Welcome back to part 4. In this post we're taking a look at the audio for this amazing attraction. It's impossible to explain the creation of Pirates of the Caribbean without bringing up Xavier Ateno otherwise known as "X" Ateno. He was an imagineer, but got his start as an "in-betweener animator" for Monstro and Pinocchio. Later he moved up to assist on Fantasia. Fast forward a number of years, he did some stop motion work on the toy soldiers for Babes in Toyland which resulted in him working on the toy solders in the parade at Disneyland as well. Before long he was moved over to full-time imagineer in 1965. X hadn't done much as an imagineer other than working on the dinosaurs for the Primeval World diorama on the Disneyland railroad. When Walt personally tasked him with scripting Pirates of the Caribbean, X had never scripted anything in his life! To put the script of such a gargantuan project into the hands of a completely untested artist who was not even a writer, was an incredible gamble. X worked on the storyboards with Marc Davis and in the midst of all of this craziness, X knew Pirates would need a song. An idea struck him for a melody as well as lyrics. Never having written anything before he scribbled down lyrics and brought it up to Walt. If Walt happened to like it, X decided that he would hand it off to musicians like the Sherman Brothers to complete. Instead Walt Disney told him it was great and instructed him to get with George Bruns to do the music. George Bruns is best known for writing The Ballad of Davey Crockett. Yo Ho, Yo Ho was specifically worded to undercut the idea of hardened murderous criminals into charismatic whimsical rascals, obviously inspired through Marc Davis's concept work. X admitted that all he did was use the kind of dialogue Marc Davis' pirates may have spoken and put it to music. People still whistle to themselves over half a century later. Marty Sklar worked out the timing for pirates and dialogue throughout the attraction. The song was performed by the Mellow Men, a quartet founded by Thurl Ravenscroft. Thurl coincidentally voiced the accordion playing pirate, the pirate once balanced a top the dynamite barrel and was in fact the voice for the singing howling dog. If you don't recognize his name, he was an amazing voice actor with a laundry list of credits including Tony the Tiger. The Mellow Men worked on a number of Disney movies and shorts such as The Three Little Pigs, the elephants in The Jungle Book, and the singing busts inside the Haunted Mansion. They also performed with Bing Crosby, Doris Day and Elvis to name few. Paul freeze, the ghost host voice in The Haunted Mansion, was the voice of the
auctioneer as well as a few other Pirates. Comments are closed.
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