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He started playing piano at six. By the age of 12, he was the principal piano accompanist in his hometown's silent movie house. For a short period, he was also the theatre organist at the St. Louis Theatre, which eventually became Powell Symphony Hall.
Aug 23, 2010 · Beginning in 1936, he worked for Warner Bros. and wrote all of the cartoon music there (including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner, Porky Pig, and Sylvester) for 22 years until his retirement in 1958. Stalling saw his first movie at age 12 in1903 and vowed to be involved in movies in some way.
- Overview
- Looney Works
Carl W. Stalling (10 November 1891 - 29 November 1972) was a noted American composer and arranger of music for animated cartoons. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he worked, averaging one complete score each week, for twenty-two years. Stalling started his career as an accompanist for silent films on the piano and theater organ in Independence, Missouri. It was there that he met and befriended a young Walt Disney who was producing animated comedy shorts in the Kansas City region. Stalling composed several early cartoon scores for Walt Disney, including Plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho in 1928, (but not Steamboat Willie, Disney's first released sound short). Early discussions with Disney about whether the animation or the musical score should come first led to Disney creating the "Silly Symphonies" series of cartoons. These cartoons allowed Stalling to create a score which Disney handed to his animators. While there, Stalling pioneered the use of "bar sheets" which allowed the musical rhythms to be sketched out simultaneously with the storyboards for the animation. He left Disney after only two years, at the same time as animator Ub Iwerks. Finding few outlets in New York, Stalling rejoined Iwerks at his own studio in California, while freelancing for Disney and others. In 1936, when Iwerks was hired by Leon Schlesinger, who was under contract to produce animated shorts for Warner Bros., Stalling went with him to become a full-time cartoon music composer, with full access to the expansive Warner Bros. catalog and musicians. He remained with Warner Bros. until his retirement in 1958. His last cartoon was To Itch His Own, a cartoon directed by Chuck Jones which featured the world's strongest flea, the Mighty Angelo. Stalling was consistently an innovator. He was the first music director to extensively use the metronome to time film scores. He is one of three composers, along with Max Steiner and Scott Bradley, credited with the invention of the click track.[citation needed]
His stock-in-trade was the "musical pun", where, much to the annoyance of his fellows, he used references to popular songs, or even classical pieces, to add a dimension of humor to the action on the screen. Working with legendary directors Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones, he developed the "Looney Tunes" style of very rapid and tightly coordinated musical cues, punctuated with both instrumental and recorded sound effects, and occasionally reaching into full blown musical fantasies such as Rabbit of Seville, A Corny Concerto and What's Opera, Doc?. Stalling was a master at quickly changing musical styles based on the action in the cartoon. His arrangements were very complicated and technically demanding. The music itself served both as a background for the cartoon, and provided musical sound effects. The titles of the music often described the action, sometimes forming jokes for those familiar with the tunes.
Examples include:
•A beautiful woman sashaying into a room would be accompanied by "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" or "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" .
•A drunken character would stagger to "How Dry I Am", "Little Brown Jug", or a slow-tempo "Shuffle Off to Buffalo".
•A football team would scrimmage to "Freddie the Freshman".
See Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling
- 3 min
Mar 4, 2024 · He was previously a composer and musical director at the Walt Disney animation studio in 1928, where he composed music for the Mickey Mouse shorts and led Walt Disney to create the Silly Symphonies series.
Nov 3, 2013 · By the time Charles Ives was composing musical jokes by mashing up and transforming pieces from the popular repertoire, Carl Stalling was starting his musical career as a film accompanist in Kansas City.
Dec 5, 2003 · Walt Disney discovered Stalling in the early ‘20s at Kansas City’s Isis Theater, where Stalling was conducting his own orchestra and improvising on the organ to silent movies.
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By the 1920s, he was leading his own orchestra and creating music to accompany silent films at the Isis Theater, Kansas City. Stalling was invited to score two animated shorts by Walt Disney. His soundtracks included cartoons such as “The Skeleton Dance”, the first of the Silly Symphonies Series.
