Hey, let's listen to a record I had as a kid. In 1959, Golden Records was putting out albums and songs of the Hanna-Barbera characters I loved. What I didn't love was that the voices on the records weren't the voices from the show. Daws Butler was Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Snooper and Blabber, etc. on TV, performing voices he originated. Golden Records employed other actors to imitate him. It is commonly assumed that this is because Daws was under contract to the Colpix company (which put out other H-B records) and that may have been the reason. I suspect though it may have been because (a) Daws was in Los Angeles and Golden Records was in New York and/or (b) Daws wanted more money than the guys Golden could get in New York.
In any case, I sure felt cheated when I bought a Yogi Bear record with my hard-earned money — it wasn't easy being so cute that relatives would give me cash — and then I'd get it home and hear a Yogi Bear impersonator. But a few of them weren't that bad. One I liked was this record of the Augie Doggie theme. The tune was heard on the Quick Draw McGraw show where Augie appeared each week but the lyrics weren't and of course, the record version was much longer. I suspect the lyrics were written by Bill Hanna, who at least claimed to have authored all the major early H-B theme songs. Maybe he did or maybe he used his position to grab the royalties due the real songwriter. I'd like to think the former.
Anyway, I liked this song because it was just a chorus with no one attempting to imitate Augie Doggie or his dear ol' Doggie Daddy. It's a pretty bouncy tune which you may enjoy…
