The Carl Stalling Project

Music From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1936-1958 (1990)
More Music From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1939-1957 (1995)
The Music That Subliminally Warped An Entire Generation of Kids

American kids of the 50s and 60s could hardly be expected to comprehend the musical chaos underscoring the talking ducks, wily rodents and dimwitted dogs that populated the world of Warner Bros. cartoons. If you're of a certain age, Saturday mornings provided a steady, subliminal diet of mis-shaped modern composition and avant-garde orchestral music, courtesy of Warners' house composer Carl Stalling. Stalling's genius was that he mixed his sometimes wildly careening orchestrations with classical cues and lighthearted adaptions of Americana song (e.g. "How Dry I Am"), creating a mashed-up pastiche of sound & effect. All you need to do is listen - without the visuals - to hear how truly revolutionary Stalling's work was; the plucked cellos that accompanied tiptoeing characters, the mad flurry of strings & woodwinds that signaled a frenzied dash and the sudden, violent outbursts of brass and percussion, now synonymous with a mallet in the face. Parisian fanfares, operatic show tunes and hairpin tempo changes were all part of the live mix. Without realizing it, we were all experiments in Warner's own "Ludivico Technique," spellbound by the violent imagery while Stalling's beautiful dissonance entered our brains via the soundtrack. No one's been quite the same since. Is it possible that Stalling's work subliminally influenced the musical experimentation of the 60s? Maybe. Guys like Frank Zappa and John Zorn have always admitted the direct lineage from Stalling's work to their own. 50 to 70 years later, Stalling's inventions are still profoundly subversive. Below, you can hear Stalling's 1955 Road Runner soundtrack, "Guided Muscle," from Volume 2. The great Hal Willner produces. Track lists are in comments.


Bonus:
Head to Dinosaur Gardens, who've posted the rare, Carl Stalling track, "Stupor Duck," which appeared only on the cassette version of the original 1990 release. It's not available on any other issue.

Cartoon Bonus:
Here's Wile E. & Road Runner in 1955's Guided Muscle. A saintly YouTuber, loogieone, has posted what may be all of Warner's Road Runners (43 of 'em, anyway). Just remember to steer clear of the later, mid-60s toons (post-Stalling/Milt Franklyn), when economics forced WB to sideline the 60 piece orchestra and begin using generic (and inferior) music scores.