MouseStation 284 – Where Disney Musicians Came From with Sean Jones
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Show run time 0:47:24
In today’s show, our second Listener of the Month, Sean Jones, joins Mark and Mike to take a different look at some of those who made music for the Mouse.
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Thanks to our sponsors
Today’s show is sponsored by:
Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center. A luxury hotel one mile from Walt Disney World, where special MousePlanet rates ALWAYS get you at least 15% off the normal rates available for the property.
Advantage Vacation Homes. A great vacation home rental company that gives you a place to stay with lots more space than a regular hotel room for a lot less money.
Feature: Where Disney Musicians Came From
Sean started talking about Louis Prima, starting with his best-known Disney recording, “I Wanna Be Like You” from The Jungle Book (buy). In talking a bit about his early days, Sean played some of “Sing, Sing, Sing” which also became a bit hit for Glenn Miller. We followed Louis to his long-term stand in Las Vegas, and played a little of “Jump, Jive & Wail” as we led into the rest of his career. The previous two songs are available on a number of different albums (buy). After doing The Jungle Book, Prima became well liked at the Walt Disney Company. He ended up recording an album of remakes from the movie Mary Poppins (buy).
Sean’s portrait of Louis Prima with Keely Smith and Sam Butera. Artwork by Sean Jones.
Cliff Edwards was well-known in his day, sometimes known as Ukelele Ike. For Disney fans, he’ll always be best known as the original voice of Jiminy Cricket (now voiced by Eddie Carroll). One of his early hits was “Only a Paper Moon” (buy). He was extremely well-known for his own recordings when Walt Disney tapped him to provide the voice of an animated cricket, and he became best-known as Jiminy Cricket. He continued to do the character’s voice for many years, including singing “You Are a Human Animal” (buy) for the original Mickey Mouse Club. Unfortunately, Cliff fell upon hard times and died penniless, though the Disney company helped him financially throughout his later years.
Jerry Goldsmith is one of the top movie score writers ever. For a time, it seemed like he wrote everything that wasn’t written by John Williams. In any case, while he wrote the Twilight Zone theme, he may be best known for the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation (buy). He also wrote the theme to Star Trek: Voyager (buy), which sounds somewhat reminiscent of his most popular Disney music: the theme for Soarin’ (buy). While the Soarin’ attraction is very cool, the music is a major part of what makes it so special. Mark passed along a story that he had heard about how Jerry Goldsmith agreed to do the score for the attraction.
Rod Miller is the long-time king of the Main Street ragtime piano (buy). Sean told some great stories from his experiences with Rod.
Our thanks to Sean Jones, our second Listener of the Month, for joining us on the show.
Listener Feedback
Linda wrote about her favorite extinct EPCOT Center attractions, World of Motion and the original Journey Into Imagination with the original Image Works upstairs. Mark and Mike talked some more about their favorite extinct attractions.
Brian from Riverside called in to report on riding the newly updated “it’s a small world” attraction at Disneyland. He thinks that it’s kind of cool and gives tribute to Disney characters but it doesn’t take away from the “small world” magic.
riding new iasw at DL, kind of cool, gives tribute to Disney characters but doesn’t take away from the small world magic, there’s Lion King for Mike and Nemo for Mark
Janice Albers wrote about our listing of Disney movie rabbits to remind us of the rabbit family from Robin Hood, which we had heard from Steven on Tuesday, but this email was received before that show went live.
Nate Haston wrote to remind us of Lucky Jack in Home on the Range. The reason why Mark didn’t remember this is because Home on the Range is probably the only Disney animated feature that he has never seen.
Dan the Light Man wrote in to find out whether there’s any way to trade their Interval International (II) timeshare to stay at Disney resorts now the Disney has switched from II to RCI. The answer is that there’s no way to do it any more. Mark and Mike both pointed out that buying timeshares with the aim of trading for specific properties is always dangerous because properties can go in and out of networks. Disney is trading with only a specific subset of RCI properties that meet its criteria, not all RCI properties.
March of Dimes
Mark is again raising funds for the March of Dimes. Last year, MousePlanet readers and MouseStation listeners helped Mark to raise over $5,000 for the worthy charity. We’re looking to beat that this year and raise $6,000! Just go to Mark’s fundraising page and help to provide a better chance to prevent prematurity and to help those babies that are born prematurely.
We’re now on Facebook! Join the MousePlanet and MouseStation groups. You can also become a fan of MousePlanet or the MouseStation. If you join the club and use Pieces of Flair, you can get your MousePlanet and MouseStation flair from Mark (though you have to friend him first).
Wrapping up
We’ve put together a new listener survey to help us learn more about you and what you like most about this podcast. This one is much more targeted than the old Podtrac survey. Please take a few minutes to fill it out and let us know what you think.
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Thanks to our audio engineer and sound editor Steven Ng.
Thank you for listening!
