Origins of non-sensical little snippet of music heard in many places

Cafe Society
#1

It’s only two bars long. It’s basically the main melody of the Carter Family recording “Chewing Gum”, which is probably the most explicit and locatable place I can point to.

It’s also present in a lot of cartoon soundtracks and the like. E.g., the Simpsons’ “Itchy and Scratchy” used it at least once that I remember.

You can hear it in “Northwest Hounded Police”, an MGM cartoon directed by Tex Avery: when an escaped fugitive lays eyes on a plastic surgeon’s sign (and subsequently gets an operation to evade Officer Droopy), it plays ominously and loudly.

This is a sketch of the outline of the melody (syncopated flourishes around which are often added):

C__A__G_B_B

G__A_B_C

(C is the highest note hee, G the lowest).

The Carter Family song is the earliest place I’ve found it, but I suspect it may be even older.

TIA.

#2

Here’s “Chewing Gum” for those who don’t know it.

It sounds like one of those progressions that have been around forever. I would guess it has more of an obvious folk tradition as an antecedent, but I’m sure there’s a classical piece (possibly operetta, because of its playfulness) that mined that particular sequence somewhere out there.

#3

Isn’t that the riff from the theme from Looney Tunes cartoons, aka ‘The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down’? Or maybe it’s a quote there as well.Here’s an mp3.

#4

Here’s the cartoon. The moment is at 5:32. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPH0mAdrNvo

Spike Jones used it in “Der Fuehrer’s Face” (excerpt here). ISTR watching someone play it on the piano when I was a kid. However, the best I can come up with is that it’s just a stereotype of German oom-pah-pah music. It might be a quote of some traditional German song or dance music still popular in the US in Spike’s day.

#5

Although the moods are similar, they’re not the same music.

I would agree that it may be Germanic in origin, and did time in light opera.

This discussion has dispelled a crazy notion I got from the Droopy cartoon: that there was some intentional evocation of ‘chewing gum’ to denote a plastic surgeon bending and shaping flesh.

#6

They most certainly are! :slight_smile: Listen to the link – the riff occurs in the intro, third measure, right before the main melody begins.

#7

You’re right, they are the same music – since I was familiar with main melody of the ‘Looney Tunes’ theme (and since I have dialup) I hadn’t bothered to listen to your clip. My bad.