TV TUNES
“Instead of considering TV a rival, when I saw it, I said, ‘I can use that, I want to be a part of it.’” ~ Walt Disney
To say Walt Disney was busy in the 1950s would be a slight understatement. Actually, it would be a huge understatement.
Not only did Walt expand from animated features into live-action pictures, he also began producing television shows and series and built Disneyland. And in true Disney fashion, music played a large role in each.
“This was a hectic time at the Studio,” recalled Buddy Baker, who joined the Disney music staff following a career in big bands and radio. “We had the weekly series [“Disneyland,” which later became “The Wonderful World of Disney,” among other titles] to write music for, plus the daily show [“The Mickey Mouse Club”]. This was in addition to the feature films the Studio was producing. And Walt demanded quality, whether it was music for a multi million-dollar animated feature or a television show.”
By all accounts, Walt got the quality he wanted. In fact, he got more than that. Many of the songs written during this time, especially those written for his TV shows, became not only hit tunes, but bona fide Disney classics that are recognizable and warmly regarded today as they were 40 years ago when they were first introduced.
October 3, 1955. 5 p.m. A popular and famous spelling cadence is heard on the ABC television network for the very first time: M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E. The “Mickey Mouse Club,” one of the most popular children’s television shows ever, debuts on ABC, starring Annette, Cubby, Darlene and the rest of the Mouseketeers, as well as one of the best-known and best-loved songs of all time, the “Mickey Mouse Club March,” written by the Club’s adult host, Jimmie Dodd.
Dodd also wrote the “Mickey Mouse Club Alma Mater” (“Why? Because we like you!”), as well as the theme songs for two educational series that were introduced in 1956 as part of the “Mickey Mouse Club.” “I’m No Fool” kicked off six animated shorts about safety (the particular song featured in this collection is from “I’m No Fool with a Bicycle”) and “You, the Human Animal,” which was heard in the series of the same name. Both were sung by Cliff Edwards reprising his role as the conscience conscious Jiminy Cricket.
Walt Disney’s first weekly prime time show on television was “Disneyland,” an anthology series that debuted on ABC in 1954. The show was hosted by Walt himself, and each week featured cartoons or feature films from the Disney library, original shows and behind-the-scenes glimpses of Disneyland, which was then under construction.
The series, with various changes in names and networks, remained on the air for 26 years. One of those changes was in 1961 when the show moved to NBC and was renamed “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color,” – and for good reason: The show was now being broadcast in color (a boon to television manufacturers and salespeople, who saw sales of color TVs skyrocket). Along with the new network, the new name and the new color format, Walt had the ubiquitous Sherman brothers write a new theme song called, cleverly enough, “Wonderful World of Color (Main Title).”
The premiere episode of “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color,” broadcast September 24, 1961, was “An Adventure in Color,” starring a brand new Disney animated character, Ludwig Von Drake. The show, which was ostensible about the wonders of color, featured Von Drake singing “The Spectrum Song,” written by the Sherman brothers, of course. The song is a clever play on words and colors and, if you pay particularly close attention to the end, you’ll hear a reference to an earlier Disney song.
Before the motion pictures Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955) and Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956), there was “Davy Crockett,” the television series. In fact, those two movies were the television series (the Davy Crockett stories proved so popular on the “Disneyland” television show that Walt decided to edit them and release them as movies).
But even before there was a “Davy Crockett,” television series, there was “The Ballad of Davy Crockett.”
“Walt needed what I call a little ‘throwaway’ tune that would bridge the time gaps in the story of Davy Crockett,” recalled staff composer George Bruns (of Sleeping Beauty fame). “He needed a song that would carry the story from one sequence to another. I threw together the melody line and chorus, ‘Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier,’ in about 30 minutes.”
Tom Blackburn, the scriptwriter for the “Davy Crockett” series, had never before written a song, but that didn’t stop him from adding the lyrics, 120 lines of them (the completed version had 20 stanzas of six lines each).
Before the television series even went on the air, “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” took the country by storm. Bruns and Blackburn’s little “throwaway” tune became a monster hit. In the first six months alone, nearly seven million copies of the song were sold, making it the fastest-selling record ever up to that time.
All told, it spent six months on the Hit Parade, was recorded by more than 200 record labels around the world and sold an astonishing 10 million copies. Versions of the song were recorded by Bill Hayes (who had the most popular version and the one heard on this collection), Fess Parker (who played Davy Crockett), Tennessee Ernie Ford, Eddie Arnold, Fred Waring, the Sons of the Pioneers, Steve Allen, Mitch Miller, Rusty Draper and Burl Ives.
“It certainly took everybody at the Studio by surprise,” said Bruns. “The irony of it was that most people thought it was an authentic folk song that we had uncovered and updated. Usually when you have a hit song, there are always lawsuits claiming prior authorship. In the case of ‘Davy Crockett,’ not a single suit was filed.”
The success of both the show and the song even confounded Walt, who admitted, “We had no idea what was going to happen with Crockett. By the time the show finally got on the air, we were already filming the third one [the series was originally planned as a trilogy] and calmly killing Davy off at the Alamo. The show became one of the biggest overnight hits in TV history, and there we were with just three films and a dead hero.”
Although the real Davy Crockett met a tragic end at the Alamo, the Davy Crockett of TV series fame did not. He rose from the dead and returned the next year in two more shows based on the legends of Davy Crockett, complete with new lyrics to “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” (it was these two shows that were stitched together to make the movie Davy Crockett and the River Pirates).
By the way, the original title of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” – before it became a big hit – was “The Ballad of Davy Crockett: His Early Life, Hunting Adventures, Services Under General Jackson in the Creek War, Electioneering Speeches, Career in Congress, Triumphal Tour in the Northern States, and Services in the Texas War.” When that proved to be too difficult to fit on the label of a 78 r.p.m. record, it was shortened.
Long before Lt. Frank Dreben and The Naked Gun, there was General Francis Marion and The Swamp Fox. The link between the two is actor Leslie Nielsen, who in 1959 starred as General Marion in Disney’s mini-series about American revolutionaries who took to the swamps of South Carolina to battle British troops.
The real treat of each episode, which was seen as part of Disney’s weekly TV show (by that time renamed “Walt Disney Presents”) was hearing Nielsen sing “The Swamp Fox,” with words by Lew Foster and music by Buddy Baker.
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In 1954, the music department at the Disney Studio was so busy that George Bruns called in an old friend and former teacher of his to help write the music for the soon-to-premiere “Mickey Mouse Club.” “I came for what I thought would be two weeks’ worth of work,” says Buddy Baker, “and I stayed 28 years. There was just so much to do I never got a chance to leave.” Baker not only wrote “The Swamp Fox” with lyricist Lew Foster, he also composed and arranged scores for motion pictures, TV series and the Disney theme parks. “No matter what I or anyone else in the music department wrote, people always recognized it as being the ‘Disney sound,’” he says. “But if I was asked to define what the Disney sound is, I’d have to answer that I don’t know.” “I think a clue comes from the man himself,” he adds. “Walt Disney had a wonderful concept of what the music should be, which is a great clue for a composer. If he wanted a big, symphonic score, he’d tell you that.” When Baker retired from the Disney Studio in 1983, it signaled the end of an era. “I was the last composer to be on staff at a movie studio,” he says. “Nowadays, composers are hired on an ‘as needed’ basis. They don’t actually work for the studios.”
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In 1968 “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” became “The Wonderful World of Disney” and received a new theme song, titled appropriately enough, “The Wonderful World of Disney (Main Title).” Actually, the new theme song was a medley of Disney’s greatest hits. Can you identify them?
(Answers: “Someday My Price Will Come,” “Whistle While You Work,” “When You Wish Upon a Star,” “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” and “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.”)
In 1957, a Spanish Californian aristocrat who doubles as a masked avenger came galloping into America’s homes. Although “Zorro” didn’t quite cause the same sensation as the “Davy Crockett” shows did, there are similarities between the two. Both started out on TV, “Zorro” as a weekly series, “Crockett” as a mini-series on Disney’s weekly anthology show. Both became motion pictures that were assembled by editing together several episodes of their TV shows. And both shared George Bruns as the composer of their theme songs.
“Zorro,” with music by Bruns and words by Norman Foster, was heard for the two seasons the show was on ABC and then popped up again later when “Zorro” was revived as a series of one-hour episodes for Walt Disney’s weekly TV show and as a motion picture in 1960.
In 1990 Disney re-entered the realm of daily children’s television with “The Disney Afternoon,” a two-hour block of cartoons starring both classics and new Disney characters. The original lineup included “Duck Tales,” “Chip ‘n Dale’s Rescue Rangers,” “Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears” and “Tail Spin.” By 1991, all four shows were among the six top-rated animated shows in syndicated television. Not surprisingly, all feature bouncy, irresistible theme songs that are as easily identified by today’s generation of kids as “The Mickey Mouse Club March” was to yesterday’s. The two themes on this collection are the “Duck Tales Theme” and “Tail Spin Theme.”
