Poor Friz was hamstrung with having to shoehorn a Warner Bros.-owned song into his Merrie Melodies. In this case, the choice was “When I Yoo Hoo in the Valley,” written by Henry Russell and Murray Martin. Whether it was heard in a Warners feature before the cartoon was released, I don’t know. It did show up afterward, in Republic’s 1940 "puttin'-on-a-show" musical-comedy Village Barn Dance, sung by Scotty Wiseman and John Lair, with a cast that included Don Wilson, Vera Vague, and Scotty and Lulubelle.
The lyrics pretty much forced Freleng and the writing staff to put the cartoon in a hillbilly setting, which makes it a natural for a send-up of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Tex Avery did the same thing in A Feud There Was (1938), but he found some funny things to put in it. This one is just weak. One gag is a clod-dancing cow is wearing a flour sack for underwear.
Friz even reverts back to the days at Harman-Ising when Warners cartoons had cheering crowds in cycle animation. He does it a couple of times in the cartoon. Here’s an example. Sixteen frames on ones. It’s been slowed down to see the drawings better.
We again pass on the reminder from Jerry Beck that cartoon release dates in the Golden Age were official in name-only; if a cartoon came in to the exchange before then, theatres could show them. The release date for When I Yoo Hoo was July 26, but newspaper ads show the cartoon was shown in Salt Lake City as early as June 20. The ad to the right is for a theatre in Tyler, Texas, on June 28. Who’s this Bogart guy?
Norman Spencer (with his ever-present woodblock) is responsible for the score. Interestingly, the fight sequence doesn’t have Spencer taking the title song and double-timing it, like he did in other cartoons. He tosses in “The William Tell Overture” and Von Suppe’s “Poet and Peasant Overtre,” which fit quite well.
Bob McKimson and Don Williams are the credited animators in this short. I couldn’t tell you what scenes they did. Someone miscalculated the animation to the background in one scene. The fight referee with an accent that comes and goes (I think it’s Tedd Pierce in a kind of falsetto) is supposed to be standing on the mat of the ring. His feet, though, are a little below it.
Now, for your listening pleasure, here are Scotty and Lulubelle singing the title song from a 1939 recording.
I'm not sure I agree with you re the referee bit. The angle of the drawing seems to be from someone seated at the ringside, and looking up -- you wouldn't see the feet of the referee from that angle. Note that you can see the underside of some of the planks forming the "roof" of the ring.
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