whaaa? Vandalising Ranger Smith’s home? Yogi’s kind of getting destructive, isn’t he? The May 10th comic is a far cry from purloining a sandwich from a basket like on TV. You can’t see them all that well but Yogi’s got a nice ranger of expressions. My suggestion would be to check out Mark Kausler’s site for full-colour versions of the bottom two rows of this month’s comics.


Look! It’s Li’l Tom Tom! No, we don’t mean the rapper (and there must be a rapper somewhere named Li’l Tom Tom). We mean the little native American boy who appeared in the early Yogi cartoon “The Brave Little Brave” (1958). Hanna-Barbera had high hopes for him; Li’l Tom Tom dolls were even manufactured. But the mute little boy didn’t really have any personality and was soon eclipsed by other H-B characters. His swan song was in a Hokey Wolf cartoon. But here he is brought out of cartoon retirement. I don’t know who wrote the story of the May 17th comic, but I like the idea the natives aren’t speaking in “Hollywood Indian.” “Bernard” and “Hildagarde” is a real stretch for a rhyme. If this had been a 1930s cartoon, Bernie would have been a Jewish Indian. Some nice Harvey Eisenberg silhouettes here. Note the wind-up record player.



The best part of the May 24th comic may be Boo Boo’s dry sense of humour in the opening panel. It surfaced maybe a couple of times on the TV cartoons. Yet another chubby-cheeked Boy Scout. The final panel is well laid out.

Unfortunately this tabloid copy is the best version I can find. The tabloids always took out one of the small panels, and one is missing in this comic. It shows Boo Boo standing in front of a rock, looking up and saying “...There’s just one thing...” before the next panel asking about the Fan Club.


What’s that? You can hear Daws Butler’s Phil Silvers voice out of the big agent? Silvers’ Sergeant Bilko would appreciate the audacity of Hanna-Barbera giving free advertising to its feature-length movie in its own comic. This May 31st comic came just after the official preview of the movie. The folks at Weekly Variety wrote, in part, on May 27, 1964:

Columbia Pictures will explore a new location Saturday ( 30) for a press junket for one of its upcoming releases—one chosen to make the film's leading man feel at home. Taking off from here Decoration Day, a planeload of press, radio and tv reps will head for Yellowstone National Park...
The mayor of Salt Lake City will accompany the fourth estaters to the habitat of the fictional bear who is central figure of the animated feature. Agenda calls for flight to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in a chartered Martin 202, transferring to buses for Yellowstone with a lunch at Old Faithful preceding screening of the - Hanna-Barbera animated feature, plus stage show with performers enacting characters from the film. World premiere of "Hey There" is scheduled for here on June 3.

The same issue of Weekly Variety reviewed the feature, calling it a “Marketable hot weather cartoon feature for the moppet mart. Will have to buck its own freevee competition.” (On another page, the paper announced “The Jetsons” would be on CBS’ Saturday morning schedule).

Back to the comic: it’s hard to make out, but the word “Zoom!” is on the bottom of the last panel as Yogi brings out his bags and goes Hollywood.

Okay, now a little bonus. In honour of the appearance of Li’l Tom Tom, here is one of the two music cues used in “The Brave Little Brave.” I haven’t been able to locate the first one, which is maddening, but this is the one played when the panicky rabbit is talking to Yogi, and during the daring rescue of the little boy before he goes over the falls. It’s from Capitol Hi-Q reel M-13. It’s a little chewed up but listenable.


L-744 MELODIC WESTERN UNDERSCORE

What? You want more music? Okay, here’s the rest of the reel. All are by Spencer Moore. None of these cues were used in cartoons.


L-741 MELODIC WESTERN UNDERSCORE



L-734 MELODIC WESTERN UNDERSCORE



L-739 MELODIC WESTERN UNDERSCORE



L-735 MELODIC WESTERN UNDERSCORE



L-525 MELODIC WESTERN UNDERSCORE


As usual, you can click on any of the comics to make it larger.

Stock music was as much a part of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the studio’s first couple of years as the animation or the sound effects (many of which arrived from the MGM cartoon studio film library along with Hanna and Barbera). You’ve read on the blog about some of the composers and a couple of the different music libraries that were used. We haven’t talked about the concept of stock music itself, though, because it’s a little off topic. However, I found a piece on production libraries quoting Bill Loose who, as you likely know, composed music that was used in Ruff and Reddy, The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Quick Draw McGraw. He was put in charge of studio operations for Capitol Records in February 1956, about the time the Hi-Q Library was being composed, arranged and assembled.

In this Wall Street Journal story from September 5, 1978, Loose doesn’t mention which library he’s referring to, but he was involved with a couple of different ones at Capitol. Cues from the OK and PMS (Production Music Services) libraries were composed by Loose (with Emil Cadkin or Jack Cookerly) in the late ‘50s, bought by Emil Ascher in 1967 and removed from the Capitol repertoire. But the story gives you an idea about the industry itself and what Hanna-Barbera might have paid to use stock music.

Need Music to Do Nearly Anything By? These Firms Have It
They Provide Recorded Tunes Quickly, Cheaply for Ads, TV Shows, Budget Films
By STEPHEN J. SANSWEET
The industry grosses only $2 million to $3 million a year and provides full-time employment for perhaps 75 people in a dozen companies. Yet nearly every man, woman and child in the U.S. is exposed almost daily to the product these firms turn out.
“People just can’t understand what I do or how I make money from it,” says the president of one of the largest companies in the field. “It’s usually easier to tell them I’m a bookie and let it go at that.”
What his and the other companies do is provide, quickly and cheaply, vast amounts of pre-recorded music that accompany television and radio shows, commercials, documentaries, industrial films and slide presentations, to name a few of their activities The clients of the music-library or production-music business are advertisers, producers, governmental agencies, universities and most large companies with audiovisual facilities There is a lot of international business. The industry may be small but for an increasing number of clients, it has become essential in helping them get their messages across to the public.
“Music is really an integral part of making any production look and sound expensive and professional,” says Ed Hansen, head of an independent film-production agency in Studio City, Calif. “But the cost of using all original music for a half-hour show might run $10,000 not counting any residual payments to the musicians for subsequent showings. That’s hard to justify when library music provides such a good alternative.
A Sour Note
Some people, however, aren’t so pleased with music libraries. Victor W. Fuentealba, in fact, wants to put them out of business. Because Mr. Fuentealba is president of the 300,000-member American Federation of Musicians of the U.S. and Canada, his position isn’t easily dismissed. “A couple of people are making a lot of money with products made cheaply overseas that displace our members here,” he complains. Library operators counter that if the residuals problem could be worked out they would record in the U.S. and provide more work for musicians.
The controversy between the union and the music libraries has been under way since the libraries sprang up in the U.S. 30 years ago. Many observers believe that it was costly union demands during television’s infancy that helped solidify the position of the libraries in the first place. Hundreds of independent stations working on shoestring budgets decided they couldn’t afford musical groups, so they switched to recorded music.
The heart of every music library is hundreds of hours of specially written musical pieces, often no longer than one or two minutes each. “These aren’t songs or tunes or even necessarily formal pieces of music with beginnings, middles and ends,” says Everett Ascher, president of Emil Ascher Inc. and its West Coast affiliate, Regent Recorded Music Inc. But the snippets can be cut blended or added to the narration skillfully enough to make the listener believe the music is an original composition.
While corporations are the heaviest users of library music for such things as training films, much of it finds its way onto television and radio, particularly as the background for local commercials. Theatrical films use mainly original scores, but library music shows up in many X-rated movies and occasional general releases like “The Blob,” which starred a then-unknown actor named Steve McQueen. It is also used extensively by background-music services such as Muzak and has provided themes for several television shows like “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman.”
Rising Costs
Because the musicians’ union won’t let its members record music for libraries, all the recording is done abroad, mainly by full-time orchestras in Europe. Costs have risen sharply there in recent years; today the cost of producing and recording one album with a 50-piece orchestra is $7,000 to $10,000. Libraries constantly have to add new albums to keep up with the latest musical tastes or fads. Most composers are European, but Americans also write for libraries, sometimes using pseudonyms. “The union called me in once and told me to stop,” one US composer says, “but I told them where to go.” William Loose, a 60-year-old Hollywood writer who composes mainly original scores, is among the more prolific American tunesmiths. He once spent three months writing, arranging and supervising the recording of five hours of production music. The score covered 2,400 pages.
Library usage fees vary. Thomas J. Valentino Inc., a long-established New York library that produces all its own music, allows clients to buy all its 157 albums for $754 and then to make unlimited use of them for $500 a year. Other libraries charge $60 to $70 for commercial use of each cut. There aren’t any residual payments. Besides the large amount of money saved, clients say the use of production music saves time and lets them know in advance exactly what they’re getting.
All the musical pieces are indexed to help the user. The 194-page Ascher catalog, for example, is broken down into 158 categories, ranging from ceremonial and funereal to eerie and outer space. Mr. Ascher says his library contains the music of 14 production companies on 900 albums containing 16,000 individual tracks written by more than 1,300 composers The titles of the selections range from dull (“Product Efficiency”) to weird (“Dracula’s Kitchen”) but are rarely descriptive enough to provide more than a clue to the client. However, since Mr. Ascher has an uncanny ability to remember most of the music in his library he is able to pull out records for suggested listening.
Picking the proper music is something of an art. “You have to keep in mind the visual what the announcer’s saying and what you’re trying to sell,” says Robert Canning, broadcast-production assistant for May Co., a Southern California department store chain. “Sometimes, I’ll spend a couple of hours looking for the perfect 30 seconds of music, although after the first seven or eight cuts everything starts to sound the same.”
In more complex projects, where several pieces of music have to be blended and cut to fit the screen action, expert editors such as Richard R. McCurdy are called in. “You have to make every effort to avoid a canned music sound,” he says. “But the quality of library music is excellent and as getting better all the time.”
One of the problems with production music is that the same piece may be used unknowingly by two or three different sponsors or shows. Another criticism is that some of the music sounds disturbingly close to popular hits. “We aren’t ripping off any composers,” says Roy Kohn of the Peer-Southern Organization. “Just because a piece has the feel of Glenn Miller or sounds like Count Basie doesn’t mean it’s a copy. We had library music that sounded like the themes from ‘Jaws’ and ‘Star Wars’ even before those two were written.”
There’s little ego satisfaction or public acclaim in the music-library business. One recent exception was a disco-classical number, “A Fifth of Beethoven,” which Walter Murphy, a young pianist and composer, originally wrote for the Valentino library. “I thought a couple of his pieces had commercial potential, so I pushed them,” says Thomas J. Valentino Sr., the 71-year-old founder of the library. Still, Mr. Valentino was surprised when “A Fifth” became so popular that it was added to the soundtrack of the movie “Saturday Night Fever” and the repertoire of the Boston Pops. “Everything is a gamble in this business,” he says.

My thanks to Bill M. for helping fill in some blanks in the article above, clipped together from Google News, and to Your Pal Doug for the pictures. They’re kind and generous people.

Now, I know you’re saying “Yowp, don’t you always have cartoon music in those posts about production music?” Well, for the most part, you’re right. And today is no exception. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything from the Langlois Filmusic library, though I do have a post on Langlois’ Jack Shaindlin coming. The majority of the cartoon cues that haven’t been posted here are from his library. However, I’ve managed to dig up some music from Ruff and Reddy.

As you know, Ruff and Reddy was Hanna-Barbera’s first effort after the studio formed in July 1957; some artists say they worked on it while still at the about-to-close MGM cartoon. Like The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Quick Draw McGraw Show, it featured music from the Capitol Hi-Q library. Several cues, like ‘TC-304 Fox Trot,’ ‘TC-215A Chase-Medium’ and ‘ZR-53 Comedy Mysterioso’, have already been posted here. They rarely or never were used in the other shows. We’ve got some more now.

As far as I know, all but two are all from the ‘D’ series, which I don’t have a lot of interest in. ‘D’ is for ‘dramatic’ and the music was perfect for westerns, detective shows and low-budget outer-space/horror feature films. And that brings us to our first set of cues.

The first Ruff and Reddy adventure (each was a 13-part cliff-hanger) involved an unexpected trip to the planet Muni-Mula (“That’s ‘aluminum’ spelled backwards”). Fortunately, Hi-Q had suitable scary space music, 15 pieces on two sides of an album, all by Spencer Moore. The first cue can be heard in production A-1 (Planet Pirates), the second in production A-4 (Mastermind of Muni-Mula) and the third in production A-5 (The Mad Monster of Muni-Mula).

L-1203 EERIE HEAVY ECHO
L-657 EERIE DRAMATIC
L-653 EERIE DRAMATIC

Here are the two ‘L’ series cues from the The Chickasaurus Egg Caper, animated by Carlo Vinci, the first cartoon of the fifth Ruff and Reddy serial. The first one is by Loose, who wrote at least a half-dozen reels with mechanical beds in a couple of different tempos featuring strings and/or horns meant to evoke chugging sounds. I’ve heard them in numerous industrial films from the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, which was the heydey for Hi-Q. The second was originally in the C-B music library by Harry Bluestone and Emil Cadkin and was repackaged in Hi-Q reel L-2A. You may recognise snatches of it from a couple of the “Seely Six” cartoons at Warners that used the Hi-Q library during a musicians strike (Seely was an executive at Capitol at the time, so that’s why his name was the one on the credits).

C-43A UNDERSCORE
CB-88A PUZZLED PUP

There are other Ruff and Reddy cues I haven’t been able to find and identify. To be honest, I have trouble sitting through those cartoons, though I saw some funny Ed Benedict people designs in one the other day.

While we’re at it, let’s give you a cue from Phil Green, originally found in the EMI Photoplay library. You’ll have heard this in Space Bear, when the quivery-voiced alien is pointing to a slide show of Yogi. Hi-Q put it in reel D-40 Dramatic.

EM-131I EERIE

And, finally, some bonus cues. These weren’t in Hanna-Barbera cartoons, they were either in live-action TV or movies and some you may have heard before. Here’s more of Spencer Moore’s work. The first two are from reel D-24 Dramatic, the next from D-1 Suspense Underscore and the last one from D-2 Dramatic.

L-1214 EERIE HEAVY ECHO
L-1216 EERIE HEAVY ECHO
L-2 SUSPENSE UNDERSCORE
L-7 SUSPENSE UNDERSCORE

These three are from Bill Loose and John Seely, the first from reel D-6 Tension, the second from D-3 Light Dramatic/Suspense and the last from D-4 Suspense/Mysterioso/Somber.

TC-52 TENSION aka FOREBODING DANGER
TC-69 SUSPENSE aka ANXIOUS EVENING
TC-73 MYSTERIOSO aka SPELLBOUND NIGHT

Finally, a cue originally from the Sam Fox library. It’s on Hi-Q reel D-27 Mysterioso. Evan Schaad has discovered it is a Lou DeFranceso cue called "Atomic Age."

SF-83 MYSTERIOSO

These are a little sampling. I haven’t bothered with more because, as the article says, the cues do sound alike after awhile, and you’d get weary listening to a bunch of not-always-melodic music anyways. However, we can only hope we may soon be able locate, and pass on, more of the music you heard in those earliest Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the ‘50s.

The earliest Hanna-Barbera cartoons have a different feel to them than what came later, partly because of the stock music dropped into the background. Hoyt Curtin was hired to compose themes for each series as soon as the studio went into business but the music within the cartoons themselves came from production music libraries used in television and industrial films. Eventually, Curtin was asked to come up with cues to be used in the theatrical Loopy De Loop (1959) and his music eventually displaced stock music in all television cartoons made for the 1961-62 season.

The bulk of the music came from the Capitol Hi-Q library, created in 1956. Some of the music was especially composed for it, some came from other libraries such as EMI Photoplay and Sam Fox (probably the ‘Variety’ series). Most of the rest of what was played in the background of the cartoons was from the Langlois Filmusic library, compiled in 1954, whose credited composer was Jack Shaindlin.

None of this music was found in record stores and it wasn’t designed for home listening. It was only made available to film, TV and radio production companies on a contractual basis and used to set moods in the background.

You’ve been able to listen to many of the cues here on the blog. There are a number that are notably absent because I simply don’t have them, don’t know who might and, in some cases, can’t identify them at all. However, I’m going to post a few odds and ends that I haven’t before and I suspect these will be the last new ones you’ll find here.

A number of the cartoons (especially Huck’s) revolved around plots dealing with Merrie Olde England. Hi-Q had a whole specialty category—the ‘X’ series—where it put international music and a variety of other things. Among them were three English-style cues used by Hanna-Barbera, all of them credited to Geordie Hormel of Zephyr Records. They were on reels X-9 and 10.

ZR-103 PERIOD MAIN TITLE
ZR-126 ENGLISH MAIN TITLE
ZR-127 PERIOD CHASE

I suspect the two or three “American Indian” music cues used in several cartoons (such as the ones with Chief Crazy Coyote and Li’l Tom Tom) came from the ‘X’ series as well but I have not been able to track them down.

Hormel had another short cue that got some play as an introductory piece for western-set cartoons. It was from the Hi-Q ‘M’ series. There were two versions, one medium and one faster. Here’s the faster version:

ZR-39A WESTERN SONG

Music from the ‘M’ series was rarely used; the H-B sound cutters stuck mainly with the ‘L’ (“Light”). The best-known ‘M’ cue was not used in cartoons. It is the theme to The World Tomorrow radio and TV show, one of a bunch of documentary cues written by Bill Loose. Hanna-Barbera picked a different documentary pieces, a lovely, short, majestic fanfare by Phil Green. It can be heard at the start of a number of shorts, including the Huck cartoons ‘A Bully Dog’ and ‘Legion Bound Hound’.

EM-147 DOCUMENTARY MAIN TITLE

An ‘M’ cue by Loose opened ‘Snow White Bear’ and was, as far as I can tell, never used again.

C-71 ROMANTIC MAIN TITLE

Besides the ‘X’, ‘M’ and ‘L’ series, Hi-Q had two others. One was the ‘D’ (“Dramatic”) series. Only a few cues from this one, which found its way into dramatic TV shows and low-budget science fiction movies, were deemed appropriate for cartoons besides Ruff and Reddy and generally didn’t get much use. Here are a few I have only been able to find in one Quick Draw cartoon. The first was at the start of ‘Choo Choo Chumps’. It and the second cue both were used in ‘In the Picnic of Time’ when the ants begin their attack on Doggie Daddy. The third showed up under a bunch of sound effects and dialogue in ‘Scary Prairie’ when Grumbleweed flies into the air to the end of the scene after the boulder crashes on Quick Draw. The fourth was very briefly heard in ‘Masking For Trouble’ when Sundown Sam shoots Quick Draw in Sagebrush Sally’s house. In the first two cases, only the last half of the cue was used. All written by David Rose who signed over the royalty rights to Bill Loose and John Seely. In each case, the first name is what’s on the Hi-Q disc.

TC-14 CHASE-MEDIUM aka ZEALOUS PURSUIT
TC-15 CHASE-MEDIUM aka SPIRITED PURSUIT
TC-9 CHASE-HEAVY aka HURRIED PURSUIT
TC-74 SOMBER aka OPPRESSIVE DEATH

Another ‘D’-series cue only seems to have been used once. It’s a Joseph Cacciola cue that appeared when Aloysius meets the fake Aloysius in the Snooper and Blabber cartoon ‘Puss N’ Booty’. There are three versions in reel D-6; the cartoon seems to have used the slow one. A number of Cacciola’s cues in the Sam Fox library were later imported into Hi-Q and given generic names.

TC-216 TENSION

The other series was the ‘S’ series, which YourPalDoug (who has a wonderful music blog, by the way) says was discontinued by Capitol. The ‘S’ series was for short edits of main cues to be used as intros, extros and bridges to (or from) scenes; you hear this sort of thing on radio and TV sitcoms. The Huck series stayed clear of them and generally went with longer, full music beds, but the sound cutters on the Quick Draw series (especially Snooper and Blabber) loved the little bridging music. The bulk of it originally came from the EMI Photoplay Q-2 discs repacked by Hi-Q and given ‘EM’ or ‘PG’ designations (‘GR’ is the code used in the EMI library). I’ve posted most of them here before but apparently missed a few of them. They’re all by Phil Green. Here are the ones I can find.

GR-454 THE ARTFUL DODGER SHORT BRIDGE No 1
GR-455 THE ARTFUL DODGER SHORT BRIDGE No 2
GR-457 DOCTOR QUACK SHORT BRIDGE No 1
GR-458 DOCTOR QUACK SHORT BRIDGE No 2
GR-82 FRED KARNO’S ARMY SHORT BRIDGE No 2
GR-85 THE BRAVEST WOODEN SOLDIER SHORT BRIDGE No 1
GR-86 THE BRAVEST WOODEN SOLDIER SHORT BRIDGE No 2
GR-97 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO SHORT BRIDGE No 1
GR-98 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO SHORT BRIDGE No 2
PG-160G LIGHT MOVEMENT
PG-161G LIGHT COMEDY MOVEMENT
PG-161H LIGHT MOVEMENT
PG-177C LIGHT COMEDY MOVEMENT
GR-346 FIRST BUDS

Finally, some odds and ends. Arrangements of several old public domain songs surfaced occasionally, like ‘Oh, Susannah’. One, almost a standard in any old movie’s snake charmer scene, appeared in one third-season Huck cartoon. Bill Loose did the arrangement of Streets of Cairo. It was on the original Hi-Q reel X-4 (Capitol replaced whole reels of cues with newer material; X-4 was replaced in the 1960s).
Spencer Moore concocted an odd version of Pop Goes the Weasel with a clock ticking effect. It’s heard just before the Fat Knight clubs Huck with a mace in ‘Sir Huckleberry Hound.’ You’ll also spot it toward the end of the Goofy Gophers cartoon Gopher Broke (1958), which used the Hi-Q library during a musicians strike. Another Moore cue only appears to have been used once, when Matilda the Kangaroo appears in Snooper’s ‘Hop to It.’
Phil Green came up with an eerie number featuring plucked strings found in ‘Impossible Imposters’ when Snoop and Blab enter the Mad Scientist’s hideout. It’s from EMI Photoplay 6-019 Additional Incidentals.
A western dance theme from the Sam Fox library pops up in a couple of Huck and Quick Draw cartoons. In that library, it’s called ‘Oh, Susannah’ and is by Jacob Louis Merkur.
Finally, there’s a short cue that came from another library, Valentino, from New York. It still sells library music for commercial purposes. It’s not the version of ‘Chopsticks’ you played on a piano as a kid. It was composed by the prolific Roger Roger, a Frenchman who seems to have been employed by many European music companies to compose stock music. It was used in a couple of Pixie and Dixie cartoons, such as ‘Missile Bound Cat.’

C-135 STREETS OF CAIRO
L-992 ANIMATION-CHILDREN
L-1147 ANIMATION-MOVEMENT
GR-57 THE SHADOW OF A MAN
SF-11 LIGHT MOVEMENT
CHOPSTICKS

Unfortunately, there are a number of cues I don’t have, including:
● About a dozen of Jack Shaindlin’s cues from the Langlois library that made appearances in many cartoons; Shaindlin was used on both the Quick Draw and Huck shows. Most are, alas, unidentified.
● There’s a short trumpet fanfare piece in ‘Missile Bound Cat’ I can’t place.
● A Green cue in ‘Space Bear’ when the alien is pointing to the film of Yogi.
● Boo-Boo discovering the ranger inside Whitey and telling Yogi in ‘Bearface Disguise’ is accompanied by what may be another Green cue.
● The brief woodwind bed when Doggie Daddy jumps in the well in ‘Crow Cronies’, though it may be a Clarence Wheeler piece called ‘Woodwind Capers.’
● The creepy muted horn cue when Ranger Smith is on the phone in ‘Space Bear,’ among a number of cartoons, that may have come from the Omar Library (distributed by Capitol).
● A nice little string Western piece at the opening of ‘Doggone Prairie Dog.’ It sounds like a number of similar Sam Fox library cues.
● The opening music to ‘Fast Gun Huck’, a building dramatic bed. I suspect it’s a Spencer Moore or Geordie Hormel cue on a ‘D’ series disc I don’t have.
● A completely inappropriate “1950s Modern Living” style cue that opens the Quick Draw cartoon ‘Slick City Slicker.’ I’m a sucker for music like that.
● ‘The Happy Cobbler’, the Hecky Krasnow composition in a number of Augie Doggie cartoons. There’s another odd cue when Boinga-Boinga climbs the walls in ‘Mars Little Precious’ I don’t have, either, called ‘Swinging Ghosts.’ Both came from the Sam Fox library.
● Latin American music that takes up the first couple of minutes in ‘Bull-Leave Me’ with Quick Draw and a chuckling bull.
● And several Hawaiian music cues by Ed Lund in ‘Hula Hula Hulabaloo’.

So this is the best I can do. I hope you’ve enjoyed the music. It’s taken me a very long time to find it with the help of some very kind collectors who enjoy it as much as I do.

A number of composers are listed on different albums/reels of the Capitol Hi-Q library at the time Hanna-Barbera used it, and you can find a little bit of information about most of the more common ones on-line. John Seely’s name comes to mind first because he got a credit on the six Warners cartoons that used the same library. Bill Loose’s name is connected with him.

You’ve read on this blog about Phil Green and Geordie Hormel adding to the sound of the 1950’s H-B cartoons through their cues picked up by Capitol (Green from EMI, Hormel from Zephyr). But there’s one composer who is a complete mystery. A chap named Spencer Moore.

You have to dig deep in the BMI database to find him; he’s not in the composer index. And a hunt for him on-line will find a reference to his stock music being used in the movie Night of the Living Dead (from the Hi-Q ‘D’ series). And that’s it.

So, just who was this guy? Was the name a pseudonym for some other composer?

Well, yes. And no.

Eventually on the blog, I’m going to do a piece on the Hi-Q library itself, but I want to focus on Mr. Moore. Let us go back to Geordie Hormel and the founding of Zephyr Records. Billboard Magazine reveals this in its edition of May 12, 1956:

Hormel Forms Zephyr Disks
HOLLYWOOD—Geordie Hormel, jazz pianist scion of the meat packing clan, has organized Zephyr Records, with the firm expected to get under way via its first initial release by June 1.
The disk firm will also operate Zephyr Music Library to supply music for radio, television and commercial films, and Austin Music, Inc. (BMI). Officers of the corporation, in addition to Hormel, include Roy Anderson and Marilyn Vaile, both associated with the Hormel Foundation of Austin, Minn.
Spencer Moore has been named general manager of the company, with Bill Hitchkock [sic] to helm a repertoire post.

There was a small, brief flurry of articles about Zephyr in mid to late 1956. On July 16, Billboard revealed Hormel was attending a convention “along with the firm’s comptroller-library chief, Spencer Moore.”

So it would appear that Moore was a money guy in charge of the Zephyr Music Library, which provided cues for the new Capitol Hi-Q library.

Moore didn’t stay with Zephyr very long. Variety of May 24, 1957 reports Moore had left the company amid reports Hormel was going to streamline operations (he was looking to sell the label a month later; Variety reported by November it was defunct). Moore went back to the music rep business. Variety mentions him again on October 1, 1958 in connection with a global tour for Arwin Records.

Hormel, if nothing, was ambitious. Billboard of September 29, 1956 tells that five projects were in the works, including “radio station management, artist representation, and TV film, motion picture and legit theater production.”

He actually did get a film company going. Eventually. From Boxoffice Magazine, April 26, 1965:

Geordie Hormel, record producer-arranger, is branching out into motion picture production and distribution, having formed Cinema-One, with plans for a slate of six features during the first year.

And guess who went along for the ride? This is from Boxoffice, Feb. 20, 1967:

SPCA Documentary Set
HOLLYWOOD—The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has been documented in a half-hour film produced by Pacific Newsreel, a subsidiary of Hormel Films. To be shown in 600 Human Society Branches, the film was produced by Geordie Hormel and directed by Spence Moore. Action scenes of the sheriff’s aero squadron using helicopters in a chase of a “slasher” is part of the color film.

So was Spencer Moore a money guy, composer and movie director? Well, the 1950 U.S. Census fills us in. It tells us he was a freelance writer and had moved from Westchester County, New York, to Los Angeles in 1949. He started, but never finished, grade 12. His 1949 income was only $1,000. The reason is revealed in several newspaper and trade publications of the day. Aline Mosby of the United Press wrote in her column of September 21, 1949 that Moore was going to star as himself in a semi-documentary about beating alcoholism, but not before some pretty tough times, including stretches in jail and drying out at Bellevue in New York (there’s no evidence the picture got out of the planning stage).

Moore was a graduate of St. Mary's School and Yonkers High School. At age 15, the Yonkers Herald-Statesman reported he got into a bit of trouble, discharging a .25 calibre gun into the tin roof of a house near his home, trying to hit a potato. In 1927, the local daily reported he has been hired as a clerk with the Quaker Lace Company on Fifth Avenue. He was 16. Census records in 1930 show he was in the engineering department of the city of New York, and a story in a 1936 edition of the Herald-Statesman said he had been on the paper's staff. The 1940 census records him as a helper with a moving van company, though his draft card that year lists his occupation as a freelance writer. He had sobered up by 1946, and we find him as director of publicity for the Phoenix Junior Police, organising a benefit starring Frank Sinatra; this was after a stint as editor of a Phoenix weekly. A story in the December 2, 1979 edition of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reveals he had retired from documentary filmmaking and was a community volunteer at the St. Vincent de Paul store in Rohnert Park.

A book from the U.S. Library of Congress called Performing Arts: Broadcasting has a wonderful section on stock music by the premier scholar on the subject, Paul Mandell, and contained therein is this pertinent information:

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...”

Maybe he could write a note of music. Or three or four. But it seems pretty clear that Spencer Moore was mainly a crony of fun-loving millionaire Geordie Hormel. And because of that, his music can be heard on some of the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

While Moore’s name is attached to different styles of music, H-B seems to have picked those with quirky violins, bassoons and horns.

L-75 is a string-and-woodwind melody that is very reminiscent of some of Hormel cues on Hi-Q; perhaps the same writer came up with it. L-85 was heard on only one cartoon, the nascent Pixie and Dixie adventure Little Bird Mouse. L-1158 is a collection of short bassoon pieces that were snipped and used as musical effects.

If you click on the name of the cue, it should download into your computer’s audio player.

L-75 COMEDY UNDERSCORE
L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE
L-80 COMEDY UNDERSCORE
L-81 COMEDY UNDERSCORE
L-85 LIGHT MECHANICAL
L-992 ANIMATION CHILDREN
L-1121 ANIMATION NAUTICAL
L-1147 ANIMATION MOVEMENT
L-1139 ANIMATION COMEDY
L-1154 ANIMATION COMEDY
L-1158 ANIMATION COMEDY

He was also responsible for a version of this song heard in a Yogi Bear cartoon. It is from the Hi-Q “X” speciality reels. L-75 La MARSELLAISE

Moore is listed as the composer of L-31 SOMBER MOVEMENT, a “D” series cue that appeared in a couple of cartoons. He is also credited with a piece of music with a double tom-tom beat in Yogi Bear’s Brave Little Brave. It’s very similar to his L-744 WESTERN MELODIC UNDERSCORE.

California state records show that Spencer Thomas Moore was born July 2, 1910 in New York and died in Sonoma, California, July 19, 1985.