William "Bill" B. Lava (March 18, 1911 St. Paul, Minnesota - February 20, 1971 Los Angeles, California) was a musical composer and arranger who worked on the Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated cartoons from 1962 onwards, replacing the deceased Milt Franklyn. Lava's music was very different from that of Franklyn and previous composer Carl Stalling. It has a tendency towards atonality. A sense of tension is often created in Lava's scores using sequences based on the notes of the diminished seventh chord. Lava also sang the theme to the popular T.V. western series Cheyenne.
