Literally, I grew up on Keaton -- it was Saturday early morning television in Los Angeles in the early 1950s before Mighty Mouse and other "modern" stuff came on about 9 or 10 am. We also had silent films from the likes of Laurel and Hardy and silent cartoons (e.g., Felix the Cat, and, as I recall, Steamboat Mickey) with background music from the likes of Ellington (e.g., The Mooche) and Basie (e.g., 12th Street Rag)! Shaped my life in some ways.
There was an excellent guerrilla theatre group in the mid-late 1960s, patterned after the SF Mime Troupe, named the East Bay Sharks (I know they played in NYC in clubs, too), that used to play at noon at Sproul Plaza on the Berkeley Campus. One day they announced that they were playing cartoon music to back their production. They played The Mooche (they had a live clarinetist); I winced. Someone must have informed them of what it was, and the next day, they humbly apologized for having referred to it as "cartoon music."
