THE LIFE F SMILEY

When the little yellow Smiley face flew across your TV screen in a Wal-Mart commercial, you heard music produced by Walter Bryant. Sometimes original music, other times Walter's adaptations of licensed existing songs, including "Rawhide," Working In a Coal Mine" and "Secret Agent Man," with Johnny Rivers performing the new lyric.  The 2005, the most recent of the animated Smiley series, the  commercials were a tribute to classic animation, with musical adaptations of classical themes many of us grew up hearing in cartoon soundtracks.

A trivia note from Walter:

"In the early versions of this series, Smiley would whistle, and I was The Whistler.  Earle Hagen (just recently deceased) was my hero.  He wrote a lot of great music, much of it for television shows.  To the average person, though it might be his whistling that is best known, as he whistled his own theme for "The Andy Griffith Show."

Even More Smiley Face Trivia