We have here a message from Rob Schimmel…
My condolences on the death of your friend, Greg Burson. I mean no disrespect but I'm a little confused about something. You said he was Daws Butler's protégé and he also did a lot of Mel Blanc's characters. But haven't a lot of people done those voices? It seems to me I read, maybe on your site, that a number of different people did Bugs Bunny and Yogi Bear since the original voices passed away. Don't they just pick one person to be the new voice?
Usually, no. I think they should and a lot of folks in the creative areas (including the voice actors, themselves) seem to think they should…but the unofficial policy these days is not to let any one person have an absolute lock on a role. Some of that is because within the varied halls of Time-Warner or some other companies, there are differences of opinion as to how the characters should sound. One guy directing a Bugs Bunny radio spot may be in love with Mel's earlier, more Bronx-like Bugs voice while someone producing a Bugs videogame favors the later, more civilized Bugs sound. Or even if they agree on the ideal, they disagree on which artist gets closer to it. Burson used to tell tales of voicing Bugs one morning for a cartoon and then being asked if he wanted to audition to play Bugs on a commercial.
Plus, of course, if you don't let any one actor "own" a role, you eliminate the ability of any actor to demand a lot of money for a job. Mel could — and did. But there are at least ten actors who've voiced The Wabbit since we lost Mr. Blanc and every one knows that if he gets too expensive, there are at least nine others in town. It will probably be that way for a long time.
By the way: A minor distinction. I didn't say Greg Burson was Daws Butler's protégé. I said he was a protégé of Daws Butler. Daws was a great teacher and a lover of new talent…so he had many protégés. A lot of good people went to his classes — and Daws wasn't one of those teachers who will take on anyone who can pay. You had to audition to get into his class…had to prove you had talent worth developing. (Daws also didn't run the classes for money. You wouldn't believe how little he charged.)
So many, many good people emerged from his classes and Daws was proud of all of them. Greg was one. For what it's worth, I got the sense that while he was impressed by Burson's ability to replicate Yogi, Huck and the rest, Daws was even prouder of Greg's ability to read copy in his own voice or to create new ones. It was pretty much the same view that Jack Kirby had about artists who could ape his drawing style. What really made an impression on Jack was not that someone could produce work that looked a lot like Kirby but that they'd followed in his footsteps of creating something brand new.