Not only did the original Flintstones cartoon have a great theme song, it also had a very memorable underscore (that is, little snatches of music played over dialogue or during scene transitions in order to establish a mood). Each and every one of those themes has been burned indelibly into my memory through constant repetition in my youth. (You can hear them all together on YouTube.) I was wondering whether any of these themes have titles, and if so, does anyone know what they are? I mean, I assume that whoever composed or commissioned them must have given them titles, as the musicians and recording engineers must have needed to refer to them somehow when playing and recording and cataloguing them, and the music director must have likewise needed to refer to them when deciding how to score each episode. I suppose they might have just been given generic numbered titles like “Flintstones Underscore Theme #3”, but as there are an awful lot of them I think more descriptive monikers would have been more useful.
Looney Toons did it better.
The one starting at 6:55 is a variation on the original theme, which was titled, “Rise and Shine.” (The original theme did not appear in the syndicated reruns, being replaced with the “traditional” opening, albeit slightly out of sync near the end as a line is removed from the theme song for some reason.)
Thank you so much for this!
My favorites include (as I call it), “There’s something fishy going on” (starting at 2:01).
I also remember a tune not included here that played whenever Fred stepped on a roller skate, or the Bedrock Police gave chase. I called it “Out of Control”.
It’s an amazing skill to write music like that, which immediately evokes a feeling, but stays below the radar above which it becomes a familiar song.
Maybe, but is it really fair to compare theatrically released shorts produced by a major film studio with the low-budget limited animation of a weekly television series?
What happened to, “English Country Garden”? (There may have been a minor-key version somewhere in the middle of that track, I’m not sure.)
Carl Stalling was a genius.
No, but this is the Dope. We do this sorta thing all the time.
I watched the show religiously as a tot, but it never occurred to me that “Meet the Flintstones” was an underscore before it replaced the season 1 theme. Presumably season 1’s theme was replaced because it was too similar to Looney Tunes "Overture," which I guess means Looney Tunes did it better.
It’s one of the tunes in the video I linked.
And even before that, it was a melody in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor.
I read about it being essentially a public domain song (which I’m sure is true of Season 1/Overture as well) before, but couldn’t be bothered to remember or look up what it was. I incidentally can’t even really hear it beyond a few notes, not that I disbelieve it was inspired by it.