Hardrock, Coco and Joe is a short stop motion

Stop motion

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...

 animated cartoon

Animated cartoon

An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...

 based on a song written by Stuart Hamblen

Stuart Hamblen

Stuart Hamblen , born Stuart Carl Hamblen, was one of American radio's first singing cowboys in 1926, and later became a Christian songwriter, temperance supporter and recurring candidate for political office....

. It is about three of Santa Claus

Santa Claus

Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...

' helpers who ride on Santa's sleigh each Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

. The short has become an annual "Christmas Classic" on Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

's WGN-TV

WGN-TV

WGN-TV, virtual channel 9 , is the CW-affiliated television station in Chicago, Illinois built, signed on, and owned by the Tribune Company. WGN-TV's studios and offices are located at 2501 W...

 and Johnstown, PA

Johnstown, Pennsylvania

Johnstown is a city in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States, west-southwest of Altoona, Pennsylvania and east of Pittsburgh. The population was 20,978 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Cambria County...

 WJAC-TV

WJAC-TV

WJAC-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station for the Allegheny area of Pennsylvania that is licensed to Johnstown. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 34 from a transmitter northwest of the city in Laurel Ridge State Park along the Cambria and Westmoreland County line....

 since its introduction in the mid 1950s. The film is entirely in black-and-white

Black-and-white

Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...

.

Its full title is Hardrock, Coco and Joe - The Three Little Dwarfs. It was originally created by a company called Centaur Productions utilizing the stop-motion talents of artist Wah Ming Chang

Wah Chang

Wah Ming Chang was a Chinese American designer, sculptor, and artist. He is known primarily for his sculpture and the props he designed for Star Trek , including the tricorder, and communicator...

. Its running time is about 2 minutes and 45 seconds. This cartoon is traditionally broadcast with their two other short Christmas cartoons, "Suzy Snowflake

Suzy Snowflake

"Suzy Snowflake" is a popular Christmas song written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, made famous by Rosemary Clooney in 1951 and released as a 78 RPM record by Columbia Records, MJV-123....

" and "Frosty the Snowman

Frosty the Snowman

"Frosty the Snowman" is a popular song written by Walter "Jack" Rollins and Steve Nelson, and first recorded by Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys in 1950. It was written after the success of Autry's recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" the previous year; Rollins and Nelson shipped the...

".

According to the narrative song, Hardrock drives Santa's sleigh, and Coco navigates with maps. Santa "has no need for Joe/ but takes him 'cause he loves him so". (However, in the Bozo the Clown

Bozo the Clown

Bozo the Clown is a clown character very popular in the United States, peaking in the 1960s as a result of widespread franchising in early television.Originally created by Alan W...

 special "A Bozo Christmas," Coco states that Joe, who was unable to go with them that year due to illness, was in charge of crisis management.) Part of the charm of this primitively-made cartoon is that Joe, the smallest of the three and very boyish-looking has a deep bass voice.

Chorus:

Oh-lee-o-lay-dee, o-lay-dee-I-ay

Donner and Blitzen, away, away

Oh-lee-o-lay-dee, o-lay-dee-I-oh

I'm Hardrock!

I'm Coco!

I'm Joe!

The program is available on DVD from the Museum of Broadcast Communications

Museum of Broadcast Communications

The Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...

.

Parody

A new generation of animation lovers was introduced to this Christmas classic via the short-lived Comedy Central

Comedy Central

Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....

 television series, TV Funhouse

TV Funhouse

Saturday TV Funhouse is the title of a recurring skit on NBC's Saturday Night Live featuring cartoons created by longtime SNL writer Robert Smigel as well as a short-lived spinoff series TV Funhouse that ran on Comedy Central...

, a spin-off

Spin-off (media)

In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...

 of the recurring Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

 cartoons. In the series' third episode, "Christmas Day", the Hardrock, Coco, and Joe short is satirized under the name "Christmas With Tingles" in which an elf named Tingles magically spreads tension and guilt during the Christmas season. Aside from the subject matter, the spoof stays remarkably faithful to the original, featuring black-and-white stop-motion animation, as well as spoken lyrics backed by an a cappella

A cappella

A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...

 chorus:

Yo-dee-yo-die-deedle, deedle-ee-dee

Awkwardness and anxiety,

Yeedle-dee-doo-deedle, dee-deedle dension

"I'm Tingles the Christmas Tension!"

The tune of the song featured in the "Christmas With Tingles" short is almost identical to the tune of the song featured in the Hardrock, Coco, and Joe "Three Little Dwarfs" cartoon.

Other recordings

The song was also recorded by Gene Autry

Gene Autry

Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...

, but in Autry's version, Joe is depicted as having a high, childlike voice, not a bass one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G2uRfYQSVw

External links

• Full Length Version
• A site commenting on the cartoon
• Vintage ToonCast - Available in flash and iPod playable Quicktime formats.