 "Great memories!" | 2008-01-07 |
| - Reviewed By User: AC5CS7ULBJA95 |
| Great memories of the cartoons I watched as a youngster. Tidbits of melodies that will always depict a certain cartoon or character. Good stuff! |
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| "Best compilation CD ever" | 2007-02-18 |
| - Reviewed By richardc398 |
Carl Stalling gave me the best musical education I ever had. I'm spending the rest of my life learning the titles and composers of all the hundreds of tunes I first heard in his cartoon scores. I've had this CD ever since it came out, and it still is one of my favorites.
Only a handful of tracks are a complete score from one cartoon; most are snippets from several cartoons edited together with a common theme.
This CD is about a composer and his music, more than about the cartoons for which he composed it. To drive home this point, it includes the score from, of all things, 1939's "The Good Egg." No one would consider "The Good Egg" to be among the best Warner cartoons, but the score, heard by itself, turns out to be a tour de force that is highly representative of Stalling's work. That's what makes this CD such a great listening experience: It was pieced together by musicologists who chose the music based on its auditory qualities, and not on the relative fame of the cartoon associated with it. It is not merely a trip down memory lane (although it is that, too), but is a great creative work in its own right.
Despite the vast amount of Stalling music that exists, this CD provides as ambitious and exhaustive an overview as can be given, and its 1995 follow-up, while also worth having, is but a pale afterthought. There's no following this act. |
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 "Here we go." | 2006-11-16 |
| - Reviewed By clayface9 |
| This CD features music from the Warner Brothers cartoon film scores by Carl Stalling. There are some complete scores and also some "medleys", with clips from various cartoons strung together. Carl Stalling was a master at writing music for cartoons, but something is lost when you just hear the music without seeing the cartoon. |
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| "Stallings CDs" | 2006-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3JJRPXDO1VQ4N |
If you harken back to the days when you snuggled on the couch on a Saturday morning with your little ones, and ate donuts and drank juice and watched "Bugs Bunny" you will love these CDs. You'll recognize all the characters and their entrances and their pratfalls...and laugh and say "I've heard that!"...it's a walk down memory lane and a very special one, at that. I highly reccommend these to anyone who loves B Bunny.
Not to mention these are some of the finest musicians you will ever hear...a lesson in classical music, and cartoons. |
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 "The Carl Stalling Project" | 2005-09-12 |
| - Reviewed By gsaugustas |
Music from Warner Brothers cartoons "Golden Years" (1936-1958).
Carl Stalling was the chief music arranger for Warner Brothers cartoons from 1936 to 1958. He was one of the foremost composers of cartoon music. This disk is much better than "The Carl Stalling Project Volume II." |
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| "Warner Brother's King of Music" | 2003-12-02 |
| - Reviewed By cmborna |
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!" |
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| "one of the best avant-garde albums I've heard." | 2003-11-12 |
| - Reviewed By lordchimp |
| To truly appreciate this music, remember that it follows the action of the cartoons. Musically, it has no conventional sense of rhythm, time, or progression. Very quirky, fun, and enlightening. Essential stuff. |
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| "You KNOW this music, you just don't realize you know it" | 2002-06-04 |
| - Reviewed By woburnmusicfan |
| 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.) |
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| "GUARANTEED" | 2001-07-06 |
| - Reviewed By nuts2cast |
| 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. |
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| "This Merry-Go-Round Isn't Broken Down!" | 2000-12-30 |
| - Reviewed By hunter21@flash.net |
| This CD, like the Warner cartoons Carl Stalling scored, is excellent. This is a compilation of some of his best work, with complete scores, excerpts from scores, and compilation tracks of his music that are perfectly listenable! If you listen closely, you might hear the audio of a cartoon you've seen before. Stalling, although not the very first of the Warner Brothers Cartoon musical directors, is considered to be the best of them. Part of his secret to making this stuff so good is that he took a funny cartoon and used funny music for it as well. Whenever there was a train going anywhere, he played "California, Here I Come.". Another favorite was an obscure 1930's tune called "Umbrella Man.", heard in chicken clucks on one of the tracks in this CD. He also is known for the famous "powerhouse" theme he used for factories and big, powerful things in cartoons, written by Raymond Scott. Sit back and enjoy this wonderful collection, you can just SEE a Road Runner or a stuttering pig, or a very "Daffy" duck. -Matthew |
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