I'm going to go out and say it: Even though I personally find Cambria Studios'
New Three Stooges cartoons to be woefully rushed and mediocre, they're sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. I love the stock library music frequently used on those cartoons (courtesy Gordon Zahler's General Music library), but the sound effects also keep drawing me back to these. Not just the stock sound effects, many of which I find really, really intriguing (plus I love hearing Jay Ward SFX in anything), but the actual editing is gloriously experimental and unorthodox.
Early on the SFX editing's a lot more conventional than it will end up as the series progress. The pilot, although he's uncredited, has the earmarks of Phil Kaye's doing, including my personal Kaye effect, a metal impact/crash heard frequently in
Roger Ramjet and in
King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, both of which he worked on.
Unfortunately, the 155 other entires in the series didn't use Kaye's library, instead using three different SFX libraries.
The first few cartoons use a mysterious stock SFX library I really wish I had the name of, but their library consisted of a number of sounds that might've been original, along with a few sounds from a library Clokey and a few other studios used effects from, a small number effects rooted from the Disney library (a couple of sputtery car sounds, including one that's performed by some guy making all manner of silly sputters and honks and beeps that I really love, plus a distorted version of the iconic "UNNNG!" hit sound and a "springs popping out" sound originally created for
Early to Bed), and a bunch of effects that are essentially variations of a few H-B/Clokey effects (that aforementioned sproing sound used in "Spaced Out Bunny", plus the "bow twang"). They also had a number of effects from UPA's sound library, plus a bunch of low-quality copies of a few of Warner Brothers' ricochet sounds and their kookaburra call, one of MGM's ricochets and even a few sounds familiar from Gene Deitch's
Tom and Jerry cartoons (a couple versions of that "boi-oi-oing!" sound and an electronic zip sound [I think])
I'm not sure if
Clutch Cargo and
Space Angel, both also from Cambria, used this library, but I'm pretty sure
Captain Fathom did
Phil Kaye and Sam Singer also used a few of the effects that were included here in this library Same with Larry Harmon Studios, but I wonder if they used this exact library sometimes, although that's unlikely (I've heard certain effects in their
Popeye cartoons Cambria didn't use). Any additional information regarding this stock library is appreciated.
Starting with cartoon #7 ("There Auto Be a Law"), the Jay Ward effects start to take the place of the other sounds (plus an H-B quick whistle zip), although some of those still show up here and there. Bizarrely, episodes #16 and #24 don't use these effects, reverting to that mysterious other library for some reason. The Ward sounds start to get used less and less over time, and by episode #56, the other library starts being used more. It's during this period the sound editing starts to get weird. The cartoons start to abound in odd, unorthodox juxtapositions between sound and visual, like a piano key being used for a character dashing off, or a bunch of cartoon bass drum/cymbal crashes being used for thunder. The Jay Ward sounds still show up from time to time, with cartoon #71 ("Aloha Ha Ha") being the last to use them.
Starting with episode #74 ("Cotton Pickin' Chicken"), a modest amount of effects from the Hanna-Barbera library show up, used in tandem with the sounds from that other library. It's here that, for some reason, the editor(s) start being dependent on that set of H-B effects mostly, and making a habit of using the same effects over and over, the same car skid, slide whistle fall, H-B arrow sounds, gunshot, etc. I guess that might because they really had to bang these cartoons out, and as such they didn't have time to go through the entire library to find any other effects to use, instead making use of the same, modest number of sounds.
Strangely, episode #44 ("The 1st in Lion") uses the H-B effects as well, although Cambria was primarily using the Jay Ward effects then.
Again, I'd love to know more about that stock library used in these. If anyone knows a thing or two about it, post below if you'd like.
Incidentally, I'd like to say that it's kinda sad that I'm the only one, for the most part, posting here. I know all of you have lives, that you do more than just sit in front of a computer posting here, but I'd love to see more discussion here. Just puttin' it out there.
Edited by user
2020-03-17T20:37:16Z
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Reason: Tweaked a bit so I wasn't complaining as much.
"With all respect to the great mousetrap."- Popeye, "The Spinach Overture" (1935)