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R.I.P. Ted Nichols, composer of ''Scooby-Doo'', ''Jonny Quest'', and more Hanna-Barbera classics
The composer behind Scooby-Doo, Jonny Quest, and many other Hanna-Barbera classics will be dearly missed. He was 97 years old.
Ted Nichols, longtime composer for Hanna-Barbera, passed away on January 9. He was 97 years old.
Nichols' career in music began at age ten when he began playing the violin. In 1946, he joined the Navy and played saxophone in the Navy's swing band before transferring to the Air Force, where he became the commanding officer of the U.S. Air Force Bandsmen Training School. He studied music at Baylor University and Texas A&I.
After his military service, Nichols worked as a high school and college band director and also sang with the "Dapper Dan" barbershop quartet at Disneyland. He also served as minister of music at Church of the Open Door, where he met a Hanna-Barbera animator in the choir who introduced him to William Hanna.
One of Nichols' first projects with Hanna-Barbera's then-music director Hoyt Curtin was the score of Jonny Quest. In 1965, Curtin left, and Nichols was promoted to music director and wrote the scores for The Secret Squirrel Show, The Atom Ant Show, Wacky Races, Space Ghost, Josie and the Pussycats, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, and many more.
Part of Nichols' job was adding musical cues to cartoons, and he described the process in an interview with Williams News, "I used to take the score and sit down with my music editors and we'd count the frames and we'd say 'Well, here I got to hit Flintstone here or here he's climbing up this'...I looked at a lot of drawings about Scooby Doo before I even wrote, because I try to get the feeling in my mind - hey, this is the kind of style that you want to write for."
Kevin Sandler, co-editor of Hanna and Barbera Conversations, told the Hollywood Reporter, "Ted's music bridged the transition between science-fiction and slapstick programming on Saturday mornings...He used less brass and more high woodwinds and violins in his instrumentation for Scooby-Doo and other comedy series to achieve a less intense, funnier sound."
After leaving Hanna-Barbera, Nichols wrote five operas and also served as the international musical director of Campus Crusade for Christ and started the Master of Church Music program at the Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland.
His family announced his passing to The Hollywood Reporter on March 23. He will be missed, and will be fondly remembered through his music.