Behind the Hits of Jerry the Mouse, Gene Kelly, Rudolph, and Frosty

Meet the hero behind the first Hanna-Barbera stars to records who made stars of Rudolph and Frosty as author JUDY GAIL KRASNOW tells the story of her father, producer Hecky Krasnow of Columbia and Colpix Records.

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Henna
Barbera. Welcome to the Fantastic World
of Hannah and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah, Joe

(00:32):
Barbera and the thousands of people, past and present who
have shared in their entertainment tradition.
And now your host, Greg Airbar. Thank you, Chris.
Anthony, welcome to the fantastic world of Hannah and
Barbera and all those wonderful people connected with them in
one way or another. I'm Greg Airbar, author of the

(00:53):
recently released Hanna Barbera,The Recorded History.
I have another author and storyteller with us today.
Her name is Judy Gayle Krasno. Now the name Krasno.
If you had Culpix records, your ears will prick up just like my
little dog Romney's ears prick up when she hears her name
because he was a major force with all those Culpix soundtrack

(01:15):
albums. He produced the very first Hanna
Barbera album, really the Rough and Ready album.
He produced the very first record that was based on
anything they had done, which was The King that Couldn't Dance
with Gene Kelly. He also was responsible for some
of the greatest holiday related songs, and we're going to talk
about that. I want to welcome author and

(01:35):
storyteller Judy Gayle Krasno. Hello, so nice to be here.
Thank you. I first want to say that I
really, really love the book that you wrote, Rudolph Frosty
and Captain Kangaroo. You can still find it on various
websites. It tells a story that really
needed to be told. There was a person behind all of

(01:57):
these hits that are major, majorparts of history.
And I also want to talk about what you do because being a
storyteller, I have actually a very close friend who is also a
storyteller. It's a very marvelous endeavor.
Can you explain something about that well?
I have to acknowledge being Hecky Krasnos daughter and

(02:19):
growing up from birth, you know,look, my old childhood while he
initially worked at Columbia Records and then went to cold
pics. And I grew up hearing the
stories he recorded told by the big people of that era.

(02:40):
Gary Moore, Art Carney recorded stories from Gene Kelly, as you
mentioned, and also the many, many, many songs that he
produced. And I was a backup singer, a kid
backup singer for a lot of the Captain Kang music and songs

(03:03):
that my dad wrote, as well as hewas Captain Kangaroos producer.
It was a magical world. I was absolutely in that other
realm as I listened to the stories and was often in the
recording studio so I could alsosee, like Art Carney was

(03:26):
animated and became each and every character, changing his
body posture, his voice. So that's what I wanted to do.
Plus my father being a musician,I played piano, I played guitar,
I sang, and I included that and still do in my storytelling

(03:47):
programs. That's how it all began.
It is really important for youngpeople to read and hear stories.
And also, you know, we grew up with children's records that
told stories and there was also radio that had a lot of
storytelling, a lot of dramatizations, both for
families and for children. And there still are podcasts.

(04:10):
There are brand new podcasts that are being made.
There's also a lot of these records still available through
streaming or you can track them down on eBay and stuff.
And it's very easy to get a record player.
They're very inexpensive. And records have not gone away.
In fact, a lot of the recordingsthat he produced, especially the
big hits are very much with us and we still hear them.

(04:31):
But you mentioned quite a few there also.
And I'd like to talk about some of the famous people that you
work for. Art Carney did quite a few
records, and he was a radioactorand announcer.
Hi Flop. Hi Mop.
Hi, Cotton. Said Peter.
But oh, Missus Rabbit put him right to bed without his supper.

(04:51):
And then she said, oh, she said,yes, she said, this is what his
mother said. You went in the garden, you
almost got caught, and you made your mother cry.
Oh, mother, said Peter, I'm verysorry, but at least I'm not a
pie. I have never to this day, and

(05:14):
it's a few decades ago that I saw this.
He recorded, among other things,for my dad, the town musicians
of Bremen. And I think it was that
recording that absolutely clinched inside me that I was

(05:35):
going to tell stories because hebecame all of the animals, the
donkey, the dog that you name it.
And literally as I sat there watching him, he wasn't Art
Carney anymore. He was the donkey.

(05:56):
He was the dog. It was one of the more
impacting, shall I say, experiences of my life and Gary
Moore, when he did several narrating roles for my dad and

(06:17):
he had it was at one time a soothing voice and at the same
time very alive. Long ago, the elephants lived
quite happily in the jungle, with just ordinary noses.
But there was one elephant, a new elephant, an elephant's
child who? Was full of the most insatiable

(06:40):
curiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions.
Narration became something fascinating to me, how somebody
could narrate something so engrossing.
Well, Gene Kelly, my gosh, my inthe book, as you know, I also

(07:08):
write my sister, my mother and Ihad a crush Kelly.
He just seemed like the nicest man at 1 recording.
We all did get to meet him and he actually came to my mother
and swept her up and danced her around the recording studio and

(07:34):
she was floating days afterwards.
Go on, try it. Try being happy, just for a
minute. If you worry, if you worry, if
you bother your head, it won't help you.
It won't help you. It will hurt you instead.

(07:54):
Grouchers, groaners, cranks, andmoaners.
They're so unfair. If you can't be gay and marry,
lock yourself in solitary. Though it hurts you, though it
hurts you. Be a pleasanter guy.
You may even learn to like it. If you'd give it a try, you
could laugh and sing and dance as gay as an elf, but don't

(08:17):
expect to get much help if you don't help yourself when you
try, I'll show you good. 1234123La La La La la you see.

(08:53):
The thing you mentioned there, people and I got to meet, among
others, Rosemary Clooney, Gene Autry, I mean all the big stars
of that era. The thing that intrigued me is
you see them on the screen and, you know, just an audience.

(09:15):
They become magnified 1000 times, huge characters.
And then I would meet them and realize they were people and
they had their eccentricities and their quirks and whatever.
Some were nicer than others. It taught me that even desiring

(09:38):
to go into theater as I did, I didn't have to be some
otherworldly creature. That I could just be me and have
a talent and work on it. Yeah, I remember the Gary Moore
recordings he did like The Elephant's Child and things like
that with original songs, which I think your dad Co wrote the

(10:00):
songs for that. And I was so lucky because we
did not have a big apartment. My father's contract when he was
with Columbia, where Rudolph andthe whole thing began, he was
under contract. So even to gain royalties from

(10:22):
what he wrote and composed, he had to use pseudonyms.
And he had 44 different pseudonyms so that he could
collect the royalties from the various things that he wrote and
composed. But our living room, 1/3 of it

(10:46):
was taken up by my parents. Chickering baby grand piano.
My mother was a pianist, my father actually was a violinist.
He went to Juilliard. My parents met at Juilliard.
Yes, his taste in both the songs, the singers and also in

(11:08):
the stories that he recorded were very much influenced by his
classical music training and it had to be good quality.
And you mentioned the records and such still being available
around streaming and so forth today.

(11:30):
Back then, my father had to run what he was going to record, be
it a song or a story by child psychologists that worked for
the record companies. I didn't know that.
Yeah, I found that out. He could not just say, oh Gee, I

(11:51):
like this, I'm going to record it.
It had to have content that was appropriate, that would help,
that wouldn't frighten all the different things.
And that's one reason so much ofthe material for children back
then also somehow had a message,had a value, a good value.

(12:13):
And I'm not talking monetarily, though it has that too.
It had to in some way educate orenhance the child.
Teach them a quality of value. Gene Kelly recorded much more
than The King That Couldn't Dance.
He did the Winnie the Pooh songsand nursery rhymes and The House

(12:35):
that Wouldn't. And there's one called The
Happiest Birthday in the World about a boy who gets a toy piano
and or sister gets it and accidentally gets broken and
he's looking at what new toys toget.
It's actually very touching. Soon everyone was searching high
and low for Betty. Have you seen a little girl with

(12:56):
a little coat and a little hat? She was standing here a little
while ago, three years old and three feet high, with a button
nose and two blue eyes. He ends up doing the right thing

(13:18):
by her. He also does a brilliant job on
The Pied Piper of Hamlin, the original poem. 3 Shrill notes
the pipe uttered. You heard as if an army
muttered, And the muttering grewto a grumbling, and the
grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling, and out of the houses
the rats came tumbling. Rats, Small rats, Lean rats,

(13:40):
Brownie rats, Brown rats, Black rats, Gray rats, tawny rats,
grave old plotters, gay, young friskers.
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, cocking tails and
pricking whiskers. Families by 10s and dozens.
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives followed the Piper for the
Lives from street to St. He piped it dancing and step for

(14:01):
step they followed dancing. Piper of Hamlin again.
That story with Gene Kelly, thatrecording, I never it it sticks
with me to this day. I don't know what it was.
There was something, well the Pied Pipers, so magical and Gene

(14:22):
Kelly just brought him to life and and all the rats that
followed him that yes. Yeah.
Gene Kelly, I think all of them.But you mentioned him now.
He had something in his voice and his personality that just
poured into the recordings. I don't know if this is the

(14:47):
right word, but it's like his good soul came out in everything
he recorded and it added some really positive element.
Mm hmm. A lot of people talk about, of
course, what a innovative in dance and in film directing and
how cinematic his work was and things like that, and how it

(15:09):
could be a taskmaster and a perfectionist and all.
But what always strikes me aboutGene Kelly, above all of the
other performers of the era, is he danced with children and
connected with children and did more children's related things
than many of his contemporaries and American in Paris, he's
dancing with kids in invitation to a dance.

(15:30):
He did a lot of that and he did these records.
So he seemed very accessible in that way.
When you're a kid, you know. Yes, definitely.
Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit.
There isn't any other stair quite like it.

(15:53):
I'm not at the bottom, I'm not at the top.
So this is the stair where I always start, you know, I think.
That was part of his charm and his ability to relate to people

(16:15):
was just, I mean, when I met himand when just he was there,
that's the only way I can put itwas it was wonderful.
And the other thing that this era was, is this was truly the
most, I mean, until the era of Lion King and Beauty and the
Beast and Kid Pop, things like that.

(16:36):
This era of children's records, the post war era, you had
records for children that were charting and that were in the
top ten and artists were happy to do them most of the time.
And they put the same effort into them.
And they also put the same greatmusicians working on Rosemary
Clooney did dozens of children'srecords, Little Red Monkey and

(16:59):
Susie Snowflake. Well, I can't forget this
because my father, I know he's my father, but I'm not just
saying this because he's my father.
He was a really kind, nice, gentle, caring human being.
And Rosemary Clooney and later Nina Simone, whom he had

(17:22):
produced her first album and written some songs with her for
it. The Amazing Nina Simone.
Both Rosie and Nina looked to myfather like a father.
They had marital problems and other problems, and they came to
him for advice. Rosie Clooney, when my father

(17:47):
first started working with her, had been trying to break into
the pop and jazz field, and she wasn't really making it.
I mean, people loved her if she sang in a nightclub because she
had a beautiful, you know, very soothing, very little excellent

(18:07):
voice and style. But it wasn't until the
composer, lyricist Fred Poots, stumbled on an old teddy bear in
his attic and then sat down and wrote the song Me and My Teddy
Bear, which he then gave to my father.

(18:29):
Fred Coots was a great lyricist and my father thought Rosemary,
I remember this because he come home and talk to my mother about
it and play us the demo records of songs and such.
And he said I just have a feeling that Rosemary Clooney's

(18:51):
voice would be wonderful singingme and my teddy bear.
And my father at that point had to, as all the people who had
hits do, once he produced Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,
he had to keep doing it. Yeah, again, he would talk about

(19:12):
I had my gut instinct. And that's how he fought with
Goddard Lieberson to record Rudolph.
He just had a feeling about the song, and his feeling was right.
So he followed his feelings and he recorded Rosie singing.
Me, my teddy bear, have no worries, have no care.

(19:39):
Me and my teddy bear just play and play all day.
I love my. It crossed over children's.
Yeah, it became a hit for children and a hit on the radio
for adults. So her name?

(20:00):
That way got into adult households and then he continued
using her. And you know, here comes Susie
Snowflake. Yep, became another hit.
Here comes Susie Snowflake Rest in a Snow White gown.
Tap Tap tapping at your window pane to tell you she's in town.

(20:27):
Here comes Susie Snowflake. Soon you will.
This was all he would just hear a voice like Gene Autry's or
Rosemary Clooney's or Gene Kelly's, and he would associate
the voices with specific songs. He would hear them with those
songs. And he was right every single

(20:50):
time. Let's talk about the story of
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It began with Robert L May, who
was a copywriter for Montgomery Ward department stores, and he
wrote this book or booklet, which was in rhyme and didn't
have the misfit toys or any of that.
That was Rankin Bass. That added a lot of that.

(21:11):
It was fairly simple story. And then his brother-in-law, who
was Johnny Marks, wrote it as a song.
Then your dad picked up on it. And let's talk about the
reluctance, because Gene Autry wasn't too thrilled about
singing it either. It was as you mentioned earlier,
his wife Ina Autry said, Oh, give it a try.

(21:32):
Also, Gene Autry kept maintaining that he was a cowboy
singer and what was he going to be doing singing children's
songs and so forth. The demo of Rudolph the Red
Nosed Reindeer, the song Johnny Marks had done had been rejected
by DECA, by all the big record companies.

(21:52):
Goddard Lieberson, the CEO, Columbia Records were my father
was working then kept saying that's been rejected by every
major record company. Why, you know, Columbia can't
take this on. It's a total risk.
And Gene Autry, I mean, this went on and to this day I
remember that whole episode because it came into our home in

(22:17):
Yonkers every night. My mother, my father were, you
know, added over this. And my father, he called me Judy
for short affectionately. He'd say, Judy, Judy, come here,
come on. I want you to listen to this.
And I like the song, but I was old.

(22:38):
Was I nine years old or something?
Who was I to say, oh, it's goingto be anything.
And then our family was very in favor of unions.
And my grandfather had a union shop with National Steel in
Hartford, CT. And my father just kept seeing
in Rudolph this underdog, or he would laughingly say this under

(23:02):
Deer, who somehow is able to getthrough all the resistance and
become a hero. And my father had an affinity
for underdogs, in this case under Deer, who became
something. I was at the recording of

(23:23):
Rudolph and I will never again. Some things just never leave
you. Because in their own way they
were wonderful but traumatic. And Gene Autry, having been
persuaded by his wife, finally came into the recording session

(23:45):
in Los Angeles, where Columbia had, of course, paid for my
father to go. And they would pay for my mother
and me and my sister to accompany him for his long
recording spells there. Gene Autry came in to that
session drunk. Oh dear.

(24:05):
He did like his whiskey. And Ina, his wife, who was a
lovely woman and very tolerant person, came in with a cord of
milk. And I was how old was like an
Abe. And I sat there watching her

(24:27):
pour glasses of milk and put them to this.
You know, I've seen Jean on the movies, on TV.
It was this big, dashing, brave cowboy, and there's his wife
putting glasses of milk to his mouth and trying to sober him

(24:48):
up. In the meantime, the phone kept
ringing and it was Goddard Lieberson.
Hecky. I told you a maximum one hour to
get this done. That's it, where is it now?
And my father couldn't say, wellhe came in drunk, you know,
you're trying to sober him up. I laughed now but Oh my poor

(25:11):
fuck. Somehow he sobered up and
basically did the song like 2 takes.
This too. I remember when recordings were
made on the great big tape machines.
Yeah. My father had to stand there and

(25:31):
he would be maneuvering the tapewith his hands back and forth to
get to the exact spot where the mistake happened, where the
orchestra had to come in again, etcetera.
I was astounded at his technicalabilities with tape and getting
everything right exactly where it was supposed to be.

(25:54):
So he maneuvered the tape, the orchestra was patient, and
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was recorded.
So it has sort of a not an edit so much as a change that we're
not aware of somewhere in the song.
Yeah, as I say, it didn't changethe song or the lyrics or the

(26:16):
music, but my father had to, in effect, edit the the mistakes of
whiskey out and get the goods taste.
Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say, Rudolph, with

(26:39):
your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?
Then how the reindeer loved him as they shouted out with Glee.
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, you go down in history.
Gene Autry had a lovely voice and he got through it, and I

(27:04):
don't have to say what kind of ahit it became.
So Lieberson never questioned myfather's judgment about songs
again. But then immediately he had to
live up to Rudolph, so he went again to have another song and
it was Frosty the Snowman. Yeah, and that was Steve Nelson

(27:27):
and Jack Rollins. Right.
Marx didn't do that one. It was, as you say, Nelson and
Rollins. My father had an ability to
figure out which songwriters could write which type of song
and which type of song could be a hit.

(27:50):
I mean, even at Easter, we hear Here Comes Peter Cottontail,
right? It's another one of my dad's
doings. And honestly, at Christmas time,
it doesn't matter what store or public place I go into a gas
station. It doesn't matter.
It's like my father is always there because the songs that he

(28:16):
did from Rudolph to Frosty, HereComes Santa, all of these were
his productions. This is one of my happiest
memories because my cousin Karen, we lived in a three
family house in Yonkers and my cousin, he was six weeks older
than I am, lived on the 2nd floor.

(28:37):
We were on the 1st and Karen andI sang together and my father
used us as backup singers. We were good.
I mean, he didn't just say, oh, they're my kids, you know, I'm
gonna use them. We were with two boys from the
little church around the corner from the Columbia 30th St.

(28:59):
recording studio. We were the backup singers for
the big hit. I'm getting nothing Christmas
that Ricky Zand sang. Hey Ricky, what you getting for
Christmas? What I'm?
Getting nothing for Christmas. Nothing.

(29:20):
Mommy and daddy are mad. What's the matter?
I'm getting nothing for Christmas.
Just nothing. 'Cause I ain't been nothing but
bed. What you do?
I. Broke my bat on Johnny's head.
We were on the Ed Sullivan show singing I'm getting nothing for

(29:44):
Christmas. How cool.
And that was, Oh my gosh, Ed Sullivan, as we've had him in
person, was this really kind of stern man.
But he ran a very, very, very organized television show.

(30:05):
We were taken to this posh dressing room, and the makeup
artist, even on our children's faces, had to put, you know, a
little bit of makeup, comb the hair.
And then we had a guide who led us to where we had to wait and

(30:25):
then walked us to the exact spots that we would stand while
singing the song and talking to Ed Sullivan.
It was an experience of a lifetime.
Did you realize how big a deal it was when you were doing it as
a kid? I think so, yeah.

(30:47):
Because I mean, every Sunday, the Ed Sullivan Show was on our
little 10 inch screen, black andwhite pixelated TV.
We knew this man, you know, the fame of his show.
And it was really, really exciting.
And of course, in our elementaryschool, Karen and Karen and I

(31:10):
were raised like twins. She's the daughter of my
father's eldest sister, Karen. And I just royalty in school
because we knew, you know, through my dad and because of my
dad. And also, and I mentioned this

(31:31):
in the book, you know, it wasn'tlong after World War 2 and we
were the second Jewish family tomove into all predominantly
Catholic and also Protestant Christian, in other words,
Yonkers N Yonkers. And there was, I wouldn't call

(31:53):
it so much. It wasn't like anti-Semitism so
much as the people and our school classmates and even to
the teachers were really curious, what were Jews?
Who were these Jews? But my father, having produced

(32:14):
so many Christmas songs, he almost worshipped.
Well, so many great Jewish songwriters and performers gave
us so many of the greatest Christmas songs and scores in
history. And Rodgers and Hammerstein,

(32:34):
when they wrote The Sound of Music, people think that those
hymns at the beginning are real Catholic hymns.
No2 Jewish guys wrote them, but they studied how to do it.
I think people, once they get toknow anybody on an individual,
find out how all the commonalities, thank God there
was talented people who just didwell with what they did and.

(32:55):
Right. And I agree with you.
And I think my experience in Yonkers was like, you're saying
it exposed people and our neighbors.
I mean, we were all friendly andeverything.
But then when Rudolph happened and then the other songs
followed, it just made people realize it doesn't matter what

(33:20):
you are. You can cross lines, you can,
you know, mingle and everything.And it was.
It was wonderful. Yeah, it is.
You love people, they become like family and you just share
traditions and it enriches your life.
That's really the way it works. Absolutely.
And I remember another thing that we did the people after

(33:44):
Rudolph and everything, a lot ofthe parents of our friends
became interested when Passover came around.
What was this seder thing that we had?
So we decided and the parents agreed to invite our best
friends from school to come to our seder and in exchange, we

(34:11):
would go right across from our school was a Catholic Church
that we would go to catechism every Wednesday they had to go
after school. We would go and see what it was
like in their church. But it's interesting that
basically the songs my father, his profession and the songs

(34:35):
that he produced opened the doors for our personal lives in
the town. Yeah, they unified.
That's a powerful thing that really is.
Yes. And to clarify a little bit
about Rudolph and about the other, first of all, Rudolph the
Red Nosed Reindeer by Gene Autrystill charts to this day.

(34:57):
It's still charts usually at least in the top 100.
And that happens at Christmas all of a sudden, when
something's made and whether or not people know who it is.
Bing Crosby charts. That's the cool thing about
Christmas. Rudolph at one time was second
only to White Christmas as the best selling record of all time.
The other thing that used to happen in those days, the change

(35:20):
with Rock'n'roll, was the song kind of came first and then you
did as many cover versions as you could.
It wasn't necessarily associatedwith a band or anything.
It was sometimes, but in the case of a song like I'm Getting
Nothing for Christmas, there were five hit versions at the
exact same time. And you mentioned Ricky Zond and
Barry Gordon's is the best knownone, but there were actually 5

(35:44):
at the same time and Ricky's also charted.
So that's the way music was in those days.
Yes, it was a very different thing and it was so homey.
All of these things were more intimate businesses, much more
like your dad was able. I'm see.
He still had a hierarchy. He still had the answer to
someone, but you had a little more autonomy.

(36:06):
I find it interesting. It did have to go through
psychologists, but there wasn't like a big marketing committee
about how salable it is or anything like that.
It was still smaller. Yeah.
And it was, as I said, I've beensaying, left up to individual
producers and my father just he had good gun in state.

(36:30):
Also the crossover at that time,him being head of children's
records at Cold Picks. He was general.
He did children's, he did grown up, he did the Chad Mitchell
trio and a whole variety. And of course, other memories

(36:50):
that I have with him. Good heavens, when we went to
the Village Gate to hear this new upcoming singer, Nina
Simone, we went into her dressing room and he hired her
on that night. I'll never forget that because
she was magical. Sit there and count your

(37:17):
fingers. What can you do?
Old girl you through should theycount your little fingers?

(37:47):
Unhappy little girl Blue. I just sat there and thralled.
It was also my introduction to the beatnik scene in Greenwich
Village. I kept saying, why do they all
have black stockings and black eyeshadow?

(38:09):
They're wearing black. And then I ended up being, as a
teenager, hanging out in the village.
And my cousin Karen and I, we had a folk singing duo and which
singing cafes there. But when I think back on it, it
was just just an amazing life with my dad.

(38:31):
Both my parents were wonderful and really lucky to have had
them as parents. But the whole record business
and they had such incredible talent.
Paul Tripp, Joe Darian. Leo is real Johnny Mars.
Fred Koontz put words together that you wanted to say and sing,

(38:56):
that stuck in your heads and that said something.
Fred Coots also Co wrote with Haven Gillespie.
He wrote Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
And like Gene Autry, that was originally sung by Eddie Cantor,
and he didn't want to sing it and his wife Ida, convinced him
to sing it. You know, there's another

(39:17):
standard of Christmas that a lotof people to this day recorded.
I. Guess they were concerned about

(39:38):
the hierarchies of show businessand getting pigeonholed.
And it's just like animation never seems to shake the stigma
of it being for children. No matter how much stuff is
aimed at adults and how sophisticated it gets and how it
wins Oscars now, live action is still the adult table.

(39:58):
For some reason. I think children's records,
while children's records have somuch to do with people's lives
because. People hear them as kids and
then these songs affect everybody, but they don't get
the credit that they deserve andno matter how big the star is
that sings them. So it could be why they were

(40:20):
concerned about it. I goodness knows Gene Autry
seemed to have no problem afterwards singing Peter
Cottontail and Smokey the Bear and all of those songs.
No. And I remember we visited him at
his Palm Beach mansion where he showed us around the grounds and

(40:42):
so forth. That was quite something.
And I remember a discussion there, and he said to my dad
that it was really the hit of Rudolph.
I mean, he was making, you know,a lot of money, obviously, but
the Rudolph song was his seasonal million dollar thing.

(41:08):
And he kept pointing out to us all the things that he had done,
had remodeled, had built as a result of Rudolph.
And he kept thanking my father and my father then kept thanking
Ina for convincing him to do it.You know, my father never made

(41:32):
money for he was still under contract.
Yeah, Columbia. And that was a very, very
difficult thing for him to cope with as he got older and, you
know, still had to watch the budget.

(41:53):
And then of course, when my sister and I became college age,
having to get loans to pay for our college, he was given, I
don't remember now how much, something like $10,000 like as a
bonus gift. But I would always say to him,

(42:17):
but what what you did for the world?
Right, that's true. And Daddy, you've been the best
Daddy, which he was. I am so grateful to have been
raised by two parents who, as I say, had really sound humane
values. And it reflected certainly in

(42:38):
the recordings my father did, the people he worked with, the
way he he treated them and the way they loved him.
Yeah, you know, and looked to him.
I became the person I am as a result.
I have 4 grown children and three grandchildren.

(43:01):
But my granddaughter who lives in Belgium, my daughter married
to Belgian and moved there, She said to me she's recently gotten
her degree as a psychologist andhad a couple who kept asking we
don't know what our life is worth.

(43:22):
And so she called me and she said she calls me Amy from when
I lived in Miami. She got me in my happy.
So I'm her Annie. She said, Annie, what what do
you feel? You know, you're older now and
all of that. What do you feel your life was?

(43:45):
And when I told her, I am so happy to have been raised as I
was and to have brought four really good human beings into
the world. And of course, they brought her
so far. And it was interesting.
She's 25. She was really impressed by that

(44:08):
answer and the way, you know, I detailed it.
But I really feel that so much of what my father recorded and
how he went about it, like you said about your father, my dad
was really busy and he was away some of the time having to

(44:29):
record, you know, out of state. But we always, even if he wasn't
there, somehow felt like we camefirst.
The things that he recorded taught us, they gave us values.
Baseball fans would be mad if I didn't mention the fact that
your dad also made our children's record with Jackie

(44:51):
Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. I have to tell you that
recording of Slugger at the bat,first of all in the recording
studio and detail by detail. Today I see the pictures in my
head when they opened the door to the recorded studio and

(45:13):
walked in. I literally, I, I didn't, but I
wanted to bow down and say thankyou, thank you, thank you.
These two men were so nice, so vibrant.
And Jackie Robinson actually satme on his lap and I said, you're

(45:37):
so amazing and you know, you've had such courage.
And he gave me a pet dog of never give up the courage.
And what you're telling me now warms my heart.
That day there was a wonderful Italian restaurant, sort of a a

(45:59):
deli type, not a great big restaurant, around the corner
from the recording studio. And I remember sitting with
Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese eating Meatball Hero.
It's so funny with the memories,but I remember Jackie Robinson

(46:20):
taking his big muscular hands and picking up the Meatball Hero
and opening his mouth and fighting into it, swallowing,
and then telling me about what his life was like.
That was a a wonderful album. Hey, I recognize him.

(46:41):
That's Pee Wee Reese. What?
Him Pee Wee Reese. Aren't you?
Aren't you Pee Wee Reese? That's right.
This man will tell you. How about it, Jackie?
He's Pee Wee Reese. All right.
Yeah. And I suppose you're going to
say you're Jackie Robinson. That's right, Slug.
Are you really Jackie Robinson? Really and truly Sure he is.

(47:01):
Catch me believing that. Tell you what, slugger, What are
you doing this afternoon? You got a ball game plan?
No. Our championship game is
tomorrow with the South Street Orioles.
All right, then you and your pals come to Evans Field this
afternoon, Jack, and I'll leave some passes for you at the gate,
and that'll prove we're not kidding you.
OK. Gee, thanks.

(47:22):
Pee Wee. Thanks, Jackie.
You guys, you believe them? I never mind him.
Pee Wee. We'll be there.
I'll bring him too. Really and truly Jackie
Robinson. And the two of them, the way
they related, even in the recording studio, I feel so
privileged that I got to be exposed directly to courageous

(47:46):
people who not only shone brightly in their particular
field, like in baseball, but whoreally were lifelong examples to
me of courage and accomplishment.
Do you remember other sessions that you went to Dinah Shore did

(48:08):
the Bongo album based on the Disney film and Dinah Shore.
Was the most relaxed that I've ever seen and I've seen so many
in the recording studio. And her voice was it just
permeated the whole. Thing when they would do these

(48:29):
records, you know you mentioned that there was tape but it
wasn't as easy to cut it just like with TV and before that
like Dinah Shores Bongo record, those weren't done with mixing
consoles and you know multiple tracks and things like that.
It was more like radio when Dinah Shore was singing and

(48:53):
narrating the orchestra was right there and they had to do
it in like 3 minute sections andthen stop because you had to
turn the record over or go to another record.
Yeah. It's.
True. Stand up, Bongo.
You're not a coward. Remember, it's Lulabelle.
You're fighting for luck. Job picks Bongo up high in the
air and throws him to the ground.

(49:16):
He has a toehold, a neck hole, 1/2 Nelson, a three quarter
Nelson, a full Nelson. Bongo's down.
He's down, but he is enough. Bongo jumps up.
He remembers the circus and the tricks he used to do.
He runs to the tallest tree he can find.
The crowd is going crazy now. Bongo's climbing the tree up,
up, up, higher and higher and higher, just like his old circus

(49:40):
stunt. Then, from the very top of the
tree, Bongo jumps 300 feet and lands right on top of Lump Jaw's
head. And she, too, they all adored my
dad. And they let me know they'd say,
Judy, you are the most wonderfulfather.

(50:02):
And here I'm being told by dinosaur.
Now I'll tell you about Captain Kangaroo because he became a
really good family friend. Also, we went to several
barbecues at his house. The way my father got involved
with him is this new show with Bob Keeshan that was going to be

(50:27):
called Captain Kangaroo was in the offing.
It hadn't been on yet. It was being written, it was
being planned. You know, Mr. Green Jeans, they
were the hiring people and so forth.
Bob Keeshan was looking for a music producer because he knew
he needed a theme song. He needed lots of songs, so he

(50:51):
was interviewing people because he had very specific ideas about
how to treat children. And a lot of the programs those
days you had these, the only wayI can take to describe them is

(51:11):
like semi hysterical. And the CS who would talk to
children and everything was hyper, hyper, hyper and loud or
talking down to them like to an infant.
So my father decided this sounded like a really nice show,
and he accepted an interview with Bob Keesha.

(51:35):
And the two of them discovered that they shared the same
attitude toward children, towardwhat children's programming
should be, toward how children should be spoken to and looked
at. And they clicked right away.

(51:56):
And my dad was hired as his producer, Bob Keesham.
What you saw on his show was what you got in person.
He was the sweetest, nicest, kindest, most respectful of
children and that they are people whether they're adults or

(52:19):
not. You don't talk to them like
coochie, coochie, coochie, you know, I mean, maybe weensy
beansy baby, that's all right, but not for a 5 and 6 year old.
My cousin Karen and I were hiredby my father as backup singers
for the Captain, and we used to love the days when we had

(52:45):
recordings with him. He was a gem.
And then we actually got to be on his show.
Wow for. One of the episodes, you know,
Ed Sullivan was exciting and great and big, big time.
But Captain Kangaroo had Mr. Moose.

(53:07):
Yes. And Mr. Moose dropped ping pong
balls. Yes, on.
OK Mr. Moose drop ping pong balls on Karen's and my heads.
What? What an honor.
Yes, we would not allow our mothers to touch our hair, to

(53:30):
wash our hair until it became impossible and they dragged us,
you know, into the sink and forced us to wash our hair.
And my dad actually writing, I remember him sitting at the
piano and he kept calling me Judy.
Judy, what do you think of this?Do you like this?

(53:51):
And when he wrote the Captain Kangaroo March, Karen and I
marched all over, perhaps to it.And my father said, well, if you
2 guys are doing this, I think it's gonna work.
And I remember the huge microphones, you know, they'd be
on a big stand. And they were these big square

(54:12):
mic were phones that had CBS on them.
And when Karen and I did backup,we didn't each have a microphone
or a special place. There would be Captain Kangaroo
or whoever we were singing backup for standing smack in the
middle at center microphone, andwe'd have to lean in around to

(54:38):
do our little bit. The first part of his name is in
the army, the second part of my name is in the zoo.
When the first part of his name says Company March, the second
part of my name goes Hop and so do.
You the first part. Of his name gives all the

(55:00):
orders, so the second part of myname knows what to do when the
first part of his name says company halt, the second part of
my name was stopped and so do you.
Do you know the answer? And you, our Captain Kangaroo.

(55:23):
That album got reissued many, many times.
Yes, the word that just, you know, comes to my and that was
magical. How about Burl lives?
He did an awful lot of stuff. You know, learn the guitar and

(55:59):
my parents said I to have guitarlessons.
He took it down and he sat with me on the couch in his living
room and he taught me the C chord, the F major chord, and
the G major chord. He taught me the first 3 chords

(56:25):
I learned on the guitar. Wow.
Folk music has been. I've been a folk singer and I
include that, as I said, with mystorytelling.
He not only recorded folk songs,but also a lot of great original
children songs like The LollipopTree and The Little Engine that
Could, things like that. Recordings real lives, among

(56:49):
other things. Just from hearing him talk me so
much about when you sing, havinga relaxed, pleasant quality to
the voice and that each song told a story.
A song wasn't just a song. And my father loved working with

(57:10):
him. The sad thing was, and I wrote
about this in the book, during the Joseph McCarthy Cold War
Communist hunt, Burl Ives kind of just kept quiet.
But if he was asked to give names, everyone was afraid that
how can I say it of everyone else?

(57:32):
My parents refused to give namesand the FBI did come to our
house and we children, my cousins who lived upstairs,
Karen and her sister Jean and I were hidden under the bed, told
not to cough, sneeze, call out, do anything.
And my mother, who had a charming smile and just a

(57:55):
charming personality, was the one that would deal with the
agents. And she ended up not only
knowing how to handle them somehow and remain calm, but she
made her delicious fudge squaresand served them coffee and fudge

(58:16):
squares. And they said this can't be
communist. So that was the secret.
Yes, they were charmed by Lillian Crass.
No, she was charming. They started.
One of them was having terrible troubles with his teenage son

(58:40):
and ended up talking to her, getting advice from her as to
how to handle him. And they left and we were not
reported to Mr. Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Wow. But it did interfere with
certain friendships. Columbia Records was suspected

(59:03):
because it had a lot of liberal people from Percy Faith to Mitch
Miller to Goddard Lieberson and on down the line.
So Burl Ives at that point beingafraid of, you know, being
investigated and everything wentto DECA, which was considered
the right wing. Well, I don't know if they

(59:24):
called it right wing at that time, but the the non communist
record company. So after that whole episode, it
took some time for Burrell to come back to Colombia and for
the friendship to be redone. And then he did do some
recording for my dad in cold pins.

(59:47):
Was it reconciled? Because sometimes the I mean to
this day with some feelings, never, never mended during that.
But apparently with Burl Ives itdid.
It never became what it had been.
It was a real kind of, I don't know how can I describe it,
buddy, buddy kind of friendship where they visit us, we visit

(01:00:10):
them, We'd have the fried chicken and all of that.
We did not resume visits. Of that nature.
But on the working level, they've worked together again,
which they hadn't done during the McCarthy, or what can I say?
Yeah. Let's talk about some of the

(01:00:32):
more behind the scenes people, because you mentioned Percy
Faith and Mitch Miller and Ray Conniff.
Were they people who interacted a lot with your dad and did you
see them? Constantly.
My dad's office was right next to Mitch Miller, and he was kind
of in between Percy Faith and Mitch Miller at the Columbia
offices. They were friends.

(01:00:55):
We had, as I said, it was not a huge apartment.
And when these people and they would come, Rosie Clooney, you
know, Gene Autry, when I think of the people that came into our
little apartment, my parents would rent folding, you know,
bridge chairs and we'd all sit knee to knee.

(01:01:16):
And they loved coming to our house because it was a warm,
friendly place and my mother wasone hell of a good cook.
We did not use caterers like Percy Faith and Mitch Miller.
You know, we went to occasions at their big houses, but they

(01:01:37):
all love coming to our house. And my sister and I would help
my mother, you know, cutting vegetables and cooking.
And my father became, even though with his Crohn's disease,
he didn't drink, but he was a really good bartender and he
baked the drinks for everyone. That was an explosively huge

(01:01:59):
time for Columbia because it wasa few years before Mitch Miller
would go on TV with his sing alongs.
But you know stars like Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis and
there were big names that came out of that era and have become
legends. There's also a lot of behind the
scenes like you mentioned, George Kleinsinger and Paul
Tripp. Paul Tripp is the Co writer with

(01:02:21):
George Kleinsinger. One of the greatest children's
recorded stories. It's been done by a lot of
people, but it was Tubby the Tuba and Victor Jury recorded it
for an independent label, but italso appeared on Columbia, and
what you wrote about George was really interesting.
Yes. Well, I'll just mention Tubby
the Tuba. We played it so much on the

(01:02:43):
record player that sat in this beautiful cabinet that my father
built. He was quite a Carpenter and
built our bookshelves and so forth.
Tubby the Tuba just, we loved him.
And it was interesting because one of my sons, he had heard it

(01:03:04):
and he became obsessed with tubas.
And we would go living in New York to the Rockefeller Center
at Christmas time and they had atuba band.
We could not get my son away. And I remember I was at that
recording and I wrote about thisin the book The Cheeks of the

(01:03:28):
Tuba. You know, to

(01:03:53):
grow up with all those stories. The George Kleinsinger one I
remember because he like had a jungle in his house or
something. US.
Pardon me for using this, but there's a Yiddish word,
Mashugana. He was a mashugana.

(01:04:13):
A nice one, but an absolute nut.And that party, I will never, I
mean ever forget the mice running around the bugs and my
mother was so finicky about bugsand mice and this monkey that

(01:04:35):
hung on her leg and it kept smiling.
But then the Darians. Did you know that, Joan and.
Joe Darian went on to write Man of La Mancha.
The car, right? Yes, Yeah.
Well, he and my dad started Unicorn music.
They worked together for severalyears.
And Helen chose wife. They became like family to us

(01:05:00):
and we were always going to their apartment in Riverdale and
they were coming to our house. And I was enamored of Helen
because I was studying dance heavily at that point.
I went to the Martha Green School of Dance and then New
School Dance on 42nd Street. But I will never, ever forget at

(01:05:22):
that party at Kleinsinger's penthouse was literally he had
planted jungle vines and plants of all kinds.
And he had a couple of pianos and they were mingled in with
huge aquariums. So you had all these different

(01:05:42):
colored fish swimming next to the pianos and what have you.
But he had a Python. And Joe and Helen Darian were
teensy people. Literally, they were the size of
a deer, a small deer. And when that Tyson came

(01:06:06):
crawling towards Helen, she was terrified.
And she used her fabulous dancing technique to leak and
jump up onto this chair. And she screamed Joe, Joe, you
know, come here and grab my hand.

(01:06:26):
And she was going to pull him up.
And, you know, my father's screaming to George Cline
singer. George, do something.
It was just. It sounds like something out of
a TV show or a movie. But a lot of the things
particularly that we experienced, because a lot of

(01:06:47):
these people were characters, but he took the cake.
Not too many people experience that.
And when I talk about it now to you, and I was reminiscing with
my book and so forth, there's nothing else I think that I
could have become except what I am, a storyteller.

(01:07:10):
I also do historical portrayals of women who have made a
difference. I grew up in a world of fantasy.
You know, I had to tell stories.I had to live, continue living
in some fashion or another with fantasy.
Why did he move from Columbia toCoal Picks?

(01:07:31):
Things, as I recall, were changing drastically.
You know, the music business. But the main thing was that
evening at the Village Gate withNina Simone.
She was looking for a record company.
They were interested. They had asked him to go and
hear her. So had Columbia, and I think

(01:07:54):
that was the major reason that he switched.
Plus, the whole folk era was beginning.
The trios, you know, folk trios that were coming up.
He had been asked also to audition a trio, the Chad
Mitchell Trio. We went again.
It was at a restaurant on the eskirts of Greenwich Village,

(01:08:19):
and they were in effect being managed by a priest.
And I remember that night we went and the priest came, and
the restaurant was not that atmospheric.
We really wondered what we were in for.
And then these three young fellows come out and they seemed

(01:08:40):
kind of green hornish, you know,not not too savvy, I say.
But when they started to sing, my father, he, my mother and I
looked at each other and we said, that's it.
You got to produce these people.And he did so cold pics.
You know, he did the Chad Mitchell trio, he did Nina

(01:09:00):
Simone, he did the children's things.
And oh, the other thing that I wanted to say, and as child,
this was like, my daddy is having lunch with Walt Disney.
No kidding. That was like when he got home

(01:09:22):
that day. Can we touch you?
You know, he was a firm believerthat a lot of the Disney songs
were wonderful songs that shouldbe sung by others outside of the
films. The songs, of course, they were
part of the characters and part of the films, but they also

(01:09:45):
stood as songs on their. Own, yes.
He finally managed to get a meeting, a very brief lunch.
It's Walt Disney. And he persuaded him to allow my
father to hire people like DinahShore and, you know, all the

(01:10:09):
others to sing some of these songs.
And Disney agreed. If you were king.
Billy Dilly. You'd need a Queen Alice in

(01:10:33):
Wonderland. How do you get to Wonderland?
Over the hill or underland or just behind the tree?
I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it

(01:10:56):
that. Did you know some of those
studio singers are not quite as well known, like Dottie Evans
and Bob Harder and people like that?
Dottie Evans I remember well because she did a lot of
recording for my dad and she wasso darned nice.

(01:11:23):
I used to love going to recordings with her and then
we'd go out to lunch and she wasjust a delight to be with.
When my. Dad went to Cole pics Things
changed a lot. I was older for one thing and
starting college and my life wasmoving on when he was at Cole

(01:11:45):
pics. My memories of that are really
more the Chad Mitchell Trio and Nina Simone.
He did far less, unless he was called specifically to produce
or work with someone. He really kind of moved out of

(01:12:06):
the children's field that he hadbeen in so intensely.
His name does appear on the soundtrack album to Dennis the
Menace, which is narrated by a guy named Howard Burke who
narrated also the Yogi Bear album and went on to be a
television writer. He wrote for Columbo shows like
that. It really wasn't an original

(01:12:27):
production because the soundtrack was pulled off of the
show and then narration was added so that the visuals could
be explained. I do have a recollection of his
working with something with Dennis the Menace.
I do remember that. Oh, and that reminds me also, do
you recall when he was writing needle drop or library music for

(01:12:52):
a specific firm? Because he's got credits on some
of this music that's used in cartoons and radio and records.
He. Started writing little excerpts
and I know about those because my sister and I get royalty
checks to this day from his old stuff from Captain Kangaroo,

(01:13:15):
which is played in other countries and stuff at this
point, but also from musical things that he wrote that I
don't even know. You know, we get a list from
ASCAP and Memory Lane Music and a few times a year.
So after Culpix, which was it was sort of short lived, it was

(01:13:37):
58 until about 65 because when the monkeys came on, then Don
Kirchner took over and it becamecold gems.
But a lot of great soundtracks came out on the label in
addition to Hanna Barbera and a lot of original recordings.
What did he do after that? He went back to playing his
violin and playing chamber musicin in is, I guess you'd call it

(01:14:02):
retirement. He pretty much, other than being
called periodically for opinion or, you know, to step into a
session, retired from the business.
It was kind of sad in the end, you know, he had Crohn's disease
and they didn't even know what it was.
He had it from the time he was ateenager and he was one of

(01:14:25):
Doctor Crohn's Guinea pigs. As a matter of fact, he had to
go periodically into the hospital for treatments, and in
one treatment they gave him Staphylococcus infection.
And that was in Miami, as matterof fact.
And it led to a whole thing. He had to have A and his heart

(01:14:49):
changed and they it's. It's a long story, but he died
when he was 74. That's fairly young by today's
standards, yeah. Yes, yes.
It was sad because they had, I guess, been discovering at that
point that Stanford caucus was spreading in hospitals.
He went in for a treatment and we thought, oh, he'll be out in

(01:15:11):
a few days. And instead that was it.
He left a an unbelievable legacybehind him.
Yes, yes, that I know for sure. I mean, it was just there was
hardly a major television and vocal, you know, singer that he

(01:15:32):
didn't work with the height of his career.
But I think that, and it's so nice to be able to share this
like this, it was just wondrous,you know, when I looked through
the book and was reminded the long list of hits.
Yeah. That he produced and stories and

(01:15:53):
you know he had been a child's prodigy.
Violin of hyphens. Wow.
And hyphens did not take everyone on.
And it was the Crohn's disease that cut into his violin career.
But when he was home recovering,my sister would skip around the

(01:16:14):
house making up little ditties. And he decided while recovering
from the operation that he had to have for the Crohn's to write
down and create song from the ditties that she was prancing
around the house making up. And then with my uncle, who was

(01:16:35):
a psychology professor at City College, he wrote the book A
Guide to Children's Records. And it was that book that got
him hired at Columbia and started this whole thing off.
When I think of him, an amazing story, an amazing person, and as

(01:16:56):
a result, for me, an amazing childhood.
Well, it's. It's an awesome thing.
I'm so glad that you were able to share it with us.
I've been wanting to interview you for a really long time.
And as I told you before, it's abook that I recommend to
everyone. I link to it a lot on stuff that

(01:17:16):
I write because this one career is responsible for so much.
Then it has this ripple effect that is not only a gift to all
of us, but it is one heck of a history and a legacy.
So congratulations to him and memory, and thank you so
incredibly much for telling us all of this in your own words.

(01:17:37):
I'm so grateful. Thank you for your interest,
your appreciation of the book. When I wrote that book, I had,
you know, contracts of his. And it wasn't just memories from
my head. I got a hold of newspaper
articles 'cause he had saved, you know, he has scrapbooks and

(01:17:59):
things. And I wanted it to be accurate.
I'm really glad that it's there and that the legacy is there.
And thank you Also, you know, you've written quite a book.
I really appreciate your contacting me and are talking
today. It's been a pleasure.

(01:18:19):
Oh, same here. Same here.
And the book again is called Rudolph, Frosty and Captain
Kangaroo, the musical life of Hecky Krasnow, producer of the
world's most beloved children songs.
It's still on Amazon, and it's probably on a lot of listings.
It is a very accessible, inexpensive, thoroughly
delightful book. And I don't think there's anyone

(01:18:40):
or I think that there are very few people who would say, I've
never heard of this. Almost every one of the things
he did has touched people even today in some way because it is
a major achievement. And the best word would be
ubiquitous. His legacy will live forever
because, as I quote Jerry Beckhoff, and the great stuff

(01:19:00):
always somehow lasts, outlasts indoors because it's great
stuff. So thank you so very much, Judy
Gayle Krasno for being with us. Thank you to everybody you
listening, Thank you for the really nice things that you
comment on and reviews and for liking and subscribing.
All those things I'm very, very grateful for.

(01:19:22):
Hope you'll join us again and bye bye.
We hope you enjoyed the fantastic world of Hannah and
Barbera with Greg Airborne. Please join us again and Many
thanks for listening.