In creating the score for Epcot’s “Impressions de France” film, he wrote a great deal of score which was placed between some of the most important and brilliant French classical music of all time-often connecting two disparate compositions to maintain the flow of the story. Its unconventional sound is like an old friend to those of us who grew up on Disney’s version of Winnie the Pooh, even as it haunts the dreams of the bear himself.īuddy wrote and arranged some of the most stunningly beautiful music ever heard, as well. For example, “Heffalumps and Woozles” is a bouncy, clever song that is only fully realized because of Buddy’s whimsical arrangement of snarly woods, wheezy reeds, strange percussion, bass harmonica, two kazoos, and stylized vocal performances. It was Buddy who devised the signature sounds, the sonic hooks, the ear-candy, and the sense of humor and timing which imprinted so many classic tunes into our collective cultural memory. From a simple lead sheet or demo, Buddy transformed their core ideas into the works of art we all remember. While a gifted composer himself, Buddy was often called upon to create arrangements from the works of other songwriters and musicians. To maintain a simple, direct, timeless human communication via music in the midst of a grand display of technologically sophisticated entertainment art-this was but one of the myriad lessons Buddy taught me and countless others in his prodigious life and career, either directly, or via visionary musical examples. Careful mixing in of some hollow organ pipe voices as following tones, resulted in the right baleful quality. Thirty years later, Buddy told me he had recorded sound effects wizard Jimmy Macdonald shaping the sound of gentle rushing air from a small hose with his mouth, making the performance subtle, with human nuance. “But wait!” my young imagination cried “The wind is playing the melody! How could such a thing be possible?”Īnd so another career began, right there in that faux musty corridor at Disneyland. The cue that stood out, however, causing a wide-eyed six-year-old to literally stop himself and 40 other guests in mid-stride through the mansion’s corridors to listen, was the simplest and yet most uncommon of all: emerging from the audible storm of thunder and lightning, the illusion of which raged outside the windows, came Buddy’s “Grim Grinning Ghosts” melody, brought forth as if on the breath of the blustery wind itself. His musical score for Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion was a simple little theme, designed to repeat in various forms and arrangements throughout the attraction, and did so effectively. Possibly one of the most sublime, pure and transcendent goals on their subsequent journey is to eventually compose such a piece that illuminates the path of another.īuddy Baker did this for me. Every composer recalls a music cue, often heard at a young, impressionable age, that changes the course of his or her life and career.
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