Growing up, I watched the Little Rascals and Laurel and Hardy films on TV whenever I could. These movies were made at Hal Roach Studios. Watching them as much as I did, I noticed the same music being used in all the films from this studio. Leroy Shield wrote these song and musical cues. The library of musical cues effectively matched the range of emotions displayed in these films. I fell in love with the music as much as I did the jokes from these movies. I was pleased when I discovered a Dutch music ensemble called The Beau Hunks that had created transcriptions of this music and recorded albums of them using vintage instruments and recording techniques. The first discovered them around 1995 when they released a CD called The Beau Hunks Play the Little Rascals Music. Later that year, they released On to the Show: The Beau Hunks Play More Little Rascals Music. I picked up copies of both and listened to them regularly. These recordings are faithful reproductions of the music on the soundtracks of the films. There is only the occasional deviation from the original arrangement. Most of the time, it sounded like you were listening to a cleaned-up version of the original recordings.
At the time, my stereo system had a CD player that held cartridges that would hold up to 6 discs. I put both The Beau Hunks discs in one of the cartridges. My oldest daughter was little at the time. My wife would play this music in the afternoon at nap time when she was rocking her to sleep. When I found out my wife was using this for nap music, I added more music to the cartridge that might be good for nap time. I had a couple of discs of George Gershwin piano roll music that I added to the cartridge because it seemed to be a good continuation of soft music to nap too. Then I added Elton John’s Greatest Hits. I finished off the cartridge set with Neil Young’s Freedom album because it includes Rockin’ in the Free World which is harder to sleep through. If she was still asleep by the time she gets to this album, it’s time to wake up.
My daughter had been using this music for several months. I decided I wanted to listen to the Beau Hunks one afternoon when I got home from work. My daughter got upset when I started playing the music. She had already had a nap and she wasn’t sleepy. She thought we were about to try and get her to take another nap.
