Ted Nichols, Famed Hanna-Barbera Composer on ‘The Flintstones’ and ‘Scooby-Doo,’ Dies at 97

He also worked on ‘Jonny Quest,’ ‘Space Ghost,’ ‘Wacky Races’ and many other other shows at the cartoon factory for nearly a decade.

Ted Nichols, who composed, conducted and arranged music for such beloved Hanna-Barbera cartoons as The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Josie and the Pussycats, has died. He was 97.

Nichols had a long battle with Alzheimer’s and died Jan. 9 in hospice care in Auburn, Washington, his daughter, Karen Tolleshaug, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Nichols worked at Hanna-Barbera Productions from 1963-72, serving as the company’s musical director for the last eight years of his tenure. He started out working alongside another legendary H-B composer, Hoyt Curtin, before succeeding him and then being replaced by him.

Nichols composed the score for the sixth and final season (1965-66) of the original primetime run of The Flintstones on ABC as well as for the 1966 feature The Man Called Flintstone.

He is probably best known for his work on Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, which premiered on CBS on Saturday mornings in September 1969.

“Ted Nichols’ underscores [for Scooby-Doo] are what I consider to be a near perfect set of music for a cartoon,” Cade Utterback says in his comprehensive 2021 documentary about Hanna-Barbera music. “It’s perfect for the show it was in. You can’t tell me it doesn’t help set the mood.

“There are a few tracks that run for a few minutes and have several sections. And the music editors knew this was a bonus as they mixed and matched parts from all the tracks to make a beautiful Frankenstein monster of a music bed in each episode.”

Utterback notes that Nichols’ music would continue to be used on every Scooby-Doo series through 1985.

An only child, Theodore Nicholas Sflotsos was born on Oct. 2, 1928, in Missoula, Montana. He and his parents, Nicholas and Josephine, moved to Spokane, Washington, and he started playing the violin at age 10.

He graduated from John R. Rogers High School and in 1946 joined the U.S. Navy, for whom he performed in a swing band based in Corpus Christi, Texas. And during the Korean War, he was commanding officer of the U.S. Air Force Bandsmen Training School, recruiting musicians from Juilliard and other schools.

Along the way, he picked up music degrees from Baylor University and Texas A&I and taught public school in Corpus Christi, where he directed a youth symphony. Nichols then moved to California, directing the band at Santa Ana Junior College and singing with the Dapper Dans of Disneyland from 1958-60.

While working as minister of music at the Church of the Open Door in Glendora, California, he first met Hanna-Barbera co-founder William Hanna.

In 1964, Nichols teamed with Curtin to write the score for the first incarnation of the adventure cartoon Jonny Quest before Curtin left the company in 1965, with Nichols becoming primary musical director.

He went on to work on Space Ghost, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, The Herculoids, The Fantastic Four, The Secret Squirrel Show, Shazzan, The Atom Ant Show, Wacky Races (and the spinoffs The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and Dastardly and Muttley and their Flying Machines), Josie and the Pussycats and The Pebbles and Bam-Bam Show and the live-action series The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Nichols left H-B to write operas and gospel works and serve as the musical director of Campus Crusade for Christ, organizing music groups for kids.

“Ted’s music bridged the transition between science-fiction and slapstick programming on Saturday morning as demands for greater social control and regulation of media violence surged in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations in 1968,” Kevin Sandler, co-editor of the 2024 book Hanna and Barbera Conversations, noted in a statement to THR.

“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.”

In addition to his daughter, survivors include his son, David; grandchildren Tawny, Kevin, Brian, Alex, Carson and Cammie; and six great-granddaughters. He was married twice, to Doris from 1950 until her death in October 2009 and to her younger sister Catherine from 2011 until her death in December 2020.

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GERALD FRIED Dragon’s Domain DDR874 24 tracks – 77:19

In 2021, Dragon’s Domain released its first album featuring scores by Gerald Fried (Roots, The Cabinet of Caligari). The composer’s work has surfaced sporadically over the past few decades, going back to the 1990s when the FSM label issued a two-disc collection of his scores. Earlier this year, Dragon’s Domain released two scores from the 1958 Roger Corman crime thrillers Cry Baby Killer and Machine-Gun Kelly as part of the Gerald Fried Crime Dramas, Vol. 1 set. Now comes this single-score release, premiering the music from What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969).

The movie is one of those oddball dark comedy-thrillers, blending horror and psychological tension in the vein of several “hag films” of the era. Starring Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon, it remains a guilty-pleasure favorite for many viewers. Fried’s score guides the audience through the story’s manic swings of grief and menace, signaled immediately by the opening prologue’s organ-hymn motif. From there, the composer charts a path from sorrow to psychotic breakdown, hinted at early on through sharp string punctuations. Fried’s atonal writing creates an astringent, intimate unease, with close string figures anchoring the descent into madness depicted in the story.

The opening titles introduce lively rhythmic material—bongo drums and off-kilter patterns that lend an almost dance-like quality—while fleeting tonal harmonies and melodic fragments attempt to surface. What follows is Fried’s signature blend of taut dramatic scoring and quirky instrumental touches that underscore the film’s darkly comic undertones. Synth keyboards add another layer of strangeness, complementing his unusual instrumental combinations in cues such as “Snooping Around,” while more lyrical material surfaces in tracks like “Falling in Love.”

Despite the film’s low budget, Fried turns the limitation into an advantage: The intimate sonic palette heightens the score’s plaintive motivic writing and reinforces the protagonist’s psychological unraveling. Fans who own FSM’s earlier collection of Fried’s 1950s and ’60s B-horror scores will find this a welcome companion release. It also serves as an excellent introduction to the composer’s dramatic instincts and his command of instrumental color.

The album includes a selection of diegetic source cues, including the opening song “Come With Me,” performed by Sherlie Mathews. An alternate version and a French-language take featuring Lilyan Chauvin are also included as part of another 36 minutes of bonus material. The score can be sampled at the BuySoundtrax website. —Steven A. Kennedy

Comments regarding this review can be sent to: stev4uth@hotmail.com.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977) ** 1/2

DON PEAKE Dragon’s Domain DDR 874 20 tracks – 36:24

The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Wes Craven’s third feature film, follows an unfortunate family whose car breaks down in an isolated area populated by violent savages. The movie, along with the director’s earlier The Last House on the Left (1972), helped lay the foundation for his emergence as a major voice in horror. Guitarist Don Peake was one of the elite members of the Wrecking Crew, the legendary group of session musicians; he can be heard on countless iconic recordings of the 1970s and worked with a wide range of pop artists. Peake also built a solid career as a composer, scoring numerous films and television projects, including extensive work on Knight Rider. He later collaborated again with Craven on The People Under the Stairs (1991).

Previously available on CD through Hitchcock Music, this rare Peake score is available once more thanks to Dragon’s Domain, now in a program greatly expanded from its original eight-minute running time. The music has also been remastered, and the tracks have been given more descriptive, narrative-based titles to better guide listeners through the score.

Among the unusual instruments Peake employed here is the Blaster Beam—best known to fans from Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture—prominently featured in the “Opening Credits.” This is combined with bone necklaces and other unconventional acoustic and electronic soundscapes that underscore the film’s brutality. Peake also explores quarter tones, enhancing the score’s unsettling sonic character. Pianist Michael Lang performed on the sessions as well.

The brevity of the original score is offset by a selection of bonus tracks that amount to just over six minutes of additional music. The result is a playlist rich in atonal experimentation, punctuated by moments such as the action material in “Dog Scare…,” which foreshadow stylistic elements Peake would later refine in his Knight Rider music. Fans of that series, in particular, will find this an intriguing and effective experimental horror score. The music can be sampled at the BuySoundtrax website. —Steven A. Kennedy