The World Owes Me a Living - Shirley Temple

It's Anniversary Week here at Covering the Mouse! It was four years ago today that I posted my first cover song, beginning what I had no idea would be such a huge project! Back then I only had a few hundred Disney cover songs, but my collection has grown (thanks to many of you) to almost 2000, over 450 of which can be heard here! This site will be able to continue for years as long as you keep on reading and listening!

As a celebration, I have declared this to be Silly Symphony Week! Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies are among my favourite of his cartoons. The style, the storytelling, the animation, the colour and the music all come together in a perfect cartoon package!

The music in this series is a focal point. Carl Stalling came to Disney with the idea of using music as a bases for a cartoon series, forming the story and animation around the use of songs and scores. Some songs, like Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf have become classics, while others have fallen into obscurity. Cover songs of Silly Symphony tunes are even harder to come by (with the exception of Who's Afraid), but I have a few gems that I would like to share with you!

Today's song is The World Owes Me a Living, the fiddle tune performed by Pinto Colvig as the Grasshopper in The Grasshopper and the Ants. The first line of the song would later serve as Goofy's unofficial theme song, also performed by Pinto Colvig, for the next few decades.

The Grasshopper and the Ants was released in February, 1934, and later that year, The World Owes Me a Living showed up in Now and Forever, sung by child actress, SHIRLEY TEMPLE. The version she performs is the sheet music version (think "radio single pop version" of those days), which isn't heard in the cartoon. I've included the track above, as well as the video below which explains the variation in volume on the recording.