Celebrating Those Great Hanna-Barbera “HBR” Records with Frederick Wiegand

Hanna-Barbera’s highly unique studio-produced records starring The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Three Stooges, Atom Ant, Pixie & Dixie, Precious Pupp, Super & Blabber and many more are detailed with author/historian FREDERICK WIEGAND.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Hanna
Barbera. Welcome to the fantastic world
of Hanna and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah,

(00:31):
Joe, 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.
I am Greg Airbar, author of Hannah Barbera, the Recorded

(00:51):
History, now on sale in all formats today.
Somebody who is quoted in the book.
Our guest today is Frederick Wiegand, who was an author and
historian, I guess, if you want to speak in the King's English.
And he is a longtime expert on the recordings of Hanna Barbera.
And so he is the perfect person,I think, for us to celebrate the

(01:15):
anniversary of Hanna Barbera Records, which began early in
1965. We want to celebrate the years
of joy it brought to millions because it was to those who
listen to them something special.
It was a treasure hunt to find these records before there was
an eBay. They had cover art that was

(01:37):
painterly, hand drawn, unbelievably good, the stuff
that you would want to, you know, put on the wall.
Some people just collected for the covers, but the records
themselves were very special too.
So Frederick, welcome to our podcast and tell everybody a
little bit about yourself and what you do in a books you've
written. All right, great.

(01:59):
Well, first, I'm very honored tobe here and still background on
my life. I was born in Seattle, WA, right
ahead of the World's Fair, so I do have vivid early memories of
the World's Fair. My birthday is New Year's Day,
which I've always been really proud of and happy about.
And I've had kind of exposure to, well, to the arts and to

(02:21):
different levels of the arts allmy life.
My kindergarten teacher actuallywas ATV Star and she had her own
television show, children's television show that happened at
noon, 1230. And so she would have to leave
our kindergarten right there. It was 1/2 day.
So then she would go and do her show.
So we would get home from kindergarten just in time to see

(02:41):
her on television. It's really pretty exciting.
It was. What was her name and what was
the show? Her name, Her real name in real
life was Ruth Prince, but she went by her stage name of Wanda,
Wanda. And she was known to kids all
through Seattle as Wanda Wanda. She was really quite a lady.
She had a costume that she wore.She wear a costume when she was
at the school because she had different people doing, it was

(03:03):
really like a high school class because she had different
people, said one person teach art, another person teach music,
another person to teach numbers and so forth.
So we had different teachers andshe was the overall supervisor
of that whole thing. It was really fun.
It was a nice foundation. Of course, that kind of brought
me into because we got to visit her television studio, things

(03:23):
like that. So it kind of brought me into
the whole entertainment world ata very early age.
You grew up listening to these records because you are able to
describe them in great detail and then analyze them.
And that would not just be a journeyman, oh, I heard it
yesterday kind of thing. How did you discover Hanna
Barbera records and other records?

(03:44):
Actually, I've been a fan of theHanna Barbera characters for a
long time, for I ever discoveredthe records.
But my first introduction, I knew nothing about the HBR label
at all. I'd never seen them.
But one of my birthday's New Year's Day, my mother and father
gave me a copy of Snagglepuss tells the story of The Wizard of

(04:05):
Oz. Of course, I was a big fan of
The Wizard of Oz, and I was a big fan of Hanna Barbera's
stuff. I was a big fan of Snagglepuss,
so it was a perfect one for me. And it was a great record to
serve as my introduction to the whole thing.
It was a style of music that wassort of different for a kid to
listen to in those days, becauseI've been mainly growing up with

(04:26):
a little bit more archaic sounding songs, shall we say.
And it delighted me. I was really very, very
captivated with the record. And the cover, especially the
cover is a very appealing cover.It's just a delightful cover,
beautifully painted. Of course, it makes you think
that Snagglepuss is the line in,and this line is actually a

(04:47):
different character, although still voiced by Doz Butler.
But it's still a really remarkable cover and a
remarkable record, and it servedas my introduction to this whole
Hanna Barbera style of the way they did the records.
The covers were sometimes not matching exactly what was on the
record because according to Willie Ito and Ron Diaz, who did

(05:10):
a lot of those, they didn't always know much about what the
record was going to sound like. They were told Snagglepuss tells
the story. Wizard of Oz, go design it and
paint it. And so that's why it appears
that Snagglepuss is the CowardlyLion.
But basically, who cares? Because you've got this yellow
brick road. It looks like the Jetsons, you
know, and Emerald City gleaming in the sun.

(05:33):
It's a gorgeous and the record. It is one of my favorites.
The record is one of the most and I've heard many recorded
versions of the Wizard of Oz. This is one of the most accurate
like the book ones because it has the feats of brains, heart,
and courage. There's two instances where the

(05:55):
Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion do exactly what they say
they can't do to help in the journey and those are on the
record and they're rarely on therecord.
When the Wizard is revealed, it's Dawes Butler in his own
voice and explaining very well to children that you have these
qualities, even if you don't think you do.

(06:15):
It's so beautifully written by Charles shows.
And then it has those groovy little songs children's records
didn't have in 1965. They were beach party Beatles
kind of sounds. They were Kingston Trio.
The Wicked Witch is one of my favorites.
You know, it's so hootenanny. It's it was bizarre then.

(06:41):
The wicked witch, the cruel witch.
The witch has gone away. So gather round, let's paint the
town. The witch has gone to stay.
Let's celebrate. Celebrate.
Let's not be late. Not.
Be late. She's been just from the land.

(07:02):
The titles of the songs on the cover made me think that they
were the same songs that we werefamiliar with because one of
them, I think the Brain one, is actually titled If I Only Have
Brain. Yeah.
And then they have the The Wizard of Oz, which that could
be. We're off to see the Wizard just
and the wicked Witch, that couldbe Ding Dong the Witch is dead.
When I first got the album, I just thought it was going to be

(07:23):
the same Oz songs that we were familiar with.
Actually, it didn't bother me. They were different.
I thought they were pretty amazing songs anyway so it was
fine. Those guys used to be the
eligibles. The one of the soloist is Ron
Hicklin, and those guys ended upbeing The Way Outs and The
Flintstones. And basically we're the Hanna
Barbera singers and many of the theme songs and well into the

(07:46):
80s. That album was really one of the
places where those singers were introduced.
And Snagglepuss is the perfect narrator because he's funny and
he'll say it like Dorothy couldn't believe her eyes.
She thought her eyes were telling lies.
But he also gets very caught up in the story and and gets very
dramatic, and not in an overplayed, lampoony kind of

(08:10):
way. The Wicked Witch put Dorothy to
work scrubbing floors and washing dishes.
Poured Dorothy. She was a slave to the Wicked
Witch. The Cowardly Lion was all tied
up with ropes, Tim Woodman was all battered and bent, and the
Scarecrow was nothing but a bundle of old clothes.

(08:30):
It looked like none of them would ever make it back to the
Emerald City alive. He says it and he means it.
Daws Butler. Goodness.
I mean, that whole album is almost all Daws Butler doing
every voice and Janet Waldo doing the female voices.
Two of the greatest. So I agree with you.
That's a that's a good one to start with.

(08:51):
Yeah, I was going to point out the Doz Butler's voice of the
Wizard is real similar to the voice he later did for the same
character in the television show.
We're off to see the Wizard. That's true.
It's almost the same. He's kind of doing a Frank
Morgan, but it's very light. Or maybe a Charlie Ruggles kind

(09:11):
of voice, but that's true. And Off to See the Wizard was
around the same time, except June Foray was Dorothy and that
was animated by Chuck Jones. But I thought that was a pretty
neat show too. I loved it.
Yeah, I loved it as a kid. I just loved it.
Yeah, it was a cool time this stuff was at.
That's when the Wizard of Oz wasonly on once a year.

(09:33):
Right. I noticed also the storyline
follows the book a lot more closely than the movie.
It doesn't give you all the samethings.
The movie has a little bit different and especially with
when they approach the Wicked Witch and she sends the wolves
and the bees and so forth. And so it kind of parallels the
book a little bit more, which I thought was a nice touch because
I was about that time, at the tender age of 6, I was familiar

(09:56):
with both the book and the movie.
Yeah, and and which has one eye,which he had in the book, and he
has some wonderful impressions. The guardian of the Gate is Ned
Sparks from those 30s movies, you know?
Why do you come to Emerald City?We've come to see the great
Wizard of Oz. I hope you know what you're
doing, because no one has ever seen the Wizard of Oz.

(10:19):
Why not? Wow, he's awfully busy being a
wizard. And besides, he can change his
looks as well. Sometimes he looks like a
Canary, sometimes like an elephant, sometimes maybe a cat.
Even so, nobody knows what he really looks like.
That has a great touch, yeah. It is.
I guess you would call it a Tourde force.

(10:41):
Yeah, and the music, the music is so great.
They've used some Jetsons music.I noticed that for the Emerald
City, and it's just perfect for that.
It really captures it. And the yellow brick road is the
same music for like whenever I had the little toy Astro
swallowed that Pete. And if you know you're Hanna
Barbera, especially as a kid, it's like I I can't believe I

(11:02):
have this on a vinyl record. I can't believe I have this to
play anytime I want because you get you could only hear that
music when you watch the cartoons, but having that
background music was so incredibly cool.
There's a lot of Jetsons on thatparticular one.
Yes, there is. Let's talk about basically, if
you want a little bit of a history, folks, Hanna Barbera

(11:24):
had, just like Disney didn't have a record label until 1965,
Disney didn't have one until 1956.
Disney, of course, there were ebbs and flows with the success
of it, but eventually because ofAnnette and Mary Poppins and
things like that, it gained ground.
Hanna Barbera started and they really did innovate because of
the pop sound, because of the writing of Charles shows which

(11:47):
was snappier and a little edgierthan you heard on most records.
It was more Stan Friberg ish than the other.
Either either out and out spoofsor like Pinocchio and Wizard of
Oz and Bambi. Very faithful to the books.
Anyway, Don Bohannan, who was anexecutive at Liberty, came to
Hanna Barbera to run it and Tom Ayers was the ANR guy.

(12:09):
They were hoping that this wouldbe a general audience label.
They made records for adults as well As for kids.
The ones that we grew up with were called the cartoon series.
Those are the ones that start all the famous characters.
And there was just a regular HBR's which were like there was
Rock'n'roll, there was easy listening.

(12:30):
There was a soundtrack to a swing in the summer.
There was The Avengers, the imported Avengers album with
Lori Johnson, so things like that.
But as kids, I'll tell you, if Iwent into a store, I was hoping
that there'd be some. I remember when Adamant and
Secret Squirrel had just premiered and I went in a store
and there's six albums based on all six cartoons.

(12:54):
And. I could only pick one if you had
those six albums in front of you.
If Secret Squirrel, Winsome Witch, Squiggly Diddly, Adamant,
The Hillbilly Bears, or PreciousPup, which one would you pick?
I'm probably knowing how I was back then.
I probably would have picked Secret Squirrel.
That probably would have been myfit because that really was of

(13:15):
those cartoons, it was really myfavorite.
Believe it or not, with me it was precious pup.
Wow. Oh, that's great.
I just thought that was the funniest cartoon.
And the Secret Squirrel album ispretty good too.
It is, yeah. Took a long time for me to find
that one. Same here.
You had to really search old record stores and thrift stores

(13:38):
and antique shops. You just had to be lucky.
And then you'd see it. And your heart was like when I
found Yogi Bear in the Three Stooges.
Meet the mad, mad doctor. No, no.
Mad, mad, mad doctor. No, no.
I couldn't believe it. You know, it was so exciting.
Let's talk about another one. How about James Bond with super

(14:00):
Snooper? Yeah.
There's one first of all, it hasthe gold Pinky song, which I
love, and I thought that was weird sounding when I was a kid.
I didn't know. I mean, I knew Goldfinger and I
knew that they were doing that, but it was so serious in the
middle of this funny record. But that was the joke.

(14:44):
That's a great singer named JeanKing, who was in the Blossoms to
sang backup for Jonny Angel, andshe's the female singer on a lot
of the cartoon series records. Yeah, I recognized her voice
from some of the different albums.
Yeah, well, there's actually a story as to how I found that,
how I came across it. I was on my way home from

(15:05):
school. I think it was in high school by
that time, and I was walking home from school.
And this neighbor lady, very friendly neighbor lady, this
British family lived down this block from us.
She came out and she said that they were holding a garage sale
of different things. And so they wanted me to get
kind of first chance to look at some of the stuff they had.

(15:25):
And I wasn't expecting to find anything I would want that, any
things that they would have. But they showed me they had this
really cool collection of records that their son had kept
for many years and he was livingsomeplace else at that point.
So they didn't need the records anymore.
They were getting rid of them. There were quite a few,
actually, a few really pretty decent records I found there.

(15:46):
But one thing I noticed, the Sunapparently seemed to like to
collect the James Bond records, any records related to James
Bond. There were quite a few that he
had in his collection. Well, the one that I zeroed in
on though was the one the James Bond one that he had, that one
with the Snoop and Blabber 1. And of course, that one I
snapped up right away because that was one I'd been looking
for for a few years. So I came on it somewhat later

(16:09):
than I did some of the other kind of Barbera records.
But of course I took it right home and played it and had a
great time with it. And I still do it.
Still, it's one of my favorites of the albums that they did.
It has again, two of the greatest voice actors, Daws
Butler and Don Messick is the entire cast.
Right. Yes.
There's a lot of funny scenes and yet Doctor Ono, he's kind of

(16:33):
bone chilling. Daws Butler is playing him so
straight and almost psychotic. You know.
He's so elegant and and so erudite.
And then when he says I said bring him here, you know,
there's something. And then at the end of Side 1,
he starts laughing maniacally. For a little kid to hear this
like this guy's nuts, it's quitea performance.

(16:54):
It is an amazing performance. Tell everybody about lightning
the load scene on the flying roll.
The flying Rolls Royce, yeah, they're up in the sky with that,
and they start taking things outand it's a really great moment
there when they start jettisoning the different things
from the plane, all the things that are there.

(17:16):
What are we going to do? We'll just have to lighten our
weight. Snooper You grab the baby grand
piano and toss it overboard. Blab You tear off the snack bar
and Jefferson him right now. Toss out the pool table.
Snooper. Babel Overboard.

(17:37):
We've thrown out everything but the kitchen sink. 007 Well,
throw the kitchen sink out. It was full of dirty dishes
anyway, Jack, hey, it's working.We're getting an altitude fast,
but we've only got one minute left before the bomb goes off.
The same people that edited the soundtracks for the films

(17:58):
handled the records at the very same time.
They put Those were recorded on 35mm magnetic film and then
transferred to tape. So they were treated like a film
without a picture, and they would lay in the sound effects
they thought worked best and thebackground music the same exact
way they would do a cartoon. Very few record labels are so

(18:23):
homegrown. I mean, these were made at the
studio on Kawanga. The songs, the pop songs were
done elsewhere. And they sort of feel like
commercials sometimes. They're so different from the
rest of it. But the actors would be there
for whatever session, and then they'd go in and they'd treat
this just like a cartoon session.
And occasionally they would go nuts with the effects because

(18:48):
Magilla gorilla Alice in Wonderland album that one on
side too is loaded with just effect after effect.
Oh yes, most definitely. Charles Shows must have worked
directly with them, I would think, for that particular
record, because the effects wereso numerous.
And then there's a couple of instances where they would do

(19:11):
these little montages, putting together as many nutty effects
as possible. So Alice ran down to the brook
where she made a cup out of the big leaf and filled it with
water. But she also dropped one of the
reducing pills into the water before she gave it to the dog

(19:31):
catcher. The dog catcher, thirsty from
his long chased after Go Go gulped the water down, and
quickly the reducing pill began to take a thing.
And the grandest of them all wasthe Hillbilly Bears.

(19:53):
Yeah, remember when the two guysfrom Hollywood go to the Great
Smokies, they run out of gas andpause.
Moonshine is put into the tank. Pause.
Moonshine is the most powerful day is our part in the gas tank.
Daryl baby, baby. Now there's one way to find out.

(20:13):
Daryl baby, I should start the motor.

(20:49):
That did it. We're off to Hollywood.
It's really good. The sound effects in general
were really a plus with the Hannibal barrels.
It's just like they don't miss abeat with the sound effects.
It just, it's right there. Every sound effect you need just
happens just right when they need it.
What's another favorite? One of the early ones that I got
shortly after the Snaggle Puss album was The Flintstones.

(21:10):
It's called Flip Fables with theGoldie Rocks and the three bear
sources and then the Three Little Pigs.
That was a great favorite of mine.
I played that one a lot, and that one is kind of unique in a
lot of ways. First of all, it has the
original voices. Alan Reed as Fred and Mel Blanc
as Barney, which became increasingly rare in Hanna

(21:31):
Barbera Records line later on. But this one has the original
voices there and they just do a great job.
Also Gene Vanderpaugh voicing Pebbles.
It's has real authenticity aboutit all the way through.
Alan Reed just gets to do a realTour de force of his whole
acting thing with his storytelling and taking on the
different voices of the characters and and all this.
He even kind of assumes a a sortof storyteller voice that's a

(21:53):
little different from his Fred voice, which carries the story,
and yet it fits really well. It all works in together, but he
just does such a great job with that.
It's one gag after another. Yabba dabba Doo, exclaimed
Goldie. Rocks porridge.
Oh, I do hope it's low calorie porridge.
I must watch my waistline. Sitting down at the table,

(22:14):
Goldie hungrily dunked a big spoon into Papa Barosaurus's
bowl of porridge. But it was too hot, so she
tasted Mama Bear Asaurus's porridge.
But yuck, it had too much oregano.
Finally, she tasted Baby Bear Asaurus's porridge and it was

(22:35):
the yummiest, so she ate it all up.
He sustains the whole Stone Age thing all the way through the
whole things. There's always Goldie rocks,
it's always the three bear asauruses and all of that.
Whereas when Barney tells the story of the three little pig
asauruses, he very quickly dropsit to just the Three Little
Pigs, and by the end of the story he's just calling them the
Three Little Pigs. Who?

(23:00):
Who is it? Said the nervous little pig.
I'm the man from Nielsen. I'm the man from Nielsen.
I'm making a survey. What TV program are you
watching? What else?
The Flintstones. How interesting.
May I come in and watch? OK, now when I unlock the door.

(23:21):
But just as one of the Three Little Pigs was about to open
the door, the other little pigs looked out the window.
And you know what? That wasn't really the Nielsen
man. It was the big bad Wolf in
disguise. Each one of those, each side is
just hysterically funny. What I love though is I love the
way the record is laid out because it begins with this

(23:44):
theme song. The not the official one, but
the one they came up with for the records.
FLINTSTONES. Yeah, but yeah, and.
Yeah. And then it gets you right into
this story where Fred needs to get Pebbles to go to sleep.
So Barney talks a minute tellinga bedtime story, and and then
it's one of the few that bookends the song from beginning
to end. And very cleverly and very well

(24:07):
done. It's like someone really put a
lot of thought and care into it.Yeah, I agree.
I think that in the case of FlipFables, the songs were worked,
especially with Three Little Pigs, the songs were worked in
to the story more than they werewith some of the subsequent
albums. Hanna Barbera Records had a
format and it even had on the liner note song, this one, you

(24:31):
know, Story Part 1, and they were separated like by tracks.
So you'd have a song and then there'd be a pause sometimes and
then the story, and then the story would stop and then the
song would play like ATV show with a song being the
commercial. And this one did that sometimes
right in the middle of a recording.
And you know what? You mentioned something that I

(24:51):
never really thought much about.Alan Reed is telling the story
of Gold Rocks really, because that's more the Alan Reed that
you've seen in movies and stuff.He does the Bears voices and he
does Goldie Rocks's voice, but Alan Reed is narrating.
It's how he would present it if he was doing an oration, you

(25:12):
know, a one man show. It's not really so much Fred and
Mel Blanc continues to be Barneyall the way through.
The Bambi album is similar in that when the Bambi story
begins, because it is completelyserious, Gene Vanderpiel becomes
Gene Vanderpiel. And we had her son Rodger on one

(25:34):
of the podcasts, and he said that album meant so much to them
because that's that's mom, That's her telling us a story.
She was so proud of that album. And what I didn't know until I
talked to him was back when she was a young, struggling actress
in Hollywood, she auditioned forthe voice of Bambi's mother, and

(26:00):
she was too young. She didn't get it.
And it's interesting because thevoice of Bambi's mother, Paula
Winslow, actually was on The Flintstones.
I think she played the client that Fred had to escort to
something, and a woman was jealous.
But Paula Winslow was on The Flintstones at least once.
She was also Riley's wife on theradio version of Life of Riley.

(26:23):
She was the voice of Bambi's mother.
But Jean Vanderpiel was so thrilled that they gave her this
project because she got to do the voice that she dreamed of
doing since 1942. Wow.
And that's a very moving album. And when Bambi's mother, you
know, when Bambi's alone, there's a song that fits

(26:44):
perfectly about being alone. It's very sad.
Yeah. And then there's that cue with
the violin, the solo violin, which was used comically.
I think it was written for a topcat.
You know, when top cat was trying to create sympathy with
Dibble or something. It was an exaggerated kind of
violin or a Romance thing. But when it's played for that

(27:05):
scene. Bambi couldn't understand why
his mother never came back to their home in the forest.
Perhaps she's lost, thought Bambi.
Perhaps she'll come back any daynow.
So Bambi continued to search forhis mother.
Day after day, Bambi wandered aimlessly through the woods and
out into the beautiful but dangerous Meadow, but he never

(27:28):
found his mother. In time, Bambi somehow realized
that his mother was gone forever, and now he must learn
to walk alone. It just shows how flexible those
cues were. Oh yes.
That's a really nice album. And like Flip Fables, you're
getting Mel Blanc telling a story for like 15 minutes.

(27:52):
You got Alan Reed telling a story.
You've got a whole album with Gene Vanderpyle and then with
Hansel and Gretel. That's all Mel Blanc, pretty
much. Right.
Yeah, that's true. He's doing every voice once you
get into Hansel and Gretel. Same with Alan Melvin on the
Alice in Wonderland album. Yes, once Magilla starts talking

(28:12):
about Alice and going into the story, he's the only person
doing every single voice. Right.
And there's several other good voice talents on the early part
of it too, which is pretty amazing that they had him just
do the whole thing. But it works.
That's a great album as well. Now, some of them didn't have
the original voices, yes. What was your reaction to that?

(28:32):
Because that's the big controversy.
Was that disturbing or was it something you grew to understand
or what? Well, for me as a kid, it was
disappointing. I got the Huckleberry Hound
album and was expecting to hear the Huckleberry Hound voice.
I was expecting to hear Daws Butler doing the voice.
I just expected it and now I know it's Paul Freeze who was

(28:53):
doing that voice. It really threw me off for a
while. It was really disappointed that
it wasn't the original, but thenwhen I heard his narration and
how he just goes through the story, there's a lot to admire
about the way that Paul Freeze does.
The voice, even though it never sounds really like Huckleberry
Hound, sounds a little bit more like Tennessee Ernie Ford than

(29:15):
Huckleberry Hound. But still, it's a good
performance. It's a solid performance, but I
tell you the best one that Paul Freeze did, the best
substitution role that he did for another actor, was when he
replaced Oz Butler as Mr. Jinx in the Pixie and Dixie album.
That one, to me, he just owns that character.
Obviously he doesn't sound the same as Doz Butler, but he owns

(29:38):
that character so completely that you just don't mind.
At least I don't mind listening to that one.
It's so good. The new mother and the two new
sisters made her life miserable.For instance, they'd all go to
the Drive in movie and leave poor Cindy home to work.
Yeah. And while they were laughing it
up at some double horror movie, they left poor Cindy home to wax

(30:02):
their surfboards. I mean, like, it was a pitiful
scene, you know, man. I mean, like, life was a real
drag for poor Cindy. You know, you wouldn't believe
it if I told you how how mean they were to Cinderella, for
instance. They'd turn on television and
they'd all sit around watching like, you know, But the only
thing they would let Cindy watchwas the commercials.

(30:26):
Talk about cruelty. It has so much of the nuance
that Dos Butler always put into it, and he just seems to have
captured that while he was recording that.
That one I really think is one of the best examples of the
substitution of 1 actor for another.
I completely agree. I got that album and when I
first played it and he said somebody mentioned me and it's

(30:48):
like, that's not Jinx. And it threw me at the very
beginning. But as he got into the telling
of the story, it's a very funny script because it's very 60s.
It's a very groovy version of Cinderella.
Paul Freeze is such a master of comedy timing that he just gives
us a different Jinx where they didn't use the original cast.

(31:10):
That was almost like, wow, that I love that album.
I think that album is terrific and chewing forays on it.
It's almost a fractured fairy tale because it's Paul.
It is, yes. Yeah.
The Yogi Bear, Little Red RidingHood and Jack and the Beanstalk.
It's hard to play Yogi and not just do a sing song.
It's really hard and Daws didn'tdo that.

(31:34):
So it's really hard to do an imitation of Yogi that isn't
just a sing song like that. Jeff Bergman does it perfectly.
You know, he studied a lot of people who did it, really
studied it. But when you're thrown into a
studio and you know you've got a60 minute session maybe and
you're handed the script and youget 1 rehearsal, you know these

(31:54):
were done fast like the cartoons.
I don't think Alan Melvin got a whole lot of chance to.
And there was no reference material.
I'm sure they didn't run a cartoon and say here's how we
did it, right? And June Foray.
Also, it doesn't sound like Boo Boo.
It sounds like one of those discontented princesses in a
fresh fairy tale. Right.
Yeah, yeah, right. I agree with that.

(32:14):
Yeah, but. Once Yogi starts the stories,
they're very funny. They are, if you didn't know it
was supposed to be Yogi and Boo Boo.
It's like, this is super entertaining, really funny.
But the albums themselves, especially the story portions,
are really good. And the songs are kind of cool,
too. They're kind of swinging, Yeah.

(32:36):
Right. Yeah, yeah.
And again, what Kitty record hadthose kind of songs?
Right. Yeah, very true.
When June takes over the voice of Red Riding Hood on the second
side, it does sound a lot like the fractured fairy tales.
And she's great and she does a great job with it.
Yeah. She's doing the granny voice and
the Red Riding Hood voice and Red Riding Hood is kind of smart

(32:59):
alecky and she gets stopped by the police just like.
Cinderella does, yes. Then it's like, it really didn't
have to be Yogi. I mean, it's not excusing that
it's not Yogi Boo Boo's voices, but it takes on a life of its
own. And then when when the wolf,
then when I go to court, I. Love that.
Yeah. And Alan Melvin is so funny

(33:20):
doing the lying Wolf. And all started when I was
walking through the woods on my way to take some warm soup to a
sick friend. I'm always doing good deeds like
that. It's just the way I am.
When the plaintiff, A Misread Riding Hood came along and I
noticed she was crying. Well, I never couldn't stand to

(33:42):
see a woman cry, so I politely asked her if I could be of any
help. Well, well, she tells me a phony
story about having a sick grannyand all that jazz.
Well, I felt so sorry for the poor dear that I went home and
made a nice pot of soup and tookit to her ailing granny.

(34:03):
Well, you can imagine my surprise when I walked into
granny's house and the two of them jumped me.
I screamed for help but nobody heard me.
It seems that the plaintiff, A misread Riding Hood and her show
called Granny, were running a phony fur coat racket.

(34:23):
They were going to tan my hide diet Gray and sell it as a mink
stole. Can you imagine that?
And. Then he put that rate cue that
everybody knows with the tweeting birds at the end.
It's masterful. I'm sorry.
You know, we're both very much in love with these records and
listen to them all our lives. So we have found these these

(34:48):
moments to be very special and there's even sequences in the
records that are funny. The Precious Pup one I mentioned
earlier because you can't see it.
They have to do the comedy and audio.
And that album is really two stories.
A lot of the records sort of there was an A side and the B
side in the story. It might have been one story,

(35:08):
but it really was 2A side. One was granny wins a race and
then the second-half is about two crooks dressed as little old
ladies trying to steal the money.
Now both of those were in effectdone on the cartoons, slightly
different, but they were. There were several cartoons with
little old lady dressed crooks that weren't little old ladies.
But when Granny leaves the room when they start searching for

(35:31):
the money, Precious is hiding throughout the room and they
have that Fred doing ballet music.
Oh. Yes, yes, uh huh.
Now's our chance, Muscles. See if you can find the little
old lady's 1000 bucks. Yeah, let me see.
I'll reach behind the sofa. Maybe she's stayed there.

(35:52):
What's the matter, Muscles? You look like you stuck your
hand on a bear trap. Something behind that chauffeur
bit me. Don't be stupid, Muscles.
What could be behind a sofa thatbites?
Try looking under the piano. OK, slapsy.
Now what? Something under the piano bit

(36:15):
me. What do you mean?
Something under the piano bit you.
Probably an alligator. Hurry up.
Don't just stand there. Bandage in your hand.
Look for the money. OK, I'll look in the closet.
That's where she probably stashed the dog.

(36:35):
I don't see anything in here. Slapsty.
Why not? It's dark now.
What? Jumped it in the closet?
Bit me bit by bit. You're driving me nuts.
What could be in a closet that would bite you?
A tiger, maybe? Here, let me go in the closet

(36:56):
and look for the money. Just as I figured, there's
nothing in here but a old umbrella.
What happened? Slap T.
It's that umbrella. It bit me.
It's beautiful, it's beautiful. It is.
They really are wonderful. Have you heard the Alice in
Wonderland one? The TV special.

(37:18):
Oh yes, that was one of my favorites.
That was one I wanted very badlywhen it first came out because
I'd seen the television special.It was advertised on television
for a few weeks before it actually aired.
And so I was primed for it. I was ready for it when it came.
And then when the album was available, I want to make sure
we got a copy of that. And I loved it.
It was one of my all time favorite.

(37:38):
I was probably has the biggest voice cast of any of the albums
and it's amazing what they do with it.
Back in those days, you didn't have the special to compare it
to when you were listening to the album because the special
was aired one time and then maybe if you were lucky it was
aired the next year, but it didn't get to have a constant

(37:58):
reference to it. So the record became your
reference point for the whole thing.
And so as that when really the strengths of the record start to
come out, because when that's your only version that you can
listen to, then you suddenly start to appreciate the voice
artists who are doing it on the record.
And that's where I really learned to appreciate Scatman

(38:21):
Crothers and his delivery of what's a nice kid with you doing
in a place like this? Then when I I go back and I hear
Sammy Davis, much as he's a brilliant performer, really
good, but I just feel like Scatman Crothers just owns that
so much more. I feel like he's really
delivering a very strong performance with that.

(38:42):
Wise a nice kid like you solo and so far from home.
Hot a nice kid like you. I get in and I head to roam with
those baby boos and that mellow smile the minute you walked in I
said she's got style. Wise, a nice kid like you, solo

(39:05):
and so far from home. I think the two performances, I
really think I prefer the Scatman version better because
it seems richer to me. And same with Jaja Gabor, who
did the voice of the Queen on a television special.
Her voice is kind of, I don't know, a little thin it sounds to
me. Whereas Janet Waldo imitates her
on the album and she sounds morelike Jaja Gabor than Jaja Gabor

(39:28):
does. Office, her head.
Office her head. Oh dear, you're the foreman of
the jury, so act like a lady. How dare you insult me like
that? Wait till I get you home.
I mean, she really manages to dothat and that just shows her
talent there. I just, I love the way she
delivers those lines. How dare you give tarts to the

(39:51):
team and so forth and she just wait.
Till I get you home. Wait till I get you home.
Yes, that one is just she just has it.
She really has that down. So there's a lot to admire about
that. And and also the White Rabbit
voiced by Don Messick on the album and voiced by Howard
Morris in the special. And at first I really didn't
have a memory of who voiced it in the.

(40:12):
Special. I really just always thought it
was Don Messick since that's whodid it on the album.
It's really interesting to hear.There are two different takes on
it, but Don Messick for my moneyjust does a fine job with it.
I just really love. I also love the echo effect when
the characters are singing theirsongs, and that always intrigued
me. That is in both the special and

(40:32):
in the album. There's just this kind of nice
little echo effect when they're singing that kind of enhances
the songs. That makes them really come to
life for me a lot more. Why games aren't silly Alice.
All life is a game. Sit down for a moment and I'll
explain Me, me, me, me, me. Life's a game, So what the heck?

(40:58):
Jumping up to your neck, get in the swim and you will see things
will go swimmingly. Life's a game.
That was a sixty thing, I think,because if you watched variety
shows and variety specials, the engineers would bump up the echo

(41:19):
when somebody started to sing. And I think that goes back to
when they call TV shows spectaculars, because your
speakers were not very powerful.They didn't have a lot of
clarity and brilliance, and so that was a way to set them apart
and make them sound better. Rankin Bass did that, and almost
every special, as soon as somebody started to sing,

(41:40):
there'd be echo. It was a very distinctive thing.
In the case of Alice, I so agreewith you.
Sammy Davis Junior is one of thegreatest entertainers you know
of all time. Scat Man is who I grew up with
and I and I didn't even know what he looked like till he was
on Chico and the Man and Sanfordand Son.
And he was already doing Meadowlark's voice.

(42:01):
And I was so thrilled he was Hong Kong phooey because here's
a weekly show with his voice. He was so endearing.
The other thing is that Don Messick, even though Ernie
Newton sang for him and hey there it's Yogi Bear and Howard
Morris, was a fine singer, you know, he sang it in the special.
Don Messick actually has a really good singing voice, I

(42:22):
think, except for when Boo Boo sang Hope in Yogi's first
Christmas, you know, and he still could hit notes and stuff.
Don Messick was extremely versatile.
Not that the others weren't, butyou didn't think of Don Messick
as a singer, yet there he was doing Life's a Game.
So that was kind of impressive. And then of course, Fred and

(42:43):
Barney on the record, it was Henry Cordon and Mel Blanc,
because Mel Blanc was all through the Alice record, but
Alan Reed was not. The song is still Henry Cordon
as it was special, but the speaking is Henry Corden as
well. Yeah, that's true.
I don't like to make comparisonsto Alan Reed and Henry Corden

(43:06):
because there's such a differentFred and it's also a different
era of Fred and a different presentation of the Flintstones.
I grew up hearing Henry Corden, this Fred on the record, so I
find there's a certain wonderfulness about him as well
because he was on the records. Yes.
I think starting with that weirdMary Poppins 1.

(43:28):
Oh yeah, yeah. Fred Flintstone and Barney
Rubble and songs from Mary Poppins.
That is a very unusual album. I get the feeling they based
some of it off the episode of Season 2, the hit songwriters,
because there's kind of that whole thing of Fred wants to
write a hit song. But it starts out with the whole
thing of Barney and Fred quitting their jobs at the rock

(43:50):
quarry. And it hadn't been established
on the television show yet that Fred and Barney worked in the
same place. Yeah, that didn't really occur
until the later series when theywould show them both working for
Mr. Slate. But in most of the series, most
of the entries of the series, Barney worked someplace else
then Fred did. We don't always know exactly
where Barney worked. Fred would drop him off some

(44:12):
other place and then go to work at the rock quarry.
So that one might be one of the first times when they were
actually shown as both working in the rock quarry.
So there's that and there's the whole attitude of Henry Corden
as Fred. And also this is where Daws
Butler is doing the role of Barney.
And there's a precedent for thatbecause on the TV show, when Mel

(44:35):
Blanc was injured as accident, Daws Butler took over the role
for about 5 episodes, I believe.So there was a kind of a
precedent for that. Although when you're first
hearing that voice, I'm thinkingmore of Yogi Bear than I'm
thinking of Barney because it sounds it's quite similar.
Though you listen closely, there's a subtle difference
between Dawes's Barney Rebel andhis Yogi Bear.
There's quite a difference there, at least you can discern.

(44:57):
But for the most part, it surprised me so much to hear
that voice. It was a little jarring at the
beginning, but then once you getused to them as the voices, then
they seem to playoff each other really well.
They seem to work together really well.
So it is something you can kind of adjust to, but it does take a
little bit of an adjustment to get used to that Barney voice at
first, especially where Mel Blanc was Barney on a couple of

(45:21):
the other albums, three of the other albums, if I'm remembering
right. But once it gets underway, there
is not much of a story to it. The story repeats over and over,
the same gag each time. Fred writes a song and it's just
like one of the songs from Mary Poppins.
And then Barney goes and gets the record from home and brings
it and plays it. Then we hear the song, It's the
song from Mary Poppins. Fred tries again and he writes

(45:42):
another song that's like a song from Mary Poppins and Barney
goes and gets the record and plays it and so forth.
And so it's a way to bring out these delightful recordings,
these delightful renditions of the songs.
But what I was wishing and hoping, when I used to dream
about owning that album, I really had hoped that there'd be
more of a storyline that tied ina little more with Mary Poppins

(46:04):
somehow. And it does get mentioned at the
end that they went to and saw the movie.
But how come all those songs keep popping into my head?
It's simple, Fred. Remember last week we went to
the Drive In movie? We saw Mary Poppins.
Mary Poppins. That's right.
No wonder those songs came to meso easy.

(46:25):
That comes very late after the story is essentially over, and I
would love to have seen more of a storyline that tied in.
So I tied the songs in a little more closely with the story.
Mary Poppins. It's still a fun album.
It's well done and it's well acted and I love it.
My playlist, I actually after the album, I have a medley of

(46:45):
songs by Eric Kunzel, Mary Poppins medley that he put
together and I finished with that.
That kind of gives a little bit of closure to the whole thing.
I think that between Travers andDisney, the story itself is
intellectual property and the songs are separate songs.
With a publisher, they're a separate piece of intellectual
property, and I don't think theyhad the legal right to do the

(47:08):
story. Now, if Mary Poppins was written
by Hans Anderson or the Grimm Brothers, it would be public
domain. And so here's what Golden
Records did. They did an album of Snow White
and Pinocchio and Oliver Twist. And in each case, the songs were
from the movies and the shows. The Snow White songs were the

(47:29):
Disney's, The Pinocchios were the Disney's, the Oliver songs
from the show and the movie. At the time, it was just a show.
Movie hadn't been released yet, but the storyline is out of the
book. They tell the grim story and
they work the songs in. They tell the Kolati story and
work the songs and they tell theDickens story and work the songs
and they make it very clear on the cover that that's what

(47:51):
they're doing. And there is a couple of British
records too. There's a Cinderella and there
is a Peter Pan that used the Disney songs.
But very clearly they're tellingthe Barry and the Perot stories.
There is a legal thing, I'm guessing, and that's probably
why. So suddenly they have basically
4 songs from Mary Poppins. And unlike those $0.99 Wincoat

(48:16):
records, I don't know if you remember those, you bought them
in the grocery store. There was an LP with four songs
on it and they just sang the lyrics over and over again to
fill up the album. So what can Fred and Barney do?
Well, the cover doesn't really imply much of anything.
They're flying in front of the moon, so we don't know, but
that's how it was solved. Let's find a way to get these

(48:38):
songs in there so they can be cued.
And it's almost like continuity.I love at the end when Doz
Butler is doing his great Ed Sullivan.
Let's turn on television and watch Yogi Bear.
And now the featured hit song ontonight's Yogi Bear show will be
the number one song in the nation.

(49:00):
Chim. Chim Cherry.
He does such a great as Sullivanhe does.
And so I think that's the reason.
Also, the four songs are sung bywho I mentioned earlier, Ron

(49:24):
Hicklin and Jean King singing for Mary Poppins and Bert.
And the song Jolly Holiday is one of the few, if any, recorded
versions of that song from that era where they use the Raspberry
ice verse. We'll start with Raspberry ice
and then some cakes. And.

(49:52):
Tea. That's not on the soundtrack
album and it's not on a whole lot of the other, you know, the
Ray Conniff or any of the other albums, but it's on the
Flintstone one. Interesting.
Yeah. Yeah, it's notable for that.
And then you have Speaking of Henry Corden and Doz Butler

(50:13):
starring as Fred and Barney again with Ed Sullivan playing a
much bigger role. You have SAS Fat Pagabska.
Yes, yeah, that's one of my all time favorites.
I love that one. It's essentially the same plot
as the Flintstone Canaries episode, and they use that same
gag, which they seem to love, that one where the person can

(50:33):
only sing in the shower. They used it with Barney, they
used it with Fred, they used it with Bam Bam.
There's even an episode of Pebbles and Bam Bam Show where
Bam Bam can only sing in the shower.
It just got passed on to the next generation.
They love that gag and I think they use it to very good effect
in the album, the barbershop quartet album.
And you know, I was fascinated to find out.
I think I thought out from you that this album was based on

(50:56):
Bill Hannah's interest in barbershop quartets and his
involvement with it. And it was through his agency
that these barbershop singers were brought in to do the album.
They're they're real barbershop singers and he was a long time
member of whatever the initials are for the real organization.
And I am convinced that the guy in the Barber chair on the cover

(51:20):
with the big mustache is Bill. He isn't any specific character
and it may have been a nod to him that they this album because
he just loved, he loved to sing.People don't think of Bill
Hannah as but he wrote all thosegreat lyrics and stuff.
He loved music. He wrote verse since he was a
kid. Yeah, that album probably gave

(51:40):
him a great big kick, you know, And it also has the Water
Buffalo song. Yes.
Which is kind of in an episode of the.
Flint it is, yes. Just a little different, but it
is in there. Yeah, and I found that
fascinating too. It's like a little bit of nod to
continuity. There is by using the water
Buffalo song from that episode where they go to the seaside
resort. I love the arrangement of it.

(52:19):
The lyrics are just so perfectlyFlintstones.
I mean, Buffalo is never funny, daddy.
It's one of the few HBRS that has a Warren Foster credit
because he probably wrote that for the episode.
Yes, he's credited, just like Tony Benedict is credited on the
Hillbilly Bears album because basically it's a Do the Bear

(52:41):
episode only right one is the guys looking for a new sound.
Side 2 is Para goes to Hollywood, the Adam Ant album.
Now that's another cool one. At least side 1 is.
It is, yeah. That has an attack by giant ants
from outer space. Yes.
And they send all of the armed forces to destroy them and they

(53:03):
can't. So then they send for Adam Ant
and Daws Butler says a line. And I always use this as an
example of how great he is and his peers were because he took a
line and made it so funny and soquotable that I can't say the
word any other way. In one scene he's a delegate at

(53:25):
the UN and they say they want tosend for Adam Ant and he's the
British delegate and he says. Adam Ant, I say.
You've got to be kidding, old Pharaoh, I say.
What good one, little bitty old Ant.
And due to monsters that can survive bombs.
And to this day, I do not say bombs, I say bombs.

(53:48):
How about the Yogi Bear in the Three Stooges?
Well, you know, the Yogi Bear inthe Three Stooges is probably
the one that most collectors go for because it has two really
strong followings. This may have been the first
time they ever did a Hanna Barbera project, so it must have
seemed very bizarre then. Yet it could have been a TV

(54:09):
special. Could have been, Yeah.
Yeah. It begins with the Rangers
having a little conclave and Jellystone.
And interestingly, Ranger Smith is not among them because Don
Messick was not there to do the voice right.
So all the Rangers are voiced byDons Butler and they all decide
it's time they do something about Yogi Bear because Yogi
Bear is getting in the Rangers hair too many times.

(54:31):
And so the Three Stooges are recruited as Park Rangers to
look after Yogi Bear. Honey, I like that we spent four
years going to Ranger School andwe wind up being a babysitter
for a bear. Cheer up, fellas.
Remember, it's always darkest when the lights go out.
Yay. But don't forget, Yogi, we're
here to keep an eye on you. And you're not going to sneak
out of Jellystone Park while theThree Stooges are on the job,

(54:53):
right? We're going to watch every
sneaky movie you make Yogi fillers.
Don't you trust old Yogi? Well, yes and no.
Mostly no. Of.
Course it doesn't last very longbecause Yogi Bear very quickly
bamboozles them and manages to sneak out of the park dressed as
a little old lady. They are fooled by his disguise

(55:15):
and they let him out. Yogi gets lost in the woods and
so forth, finds himself in this spooky old castle and gets taken
in by this Frankenstein like madscientist and he this whole
divisive changing the brains andmaking one person 11 sure into a
desert type of creature. And so a trope that was used a
lot in Hannah Barbaric cartoons.And a lot of sitcoms too.

(55:38):
I mean, right? Then the three Stooges.
Of course they have to go find Yogi and help him.
And by the time they get there, well, they, they have quite a, a
mess they have to clean up. And it's, it's quite funny the
way they interact with each other.
Of course, the Three Stooges were very visual comedians.
A lot of their humor was purely visual.
And here they're doing purely audio.

(55:59):
And so they do manage to do a good job conveying some of the
slapstick and some of the humor that they have there.
But my favorite line in it is where MO says.
OK wise guys, I'll show you. This whole thing is nothing but
cheap Ledger domain. Besides, it's probably a phony
trick too. Which was kind of like a
Gilligan line. Yes, yeah.

(56:20):
I am sure that the idea of mind transfer goes back to vaudeville
and burlesque, somebody who gains the personality of
somebody else, or an episode where everybody role plays that
they're the other person. It's always fun.
And this album is very visual. You can see it.
You can see the happening. Why you listen to it again, the

(56:42):
great music, the great sound effects.
And Daws Butler is Yogi. Yeah, not Alan Melvin.
God bless that. That's one of the last albums
that they did. Sadly, the label didn't succeed
the way they had expected for many reasons.
It had nothing to do with the Taft purchase.
There were those who thought that, but I interviewed the CEO

(57:02):
and he said no. We didn't even know they were
doing that. It was more a case of Hanna
Barbera was trying to become an all-purpose entertainment
company and records were going to be an adjunct to that.
I'm sure the cartoon records sold fairly well.
The pop ones they had a lot of trouble with because it was very
hard to get into the markets back then.
They went regionally and small labels, which is what they were,

(57:25):
had a lot of trouble with it. So did Disney.
Disney essentially was a small label back in the 50s and 60s.
You know, the fact that Annette Songs did so well is a testament
to how popular she was was because until Mary Poppins came
along and they were going to putthat on another label, they
didn't necessarily going to put it on Buena Vista.
So in the case of Hanna Barbera,they didn't get the

(57:47):
distribution. They didn't get in enough of the
stores. Some people may have said, why
would I buy this on a record when it's on TV for free?
Well, that's the whole reason tobuy the record, because this is
what you listen to when the showis not on.
We didn't have video in those days.
Mostly it just didn't get a lot of time.
You know, had it lasted longer, the pop thing might have picked

(58:09):
up gathering some speed on that.So they closed it down in 67.
Among the last things they did was the Gene Kelly, Jack and the
Beanstalk soundtrack. And then Liberty Records took
over their label, repackaged them.
Well, they didn't repackage them.
They just changed the shrink wrap and put a sunset label over
the HBR logo. They didn't press any new

(58:32):
records, but they did make to more on Liberty's Sunset label,
The Flintstones, Meet the Orchestra Family and Shazam.
They were pretty good, and it's too bad, but Liberty also, you
couldn't find the chipmunk albums by the late 60s anymore.
The business was changing. Kids were buying more
rock'n'roll, you know, The Monkeys and The Beatles had a

(58:53):
lot to do with that too. Suddenly children we bought, you
know, I was six years old when Igot more of the Monkeys that was
on TV. He wanted to have that music.
So it was harder for children's records, purely children's
records. After a while it got harder and
harder and harder on the budgetsgot smaller and smaller.
Hanna Barbera had the advantage of they had that music library,

(59:14):
that the sound effects library and that the great casts.
So they didn't have to create a lot of original stuff except for
the songs. And after a while they didn't do
that either, because the one we talked about, The Three Stooges
1, only has that old Yogi song from an early album.
Yeah. They weren't even doing that
anymore. So it was just a matter of if
only. You know, it would have been

(59:36):
great if it lasted a little bit longer, but they are out there.
And in the book we've got a complete discography.
You can track them down. So I think we've covered quite a
bit of them. But before we go, I want you to
talk about the books that you'vewritten and how people can
contact you because you are an accomplished author.
All right, Well, thank you. My business partner and I have

(59:57):
our own publishing company and we've got our work published on
Amazon. I have a series of books about
the life of Saint Nicholas, the Git Bringer series.
There's 12 volumes in the seriesand.
About four different story arcs that are covered in those 12
volumes. I'm real proud of those works.
I call it historical fantasy. I did a lot of research and

(01:00:18):
tried to bring the the legends of Saint Nicholas to life.
I try to take a little differentapproach.
I make, I try Saint Nicholas while I was taking pains not to
tarnish his image in any way, I do show him as being very human,
a very human person with human feelings.
That's part of what I try to bring out.
So the Saint Nicholas books cover his life from birth to to

(01:00:39):
about age 30. There's a whole lot of history
that gets involved in it, sort of bringing out the legends.
And particularly my two favoritelegends get a lot of focus.
The story of the dollarless maidens that Nicholas helped out
when they were poor and they needed some money.
And then there's the three school boys that informs the
whole last volume, which is pretty dramatic.

(01:01:00):
But we got the Saint Nicholas books, 12 volumes of those.
They're all called Gift Bringer.The whole title is Gift Bringer.
And then the each individual volume has its its own titles
such as the first one is Desiresof Childhood, the second one is
Earnings of Youth and so forth. Then another series that's more
modern setting is the Control series, which I collaborate on
with my friend David Cobb. He's kind of my idea man and

(01:01:22):
person do I bounce ideas off of and so forth.
I did most of the writing but itwas very much a collaborative
effort because we would go over the chapters and talk about
what's happening, where the characters going and so forth.
So I have 4 volumes of those. It's called Control, and it's a
series of psychological thrillers set in Seattle, which
is my background, my hometown. The first one is Control, the
novel, the second one is Serenity, the third one is

(01:01:45):
Cacophony, and the fourth one, which just came out a few months
ago, is Absolution. And together these form a very
solid body of work which I'm very proud of.
And I'm getting a lot of good feedback from people who are
reading these and and loving them as well as I'm getting some
really good feedback from peopleread the Gift Bringer books as
well. But I have two standalone

(01:02:07):
volumes as well. They're storybooks.
One of them is Christmas Plums, which is a series of novellas,
short novellas about this familyat different Christmas times.
I have a whole universe, shall we say, of characters that
interact with each other at different levels and so forth.
And then the last one that I'm mentioning of mine is Diaryville
Tales, a series of comedies and for cartoon fans.

(01:02:31):
Anybody was listening to this podcast particularly, they might
be most interested in DiaryvilleTales because they're inspired
by, not based on, but inspired by a lot of the cartooniness of
the cartoons that we used to watch as kids.
The main point being that the main thing with the two heroes
is that no good deed goes unpunished and you see that
playing out in a lot of the Hanna Barbera cartoons.

(01:02:52):
It plays out in the lives of my 2 heroes, Spike and Bryant, who
just seemed to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We also have one non fiction work that just came out called
Mood Stabilizers which my friendDavid wrote.
He and his wife wrote it and I edited.
You can type in the name Frederick Wiegand FREDERICKWI

(01:03:13):
e.g. AND and they'll come up.
We have a new one coming out soon, Diaryville Christmas
Tales, which is a follow up to the first Diaryville Tales book.
I do have one website for the Gift Bringer books though if you
want to look at that. It's www.giftbringer.net.
But you could go to Amazon, put in FREDERICKWI e.g.
AND books. And it'll probably probably show

(01:03:35):
you pretty much the whole line. Yes, yes, fills up about 2
pages. Wow, that is prolific.
I write every day. I wake up first thing in the
morning, I do a little bit of Bible study, and then I write.
They say that the only way to bea writer is to write.
You can get inspiration, you cango for walks and things.
That does help, but you also have to sit down and write

(01:03:58):
something, even if you don't feel it.
You can't wait for a muse. Right.
You make that appointment to write a certain time.
It's there. You can just sit down and you
can do the writing. It's like the muse meets you.
I can sit down and start writingmy characters whenever I get get
started. I've got a lot of unpublished
work too, which we're hoping to bring out.
I've written over 200 plays. I think it's maybe about 230

(01:04:20):
plays at this point. That's really my favorite
format. But I've also written a lot of
novels. I have a couple of other
unpublished novels which we're hoping to bring out too.
That's really something that's good advice to the people who
are aspiring. You've got to just just do it,
and you can always rewrite it because writing is rewriting.
You have to craft it like you'resculpting.
Would it be safe to say that thekid that listened to this snappy

(01:04:42):
dialogue and these fun, sometimes serious, very
entertaining albums, that was a springboard in a way, very early
into the love of words and putting them together into
stories and dialogue? Absolutely.
By all means, yes. Yes, that was definitely a
springboard to my my writing. I've been writing steadily since

(01:05:03):
the age of 13. Some of the stories I write are
direct descendants of the stories I was writing when I was
13, which I'm really proud of. Well, that's really fascinating.
You're a fascinating guy and youhave a beautiful way of
expressing the insight into things.
So I appreciate you spending this time and sharing your

(01:05:23):
insights to a very unique art form, the Hanna Barbera Record.
Thank you, I've really been veryhonored and enjoyed this a great
deal. So it's Frederick Wiegand and
his books. Look them up on Amazon.
You can also find them on Facebook.
Say hello and I appreciate you being here.
Appreciate all of you listeners who continue to listen.

(01:05:44):
It's really, really special thatyou enjoy the show and the nice
comments mean everything. You know, this show is just what
we do because we love the material and it's always
entertained us. So thank you so much for
listening and until next time, bye bye.
We hope you enjoyed. The fantastic world of Hannah
and Barbera with Greg Airborne. Please join us again and Many

(01:06:07):
thanks for listening.