Track Listing

1. Putty Tat Trouble, Pt. 6
2. Hillbilly Hare
3. Early WB Scores: The Depression Era [Medley]
4. Good Egg
5. Various Cues from Bugs Bunny Films [Medley]
6. There They Go Go Go
7. Stalling Self-Parody: Music from Porky's Preview
8. Anxiety Montage [Medley]
9. Stalling: The War Years [Medley]
10. Medley: Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals
11. C. Stalling w/Milt Franklyn in Session (Recording "Putty Tat Trouble")
12. Speedy Gonzalez Meets Two Crows from Tacos
13. Powerhouse and Other Cuts from the Early 50's [Medley]
14. Porky in Wackyland/Dough for the Do Do
15. To Itch His Own [Stalling's Last Score]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23370 in Music
• Released on: 1990-07-17
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack

Amazon.com
For fans of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, et al., this is the essential cartoon soundtrack as well as a monument to surrealism. During his 22 years as a composer for Warner Bros. animated shorts, Stalling invented the musical vocabulary of cartoons. Producer Hal Willner has lovingly assembled a sonic collage that showcases Stalling's compositional genius and uncanny ability to borrow a tune. It's a whirling collection of random moments, chock full of music you never knew you knew, from Bugs Bunny's theme from "Rabbit Fire" to Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" to Stalling's own "Woo! Woo!" Also included in the mix: outtakes from recording sessions, and several complete scores. --Heidi MacDonald

Customer Reviews

GUARANTEED
Although I was familiar with most or all of the music on this CD, I'd never heard of Carl Stalling. Well, to my delight, he turns out to be one of the most important composers ever to write movie scores, right up there with Maurice Jaubert and Nino Rota and John Williams, as far as I am concerned. He was a true original. He wrote the scores for the Warner Brothers cartoons from 1936 to 1958.

This CD is not only a tribute to Stalling, it is also the most entertaining, endearing, smile-engendering, memory-invoking, guffaw-getting album you'll hear in quite a while. I postively guarantee that you will love this album if you were EVER a child--if you EVER joined your friends to sneak into a Saturday matinee and cheer when our hero Bugs Bunny foiled the villain--if you EVER laughed uncontrollably when you heard, "I taught I taw a Puddy-tat"--if you EVER felt forlorn when you heard our pal Porky stutter "Th-th-that's all, F-f-folks!" Stalling wrote the perfect music that we heard in "our subconscious" while we watched those "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies."

Just the titles of the various selections will put you in the right mood: "Gorilla My Dreams" and "I Got Plenty Of Mutton" and "Puss 'N' Booty" and "To Itch His Own" (Stalling's last score- 1958) to name just four.

As Hal Wilner writes in his introduction to Stalling and the CD, "It (the CD) contains some soundtracks by one of the greatest film composers/arrangers from some of the finest films ever made."

Buy this album and I dare you to play it just once. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Warner Brother's King of Music
Even if you do not recognize his name, Carl Stalling is a very familiar composer. He wrote the soundtrack for many of our young lives as the composer for Warner Bros.' "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes" cartoons from late 1930's to late 1970's. Hal Willner has compiled this CD that for the first time lets you hear the music on its own, and lets you realize just how much of the cartoons' impact came from Stalling's music.

Willner sifted through hundreds of cartoons to choose about 40 with the most significant music. He presents the music in a variety of formats. A few tracks provide the soundtrack for a single entire cartoon. Others are medlies from a certain period in Stalling's career or pieces that set a particular mood (such as the "Anxiety Montage"). There are also tapes from recording sessions for 1951's "Putty Tat Trouble" that give insight on how this music was recorded. I couldn't recommend this CD any more highly. (After you've given it a listen, check out a Raymond Scott "best of" album like "Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights" to see just how many of its tracks are familiar from various cartoons.)

Stalling's music, instead of following the traditional rules of musical structure (exposition, development, theme, variations, etc.), was written to follow the rapid action of cartoons. Stalling would not compromise on this, even if it meant having the 50-piece orchestra play fortissimo for five seconds and then having only one piccolo playing the next four seconds. To ensure a perfect correspondence between the sound and the image, Stalling and the cartoon's directors would agree on a few sketches and on the timing of the action. This enabled Stalling to compose and record the music without even seeing the movie. Carl Stalling was also a master at telling a story through music, with gestures so clear, that there is never any doubt as to his intentions.

Stalling once said, "One problem with cartoons today is that they have so much dialogue the music doesn't mean much." Unfortunately, this statement rings true as we move into 2004. But keeping Carl Stalling from rolling in his grave is not why you need to buy this CD. You need it because it is IMPOSSIBLE to maintain a bad mood while this CD is playing. You need this to listen to as a stress reducer on those tough days. You need this because it is complete childhood in a disc.

I challenge you to turn on your television and watch some Looney Tunes. Turn up the volume and listen while doing something else (wash dishes, write a paper perhaps.) I guarantee you will know exactly what is happening, and to whom. This was the comedic skill and genius talent of Carl Stalling.

As Porky Pig would say: "abieh-abieh-abieh... That's All Folks!"

You KNOW this music, you just don't realize you know it
Carl Stalling is the composer you KNOW, even if you don't recognize his name. He wrote the soundtrack for many of our young lives as the composer for Warner Bros.' "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes" cartoons from 1936 to 1958. Hal Willner has compiled this CD that for the first time lets you hear the music on its own, and lets you realize just how much of the cartoons' impact came from Stalling's music. It's more than coincidence that the cartoons had a big drop-off in quality right around the time Stalling retired. The arrangements twist and turn in a millisecond, the clever orchestrations include some sophisticated early use of electric guitars as sound effects, and the quotes from popular songs (and from the canon of eccentric jazz composer Raymond Scott) were so influential that today we know the standard "Arkansas Traveler" primarily as "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee" and Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave" as the theme song for the Mynah Bird.

But that's not why you need to buy this CD. You need it because it is IMPOSSIBLE to maintain a bad mood when this CD is playing. You need this to listen to as a stress reducer on those tough days. You need this because it is chilhood in a disc.

Willner sifted through hundreds of cartoons to choose about 40 with the most significant music. He presents the music in a variety of formats. A few tracks provide the soundtrack for a single entire cartoon. Others are medlies from a certain period in Stalling's career or pieces that set a particular mood (such as the "Anxiety Montage"). There are also tapes from recording sessions for 1951's "Putty Tat Trouble" that give insight on how this music was recorded. I couldn't recommend this CD any more highly. (After you've given it a listen, check out a Raymond Scott "best of" album like "Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights" to see just how many of its tracks are familiar from various cartoons.)