20,000 vinyl LPs 321: The Magical Music of Walt Disney

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The Magical Music of Walt Disney 4 vinyl LPs box set detail

detail photo of album cover by Styrous®

One hundred and twenty years ago today, on December 5, 1901, the most famous cartoon animator in the world, Walt Disney, was born. This is a tribute to Disney who besides being an animator, was an entrepreneur, writer, voice actor, and film producer. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards earned by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.           

The Magical Music of Walt Disney 4 vinyl LPs box set 

photo of album cover by Styrous®

This is a collection of music from cartoons Disney created. The voice of Mickey Mouse, who appears on the cover of the album, was provided by Disney until 1947.              

The Magical Music of Walt Disney 4 vinyl LPs set box back  

photo of album cover by Styrous®

There are dozens, if not hundreds of great songs from the Disney films; how they managed to choose which ones they did is a miracle to me. The packaging for the set is beautiful. There was also a beautiful book issued at the same time and I wrote about it on the 90rh birthday of Micky Mouse three years ago (link below).    

By today's standards there are ethnic issues with many of the films but it was another time, another world and the wonderful music shines through.       

 

To start off, for sheer beauty and hope there is nothing like When You Wish Upon a Star from the film Pinocchio sung by Cliff Edwards as the character, Jiminy Cricket.                 

 

For introducing kids to the issues of life, Bambi is chock full of life realizations as when he meets Thumper who says, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." And the tragedy of the death of the mother of Bambi. There is beauty as well, as in the song, Little April Shower which is quietly bouncy and sung by a full chorus.          

He's a Tramp, sung by Peggy Lee in Lady & the Tramp, is a smooth and sensual jazz vocal that is Le Jazz Hot! She also sings the exotic Siamese Cat Song.           

 

Once Upon a Dream from the film Sleeping Beauty is sung by opera singers Mary Costa and Bill Shirley. Its lyrics were written by Jack Lawrence and Sammy Fain while the music is adapted by George Bruns. The song's melody is based on the Grande valse villageoise (nicknamed The Garland Waltz), from the 1890 ballet The Sleeping Beauty by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.      

 

Mary Poppins (1964) had the impossible to forget song, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! It also had the lovely Feed the Birds (although I do hate pigeons) written by Robert B. Sherman with lyrics by his brother Richard M. Sherman. Then there are a couple of dance segments, The Penguin Dance which had no vocal but a lot of silly dancing by Dick Van Dyke with animated Penguins; the other is Step In Time with a gaggle of chimney sweepers.            

Pete's Dragon has a lovely song, I love you Too,  the film stars Sean Marshall, Helen Reddy, Jim Dale, Mickey Rooney, Red Buttons, Jeff Conaway, Shelley Winters, and the voice of Charlie Callas as Elliott.           

Tracklist:

Side 1:

A1 - Mickey Mouse Review Overture - 2:30
A2 - Steamboat Willie - 0:45
A3 - Mickey's Early Years - 7:52
A4 - Maestro Mickey Conducts - 11:50
A5 - Three Little Pigs  - 4:02

Side 2:

B1 - Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs - 10:23
B2 - Fantasia/Sorcerer's Apprentice - 9:11
B3 - Pinocchio - 9:31

Side 3:

C1 - Dumbo - 10:10
C2 - Bambi - 11:35
C3 - Animated Classics Of The 40's - 7:25

Side 4:

D1 - Song Of The South - 11:35
D2 - Cinderella - 9:35
D3 - Peter Pan - 7:00

Side 5:

E1 - Lady And The Tramp - 9:07
E2 - Sleeping Beauty - 10:20
E3 - The Vanishing Prairie - 5:37

Side 6:

F1 - The Later Animated Years - 12:58
F2 - The Rescuers - 8:55

Side 7:

G1 - Mary Poppins - 28:05

Side 8:

H1 - Pete's Dragon - 9:00
H2 - Live Music From The Magic Kingdoms - 9:45
H3 - Music Of The Magic Kingdom Attractions - 6:45
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Companies, etc.

    Manufactured By – Ovation Incorporated
    Distributed By – Ovation Incorporated
    Mastered At – Diskwerks
    Pressed By – PRC Recording Company, Richmond, IN

Credits:

    Mastered By – Gary Heddin
    Producer, Liner Notes – Dick Schory

Notes:

Comes with 52 full-color page book

Barcode and Other Identifiers

    Matrix / Runout (Side A, Label): OV 5000-1A
    Matrix / Runout (Side B, Label): OV 5000-1B
    Matrix / Runout (Side C, Label): OV 5000-2A
    Matrix / Runout (Side D, Label): OV 5000-2B
    Matrix / Runout (Side E, Label): OV 5000-3A
    Matrix / Runout (Side F, Label): OV 5000-3B
    Matrix / Runout (Side G, Label): OV 5000-4A
    Matrix / Runout (Side H, Label): OV 5000-4B
    Matrix / Runout (Side A Runout, etched; DISKWERKS is stamped): OV-5000-1 A-1-1-111 DISKWERKS PRC
    Matrix / Runout (Side B Runout, etched; DISKWERKS is stamped): OV-5000-1 B-1 DISKWERKS-1-11 PRC
    Matrix / Runout (Side C Runout, etched; DISKWERKS is stamped): OV-5000-2A-1 DISKWERKS-1-1 PRC
    Matrix / Runout (Side D Runout, etched; DISKWERKS is stamped): OV-5000-2B-2-1-1 RCII PRC DISKWERKS
    Matrix / Runout (Side E Runout, etched; DISKWERKS is stamped): OV-5000-3 A-1 DISKWERKS-1-1 PRC
    Matrix / Runout (Side F Runout, etched; DISKWERKS is stamped): OV-5000-3 B-1-1 DISKWERKS-11 PRC
    Matrix / Runout (Side G Runout, etched; DISKWERKS is stamped): OV-5000-4A-2-1-1 II PRC DISKWERKS
    Matrix / Runout (Side H Runout, etched; DISKWERKS is stamped): OV-5000-4 B-1 DISKWERKS-1-11 PRC
    Other (Catalog number on sleeve for record one): OV-5000-1
    Other (Catalog number on sleeve for record two): OV-5000-2
    Other (Catalog number on sleeve for record three): OV-5000-3
    Other (Catalog number on sleeve for record four): OV-5000-4

Various – The Magical Music Of Walt Disney
Label:    Ovation Records – OV5000, Ovation Records – OV 5000
Format:    4 x Vinyl, LP, Compilation
Country: US
Released: 1978
Genre: Jazz, Classical, Children's, Stage & Screen

Viewfinder links:        

          

The Art of Walt Disney ~ Mickey turns 90 years old today        

Mary Costa          

Jim Dale           

Walt Disney           

Peggy Lee         

Mickey Mouse           

Mickey Rooney        

Carl Stalling          

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky          

Shelley Winters          

           

Net links:         

           

           

           

           

           

YouTube links:          

           

Bambi ~   

          Bambi Meets Thumper             

          Little April Shower      

Cinderella ~          

          Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo         

          A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes          

Dumbo ~    

          Pink Elephants on Parade            

          When I See an Elephant Fly           

Fantasia ~     

          The Sorcerer's Apprentice           

Lady And The Tramp ~             

          He's a Tramp         

          The Siamese Cat Song           

Mary Poppins ~           

              

          Feed The Birds         

          The Penguin Dance      

          Step In Time      

          Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious    

Peter Pan ~            

          A Pirate's Life        

          You Can Fly       

          You Must Never Smile at a Crocodile      

          What Makes The Red Man Red?     

Pete's Dragon ~ I love you Too         

Pinocchio - When You Wish Upon a Star           

Sleeping Beauty ~        

       Once Upon a Dream  

Song Of The South ~     

          How Do You Do?       

          Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah                 

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs ~           

          The Dwarfs' Yodel Song           

          Transformation scene     

Steamboat Willie          

Three Little Pigs          

           

           

           

           

           

 

Styrous® ~ Sunday, December 5, 2021   

    

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20,000 Vinyl LPs Archive 
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Carl W. Stalling & Walt Disney

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Carl W. Stalling
date & photographer unknown

 

            

Carl W. Stalling was born a hundred and thirty years ago on November 10, 1891, in Lexington, Missouri. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts (links below) produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.         

 

Stalling met Walt Disney in the early twenties; In 1928, Disney was on a journey from California to New York City to record the sound and make the preview of Steamboat Willie, Disney's first released sound short. During the journey he stopped at Kansas City to hire Stalling to compose film scores for two other animated shorts. Stalling composed several early cartoon scores for Disney, including Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho in 1928 (but not Steamboat Willie, Disney's first released sound short). Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho were originally silent films and were the first two Mickey Mouse animated short films in production.  Disney hired Stalling as his studio's first music director.        

 

Animation historian Allan Neuwirth credits Stalling for basically inventing the process of creating a film score for cartoons. According to Strauss, the "wildly talented" Stalling was suitable as a film score composer for animated films. Stalling even voiced Mickey Mouse in The Karnival Kid in 1929.          

 

Stalling encouraged Disney to create a new series of animated short films, in which the animation and its action would be created to match the music. This was still unusual at the time, since film music was played or composed to match the action of a film. Stalling's discussions with Disney on whether the animation or the musical score should come first led to Disney creating the Silly Symphonies series (links below) of animated short films. Stalling is credited with both the composition and the musical arrangement of The Skeleton Dance (1929), the first of the Silly Symphonies.   

 

A great example of Stallings work is in The Haunted House (links below) in which Disney provided the voice of Mickey and Ub Iwerks was the primary animator.       

The Haunted House

Carl Stalling & Ub Iwerks

 

 

These cartoons allowed Stalling to create a score that Disney handed to his animators. The Silly Symphonies was an innovative animated film series, in which pre-recorded film scores were making use of well-known classical works and the animation sequences were choreographed to match the music. Stalling helped Disney streamline and update the sound process used in creating early animated sound films, following the long and laborious synchronization process used in Steamboat Willie. The close synchronization of music and on-screen movement pioneered by the Disney short films became known as Mickey Mousing.          

 

Stalling left Disney after two years, at the same time as animator Ub Iwerks. Stalling had completed the scoring of about 20 animated films for Disney. Stalling served as the music director of Iwerks' studio until the studio shut down in 1936. In 1936, when Leon Schlesinger, under contract to produce animated shorts for Warner Bros., hired Iwerks, Stalling went with him to become a full-time cartoon music composer. As music director Stalling became an integral member of the team producing two very successful animated series. The two animated series which Schlesinger produced for Warner Bros. were the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, both introduced in the early 1930s.         

 

 

Stalling served as music director for Warner Bros. for 22 years and is credited for the film score of over 600 animated films. He remained with them until he retired in 1958.           

 

Carl W. Stalling died in the Los Angeles area on November 29, 1972, nineteen days after his 81st birthday.           

 

In 1995 Warner Bros. Records released a two volume compilation of music from the Warner Bros. cartoons from 1939 to 1957; more on that in a future article.       

Carl W. Stalling ~ The Carl Stalling Project

 

         

        

Viewfinder links:       

        

Walt Disney         

Ub Iwerks             

Mickey Mouse        

Carl Stalling        

     

Net links:       

         

ABC.net ~ Meet the man that underscored your childhood        

AWM ~ Carl Stalling & Humor in Cartoons        

Cartoon Research ~ The Spooky Story of The Skeleton Dance         

Critics at Large ~ The American Absurdism of Carl Stalling          

Entertainment Junkie ~ Carl W. Stalling: The Man Behind the Tunes

michaelbarrier ~ Funnyworld Revisited         

Musician Guide ~ Carl Stalling        

Slate ~ The Mickey Mouse Genius        

     
YouTube links:       

        

Carl Stalling ~      

       The Haunted House (1929)       

       Silly Symphonies

       The Skeleton Dance (5 mins., 31 secs.)        

How Looney Tunes influenced a generation of composers (9 mins., 42 secs.)    

Merrie Melodies ~ Carl Stalling and Cartoon Music (documentary)   

        
        

        

         

 

        

        

        

        
        

        

Styrous® ~ Tuesday, November 16, 2021    

         

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The Art of Walt Disney ~ Mickey turns 90 years old today

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Mickey Mouse is 90 years old today; he was born on November 18, 1928. Mickey first appeared in a screen test of the American animated short film, Plane Crazy, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks but debuted publicly in the short film Steamboat Willie (1928), one of the first sound cartoons. He went on to appear in over 130 films, including The Band Concert (1935), Brave Little Tailor (1938), and Fantasia (1940).    

The Art of Walt Disney -
hard cover book with acetate dust cover 

photo by Styrous®        

       

The Art of Walt Disney - hard cover book
without acetate dust cover
photo by Styrous®

Mickey was in over 130 films, including The Band Concert (1935), Brave Little Tailor (1938), and Fantasia (1940) (link below). Mickey appeared primarily in short films, but also occasionally in feature-length films. Ten of Mickey's cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, one of which, Lend a Paw, won the award in 1942. In 1978, Mickey became the first cartoon character to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.      

The Art of Walt Disney - hard cover book
front endpaper
photo by Styrous®

Beginning in 1930, Mickey has also been featured extensively as a comic strip character. His self-titled newspaper strip, drawn primarily by Floyd Gottfredson, ran for 45 years. Mickey has also appeared in comic books such as Disney Italy's Topolino, MM Mickey Mouse Mystery Magazine, and Wizards of Mickey, and in television series such as The Mickey Mouse Club (1955–1996) and others. He also appears in other media such as video games as well as merchandising and is a meetable character at the Disney parks.        

The Art of Walt Disney - hard cover book
photo by Styrous®

From 1928 onward, Mickey was voiced by Walt Disney (link below) himself, a task in which Disney took great personal pride. However, by 1946, Disney was becoming too busy with running the studio to do regular voice work which meant he could not do Mickey's voice on a regular basis anymore. It is also speculated that his cigarette habit had damaged his voice over the years. After recording the Mickey and the Beanstalk section of Fun and Fancy Free, Mickey's voice was handed over to veteran Disney musician and actor Jimmy MacDonald. MacDonald voiced Mickey in the remainder of the theatrical shorts and for various television and publicity projects up until his retirement in 1977.       

Voices of Mickey: 

Walt Disney (1928–1966)
Carl W. Stalling (1929)
Clarence Nash (1934)
Jimmy MacDonald (1947–1977)
Wayne Allwine (1977–2009)
Les Perkins (1986–1987)
Bret Iwan (2009–present)
Chris Diamantopoulos (2013–present)
(for more info, see voice actors)

      

 

The Art of Walt Disney - hard cover book
page spread open
photo by Styrous®

Originally published in 1973, the book by Christopher Finch, The Art of Walt Disney, is about the innovations of Walt Disney. This is the original 1973 edition with the image of Mickey Mouse in bold relief on the cover.             

The Art of Walt Disney - hard cover book
cut out of Mickey Mouse on the cover
photo by Styrous®

 

Beginning in 1930, Mickey has also been featured extensively as a comic strip character. His self-titled newspaper strip, drawn primarily by Floyd Gottfredson, ran for 45 years.        

The Art of Walt Disney - contents page
photo by Styrous®

He was in the television series the Mickey Mouse Club which ran from 1955 to 1959 on the ABC network. It was hosted by Jimmie Dodd, a songwriter and the Head Mouseketeer. The main cast members were called Mouseketeers, and they performed in a variety of musical and dance numbers, as well as some informational segments. The most popular of the Mouseketeers comprised the so-called Red Team, who were kept under contract for the entire run of the show (1955-1959), consisted of the following:     

• Sharon Baird
• Bobby Burgess
• Lonnie Burr^[6]
• Tommy Cole
• Annette Funicello
• Darlene Gillespie
• Cubby O'Brien
• Karen Pendleton
• Doreen Tracey

Annette Funicello, the most famous of the Mouseketeers, went on to a movie career that included the "Beach Party" genre (link below) with co-star Frankie Avalon and a successful career as a singer (link below) during the mid-1960s. Funicello was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1992 and died of complications from the disease on April 8, 2013.        

The Art of Walt Disney - "A New Art Form"
photo by Styrous®

The Mickey Mouse Club was revived from 1977–1979 and 1989–1996 in varying guises and titles. Mickey Mouse himself appeared in every show not only in vintage cartoons originally made for theatrical release but in opening, interstitial, and closing segments made especially for the show. In both the vintage cartoons and new animated segments, Mickey was voiced by his creator Walt Disney.                

Walter Elias Disney (/ˈdɪzni/) was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. He took art classes as a boy and got a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to California in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy.     

In 1955, Disney opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California, He was also involved in planning the 1959 Moscow Fair, the 1960 Winter Olympics, and the 1964 New York World's Fair. In 1965 he began development of Disney World, which opened on October 1, 1971, in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Walt Disney World is the most visited vacation resort in the world, with average annual attendance of more than 52 million people.      

Disney was a heavy smoker and In November of 1966, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was treated with cobalt therapy. He died of circulatory collapse caused by the cancer on December 15, 1966. 

Mickey Mouse

Mickey Mouse has been celebrated all over the world, from France to the former Soviet Union.     

     
Viewfinder links:        
          
Walt Disney 
Mickey Mouse      
Divine aka Ursula          
Divine ~ Greatest Hits         
Paul Dukas, The Sorcerer & Mickey Mouse (Fantasia)     

Net links:        
          
Plane Crazy Synopsis         
Steamboat Willie Synopsis         
Walt Disney Family Museum            
Walt Disney ~ 90th Spectacular Honors the Mouse Who Started it All  
Voice actors       
Annette Funicello Filmography     
Annette Funicello Discography       
         
YouTube links:        
          
Plane Crazy         
Steamboat Willie       
              
   

  

Happy Birthday, Mickey

      
     
       
       
        
      

Styrous® ~ Sunday, November 18, 2018,  
        

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