He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.
[1] During that time, he met and befriended a young Walt Disney, who was producing animated comedy shorts in Kansas City.
[1][2] Stalling was at his job at the Isis Movie Theatre, demonstrating his ability to combine well-known music by other creators with his own, improvised compositions.
During the journey he stopped at Kansas City to hire Stalling to compose film scores for two other animated shorts.
[3] Stalling composed several early cartoon scores for Walt Disney, including Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho in 1928 (but not Steamboat Willie).
Animation historian Allan Neuwirth credits Stalling for basically inventing the process of creating a film score for cartoons.
The close synchronization of music and on-screen movement pioneered by the Disney short films became known as Mickey Mousing.
Initially, Wilfred Jackson utilized a Metronome to set a definitive tempo of the cartoon sections, that then got further developed over the years (being transcribed onto a "bar-sheet" or a "dope-sheet").
[3] In 1936, when Leon Schlesinger—under contract to produce animated shorts for Warner Bros.—hired Iwerks, Stalling went with him to become a full-time cartoon music composer.
He had gained this reputation and considerable experience as the music director at the studios of both Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.
The new music director (Stalling) became an integral member of the team producing two very successful animated series.
[3] The two animated series which Schlesinger produced for Warner Bros. were the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, both introduced in the early 1930s.
From 1936 onwards, Stalling was the film score composer for almost every theatrical animated short released by Warner Bros. Cartoons until his retirement.
[1][2] Like his predecessors as music director for the studio, Stalling had full access to the expansive Warner Bros. catalog and musicians.
His stock-in-trade was the "musical pun", where he used references to popular songs, or even classical pieces, to add a dimension of humor to the action on the screen.
Working with directors Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson and Chuck Jones, he developed the Looney Tunes style of very rapid and tightly coordinated musical cues, punctuated with both instrumental and recorded sound effects, and occasionally reaching into full blown musical fantasies such as Rabbit of Seville and A Corny Concerto.
The sheets broke the animation, dialogue, and sound effects into musical bars, which Stalling would then use to create his score for the film.
The theme of the Looney Tunes series was "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" (1937), a minor hit from the team of Dave Franklin and Cliff Friend.
Stalling made extensive use of the many works of Raymond Scott, whose music was licensed by Warner Bros. in the early 1940s.
For example, the reportedly "fast and wacky" "Powerhouse" (1937) by Scott was frequently used to accompany animated scenes involving conveyor-belts or chases.
[2] Scott's works had a cartoon sensibility and brought visual images to mind, elements which Stalling needed for his compositions.
Raymond Scott's "In an 18th Century Drawing Room" is usually associated with Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety shorts, and his "Powerhouse" pops up in scenes of machines, factories or mechanical devices.
Stalling composed music for the Rossini-derived short The Rabbit of Seville, and linked Smetana's "The Dance of the Comedians" to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
[1] Chuck Jones and the other Looney Tunes directors sometimes complained about Stalling's proclivity for musical quotation and punning.
[5]Musicologist and animation historian Daniel Goldmark has noted that Jones repeated this anecdote about Stalling in a number of interviews.
Jones also claimed in a 1975 interview that "My Funny Little Bumble Bee" song was too obscure for the audience to notice the musical reference.
The song served as the title music of The Bee-Deviled Bruin (1949), an animated short directed by Chuck Jones.
Stalling did use the melody composed by Felix Mendelssohn in several animated shorts, but never in combination with an actual cave scene.
[6] Original music scores and other documents relating to Carl W. Stalling (1900-1978) can be found at the University of Wyoming - American Heritage Center.