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Kill the Wabbit!
Chuck Jones’ gimmick bears fruit
Anybody who watched a lot of TV as a kid knows exactly which Bugs Bunny cartoon it was.
Bugs was Ingrid in a goofy, wonderful take-off on Wagner. Resplendent in warrior helmet and blonde pigtails, Bugs lounged carelessly on a preposterous white steed of fantastic girth and dignity as Elmer Fudd sang "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"
It might just be the best Bugs they ever made, but if you stop to remember the ones you watched as a kid, you probably notice that the ones that stick in your mind are the ones that were based, in some way, on opera. They had little featurettes, usually with Bugs and Elmer Fudd, that were based on music by Guiseppe Verde (or, as he’s known among us pretentious cognoscenti, "Joe Green"), or Mozart, or Wagner.
Opera tends to the overdramatic, and so lent itself readily to the type of parody Tex Avery and Chuck Jones could provide. They made for great cartoons.
Back about six months ago I was channel surfing, and came across an announcement on the Toon channel that next up would be Bugs Bunny, a night at the opera special. "Hmm," I thought, and stuck a tape in the VCR. And then spent a wonderful half hour watching those grand old bits of foolishness. (I don’t need to worry about a second childhood; I haven’t left the first!)
I always figured the presence of what we lumped together as "classical music" (which, in other cartoons, would include along with opera; jazz, swing, romantic, and even some classical) was just a gimmick they tossed in so they could tell concerned parents, "Sure it’s got redeeming social values. You hear that? That’s Mozart!" It was like Popeye with the spinach. Popeye, it was presumed (very presumed) not only entertained kids, but it fostered a love of greens, so Popeye was good for them, too.
In the case of Popeye, the "fostering love of spinach" was, of course, bullshit of the purest ray serene. But the notion that the music in the cartoons fostered an appreciation of and familiarity with music, I think, has validity. I was lucky enough to be raised in a home where music got played a lot, and so even without Bugs Bunny, I would have been familiar with Dvorak, Grieg, Chopin, Sibelius and the rest, but I can think of more than one occasion where unexpectedly familiar strains come out of the speakers, and I would eye the album cover and think, "Oh, hell, so that’s what that is!" I think the old Loony Toons greased the skids, as it were, for me to sit down and learn jazz and swing, and like both. I must have heard "In the Mood" a hundred times before I learned that it was a real song, done by some old guys way back in the 40s, and my parents liked it. Despite that, I liked it, too.
For a guy who can’t sing "Love Me Tender" without making it sound like a fight between a bullfrog and a cat, I sure like music. And I keep getting jobs in places where I sometimes meet famous musicians, and often meet ones who aren’t famous, but often enough, ought to be.
One thing I learned was that when someone tells you, "I’m a musician", the smart question to ask is "What type of music?" That’s the fastest way of figuring out who you are talking to, if they happen to be well-known. I once spent about ten minutes talking to James Brown before I figured out who the hell he was. Good thing I figured it out in time; my sister in law would never have forgiven me if I hadn’t gotten an autograph for her.
Quite aside from being a handy guide to identity, it usually opens the other person up, since it’s a topic most musicians want to discuss.
So when a tall, athletic African-American with cornrows down his back and a big friendly smile announced that he was a musician, I promptly asked the question, expecting to hear R&B, or maybe hip-hop. He was young enough, I thought.
"Opera"”
OK. We don’t get many opera singers in here. I was intrigued. “"hat sort of opera?"
He waved a hand. "Oh, pretty much whatever. Verde, Mozart, Wagner..."
"Where do you perform?"
He named a few concert halls, mostly in Germany and Italy.
These are two countries where the afficionados are reputedly perfect snots about their prized national music. If he is performing in those places, I thought, he’s got to be pretty damned good.
So I got to know him. Timothy Robert Blevins. Track and field major in high school, wound up going to UC Davis to become a Veterinarian. Some friends heard him singing, and told him to have someone professional hear that voice. So he did, and at age 23, got a 100% of cost scholarship to Juilliard School of Music where he became a Master of Music. Winner of this year’s Amadeus Prize, which he took from Pavarotti.
In other words, this wasn’t the third-back-up tenor for the Schenectady Opera House. The guy is a world class baritone, fast approaching the level of renown of the aforementioned Pavarotti.
Not bad for a little black kid from Weed, California. I was pretty impressed.
"Mind if I ask you a real goofy question?" I asked him. (Yeah, you know what the question is. You’re so smart, you write the essay...)
He smiled and nodded. I think he knew what was coming, too.
"Did you ever find yourself influenced by those old cartoons with Bugs Bunny when you were a kid?"
"Oh my, yes."
Then he stood up, three feet from me, and started singing "Kill the Wabbit."
I’ve never had front row seats to the opera. In truth, I’m not all that keen on opera, compared to other musical forms.
But when you have what might be possibly the finest baritone voice in the world singing in a small office just feet from you, your perspective changes. His voice, which I don’t believe was really all that loud, filled the room. I was utterly amazed.
He grinned and told me that he often gave talks to school kids, and he would tell them that a lot of opera was actually the same stuff they saw in the cartoons, and he would sing examples. "For example, the 'Let me cut your hare' is from 'Figaro'" (another stunning display of virtuosity).
I gotta say, when it comes to singing, he’s got Bugs Bunny beat seven ways from Sunday.
And I’m sitting here this evening, feeling like I got handed a little slice of heaven.
But Blevins had one last surprise. In his life, he had only gone up the mountain to Panther Meadows once, to play in the snow. "I got frostbite. I never went up again."
The mountain’s loss.
The world’s gain.
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