In 1983, the Disney Channel took to the air, its slogan appropriately being, "Everything you ever imagined - and more." One year later, viewers of this wonderful new network saw "more", in the form of a series of music videos that appeared as filler material between shows. These videos interspersed classic Disney animation, shorts and full-length features alike, with classic songs from the 1950s, '60s and '70s. They open with one of the most rocking intros ever heard on a Disney program:
That track that opens this program is "RPM", which was created by Killer Tracks in 1981. This was Disney's answer to the then-new MTV network, which was also launched in 1981 to great success.
Walt Disney Home Video decided to get in on the fun, and by Christmas of 1984, VHS and laserdisc compilations of these videos were released, as part of a huge promotion, like so:
You can look at a video on the history of these videos on this link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWxPv1uaWTM.
There were several volumes produced at that time. The link above tells about one of them, "Pop and Rock", but for my purposes, I will be devoting this to one of my favorite volumes in the series...
As the title suggests, this program includes the usual mix of rock tunes of the 1950s and '60s, such as those by the Beach Boys, Annette Funicello, and the myriad artists from Motown like Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and it also throws in some hit parade songs from the 1940s and '50s, such as from Lena Horne, Burl Ives, and Tennessee Ernie Ford. For good measure, there are even some comic novelty songs such as by Spike Jones and His City Slickers and by a group called the Cadets. For reference, here is the contents of the video below:
I find it just so great that they are able to mesh Disney animation from the 1920s through the '60s with these golden oldies, and you'll notice from the image above that this is one of the only tapes on DTV to feature songs from Disney-based record labels. In this case, you will hear one song from the company's Disneyland Records label, "Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)", performed by Burl Ives for the Disney movie So Dear To My Heart (although it sounds different than the original movie), and you'll also hear two songs from the studios' Buena Vista Records label, "Pineapple Princess" and "Tall Paul", both performed by Annette Funicello. Incidentally, both songs were written by nobody less than Richard and Robert Sherman, before they really left their musical mark on Disney.
Beyond Disneyland and Buena Vista, many of these songs come from such record labels as Motown, RCA, Capitol Records and, in the case of one, Collectables.
As I mentioned before, I love the way these cartoons mesh with the songs' themes. For example, in "Money (That's What I Want)", performed not by the Beatles, but by Barrett Strong, you are treated to footage of characters and their money, such as Goofy trying to gamble and win in Get Rich Quick and, appropriately enough, Scrooge McDuck and Money...
In Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons"...
As seen in Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "Mickey's Monkey"...
And then there's The Cadets' "Stranded in the Jungle", the one song on this tape that originated from Collectables Records:
Other meshings of song and footage include, but are not limited to, the Supremes' "Baby Love", set to footage of children and parents in Dumbo and shorts like the Silly Symphony cartoon The Ugly Duckling and the Goofy short Fathers Are People; Annette Funicello's "Tall Paul", set to footage of Disney's own tall Paul - Paul Bunyan, that is, from the 1958 featurette of the same name; Lena Horne's rendition of "Stormy Weather" (as heard in the 1940s movie of the same name), set to footage of storms in the Silly Symphony cartoon The Old Mill and the "Beethoven Pastorale" scene of Fantasia (that moment where Zeus, assisted by Vulcan, decides to crash Bacchus' wine party); the Beach Boys' "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)", set to footage of Donald Duck in various jobs; and a rendition of "The Blue Danube" by Spike Jones and His City Slickers, set to footage of Symphony Hour and a hodgepodge of shorts as wildly varied as the crazy sounds heard that made Jones so famous.
I like a lot of the songs on this list, but one I've never really liked for some reason is "That Old Black Magic", arguably the most famous rendition by Louis Prima (who would later perform as King Louie in The Jungle Book) and Keely Smith. From the moment I first heard in my youth, I couldn't stand it. I always had to cover my ears when I heard it on a tape or, for a brief time, on radio. I was able to skip the song on the tape, though; I simply fast-forwarded past it. Thankfully, this was in the minority, as the majority were ones I did like.
Beyond the songs, there are some equally catchy interludes between songs, some of which, like the opening music, originated from Killer Tracks. There is one of Mickey and friends at a drive-in, whose music is known as "Sunset Boulevard" (the tape version showed a Mickey cartoon starting at the start, not the closing of How To Dance, as this video shows):
Another Killer Tracks interlude is entitled "Hard Drivin'", and features neon-lit TV antennae and a wall of TVs, whose images displayed flash a barrage of images to the hard rock, only for it to become so frenetic that the TVs get blown away!
Other interstitial footage include one of the storm in The Old Mill (whose music is appropriately dramatic); one of a parade of stop motion-animated Disney toys, which originated from a TV special for Mickey Mouse's 50th birthday in 1978; and one of the hapless bee in the "Bumble Boogie" scene of Melody Time, set to a shortened rendition of the title song.
DTV was so successful that it became a piece of worthwhile '80s Disney culture. Given the timing of the release (when Disney was under threat from corporate raiders), it must have been pretty daring, and it must have been pretty worthwhile if this relic of the Ron Miller regime was allowed to carry on under the Michael Eisner regime. Since then, the program has spawned numerous more videos in the following years, some of the Disney Channel and some on Disney-made network TV specials (which can be found (in whole or in part) on YouTube, apparently). It was in these specials, incidentally, that Tony Anselmo and Bill Farmer first performed as Donald and Goofy, respectively. There is already a small article on this blog here devoted to Bill as Goofy in particular: http://pixiedustpastiche.blogspot.com/2017/01/happy-30th-to-bill-farmer-as-goofy.html. In 2009, it also influenced a new, if relatively short-lived, Disney series known as Re-Micks, which similarly merged animation with popular music.
These videos, including "Golden Oldies", can be found on eBay, usually for anywhere from $10 to $20. If you have a VCR (or a laserdisc player), and you're a Disney fan like me, you should definitely get a copy of this and have a great time. As the cover of these videos rightly state, "This is music you have to see."
