Could This Be The "Looney Tunes" Guitar?

Jeremy Steele · From: Princeton, NJ USA

I got a message from my friend Allyn Love (who is an AWESOME steel player, as many here know)...anyway, he now manages the North Carolina Symphony, and they just did a show called "Bugs Bunny on Broadway" in which the orchestra plays live to some of those wonderful old Warner Brothers cartoons.

The conductor of the show brought a holy grail of sorts with him... this would be the lap steel upon which Freddy Tavares played the opening gliss to every cartoon, which must be the most-heard bite of steel guitar EVER (at least to those of us who grew up watching those cartoons).

It's had new pegs installed, but Allyn says when they played it through a Fender Vibrosonic it did indeed sound like the real deal.

Here's a quote from Allyn on how the "swoosh" is played...

"to make the swoosh, only the top 3 strings are used which are tuned G-B-D. You can see the tape on the guitar where you start the slide (a C
chord) and end. On the concert, the part was played by the pianist."

Anyway, here it is, for your analysis and comments.

Russ Wever · From: Kansas City

Barry Blackwood · Posted 29 Jan 2009 7:29 am

Strange that the conductor would go to the trouble of bringing the instrument to the concert, and Allyn wouldn't have volunteered to play the iconic slide. Having the keyboard player do it is as mysterious as it is annoying.
Mad

By the way, is that a Dobro logo on the head?

T. C. Furlong · From: Lake County, Illinois, USA

Years ago, I played (re-played?) the Freddy Tavares steel part on the digital re-record for the demo of the Warner Bros. Symphony and Bugs Bunny on Broadway. I also played the part live for a weeks worth of shows when it was at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. I wore a tux just like a real symphony player and got paid the same as the real musicians to play a total of about eight seconds of music each performance. Since I kicked off the 50+ piece orchestra, it was the most nerve-wracking gig I think I have ever done. I ended up only blowing it once in rehearsals (thankfully)...talk about a train wreck!!! The comments that I received about my small contribution was that it was really much better to have a real steel player playing the part. I think the regular piano player was ill and the replacement wouldn't play the steel which is why I got the call.

Interesting note: The Warner Bros. Symphony carries a few key players and "picks up" local musicians in each city. The "pick up" players when I did it were Chicago Symphony Orchestra players who are arguably the best players in the world. They commented that they had to spend way more time woodshedding to get through the gig. Apparently the cartoon music is very difficult music to play.

I never heard anything about the instrument or Freddy T during the time I played the part. On the recording, I played a Fender Custom 8 that the engineer re-amped through an old Twin Reverb. Pretty much dead on recreation of the sound.

One final note; Howdy to Allyn Love. Great steel player who I would run into in his Madison Wisconsin days. Nice suit dude!
TC

Mike Cass · Posted 29 Jan 2009 8:51 am

That is indeed a Dobro label on the headstock. I'll venture a guess that Rudy Doperya might have originially made this for Freddy as Rudy experimented with and produced a number of variations on the standard Dobro line over the years, including their electric haiwiian instruments.
That Dobro label appears to be one from the '60s, very similar to the Mostrite-era Dobro logo wth the elongated banner on each side of the shield, which Rudy was fond of using when refurbishing an older Dobro instrument(tuners are new too, as pointed out earlier). Im curious though as to why FT would be playing a Dobro instrument instead of a Fender unless the guitar was made for Freddy, pre-Fender Musical Instruments? Rudy made up a number of custom instruments at the shops in Long Beach and El Monte, Ca. and this could very well be yet another example of his handywork. Remember the pre-war walnut bodied Dobro's w/gold plated parts? yep, ol' Rudy designed and built those too.
Th-th-th-thats all folks! Wink

Nathan Golub · From: Durham, NC

Cool guitar! Nice to see Allyn mentioned here, he is indeed a great steel player. I've had a few lessons from him and always come away with great stuff to work on.

chris ivey · From: california (deceased)

i always thought speedy west had played those cartoon parts?! guess i was wrong, huh?

Glenn Suchan · From: Austin, Texas

I have a copy of the CD from the original production of "Bugs Bunny on Broadway" which is OK to listen to. It's available from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Bugs-Bunny-on-Broadway/dp/B000002LOA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1233253675&sr=1-1

But the real gem is another CD I have: "The Carl Stalling Project - Music From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1936-1958". Also available from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Carl-Stalling-Project-Cartoons-1936-1958/dp/B000002LJE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1233253922&sr=1-3

All tracks on this CD are from the original recordings of the scores Stalling did for Warner Bros. "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons. They're the original performances on a Warner Bros. sound stage with the WB symphony orchestra and foley (sound effects) artists under the direction of Carl, himself.

A little background on Carl Stalling: Born in 1891, Carl went to work as a composer for a young Walt Disney in 1928. From 1936 until he retired in 1958, Carl worked for Leon Schlesinger at Warner Bros. Studios, doing cartoon scores for "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons. These were famous for introducing characters such as Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc.

While at Warner Bros. Carl developed what he called the "tick system". In modern technology this evolved into what is known as a "click track". Warner Bros. Studios saw the need to be able to produce the score separately from the animation. Specifically, in order to facilitate dialog to be interchangeable for different languages (Looney Tunes were popular all over the world). So Carl devised a method of scoring measured by time. The time could be counted by the number of frames of animation per second. Film animation was produced at 8 , 10, and 12 frames per second. Carl's system involved scoring by the second, or by 8, 10, or 12 frames of animation. Thus, it could be separately performed by the Warner Bros. studio orchestra and later synched to the animation. With the "tick system" a separate recording of a metronome was played back to the musicians (including the Foley Artists) via a single headphone. The tempo was based on the frame-per-second rate of the animation which was also comparably notated on the score. Both Carl and the animators used the story boards as an outline for their work. True genius on Carl's part.

Here's a YouTube link to one of the tracks off of the CD. You'll here Carl's direction plus the metronome applied to retakes of passages from a score:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EylQEoqTtw

At one time there was a YouTube of a "Looney Tunes" Daffy Duck cartoon with just the score and sound effects - no dialog. It's been pulled for licensing infringement. But here is a link to a good ol' "Merrie Melodies", Bugs Bunny cartoon with the amazing Carl Stalling's score (including Freddy Travares' infamous steel guitar gliss):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l8mWGCeBu8

Keep on pickin'!
Glenn

Brett Day · From: Pickens, SC

Jeremy, Allyn played steel with Steve Wariner.

Brett

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