Cartoon Music Part 2

The Great Carl Stalling

If you tried to write about the history of cartoon music without mentioning Carl Stalling, the huge gap in your timeline would make it look as though for many years there was no music in cartoons. Stalling is unquestionably the seminal cartoon musician creating some of the most iconic scores in animation history.

Carl Stalling was from Missouri and at the age of 12 he was the pianist at the local silent movie theatre. From there he moved on to conducting his own orchestra in Kansas City. It was here that he met a young Walt Disney when Walt was making the Laugh-o-Grams. After the success of the synchronized sound in Steamboat Willie, Walt persuaded Carl to come out to Hollywood to create the score for Plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho.

There was always friction between Walt and Carl over which element should inform the other. Should the action inform the music, or should the music inform the action? In a compromise, Walt offered a series of cartoons that would be completely informed by the music called Silly Symphonies. Carl would create the scores for the Silly Symphonies and the animators would animate, while in the Mickey Mouse cartoons, the gag and story men would create the story and then Carl would compose a score. Very quickly, the Silly Symphonies became just as popular as the Mickey Mouse cartoons, and The Flowers and the Trees became the first animated short in color as well as the first animated short to win the Academy Award for best animated short film.

After a couple years at Disney, the friction between Walt and Carl became too much to handle, and Carl left the Disney Studio. After freelancing for a while, Leon Schlesinger hired him to work on the Warner Bros. cartoons, and he remained there for twenty-two years. While at Warner Bros. he would create some of the most iconic musical scores of all time indelibly associating various pieces of classical music with cartoons.

Though many people enjoyed his punny musical scoring, director Chuck Jones did not, saying, 'He was a brilliant musician. But the quickest way for him to write a musical score was to simply look up some music that had the proper name. If there was a lady dressed in red, he'd always play "The Lady in Red". If somebody went into a cave, he'd play "Fingal's Cave"...I had a bee one time, and my God, if he didn't go and find a piece of music written in 1906 or something called "I'm a Busy Little Bumble Bee".'

Here are just a few of the great musical gags and animation scores of the brilliant Carl Stalling:
For scenes at sea, the Spanish tune "Over the Waves"

For machinery, Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse"

For waking up, "Morning Mood"

For characters out driving, "In My Merry Oldsmobile"

For chase scenes, "The William Tell Overture"


Too many to include in one simple blog post. However, if you enjoy the work of Carl Stalling, check this out as well.

CG