Sentimental Paleontology: Our Musical Heritage of the Past

So Halloween is over now. You know what that means. Cue the army of mall Santas.

I'm not quite ready to go full eggnog myself. I want to try to ease into the Christmas-themed posts here, so I'll start tangential: What was the first attraction at Disneyland to be made over into an alternate version for the Christmas season? I guess in part it depends on what you mean by “alternate version of the attraction.” Specially designed Christmas parades at Disneyland go all the way back to 1957...but I wouldn't consider “the parade” to be an attraction per se. There have been many different parades in Disneyland's history, of which the Christmas ones are just a few. Our current iteration, A Christmas Fantasy, is not Soundsational! or any other “regular” parade with tinsel added to the floats; it has its own completely separate floats. So it's not an alternate version of the attraction so much as an alternate attraction.

But neither did seasonal attraction overlays begin during the much-maligned Pressler era. “it's a small world” was actually the second participant in a Disneyland tradition that goes back over thirty years—more than half the park's existence. So what was the first?

Just a little show in the back corner of the park called...the Country Bear Jamboree.

I remember the debut of the Country Bear Christmas Special. It was 1984; I was seven. As with the Fantasyland makeover a year prior, I remember being excited for the change to something that was already very familiar to me...but by now those memories of the original have faded into obscurity. Before Disney started releasing its attraction soundtracks on CD, I could not have told you which songs the bears sang in the first version of the Jamboree. And I still don't remember them from back then, per se.* I just know them because I have the soundtrack.

No—the “regular,” non-seasonally-specific Country Bear show I grew to know and love was the Country Bear Vacation Hoedown, which permanently replaced the original in 1986. I have to apologize to the nostalgic purists…looking at the situation objectively, Vacation Hoedown was a better show…for Disneyland.

I’m going to do something here that I don’t do very often: talk about Walt Disney World. I don’t do it very often because the Orlando resort doesn’t need the help. It’s bigger, it gets more visitors in a year, Disney's Marketing Department treats it like the resort worth seeing, and there are already numerous blogs focusing on it and comparatively few focusing on Disneyland to the same extent. But it’s impossible to talk about the Country Bear Jamboree in any depth without talking about Walt Disney World, because it actually originated there** and was—at first—designed for the sorts of guests you would expect in Florida but not so much in California.

The original Country Bear Jamboree was just as advertised: 100% country. The bears, many of them voiced by members of actual bluegrass family The Stonemans, all spoke and sang in lackadaisical Southern or Appalachian drawls. Their costumes consisted of approximately equal proportions of music-hall finery and sagging overalls, and their performances likewise veered wildly between semi-professional competence and flummoxed stumbling, like an extended family where not all the members are quite on board with the most charismatic cousin's pet project. Some had introductions or stage titles emphasizing the characters' Southern and/or rustic roots. Most importantly, the songs were all pure country—some more folk, others more blues, but definitely entirely contained within the country-western tent without admixture by other genres.

Audiences in Florida loved it, enough to prompt an exact copy for Disneyland. It was a hit here too...for a while. We must assume its popularity was flagging by the early to mid-Eighties, because why else would they re-write the entire show from the ground up? And I think we can safely assume the crowds had thinned out more in Anaheim than in Orlando, not just because the rebooted show was installed here first and then duplicated in Florida, but because it seemed calculated specifically to bring the Country Bears more in line with California sensibilities.

(I should note that these changes had started to take place as of the Christmas Special, but they weren't fully established until the Vacation Hoedown.)

Most of the bears were re-cast, many of them acquiring West Coast accents in the process. The show content remained largely country-western, but a heaping tablespoon of pop and classic rock was mixed in. Instead of quaint costumes reminiscent of saloon performers or poor hillfolk, the bears dressed more like suburban middle-class Americans at leisure. Liver Lips McGrowl became an Elvis impersonator, the Sun Bonnets donned swimwear and sang a Beach Boys cover, and Teddi Barra traded her Mae West getup and Jean Shepard lament for a stylish rain slicker and the upbeat Hollywood chart-topper “Singin' in the Rain.” The script included less rambling conversation and more self-aware jokes about the performers being bears. The rotating stages had actual backdrops and thematic props rather than the minimalist curtains from the original, and the performances themselves were more polished, with errors mostly attributed to a new, unseen stagehand character named Rufus.

Make no mistake, it was still country...but country for the Disneyland crowd as opposed to the Walt Disney World one, which—due to geographic proximity—includes a far greater proportion of people from the actual South and other regions where country music is a big part of cultural identity. If you want proof, well...look no further than the fact that the Country Bear Vacation Hoedown didn't take in Florida. The guests demanded the old show back, and a only a handful of years later, they got it. Whereas in California, the Vacation Hoedown played for fifteen more years until it too ran out of steam and the attraction was removed to make room for a Winnie The Pooh dark ride.

I am...not going to talk about the Winnie The Pooh dark ride.

But I will talk about one more big difference between the Country Bear Jamboree in Walt Disney World and the Country Bear Jamboree in Disneyland, and the ramifications that had for Disneyland.

At the Magic Kingdom, the Jamboree is in the heart of Frontierland. It was part of the park's plans from the beginning and there was no angst about where it would fit. Disneyland had to build it as an add-on to an already constrained park, and so it was put instead at the far edge of Frontierland, on the site of the former Indian Village...and the area was spun off into a new land called Bear Country, revolving entirely around the Jamboree characters. (Country Bears...Bear Country...I see what they did there.) From the Hungry Bear Restaurant to Ursus H. Bear's Wilderness Outpost, all the new shops, eateries, and secondary attractions in the area were themed to the Country Bears. To underscore the point, the entrance to Bear Country took the form of a steep-sided canyon—about as clear an analogue to the tunnels under Main Street Railroad Station as there could be:

This was a first for Disney: the first time an entire land was based on a single IP. Normally I am not a fan of single-IP lands; I find the laser focus too inherently limiting. But I think Bear Country got away with it because the IP in question originated in the Disney parks to begin with rather than being tied to a movie or other outside material. This gave the Imagineers more latitude in determining how to expand on what was already there.

To see what I mean, consider a book: a standalone novel, not part of a trilogy, series, or other multiple. Now consider a movie based on the book. It may or may not be a good adaptation; you have to judge it on its own merits. Now consider sequels to the movie. Is there not something inherently shoddy about making sequels to a movie based on a book that, itself, has no sequels (whereas sequels to a movie based on an original concept do not suffer the same stigma)? This is part of why Disney's own direct-to-video animated sequels are viewed so poorly—not just because they are cheaply made, but because they are cheaply conceived. Basing an entire theme park land on a single franchise potentially runs into a similar problem. There's only so much material that can be directly adapted. When that's used up, the adaptors have to start inventing, and the results are incredibly hit-or-miss.

Another reason Bear Country worked was that it was right in tune with the mission statement of Disneyland, which is creating worlds for guests to explore. For as little as we got to see of them, the Country Bears were sure interesting. You could imagine all sorts of drama behind the scenes, maybe on the other side of those endlessly quirky dressing-room doors in the waiting area. This was of course thanks to Marc Davis, who designed all the bears with his usual flair for making a single character sketch as good as a multi-page personality profile including Myers-Briggs category and zodiac sign.*** Actually seeing such a character move and sing for a minute and a half, then, is the equivalent of reading their biography. The Country Bears were obviously alive, and living performers have lives off the stage too. They might own an amusement arcade for extra income or co-sponsor a restaurant or proudly operate a general store named after their founder...or show up in the fur, outside their attraction, for photos and autographs.

This was a level of detail and development given to characters originating in the parks that had never been seen before and has not been seen since. Nope, not even for the Haunted Mansion. Is it any wonder that when Disney decided to start making movies based on their theme park attractions, the very first concept they tapped was the Country Bears? I mean...the movie wasn't any good, but it's no surprise that they made it when the cast came pre-established.

In an ironic twist, of course, Country Bears was released after the bears had been evicted from their Disneyland venue in order to make way for a much more merchandisable bear. But their influence had been dwindling for a long time beforehand. A mere three years after the premiere of the Vacation Hoedown, the bears were obliged to share their corner of the park with a whole host of other critters...and the area was consequently re-named Critter Country. The construction of Splash Mountain required the removal of the canyon entrance and prompted the re-naming of some of the area fixtures—the Wilderness Outpost became Crocodile Mercantile, the Mile-Long Bar became the Brer Bar. (Wah waaaaah...) Since 2001, the Hungry Bear has been the only remnant of the Country Bears' former ownership of an entire tract of Disneyland real estate.

And that's...extremely sad. This is my third Sentimental Paleontology post, but it's the first one where I really feel the closure of the attraction in question was unjustified. I adored Adventure Thru InnerSpace, but it was pretty badly dated by the time it closed. America Sings was an oddball little piece of Seventies kitsch that never quite belonged in the first place. But the Country Bears still had some life in them in 2001. When the costumed versions started making appearances in the Festival Arena behind Big Thunder Ranch a few years ago, they were enthusiastically received. More people probably ride The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh to catch a glimpse of Max, Buff, and Melvin than for its own sake.

They watch you from behind...

As we all know, the Ranch, Festival Arena and all, is mere months away from demolition. It's too soon to lose the Country Bears again after the giddy surprise of seeing them again. So listen up, Disney—find something else for these guys to do. Bring them out at the Golden Horseshoe, let them rent out Pooh Corner once in a while, move them across the Esplanade and install them in Grizzly Peak Recreation Area, whatever. They might not have a permanent attraction on the West Coast anymore, but neither does Cinderella, and that doesn't stop her from putting in a full shift at the meet-and-greet every day. Take care of your unique characters, and they will take care of you.

After all...they've still got a lot to give.

(The above was actually taken at Walt Disney World, not Disneyland. As you'll see below, Disneyland's theatre had the animal heads on the opposite wall.)

And since we are heading into the Christmas season...what the heck. (Walt Disney World again...the only Disneyland one I could find had too many cuts in the footage for my tastes.)

Links:

Yesterland's entries on Bear Country, the Country Bear Jamboree, and the Country Bear Vacation Hoedown

Wikipedia page on the Country Bear Jamboree

* There is one thing I remember quite clearly from that show, however. During the Sun Bonnets' song, “All the Guys Who Turn Me On Have Turned Me Down,” a slide show played in the background illustrating their romantic woes. It included the old cliché of a girl flirtatiously dropping her handkerchief in front of the guy she fancies, only to have him step on it.

** Well...technically it originated in the plans for the Mineral King ski resort. It just ran into the little snag of said resort never actually being built.

*** Teddi is definitely a Libra. (In the big Venn diagram of the world, the intersection of “Disney theme park buffs” and “knowledgeable about astrology” must be miniscule, but for all six or so of you out there...this one's for you.)