The new Looney Tunes DVD set includes some 1962 audio outtakes of proposed new arrangements of "Merrily We Roll Along" for the studio's new Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies titles. (Milt Franklyn, the studio's longtime orchestrator/composer, died not long after recording these new arrangements and they weren't used for the titles that were finally created.) I thought I'd have a go at combining one of these arrangements with the new LT/MM titles that were adopted in 1964. Note, however, that this is not how they would have actually gone together; for one thing, the title they finally used is a lot shorter, so I had to extend it to make the music and titles fit together.
This beats the heck out of what they actually ended up using. It's too bad Milt Franklyn didn't live longer.
ReplyDeleteMan, this "new" arrangement is genius! Too good for those DFE cartoons.
ReplyDeleteThe arragement they ended up using indicated the quality of the cartoons they were making. When I was a kid, as soon as I'd hear that DFE tune I'd rush to change the channel.
As I noted over at TTTP, you can take Carl Stalling's child-like rendition of "The Merrie Go Round Broke Down" from Avery's 1941 cartoon "Porky's Preview" and paste the audio over the modern LT opening almost perfectly (it's a little shorter than the actual visual, but the hard musical notes Stalling uses at the opening mix particularly well with the W-7 Arts revised opening, and by 1967, the childlike music Carl wrote as a parody kind of fits the Hanna-Barbera style characters Alex Lovy was using).
ReplyDelete