Back in this post, we linked you to a jazzy, relatively-recent interpretation of "The William Tell Overture" by the timeless composer, Gioachino Antonio Rossini. Actually, as my pal Pat O'Neill reminds me because I didn't know this, the part we all know and love from the Lone Ranger shows is just the final fourth part of the Overture.
And as another pal, Bruce Reznick (who's been a pal since around tenth grade at University High School) reminds me, one of the places where folks today learned of the works of Mr. Rossini and many other great composers of classical music. That would be in cartoons…especially cartoons made for theatrical release in the thirties, forties and fifties. Here, suggested to me by Bruce, is a page that will remind us of some of the places where we first heard these magnificent merrie melodies and long-lived looney tunes.
And e-mail pal George Haberberger told me about this rendition of Rossini's Greatest Hit. It's performed by Glen Campbell, who everyone remembers as a great singer…but we sometimes forget how for a long time, he was hired to play, not sing. The man could work magic with one of them geetar things…