Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Halloween: Boogie Men

"Lullaby Land" (Disney Silly Symphony, 1933) is not an easy cartoon to get through. I will give it credit for being one of the more overtly Freudian cartoons of the early 30's but as I said: kinda dull. However, it does have 57 seconds of pure joy which occurs unexpectedly about three quarters in. This is "The Dance of the Bogey Men" and I believe it was animated  by Dick Huemer coming fresh from the Columbia Scrappy series. There was a great 78 RPM picture label disc issued of the song which I would love to hear some day!








As an added bonus today I am posting also the song "The Boogie Man" as recorded by Todd Rollins and his Orchestra. As the liner notes state: "Boo! Simply, one of the most disturbing lyrics in the entire western pop canon." I agree whole heartedly.



2 comments:

Theorbys said...

Whew, the first half of this sounds like the serial killer's playbook, the second half seems to have come directly from the 1935 Scrappy cartoon "Scrappy's Ghost Story". I don't know if there was ever an entire song called "I'm a Ghost" but it sounds identical to the song in that cartoon. And a great song it is, very much contributing to the genius of that cartoon.

J.V. (AKA "White Pongo") said...

A deep dive into a post almost a decade old! Wonder if this blog will be around 10 years from now? "The Boogie Man" hails from a CD I bought in the 90's called 'Halloween Stomp' on the short-lived Jass label. Milton Knight, who's work I wasn't yet familiar with, did the cover art. Pretty sure the version of 'I'm a Ghost' (which was an unlabeled 'hidden track') is taken directly from the film. The other 'hidden tracks' consisted mainly of audio clips from 'Jasper in a Jam'. Weirdly I knew the song only as a mystery track, with unknown provenance, for over 10 years until the internet and Jerry Beck's Garage Sale discs solved the mystery for me!