Since I started this blog, I have unfortunately only spoken a few times of Hoyt Curtin, who gave Hanna-Barbera much of its musical identity. That is why I'm beyond excited about today's post. Coming to us from the October 11th, 1995 edition of The Flint Journal, is this fascinating look at Curtin's career. Unsurprisingly, the focus is on his work for Hanna-Barbera, but he also discusses his influences and life post-Hanna-Barbera. Check it out below, along with a nice photo of Curtin alongside Alan Reed and Hoagy Carmichael during the production of The Flintstones episode, "The Hit Songwriters."
Veteran composer's music lives on in TV cartoons
By Martin Natchez
Even today, Curtin's less-than-a-minute melodies can be sung by millions of adults and children by heart.
Remember "Get set, get steady, here comes Ruff and Ready"?
Or "Flintstones, meet the Flintstones, they're the modern stone-age family"?
Don't forget "The greatest show in town is Huckleberry Hound for all you guys and gals, dah-dah-da-da-dah!"
Nearly 50 of Curtin's famous "toon tunes" are anthologized on the new Kid Rhino Records CD "Hanna-Barbera Classics Volume 1." The offerings range from themes for Pixie and Dixie and Augie Doggie to later favorites like Magilla Gorilla and Scooby Doo.
Chances are, Curtin's music still creates instant visual images of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera's famous cast of TV celluloid celebrities. The musically minded trio worked together, in fact. Yet their creative end was often achieved in a slightly unorthodox exchange.
"Usually, the pieces started with Bill and Joe writing the lyrics, because they knew what shows they were going to put out. Then I'd write the music and call them back on the phone," Curtin explained in a recent phone interview. "That's the way we did Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound - all those early ones. We rarely had a formal sit-down table meeting."
When discussing his career, the good-humored composer, who, at 72, is still seeking his doctorate degree in music, enjoys relating how a slow clarinet lament in the premiere episode of "The Flintstones" was jazzed up with tympani, to give it "a real caveman feel." It was transformed into the series' second, and more popular, opening theme.
And why does "The Jetsons" theme contain a few bars of "Chopsticks"? Without hesitation, Curtin replied, "Elroy was such a nice kid, I just figured he ought to take piano lessons."
Although classically trained, Curtin said his biggest influences came from listening to the jazz stylings of Artie Shaw, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. He, in turn, carried his love for that big brass sound toward a number of rousing cartoon scores.
And from 1957 to 1990, Curtin wrote and recorded main themes and background "cues" for hundreds of Hanna-Barbera cartoons that are mainstays on cable TV.
"Mozart I'm not, but Bill and Joe's philosophy about music was that it should be bright, up and happy," Curtin said. "I wrote all the themes and I chose all the bands. I had five arrangers, and we would all meet at a table in the corner of a Bob's Big Boy, give the waitress $10, and tell her just to bring coffee while we set up the recording sessions."
For each season, Curtin had to have the music completed before the first week of September, when film would start arriving from animation studios based in Taiwan, Madrid and Hollywood. Primitively, he notes, the music had to be pre-written and timed to storyboards with a stopwatch.
"It was all done before computers," said Curtin of the bygone practice. "But even today, all the guys who do what I did have huge workloads. It was murder, but you couldn't ask for a better job."
If you'd like to learn more about Hoyt Curtin, I highly recommend reading this e-mail correspondence the folks at Classic Jonny Quest had with him back in '99. Yowp also has a few great reads on him, but I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you that! I also shared a video interview with him last year, which you can watch that right here.