Carl Stalling is the composer you KNOW, even if you don't recognize his name.  He wrote the soundtrack for many of our young lives as the composer for Warner Bros.' "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes" cartoons from 1936 to 1958.  Hal Willner has compiled this CD that for the first time lets you hear the music on its own, and lets you realize just how much of the cartoons' impact came from Stalling's music.  It's more than coincidence that the cartoons had a big drop-off in quality right around the time Stalling retired.  The arrangements twist and turn in a millisecond, the clever orchestrations include some sophisticated early use of electric guitars as sound effects, and the quotes from popular songs (and from the canon of eccentric jazz composer Raymond Scott) were so influential that today we know the standard "Arkansas Traveler" primarily as "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee" and Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave" as the theme song for the Mynah Bird.