Modern Stone Age Melodies
Biography
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that was broadcast from September 30, 1960, to April 1, 1966, on ABC. The show was produced by Hanna-Barbera. The Flintstones was about a working-class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. The show's continuing popularity rested heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting. The Flintstones was the most financially successful network animated fran...
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that was broadcast from September 30, 1960, to April 1, 1966, on ABC. The show was produced by Hanna-Barbera. The Flintstones was about a working-class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend.
The show's continuing popularity rested heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting. The Flintstones was the most financially successful network animated franchise for three decades, until The Simpsons debuted. In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Flintstones the second Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time (after The Simpsons).
The opening and closing credits theme during the first two seasons was called "Rise and Shine", a lively instrumental underscore accompanying Fred on his drive home from work. The tune resembled "The Bugs Bunny Overture (This Is It!)", the theme song of The Bugs Bunny Show, also airing on ABC at the time, and may have been the reason the theme was changed in the third season.
Starting in Season 3, Episode 3 ("Barney the Invisible"), the opening and closing credits theme was the familiar vocal, "Meet the Flintstones". This version was recorded with a 22-piece jazz band, and a five-voice singing group called the Skip Jacks. The melody is derived from part of the 'B' section of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 Movement 2, composed in 1801/02. The "Meet the Flintstones" opening was later added to the first two seasons for syndication.
The musical underscores were credited to Hoyt Curtin for the show's first five seasons; Ted Nichols took over in 1965 for the final season.
During the show's final season, "Open Up Your Heart (And Let the Sunshine In)", performed by Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, in a clip from that season's first episode, was used as alternate close music.
In 2010, a PRS for Music survey of 2,000 adults in the UK found that the "Meet the Flintstones" theme tune was the most recognised children's' TV theme, ahead of those for Top Cat and Postman Pat. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
