Music from the Tex Avery Original Soundtracks

"Carl Stalling is the 500-pound gorilla in the room when music written for classic American theatrical cartoons is considered. However, Stalling was not the only player in the game. There was Winston Sharples at Famous Studios, Philip Scheib at Terrytoons - who on his own scored nearly 800 cartoons - and Scott Bradley at MGM. Bradley is a figure of particular significance, as he scored all of the theatrical cartoons of the world's most popular cat and mouse duo - Tom and Jerry - through 1958, and was a significant contributor to the work of classic animation's most certifiably insane director, one-eyed tall tale spinner and spot gag specialist Fred "Tex" Avery. However, serious interest in Bradley has been comparatively slow to develop in comparison to Stalling, and although Bradley's name is only acknowledged in the small print, Milan's Music from the Tex Avery Original Soundtracks is a small step in the right direction.

The disc includes a mixture of complete and condensed soundtracks from six cartoons and totals a mere 35 minutes. However, the sound is terrific, especially in material taken from original soundtrack elements without the voice actors, and particularly when compared to anything that might come squawking out of the speaker on one's television, the most common reproduction medium used for experiencing such music. Bradley's score for "TV of Tomorrow" (1953), without its ingratiating narration, comes off well on its own and contains good examples of Bradley's innovative scoring techniques, nurtured in silent films and early talkies, but further informed through his contact with Arnold Schoenberg. On the downside, Deputy Droopy (1955) is a little harder to appreciate without the hilarious screaming of the actors that would have been part of the voice track - we get the musical passages leading up to the yowling, but then the yowl itself isn't there. By comparison, with "Little Johnny Jet" (1953) we get the whole soundtrack, completewith dialogue and sound effects, and the additional elements are noticeably distracting vis á vis Bradley's music. One might deduce that availability of elements would have played a large part in determining the final content of this short disc, but there is no explanation of this part of the process in the notes, of which eight paragraphs are devoted to lionizing Tex Avery and only three to Bradley's part in their collaboration. These concentrate mainly on Bradley's use of pre-existing material, despite that Bradley's relative departure from stock tunes and interest in music that follows action is what largely sets him apart from his colleagues."
- Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide