Lorenzo Music, 1937-2001

Good luck and godspeed to Lorenzo Music. The voice of Carlton your doorman and Garfield the cat died this week. We at the SDMB wish his family well and send our condolences.

Click here for details.

Wow. The day the Music died.

Not only that, he was an acomplished writer and producer. He was one of the guys behind the “Bob Newhart Show”!

http://www.evanier.com/News080501.htm

Lorenzo Music WAS Garfield. He was the perfect voice for such an interesting personality. It’s interesting to note that Lorenzo’s most popular roles were all off-screen.

I will miss you, even though I didn’t know you.

One of the all-time great voice-overs. Not exactly versatile; but neither were Mae West or W.C. Fields.

cnn.com didn’t have anything on this, but I’ll keep checking.

When I was MissRobyn, my family and his carpooled, and his son was my brother’s best friend for a while. While we were in the car on the way home, he’d show us how he voiced his characters. (This being the late 70s, it was sometime after Carlton but before Garfield.)

My day is ruined. :frowning:

Robin

From today’s Los Angeles Times [edited down a bit]:

"He swore he didn’t know Garfield the Cat from Charlie the Tuna. Nevertheless, the former folk singer and comedy writer with the voice once described as ‘kind of cutely stupid’ became television’s animated Garfield. Lorenzo Music, who was also the voice of Carlton, the unseen drunk doorman of the TV series ‘Rhoda,’ as well as a crash dummy and a pig tout for the Queen Mary, has died. He was 64. Music died Saturday of bone cancer at his home in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park.

Garfield creator Jim Davis chose Music as the orange cat’s sardonic voice for the comic strip’s first animated television special in 1982. Building on Garfield and the popularity he had already achieved on ‘Rhoda’ from 1974 to 1978, Music became something of the pet rock of voice advertising.

Born Gerald David Music in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in Duluth, Minn., Music studied at the University of Minnesota. He assumed the name Lorenzo for spiritual reasons. Music was a folk singer working in San Francisco when he met Tommy Smothers, to whom his voice has been compared. Smothers hired him to write for his ‘The Smothers Brothers Show’ with brother Dick. The show earned Music an Emmy in 1969, and he went on to write and work as story editor for ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ and ‘The Bob Newhart Show.’ Music and his wife also wrote the theme song for the Newhart show.

Working on the Mary Tyler Moore spinoff ‘Rhoda’ with partner David Davis, Music had no intention of acting in the sitcom. But producers who liked his unusual voice asked him to try it, and he became Carlton the Doorman. After ‘Rhoda’ was canceled, a Paramount executive suggested that Music capitalize on the fondness for the Carlton voice by making radio commercials–a new career that he followed until about a month ago.

Music is survived by his wife and their four children, Roz, Fernando, Sam and Leilani."

You mean the voice of Venkman died? Aw crap . . . :frowning:

Tripler
You’ve never watched “The REAL Ghostbusters”?

I felt bad. Just heard last night.
I todl my son, and he said, “Now they can only show repeats.”