Bagpipe Bosko

Bosko plays some kind of instrument that doesn’t look like a flute, but sounds like one, in Bosko the Sheep-Herder (1933).

In fact, it still sounds like a flute when he turns it into something else.

Bosko risks being stung by grabbing a beehive and branches from a dead tree, combining them, and turning them into bagpipes. The buzzing bees make the sound of the drone.



Carl Stalling would likely have put “The Campbells Are Coming” in the background of this gag but Frank Marsales settles for a Scottish-sounding tune I can’t identify (it may be a Marsales composition). The main tune heard in a good portion of the cartoon is, apparently, Harrison Aldrich’s “The Straw Ride,” which I have not heard before. It’s the only Warners cartoon where it is heard.

One scene got the Tex Avery treatment more than two decades later. Bosko’s sheep line up and move forward en masse devouring all the grass. Avery had Droopy’s sheep do the same thing (though he added a pile of gags) in Drag-a-long Droopy, released in 1954. Comparisons:



Ham Hamilton and Max Maxwell are the credited animators. Hugh Harman directed.