'Twas Brillig - Camarata Chorus & Orchestra

Here's a rare treat: A cover of the short chorus that the Cheshire Cat sings to himself in Alice in Wonderland. This chorus was originally written by Lewis Carroll for his book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, with music by Oliver Wallace. It is part of the much longer poem, Jabberwocky, which is made up of many nonsense words. Humpty Dumpty offers Alice an explanation of many of these words:

Brillig — Four o'clock in the afternoon: the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.

Slithy — Combination of "slimy" and "lithe."

Tove - A combination of a badger, a lizard, and a corkscrew. They are very curious looking creatures which make their nests under sundials and eat only cheese.

Gyre — To go round and round like a gyroscope.

Gimble — To make holes as does a gimlet.

Wabe — The grass plot around a sundial. It is called a "wabe" because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it, and a long way beyond it on each side.

Mimsy — Combination of "miserable" and "flimsy"

Borogove — A thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round, "something like a live mop".

Mome — Possibly short for "from home," meaning that the raths had lost their way.

Rath — A sort of green pig.

In the preface of his book, Carroll notes that gyre and gimble are pronounced with a hard g, and that slithy is pronounced like two words: sly and thee. The Cheshire Cat gets everything right, but Tutti Camarata and his Chorus gets all of this wrong. It also sounds like they are singing borogroves instead of borogoves.

It's a fine cover and the added bridge, which is not part of the original poem, is a nice addition to what would be a very repetitive song. However, it does bug me that they didn't pronounce those words correctly.

This song can be found on the 1957 Disneyland LP record ALICE IN WONDERLAND: MUSIC FROM THE SCORE which features new arrangements of the music from the film by Tutti Camarata. The entire album is available exclusively through iTunes.

So This is Love - Heather Marie Marsden

SO THIS IS LOVE is the name of the love ballad in Cinderella, but it is also a three song EP by HEATHER MARIE MARSDEN that features contemporary jazz versions of three popular Disney songs.

Marsden has been in the acting business for the past fifteen years, having appeared in such television show as Charmed, Diagnosis Murder, Drake & Josh, and Boy Meets World. More recently, she has been branching out into the world of music. Her song, Into Your Heart was featured in an episode of Melrose Place last September, with this EP debuting just before that. Here is what Heather had to say about this new EP:

I am thrilled to announce that my first jazz project, So This is Love, has just been released. It's my re-imagining of some classic Disney songs as late night, adult fare. I co-produced the project with Chris Rhyne, (Santana, Ponty) who is a wonderful jazz pianist, and my partner-in-crime in the studio. I hope you enjoy as much as we did creating!

I know I enjoyed it, and I hope to see a full length album of Disney tunes sometime soon!

Little April Shower - Renee Sandstrom

Heigh-ho, Disney cover song fans! Kurtis has once again given me the honor of presenting one of my favorite Disney song covers on his wonderful blog. I'm Brian Ibbott, host and producer of the Coverville Podcast and Radio Show, which you'll find at Coverville.com.

My choice this time around was a lot tougher. I wanted to pick something that Kurtis hadn't featured before, but was still cool and entertaining. Some of my favorite Disney covers have been featured recently, so I had to dig a lot deeper to find some uncharted territory.

The song comes from DISNEY CUTIES, a mostly-forgettable album which tried to combine the music of Disney with techno rhythms (gee, how could THAT not work). For the same reasons that combination fails on the other songs on the album, it succeeds well on the cover of Little April Shower, whose drips and drops bounce fluidly with the synthesizer plops, and whose vocals - though mainstream - balance well with the instrumentation, not distracting, but complementing.

It's not the most brilliant cover, by any means, but it's cool, it's entertaining, and it works!

Under the Sea - The Chipmunks

A big bulk of WHEN YOU WISH UPON A CHIPMUNK is fluff. Super sweet pop versions of Disney tunes with annoying voices. But if you grew up through the 80s and 90s watching a lot of Alvin and the Chimpunks on TV like I did, you will probably enjoy this track.

At first this may sound like an exact rip off of the original version of Under the Sea with squeaky vocals, and to some extent that may be true. But the strong rock star-esque strength of the lead, the high-pitched vibrato and the powerful harmonies are indicative of THE CHIPMUNKS and I can't help but smile just a little bit when listening to it.

Etta James - It's a Small World/When You Wish Upon a Star Medley

ETTA JAMES began her singing career when she moved to Los Angeles by herself at the age of 14 to sing in a trio called THE PEACHES. Their most famous song was The Wallflower (Dance with Me Henry)

Etta James started out as an R&B singer in a doo-wop group, however over the course of her sixty year career she has become an award winning vocalist in a number of styles, including pop, jazz and blues.

In 1995, she recorded a pop/R&B medley of It's a Small World and When You Wish Upon a Star for Disney's MUSIC FROM THE PARK. The two songs go together very well, and Etta's low, sultry voice is a pleasure to listen to.

Happy birthday to Etta James who turns 72 today!

Lavender Blue - Stephen Michael Schwartz

This week (the 19th to be exact) marks the 51st anniversary of So Dear to My Heart. Walt loved the American frontier days, which at the time this movie was made was only 50 years ago. Many of his live action movies (Old Yeller) and TV programs (Davy Crockett) are set in this period. I think nostalgia has a lot to do with it, and So Dear to My Heart is be filled with reminiscing of those days.

Today's cover is Lavender Blue (Dilly, Dilly), an old folk tune from the 17th century that was popularized to a modern audience by Burl Ives when he performed it in this film.

Lavender Blue is covered by STEPHEN MICHAEL SCHWARTZ, singer/songwriter of Parachute Express, who last year released WHEN YOU WISH UPON A SONG, his take on a collection of Disney favourites.

Beauty and the Beast - Trinidad and Tobago Showboat Orchestra

It's another celebrity birthday today, this time for ROBBY BENSON who turns 54! If you are a Disney fan then you probably know Benson as the voice of the Beast in Beauty and the Beast.

Here are five things you probably didn't know about Robby Benson:

Benson was the director for the entire 25-episode second season of Ellen DeGeneres' sitcom Ellen.

Benson's other voice over work includes the lead role in The Legend of Prince Valiant and J.T. Marsh in Exosquad, as well as reprising the role of the Beast in all the Beauty and the Beast sequels House of Mouse and the Kingdom Hearts video games.

Benson auditioned for the role of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars but lost to Mark Hamill.

Benson was born with a heart defect that caused him to have surgery a few times throughout his life. This lead to the creation of the off-Broadway musical Open Heart of which he wrote all of the script and music.

Benson's two children are called Lyric and Zephyr.

Today's cover is from the album BEAUTY AND THE BEAT by the steelband group TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO SHOWBOAT ORCHESTRA. Don't let the opening of this song fool you. It starts off with Something There but then goes into Beauty and the Beast.

The Siamese Cat Song - Sondi Sodsai

Hello! It's Leopold Stotch from Versions Galore.

Big tip of the Mouseketeer cap to Kurtis here at Covering the Mouse for inviting me to guest blog today.

Sometime around the age of 12 I had exhausted the listenability of my entire music library; a collection of that consisted of 3 Thompson Twins cassettes, two Michael Jacksons, and an Eddy Grant. Raiding the parental's record library was out of the question as Joen Baez, The Kingston Trio and Neil Diamond all induced a malaise in me on par with brussel sprouts. Going down to local record store was not an option either. We lived in a what was called a non-commercially zoned suburb, meaning the nearest well of culture was nudie and gun filled magazine rack at the the Shell station 2 miles away.

My little sister however had amassed a small collection of LPs, all Disney, to raid. Unlike me she also had a record player. More succinctly she had an arsenal of A/V equipment; record and cassette players, 'video' cameras, transistor radios, all of it Fisher-Price (the Bang and Olufsen of the under 5 set). I still miss the smell of oversized hulking beige plasticness of it all, with all of their corners rounded for safety.

Grabbing her records and her portable(!) FP player, the listening process moved along quickly.

'Nope!' SCReeeeech! 'Nope!' SCReeeeech! 'Nope!' SCReeeeech! was the sound of the editing process as I would scrape the needle from track to track.

The quest for new music left me with a few Disney tracks that I still have a soft spot for today. There was Peter and the Wolf, Trust in Me (from The Jungle Book. Already covered here, natch.), Disco Duck (truly the weirdest Disney song off all time. Qualuudes anyone?), and my pick for today The Siamese Cat Song from Lady and the Tramp. Looking past its ambiguously stereotyped asian overtones, I've always loved this song for its trouble making mood which appealed directly to the dark prankish nature that lurked within.

Years later, during my college years, as my friends and I started growing bored with punk, we soon started plundering the thrift stores for exotica records. Long before the nascent neo-Lounge took foot when they were 25 cents a pop. Somewhere between the collected Dennys, Baxters and Sumacs I discovered little SONDI SODSAI. A one time Miss Thailand and actual bonafide Miss Congeniality, Sondi was also known as regular on the US TV series Adventures in Paradise where she would play the part of a Tahitian. Her sole 1956, Martin Denny produced release SONDI, found her cooing along to exotica classics such as Bali Hai and Japanese Farewell Song. More importantly however it also quartered, much to my glee, The Siamese Cat Song. And while her version stops short of Peggy Lee's wonderful references to drowning and dismembering goldfish ('there will be a head for you, a tail for me'), I'm sure you'll agree that Sondi's exotica rendition is just as enjoyable.

If I Never Knew You - Michael Crawford & Sherie René Scott

Today's cover is brought to you by MICHAEL CRAWFORD who turns 68 today. Happy birthday! If I Never Knew You is a duet Crawford sang with fellow Broadway star SHERIE RENÉ SCOTT for his 2001 album THE DISNEY ALBUM.

Both Crawford and Scott have other Disney connections: Possibly most famous for his role as the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, Michael Crawford has been in the Broadway and film business since the late 50s. Crawford played the role of Cornelius Hackl in the Gene Kelly's 1969 film Hello, Dolly!. You can see him sing and dance in the few clips that are used in WALL*E. (Crawford plays another character named Cornelius in the animated film Once Upon a Forest, which is often mistaken for a Disney movie.)

Sherie René Scott's career has stayed mostly in musical theatre. Some of her credits include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Rent, Grease, Tommy, and the lead role in Debbie Does Dallas: the Musical! In 2000, she was the star of Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida and she landed the role of Ursula in the 2007 The Little Mermaid Broadway musical.

Winnie the Pooh - Mike Curb Congregation

Born on this day in 1882 was famous writer Alan Alexander Milne, better known as A.A. Milne, author of the classic Winnie-the-Pooh children's books. (The hyphens in Winnie-the-Pooh were dropped by Disney, but I am keeping them in this post since we are going to talk about Milne's work.)

Do you know how Winnie-the-Pooh go his name? Way back in World War I, a Canadian Lieutenant named Harry Colebourn bought a little black (female) bear cub from a hunter in Ontario for $20. He named her "Winnie" after the bear's hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Colebourn was on his way to England to fight in the War and brought the bear along with him. While he was fighting in France, he left Winnie in the London Zoo and ultimately ended up donating her to the zoo.

The Milne family took many trips to the London Zoo and A.A. Milne's son, Christopher Robin Milne, loved the little black bear so much that he named his own stuffed bear after her.

The "Pooh" part of Winnie-the-Pooh comes from a swan named "Pooh" that the Milne family met while on a vacation. Pooh the Swan actually makes an appearance in one of the poems in Milne's When We Were Very Young, which coincidentally is also the first appearance of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Milne has a little different explanation of where Pooh got his name, as written at the beginning of Winnie-the-Pooh:

But his arms were so stiff... they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off. And I think — but I am not sure — that that is why he is always called Pooh.

Today's cover is Pooh's famous theme song, written by the Sherman Brothers, arranged by MIKE CURB and performed by the MIKE CURB CONGREGATION for their 1995 album, WALT DISNEY'S GREATEST HITS. The song refers to a few new characters, a Horsey named Hee-Haw, a birdy and Chippy the Chipmunk, which as far as I know, have nothing to do with the books or the movies.

When You Wish Upon a Star - Freddie and the Dreamers

FREDDIE AND THE DREAMERS were one of the many British bands that rode on the popularity wave created by the Beatles. The Manchester quintet had a few hit records and a number of hit singles in the UK in 1963 and 1964, and when their popularity started to fade, they took their act overseas where the British Invasion was just hitting North America.

It has been said that Freddie and the Dreamers are indirectly responsible for all of the songs written by the Beatles. Let me explain:

The band made a hit single out of an arrangement of James Ray's If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody. Back in that day, bands didn't write their own material. Record labels had song writers that supplied all their artists with music. Everyone covered everyone else and it was up to the artist to make the song their own.

But apparently the arrangement of If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody that the Dreamers were performing was arranged by the Beatles who played that particular arrangement at a show in Manchester. The Dreamers released the song as a single, which made the UK Top 5 and didn't give any credit to the Beatles. It was from that moment on that the Beatles decided to write their own music.

How would you like that to be your legacy?

In 1966, the Dreamers released a whole album of Disney covers called, IN DISNEYLAND. It contains some really swell 60s Brit pop versions of both rare and common Disney songs.

Can You Feel the Love Tonight - Neil Diamond

In the Bill Murray movie What About Bob? Bob explains that there are only two types of people in the world. "Those who like NEIL DIAMOND and those who don't."

I don't know which category you fall into, but there is no denying the popularity and success of this singer songwriter.

I'm making this post the unofficial sequel to yesterday's post by Jamie who mentioned that the Simba/Nala sequence during Can You Feel the Love Tonight is almost a mirror of the same events that happened in a much earlier Disney movie, Robin Hood.

Neil Diamond's version of the Elton John love ballad can be found on AS TIME GOES BY: THE MOVIE ALBUM, a two-disc set that Diamond released in 1998.

The album is full of movie song covers, however he turns the "Adult Contemporary" knob up to 11 and churns out the sappiest versions of already sappy movie love ballads such as Unchained Melody, As Time Goes By and My Heart Will Go On.

The highlight of this album is the fact that film score composer Elmer Bernstein, whose credits range from The Ten Commandments to Airplane, arranged all the music and conducted the 80 piece orchestra.

Overall, each track may sound pretty, and fans of Neil Diamond's voice will no doubt enjoy listening to his voice, but whole album really sounds like one big long song. Not too much variety. Take a listen to Can You Feel the Love Tonight and see for yourself.

Love - Sunaga t Experience featuring Till Brönner

Hey everyone! It's Jamie from over at Fong Songs. It's a brand new year and it's great to have Covering the Mouse back in full force. Kurtis was nice enough to welcome me back to help out with his blog revival and I was more than willing to help out. As you may or may not know, I'm an aficionado of Disney and Disney covers alike, so this will be the first in a series of monthly guest posts from yours truly, my first post here since April 2008! First up, the love theme from 1973's Robin Hood, appropriately titled Love.

Robin Hood has always been one of my favourite Disney films. I can't even count the number of times I've seen it on video as a kid. Part of its enduring quality is its memorable soundtrack, which was chiefly written and performed by Roger "King of the Road" Miller who portrayed the narrating minstrel rooster, Alan-a-Dale. George Bruns and Floyd Huddleston co-wrote Love, which was sung by Huddleston's wife Nancy Adams. An alternate version of the song was posted on youtube by their son Huston Huddleston. I didn't realize until rewatching these scenes recently, but the Love montage with Robin and Marian was later mirrored with Simba and Nala during Can You Feel the Love Tonight? in The Lion King. The forest setting, their reflections on the water, even walking under a waterfall, and of course those long meaningful looks into each other's eyes. Ah, it's Disney love!

Love was actually nominated for Best Original Song at the 46th Academy Awards up against, among others, Live and Let Die and The Way We Were (the winner). You know how they perform each song nominee during the Oscar broadcast? Well, Love was actually performed as a duet by an 11-year old Jodie Foster and Johnny Whitaker, the young co-stars of Disney's Napoleon and Samantha. They were also fresh off the release of 1973's Tom Sawyer, with Whitaker in the title role and Foster as Becky. More random trivia: Whitaker's siblings Billy and Dora respectively played the bunnies Skippy and Tagalong in Robin Hood!

One of the reasons I wanted to feature this song was that it was also recently revived in Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was my favourite film of 2009 (more on that here). Ah, animated foxes in love! Even before Love makes a cameo, Anderson opens the film with The Wellingtons performing The Ballad of Davy Crockett, which was incidentally co-written by George Bruns too!

There aren't a lot of Robin Hood covers out there, so I was thrilled to find this jazz cover of Love, taken from the Japanese Disney cover album MODAL JAZZ LOVES DISNEY as performed by the SUNAGA T EXPERIENCE featuring German trumpeter TILL BRÖNNER.

You've Got a Friend In Me - Sally Harmon

Happy 53rd birthday, John Lasseter!

One of the most important people in recent Disney history, Lasseter is the founder of Pixar studios and the director of Toy Story. He was also named chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios when Disney bought Pixar in 2006.

Today's cover is You've Got a Friend In Me and is a beautiful rendition played on the piano by SALLY HARMON. Harmon began playing the piano by ear at the age of three, and mastered her instrument through several years of lessons, practicing, and hard work. But she makes it sound so easy with her creative and well thought out arrangements of famous classical and pop tunes. She now tours all over the US, sharing her special talent with everyone!

You've Got a Friends in Me can be found on HEART OF THE MOVIES a collection of songs that are featured in cinema. She has recorded a few other Disney songs, so you may hear her again at Covering the Mouse!

Cruella De Vil - Vocal Spectrum

Actor ROD TAYLOR turns 90 today! Happy birthday, Rod!

Taylor's most famous films include H.G. Wells' Time Machine and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, but he was also the voice Pongo in 101 Dalmatians! Taylor is still active to this day, most recently playing Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

To celebrate his birthday, I have posted a track by the Missouri a capella group VOCAL SPECTURM. This cover of Cruella De Vil can be found on their self-titled 2006 release, VOCAL SPECTRUM and contains some pretty impressive harmonies. But this shouldn't be a surprise since they were the International Champions at the Barbershop Harmony Society's International Collegiate Quartet Contest in 2009, a win that can be seen in the 2009 documentary American Harmony.

This song is basically a big spotlight on tenor Tim Waurick whose incredibly powerful set of lungs allow him to hold his final note for 33 seconds! Wow!

The Bare Necessities - Astrud Gilberto

ASTRUD GILBERTO may not be a name that is familiar to you, but surely you recognize her voice as the singer on Stan Getz's Girl from Ipanema. That song can be found on influential jazz bossa nova album GETZ/GILBERTO from 1964. The Giberto featured in the album's title is João Gilberto, a Brazilian singer/guitarist who is credited as creating the bossa nova beat! Astrud was married to João at the time and was invited to sing on the Ipanema track, the popularity of which instantly launched her career as a professional singer.

Astrud signed a contract with Verve who produced her records throughout the 60s. The Bare Necessities can be found on her 1968 album, WINDY. The kid she is singing with is her son, Marcelo Gilberto, who, twenty years after this recording, eventually became her bass player through the 80s and 90s.

This a fun cover, and I give her extra points for singing the "prickly pear" verse which many artists leave out. But the inclusion of Marcelo playing the Mowgli part helps make the verse actually mean something. I love the banter between the two. It's quite charming.

This cover was requested by Jonathan M Kemp, and it is my pleasure to be able to fulfill it! Enjoy!

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf - Max Raabe & Palast Orchester

Andy, one of my faithful readers, has been educating me in the world of German Disney cover songs. When it comes to foreign language Disney covers I only really have a lot of Japanese and Portuguese covers due to the number of Japanese cover albums and bossa nova discs out there.

However, there is a whole world of covers out there and I am just beginning to scrape the surface! Andy was good enough to send me this cover of Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf by a German orchestra called MAX RAABE & PALAST ORCHESTER. Here is what Andy knows about the group:

The Palast Orchestra with its singer Max Raabe usually plays German hits of the 1920's/1930's in (probably) its original style, but in the last years it tended to include also foreign-language hits from that era to its repertoire.

Actually about ten years ago, they also hooked up on (then) prominent pop-songs [Britney Spears' Oops...I Did It Again, for instance]. Their popularity started to rise immensely some years ago, so they now performed all over the world including Italy, Japan an L.A. and New York, where their last tour started.

Apparently, they also played at Marilyn Manson's wedding in 2005!

The recording you will hear is taken from a live recording from their most recent Berlin tour, however the same song can be found on their latest North American release, HEUTE NACHT ODER NIE, a live recording from Carnegie Hall in New York.

Zippity Do Da - Marvin Mouse

Hey all! This is Ben Century from the Classical Gas Emissions blog. Kurtis was kind enough (I paid him) to let me write on his blog. Blogosphere dominance is just a few dollars away!

What we're going to hear is a song sung by a mouse. I'm sure you know who he is. He's got round ears that stick up, a cute little black nose, and always has a smile. You know who he is... You love him, I love him, he's everybody's favorite mouse in the whole wide world, It's....

MARVIN MOUSE!!!???

Marvin was one of the main characters on a local children's TV show in Canada (Winnipeg, Manitoba to be exact). Him and other characters were created by mastermind Bob Swarts who voiced all the puppets on his show. The song we're going to hear is taken from the album "Funtown with Petite and Mayor Bob".

  

This album mostly consists of material made by other, more famous artists. The credits for the songs on the album were given to either Petite the dog or Marvin Mouse. The artists who actually did the songs on the album (Anne Murray, Ringo Starr, Phil Harris, etc) received no credit whatsoever.

All the songs done by female artists were likely 33 RPM records, but played at 45 RPM! All of the Anne Murray songs make her sound as if she just finished sucking on a bunch of helium balloons, and the Chipmunks are doing the backup vocals.

Anyway, I've yammered on enough. This song is Bob Swarts voicing Marvin Mouse, singing Zippity Do Da (sic) over someone else's recording. Enjoy!

Also, if you'd actually like to see an actual episode of the low-budget children's show that Bob and Marvin appeared on, there's one on Youtube HERE.

Heigh-Ho - Los Lobos

In 1988, LOS LOBOS covered I Wan'na Be Like You for STAY AWAKE, the 1988 Disney tribute album.

Now, more than twenty years later, Los Lobos has recorded an entire album of Disney cover songs! LOS LOBOS GOES DISNEY was released this past September as an Amazon exclusive before hitting the rest of the world. I'm happy to say that the entire album is full of great music and amazing covers by an amazing band.

Today's cover song is the lead track off the disc, Heigh-Ho from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Mexican-America band from East LA gives this tune a dramatic energy that only they could do. Their American Chicano rock style is perfectly represented in this cover and using the horn section instead of whistling is brilliant! Los Lobos is coming up on their forty year anniversary in 2013 and it doesn't look like they're slowing down!

EXTRA: Here is a music video that Disney has released to go along with the album!

Little April Shower

To start off the week, I'm sharing with you a track from the 1998 album HEIGH-HO BANJO, BLUEGRASS SALUTES FAVORITE DISNEY SONGS. This album is full of well put together instrumental arrangements of the most popular Disney songs, plus a few that are not often covered, such as this one: Bambi's Little April Shower.

There are many studio musicians that have come together to create this album, including Mike Toppins, Glen Duncan, Billy Troy, Jim Brown, James Freeze, David Chase. Every time I post one of these songs, I will highlight one of the musicians.

Information on studio musicians is often hard to find. This is what I have found out about MIKE TOPPINS: He is an expert banjo and steel guitar player that has been recording with bluegrass and country artists since as early as the mid 70s. He is also quite familiar with the dobro, and various styles of guitar playing. He is also a mixer and engineer, a few skills that are often picked up if being in the studio is your full time job.

Toppins has been a force behind many bluegrass tribute albums and other banjo and bluegrass collections, strutting his excellent picking ability. Most recently he has been working with popular country songwriter BILL ANDERSON. I hope you enjoy his excellent picking in this song, especially when they kick it into high gear two-thirds into the song!