Junk Food

This week's batch of cartoons starts with an imagined scriptural scenario.

Figs are indeed tasty, but if they came from a plant that also provided your foundation wear, the appeal might be diminished. 

Please don't offer any "corrections" as to whether Adam and Eve actually wore fig leaves, since they aren't actual historical figures.

These superfans had previously followed the "Odessey & Oracle" farewell tour.

Fish oil offers many health benefits, and taking it in pill form is easier and safer than ransacking trash cans.

This pup is the perfect host. After all, 50,000 fleas can't be wrong.

A word of advice: Don't turn that handle unless you're sure it's where he'd want to be scattered.

Even in the animal kingdom, gentrification can become an issue.

Postmarked Project

Outside of my normal Bizarro work, at the end of the month, I'm participating in The 4 x 6 Mail Art Show, a cool exhibit organized and curated by my friends at CommonWealth Press and Kim Fox of WorkerBird.

Every piece in the show will be 4 by 6 inches, and has to have arrived via postal delivery. My untitled contribution is a surreal image executed in ink on paper, with some blue pencil showing through. A few of the elements in this composition were taken from comics I had recently drawn or was working on at the time.

Thanks for continuing to follow Bizarro. Please check out Dan Piraro's blog to read his take on the past week's comics, and to see his latest Bizarro Sunday page.

Musical Mystery Solved (Partially)

Last week, we ran a gag referring to that weird trombone sound used for adults' voices in various Peanuts animated specials. I mentioned in my blog post that the name of the musician responsible for that distinctive effect was unknown.

A few days after the cartoon's publication, we received an email from a Bizarro reader named Michael Brady, who told us that his late friend Dean Hubbard (1953-2018) provided the "voice" of the teacher, and other adults in most of the Peanuts TV specials.

Dean W. Hubbard

Further research turned up a discussion on a trombone forum, which quoted an email from Dean Hubbard himself, mentioning the specific instrument and mute he employed:

I was the teacher's voice on the Charlie Brown cartoons, specials, and commercials from the mid-seventies until about 1990. I used my trusty Conn 6H and a Shastock wooden Solotone mute I purchased from a pawn shop to do the sound. It was and is amazing to me that the noises that got me thrown out of many high school rehearsals allowed me to buy our first home.

Hubbard was known to be a versatile musician with a wicked sense of humor. His credits certainly confirm his versatility. He played with many artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Nelson Riddle, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett , Aaron Neville, Linda Ronstadt, XTC, and Joe Strummer.

Another close friend of Hubbard posted this on the forum:

Somewhere there's a recording of a session where the director reads him the spoken line and he plays it back. He had the guys in the booth cracking up.

Now, that's something we'd love to hear!

However, we still don't have a confirmed name for the musician who first did the "wah-wah" sound in those Peanuts cartoons. The trombone forum included a detailed listing of the cartoons that used the sound effect, which was first heard in the 1967 special You're in Love, Charlie Brown. Dean Hubbard would have been 14 years old at the time, and he also mentioned in the email above that he started doing the sound in the mid-seventies.

The trombonist listed on the session records for the 1967 cartoon was Frank Rosolino, so it's not too much of a stretch to posit that Mr. Rosolino was the originator of the sound.

Bonus Track 

Since this post has been so trombone-centric, our bonus track features trombonist, singer, actor, and second banana to Bob Hope, Jerry Colonna.