Best musical director after Carl Stalling

[J Lee]

With the release of the "That's All, Folks" CD, I thought I'd toss this poll out. I took out Stalling since that would be like running a poll on "Best NBA player of the 1990s."

All the names listed worked at some point in time after 1940, since there weren't enough spaces to add the early and mid-30s directors like Frank Marsalles or Leigh Harline.

And, no, John Seely's work doesn't count. ;)

[Jack]

Wow, I was just about to post something like this. I like Scott Bradley. His scores were different than those of stalling, a little jazzier, but they accent the MGM style of cartoon perfectly.


Jack:D

[dendawg]

I voted for Milt Franklyn. As Carl's protoge, his style combined with slightly jazzier music than Carl's, he barely edges out Scott Bradley.

[Matt Yorston]

It was a REALLY tough decision for me. I immediately wanted to choose Darrell Calker (Lantz) when I saw he was on the list... until I then saw that Disney composer Oliver Wallace was *also* on the list. I love both composers' music very much... but I went with Calker in the end after all. I have a soft spot for Calker's music. After Stalling, his was the first cartoon music I remember really enjoying and taking an interest in. There was just something about his scores that had a real mesmerizing, enjoyable quality to them that made the cartoons they accompanied that much more entertaining. I like him better than any other composer who worked for Lantz (although Eugene Poddany's music was rather enjoyable too). Favorite Calker scores: "Man's Best Friend" (1941), "Under the Spreading Blacksmith's Shop" (1942), "Jungle Jive" (1944; the stuff he ad-libbed), "Smoked Hams" (1947), "The Coo Coo Bird" (1947), "Drooler's Delight" (1949), "Mother's Little Helper" (1962), and "Rah Rah Ruckus" (1964).

Now for Wallace... He is probably my favorite Disney composer. I've noticed a common trend in Wallace's work... at first, they seem rather mundane (on the initial viewing at least) but after you watch the cartoons he scored a second or third time, his scores almost knock your socks off. It's the *little* things in Wallace's work (usually a particular instrument or tempo being used) that makes it entertaining. Some of my favorite Wallace "moments" include the scene in "The Plastics Inventor" where Donald's plane comes closer and closer to disintegrating with Donald trying in vein to salvage its' structure, a lot of his score for "Commando Duck" particularly the scene where the Japanese start firing at the naive mallard ("Must be mosquitoes"), the scene in "How to Play Golf" where Goofy uses a bit of "mental calculation" and starts writing like mad on a pad of paper, "The Big Wash" where Dolores the elephant keeps to trying to awaken the slumbering Goofy, and the opening shot of "Goofy Gymnastics" in which the Goof wearily opens the door to his apartment and slumps in a heap in the floor. Wallace's music makes all of these scenes that much more effective.

Just goes to show that a cartoon's musical score can be much more than just an added attraction... in the hands of the right people.

[J Lee]

Eugene Poddany's music was rather enjoyable too

I had a tough time deciding whether to include Walter Greene or Eugene Poddany on the list, since I wanted to get at least one musical director from all of the major studios that anyone has really heard (sorry, Columbia). I went with Greene because his musical stints were a little more well-defined within the 1960s -- his is probably the best style of that decade, in which musical directors had to cope with fewer and fewer musicans to work with when they were composing their scores.

Poddany had a chance to work both with full orchestras at Warners in 1950 and with MGM in 1964-65, but he also had to deal with the "limited budget" group of musician Lantz had available.

[lislebartman]

My vote is for Scott Bradley over at MGM. Next to Stallng, he was the best. All of his scores were nicely composed and really added to the onscreen action. There is one T & J cartoon which he didn't score (the one with Jerry posing as a white mouse that drank explosives - "Case of the Missing Mouse", I believe) and that one was scored by Edward Plumb (worked for Disney, I think). Listen to the music score on that particualr cartoon and then listen to the others. The music just didn't seem like a Bradley score.

Next would be Milt Franklyn, naturally.