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Rating: "Hey, what's up, doc?"
How cool is Bugs Bunny? He always manages to make fun of everyone and gets away with it, casually munching on his carrot with an air between indifference and self-satisfaction. Or Wile E. Coyote. Always chasing Road Runner without ever catching him, and after yet another failure, another rock falling on his head, another badly triggered explosive, and another precipice, he finds the strength to get up and try again, incessantly.
He knows he will never catch that darn bird, but he keeps trying anyway. And then there's Speedy Gonzales, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat..... all characters created by a pencil, yet more real and sincere than human beings themselves. But beyond the stories and the charming protagonists, what is it that makes these cartoons immortal?
What was that element that accompanied the images in such a dynamic and stimulating way? Let's try to close our eyes while watching any Warner cartoon: the background soundtrack is absurd, and no other adjective would be more appropriate (actually, there are many others) to describe the music of Carl Stalling, the brilliant composer of these little shards of crazy notes.
Carl Stalling worked for a full twenty-two years at Warner Bros, from 1936 to 1958, and this is the first of two collections released only in the early nineties; the second volume "More Music From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1929/1957" would be released five years later. Absurd, as we said. Yes, because every scene of a cartoon has a perfect musical atmosphere, every movement of Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote is associated with a particular sound extracted from one of the fifty elements that make up Carl Stalling's orchestra: a sudden violin stroke, a hysterical trumpet, or a menacing drum roll; nothing is left to chance.
But another aspect that strikes the unsuspecting listener is the variety and originality of these pieces, which at first glance may seem dated. The musical climate in which Carl Stalling moves is that of the '30s and '40s, years in which jazz was emerging and making its mark on people's ears, but they were also years in which new paths and new sound possibilities were being sought. Stalling, therefore, fully absorbs this new artistic ferment and transposes it into music, into the soundtracks of "his" animated cartoons.
No limitations: all genres are considered equal and essential to the sound realization for animation. Indeed, in pieces of four or five minutes, Stalling moves from pure jazz pieces to more "classical" solutions, without neglecting a certain pop flavor or the solo interjections for flute or violin: all this in one single track. Carl Stalling remains one of the most underrated and unknown composers, but he deserves equal respect and attention as masters like Morricone, Rota, or Herman.
A great avant-garde artist, who with genius and irony gave a mighty kick to the limitations imposed by genres. Not to mention that he also influenced the work of great musicians we all adore today, like John Zorn and Mike Patton.
Before dying, Carl Stalling stated that a downside of today's cartoons is that they have so much dialogue that the music means little. And I believe that's unfortunately true: what's the pleasure in hearing, for example, Tarzan with Phil Collins' voice? There's no personality, only conformity to the public taste, something that Stalling didn't do, trying only to create the best soundtrack for a given scene.
"Hey, what's up, doc?"
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