Best cartoon music

[Unicron]

What do you consider the best cartoon music? It can be any music, not simply the opening/closing credits. I think one reason I still love a lot of the stuff I grew up on is because it had an awesome soundtrack. My short list:

Transformers
Thundercats
Batman: The Animated Series
X-Men (animated)
He-Man

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I live the incidental music from both Transformers and G.I. Joe..it was the same music but it was quite good. always got me ready for the scenes.

[Kegek]

Sharky and George, naturally.

[Neroon]

My personal favorite cartoon music is that used in the classic "Tom & Jerry" era, back in its MGM days, when they were produced by Fred Quimby. Later on they lost the soul and musical descriptiveness they had back then.

[ITL]

Neroon wrote:

---

My personal favorite cartoon music is that used in the classic "Tom & Jerry" era, back in its MGM days, when they were produced by Fred Quimby. Later on they lost the soul and musical descriptiveness they had back then.

When I was a kid, hearing the music on a Quimby T&J set off a Pavlovian response (well, grinning....) in our house. Especially from my dad. Especially especially if it was the "Bonjour, monsieur pussycat!" one.

[Gary Mitchell]

I always liked the theme for Battle of the Planets

[Unicron]

Forgot about Danger Mouse.

[Cicero]

1. Exosquad (even though it repeated the same handful of tracks for its entire run)
2. Batman: The Animated Series
3. X-Men

[Moocey]

I like the GI Joe chase music.

[Unicron]

I think GI Joe and Transformers shared some of the same music.

[God Magnus]

Unicron wrote:

---

I think GI Joe and Transformers shared some of the same music.

Not really. The two soundtracks and theme songs were very distinct. However, since they were both produced by Sunbow, every once and a while they would cross over music - including the bumpers for the commercials.

[TGTheodore]

Carl Stallings and Milt Franklyn. Composers of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons. No one can touch their genius.

Jazz, classical, swing, standards. And incredible use of existing music from the WB library as well.

--Ted

[Christopher]

It's not the best music, but the cartoon music that was closest to my heart growing up was the music from Filmation's shows from the '70s, which was credited to Yvette Blais and Jeff Michael, but which I now know was actually composed by Ray Ellis, Marc Ellis, and Norm Prescott (although it's unclear whether Prescott actually helped write it or just produced it). That was the soundtrack of my childhood, pretty much.

Of course the music Shirley Walker and her team did for Batman: TAS was fantastic, as good as any other TV score and quite diverse. Another favorite of mine was Shuki Levy & Kussa Mahchi's score to the 1994 Spider-Man series. It wasn't nearly as stylistically diverse, but it was lively and had a rich orchestral sound, as well as the kind of motif-driven style that I like. (I couldn't stand the theme music, though, which I think was by some guy from Aerosmith.)

I'm also very fond of Ron Jones's score for Disney's Duck Tales from the late '80s. There was a slew of syndicated Disney TV series that followed Duck Tales, but none of them ever equalled the quality of Jones's scores.

God Magnus wrote:

---

Not really. The two soundtracks and theme songs were very distinct. However, since they were both produced by Sunbow, every once and a while they would cross over music - including the bumpers for the commercials.

Well, that's exactly what Unicron said: that they shared some of the same music. I didn't watch either show that often, but I definitely remember them using a lot of the same stock cues. Naturally any cues that used either series' main theme were reserved for that series alone, but the more generic action cues were heard often on both (probably the "chase music" moocey is referring to). And of course they both had the same composers, Johnny Douglas and Rob Walsh.

By the way, to give credit where it's due, the music from MGM's cartoons was by Scott Bradley.

[Timby]

As much as I loathe the show, Ron Jones is doing some fantastic work on Family Guy.

[TheBrew]

I've always liked the music from the Simpsons.