Howdy folks. “Bear” with me as I tell you about what happened at Disneyland on this day in 1972. It was the opening of the one and only original Country Bear Jamboree. Host Henry the Bear invited audiences to “clap your hands and stomp your feet” as the show kicked off with the “Bear Band Serenade,”a song with music by George Bruns, and lyrics by animator-turned-writer X Atencio, who also wrote lyrics for park tunes such as “Yo Ho (A Pirates Life For Me)” and “Grim Grinning Ghosts.” Recently, X told D23, “I had no musical background at all. I never played an instrument or sang in a church choir or anything. It was just a case of coming up with the lyrics and having somebody like Buddy Baker or George Bruns do the music for it.” In the mid 1960s, artist and Disney Legend Marc Davis had been working on drawings of all the bears in the show. Walt Disney had gone in Marc’s office and seen the drawings and laughed and laughed. That was the last time Marc ever saw Walt. Just two weeks later Walt passed away.
