# Origins of non-sensical little snippet of music heard in many places **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 10, 2007, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-non-sensical-little-snippet-of-music-heard-in-many-places/415151 "2007-08-10T16:08:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-non-sensical-little-snippet-of-music-heard-in-many-places/415151/1 "2007-08-10T16:08:20Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-non-sensical-little-snippet-of-music-heard-in-many-places/415151/2 "2007-08-10T16:27:57Z")
[Here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjvkT0mKzQ)’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. ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-non-sensical-little-snippet-of-music-heard-in-many-places/415151/3 "2007-08-10T19:01:07Z")
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](http://melaman2.com/cartoons/looney/themes/looney_tunes_opening4.mp3). ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-non-sensical-little-snippet-of-music-heard-in-many-places/415151/4 "2007-08-10T20:26:12Z")
Here’s the cartoon. The moment is at 5:32. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPH0mAdrNvo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPH0mAdrNvo) Spike Jones used it in “Der Fuehrer’s Face” (excerpt [here](http://www.last.fm/music/Spike+Jones/_/Der+Fuehrer's+Face)). 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. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2007, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-non-sensical-little-snippet-of-music-heard-in-many-places/415151/5 "2007-08-11T02:56:37Z")
[QUOTE=choie] 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](http://melaman2.com/cartoons/looney/themes/looney_tunes_opening4.mp3). [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2007, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-non-sensical-little-snippet-of-music-heard-in-many-places/415151/6 "2007-08-11T03:44:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Although the moods are similar, they’re not the same music. They most certainly are! 🙂 Listen to the link – the riff occurs in the intro, third measure, right before the main melody begins. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2007, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-non-sensical-little-snippet-of-music-heard-in-many-places/415151/7 "2007-08-11T11:56:20Z")
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.