Yippy for Yowp!

"Yowp" is a niche site devoted to exhaustive analysis of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Since a large part of my life is devoted to exhaustive analysis of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons, I'm pretty excited.

Yowp might dwell a tad too much on dissecting gags and recounting plot lines of specific shorts(1) but they redeem themselves in a big way with a vast knowledge of the origins and implementations of the background music (sometimes tagged "incidental music") used in Hanna-Barbera productions.

Much of the music you hear in early television was culled from "production music libraries." Pre-packaged music has been used since at least the early days of radio and Poverty Row B-movies. The libraries were delivered as a series of 12-inch discs or reel-to-reel tapes and usually came with a printed catalog that classified the music according to various parameters like length, theme, mood and style. Producers paid a nominal fee for the actual physical discs and were assessed an annual fee that varied according to how the music was used. Some libraries would bill on a "needle drop" basis: a pro-rated fee based only on tracks they actually used. This last practice has led to some problems with contemporary repackaging of old tv and film properties since certain library music was not intended to be licensed in perpetuity. As a result, I'm told that the incidental music in the "My Three Sons" DVD was changed because of licensing issues.

A typical disc might feature the work of a single composer or it might be tailored to a specific category of music or usage.Some discs might contain familiar pieces of classical music or recognizable period pieces (i.e. at least one rousing Sousa march.) Other discs might be devoted to generic "sound-alike" songs recreating popular genres like country or rock and roll but without relying on previously published (i.e. expensive) works.

But the true gems are the custom tracks created specifically for the libraries.

A good music library disc might use a certain melody as a starting point then rework the same melody in various ways (faster and slower) on different tracks. Each piece was usually pop-song length or less (1-4 minutes) As a rule they were meticulously metered and structured very carefully so that with a bit of editing they could be looped and extended or seamlessly joined with other pieces from the same library.

The music libraries were usually created for "non-exclusive" use. Hence you might encounter the same piece of music in Quick Draw McGraw, Gumby or a Russ Meyer flick.

The king of production music was Capitol records which released various libraries targeted to different markets under a wide variety of titles.The Capitol library is all over "Leave it to Beaver", "Ren & Stimpy" and many other programs. You can still find old production library discs at record collector shows and if you know anyone who works at a college radio station that has been around a while, you can occasionally find a dusty milk-crate in the basement filled with stuff that even the program diector wouldn't steal.

Yowp features links to great MP3 rips of classic H-B production music that are meticulously identified and credited to the original composer(s). Even if you don't get excited about the cartoons here, the music is a great resource to anyone creating short films or animation.(2)

Footnotes
(1)Whenever I read an article about a film and half the text is devoted to retelling the story, I feel a bit gypped. Filmfax magazine does this a lot. A ten page article about "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" doesn't need five pages of filler retelling the plot point by point. Old movie reviews used to do this too but they were cranked out on tight deadlines so they relied heavily on press book plot summaries to pump up the column inches. Likewise here, if I'm going to the trouble to read about a specific "Pixie & Dixie" short then it's a pretty safe assumption that I have already seen it.

(2) Well, not LEGALLY mind you.