The Story of the DuckTales Theme, History’s Catchiest Single Minute of Music

Psychological studies tell us that the more often we hear a song, the more likely we are to enjoy it. Nostalgia plays a part too. For many, the DuckTales theme is inextricably tied up with happy, potent memories of childhood, of after-school television-watching and put-off homework.

But the DuckTales theme also happens to be a superb piece of music. It’s not only a high point of an underrated musical form, but an exquisite miniature pop classic in its own right.

It begins with a bopping bass line—octave-jumping quarter notes and an eighth-note syncopation, a close relative of the attention-seizing intros of Hall & Oates’s “You Make My Dreams Come True” (1980) and Kenny Loggins’s “Footloose” (1984).

Grammy award-winning keyboardist Gregg Karukas engineered Mueller’s demo and played on the final version. At that time, he was playing in contemporary instrumental bands around town, including with a young Kenny G in a group called The Rippingtons—the beginnings of smooth jazz. He’d also tickled the ivories for the incidental music in Cheers. Karukas had converted his garage into a studio, equipped it with a baby grand piano and a stack of synths. (Mueller and Karukas also experimented with more overtly quack-like sounds. These were, mercifully, dropped.)

In accordance with Disney’s instructions, Mueller injected as much thrilling comic-book imagery into the lyrics as possible, conjuring a dizzying array of tempestuous weather, speeding vehicles, sci-fi gadgetry—and ducks:

“Life is like a hurricane—”“Here in Duckburg.”“Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes—”

“It’s a duck blur.”

Those crucial first and third lines employ a rhythmic meter called catalectic trochaic tetrameter, a rare scheme that Shakespeare uses for the lines of the fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream (“Through the forest have I gone”).

Joining Mueller and Karukas in the garage studio was Jeff Pescetto, a singer-songwriter whose vocal style was influenced by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Robert Plant, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles. Disney tried out other, more high-profile singers at considerable cost, Pescetto remembers, before finally deciding his demo vocals were the best of the lot.

It’s easy to hear why. Listen out for how Pescetto attacks the line “or re-write history,” sounding rawly excited about the prospect (as the electric guitar gets a groove on in the background).

The arrival of the chorus is an ecstatic event. Writing it, Mueller realized he’d left a couple of gaps just after the rousing cry of “DuckTales!”—six beats each of valuable potential melodic real estate. Perhaps tapping into his own feelings that day, he instinctively threw in an exhilarated “A-woo-hoo!”

It works because Pescetto’s “a-woo-hoo” sounds genuinely enthusiastic; the woo-hoos of the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” (1983) feel cheerlessly unspontaneous by comparison.

The chorus also heralds the entrance of an exuberant horn arrangement, contributed by longtime Quincy Jones collaborator Jerry Hey—already a four-time Grammy Award winner by 1986. Gary Grant and Hey himself played trumpet, with Bill Reichenbach on trombone. The three of them were a prolific unit in the 80s; it wasn’t long before DuckTales that they were contributing blazing brass lines to Earth, Wind & Fire and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.