Friday, December 14, 2007

"Bugs and Friends Sing the Beatles"

The 90's were a great time for cartoon-inspired novelty albums. Kids and adults alike enjoyed listening to the many compilations of Disney movie tunes, music from the likes of Animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy and other then-current TV hits. Warner Bros. decided that maybe they should try something with Looney Tunes. In 1995, they released "Bugs and Friends Sing the Beatles".

The absence of Mel Blanc hurt this album tremendously, but the four voice actors who played Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Taz did a pretty decent job. Bugs was played by an actor nemed Mendi Segal (sp?) Daffy was Joe Alaskey, Taz was Jim Cummings, and Fudd was Jim Meskimen, who later wound up doing George W. Bush for the jibjab.com political cartoons.

Here's a sampling of the results...not bad, really! A real highlight is Joe Alaskey doing Yosemite Sam as a pirate in "Help!"...

UPDATE (12/18/07): Bob Bergen sends along some more information about the LT Beatles album:
Regarding your Looney Tunes Beatles blog, I myself participated in this project, but sadly the songs I sang were cut. Originally Porky sang Mother Nature's Son, and Tweety sang Yellow Submarine. But for reasons I don't know they decided to cut Porky and Tweety. I think the feeling was they wanted to have a Looney Tunes fab 4. With the inclusion of Porky and Tweety, that would make 6. Too many toons. Those tracks exist somewhere. Not sure where, though.

I did participate (and thankfully didn't get cut) on Bugs and Friends Sing Elvis. Porky was fat Elvis. It came in a blue suede CD box.















4 comments:

Jeff Cook said...

Thanks for the post. Ive been listening to this album for a few months now and I was sure of the voice acting by Joe Alaskey and Jim Cummings, However I couldn't pick the voices of Bugs and Elmer. I dismissed them to be both voiced by Billy West.

Thanks again for clearing this up.

Anonymous said...

It would be the ideal soundtrack to listen whilemaking the christmas tree!

Anonymous said...

Who voiced Sam? Though the singing is a little off, the speaking (shouting?) voice is pretty damn close — easily the best non-Blanc Sam I've ever heard.
Odd that Tweety and Porky should get the axe for turning the featured Fab Four into six, but you've still got more than four when you add Sam. Maybe they left the Sam number in because they could theoretically claim it was a Bugs number?

Anonymous said...

Er, Matthew/Jon— whoever reads this, couldja please reword my previous comment so I'm no longer asking who did Sam's voice? Somehow, my eyes moved right past your note that Alaskey was responsible.

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