The Hottest Hit On The Planet:
“The Ballad Of Davy Crockett”
Davy Crockett only lasted for three episodes. Three hour-long episodes as part of Disneyland, Walt Disney’s weekly show, that he had agreed to produce for ABC, in return for ABC helping out with the finance needed to build Disneyland, the theme park.
Disneyland, the show, was a virtual theme park in itself. Depending upon the week you tuned in, you might go to Fantasy Land, or Tomorrow Land, or Adventure Land, or, if you were extremely lucky, Frontier Land.
Lucky, because Frontier Land was the land where the adventures of Davy Crockett were shown.
As far as cultural-impact per minute of screen-time Davy Crockett might be the most important television series in history. Although when I say “cultural-impact”, what I really mean is merchandise sales.
Davy Crockett was a major reason why Disneyland was the sixth most popular TV show of 1954/1955 with about 12 million viewers. I Love Lucy was Number One with 15 million viewers. Disneyland would probably have been Number One if Walt hadn’t killed Davy Crockett off in the third episode.
It wasn’t Walt Disney’s fault that he had to kill Davy Crockett off. After all, the real Davy Crockett died at the Alamo.
Also, the real Davy Crockett didn’t really do enough with his life to justify more than three episodes. But not really doing enough with his life to justify his legend had never really stopped Davy Crockett before.
If Davy Crockett is to be believed – and just to be completely clear, it should not – Davy’s friends were already building him up to be a legend even before he’d done anything legendary, singing songs about him, callin’ him the buckskin buccaneer. During The Creek War – or the Injun War, to use the parlance of the times – Davy seemed to do less fighting Injuns single-handed, and more hunting bears single-handed. Which is, let’s face it, probably most impressive. It’s also, more or less, historically correct: Davy did do more hunting during the Injun War than actual fighting.
Davy Crockett, the man, has a complicated legacy. As a legend he was far, far bigger than anything he actually achieved. There’s a reason why his Wikipedia page focuses on his political career, even though he didn’t really achieve much there either… but at least it was something tangible, something that he actually did. Because the real Davy Crockett sure as hell didn’t do much.
He almost certainly did not march into Congress to make a great big speech, before ripping up Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act.
He did write an angry letter to Andrew Jackson however, and he did vote against it. He was the only Tennessee congressman to do so.
He was voted out at the next election for his trouble, although he did win again a few years later, then voted out again, at which point he told the voters “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” Which he did. And died at the Alamo. As evidenced by third Davy Crockett episode: Davy Crockett At The Alamo.
So, in summary, Davy fought the Injun (or did he?), then he stuck up for the Injun in Congress, then headed West to Texas to take over what was presumedly Injun land. Complicated man that Crockett. Complicated. Or just not very consistent.
That Davy was already something of a legend whilst he was still alive is evidenced by the fact that popular parodies were being made of him:
- Colonel Nimrod Wildfire of Kentucky.
- The Lion Of The West, a hugely popular play whose titular character made claims such as he was “half horse, half alligator [and] a touch of the airth-quake”, that he had “the prettiest sister, fastest horse, and ugliest dog in the deestrict.”
- And that he could “tote a steam boat up the Mississippi and over the Alleghany mountains.” Half a century later they’d be another hugely popular play: Davy Crockett, or,Be Sure You’re Right, Then Go Ahead, which sounds like a good motto to live by.
Even as early as 1828, shortly after he’d been elected to Congress, newspapers were publishing poems about him. Poems that aren’t too different from “The Ballad Of Davy Crockett.”
Poems which, if it turns out they were written by The Committee To Re-Elect Davy Crockett, it would not surprise me in the least!
The claims in that poem are only slightly more outlandish than those in “The Ballad Of Davy Crockett.”Let’s have a look at a few:
- He was born on a mountain top in Tennessee.
- He was raised in the wood, so he knew every tree.
- He kilt him a b’are when he was only three.
Hardly a single claim in that former paragraph is true. Except that he was born. Of that, at least, we can be sure. And that he was raised in the wood. But that’s nothing special. Back in those days there was a lot of wood!
But Davy wasn’t born on a mountaintop. He was born in a river valley.
Although that river valley is currently part of Tennessee, it was, at the time, part of the Lost State Of Franklin. And although the man claimed a lot of crazy stuff, he never claimed to have kilt a b’are when he was only three.
And he certainly didn’t fix the crack in the Liberty Bell, as is claimed in a later verse. We know this because the crack is still there!
None of this however was important, since Davy-Crockett-mania was flooding the country. And various versions of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” were flooding the charts.
I’ve already discussed multiple times the very mid-50s phenomenon of multiple versions of songs clogging up the charts. By the end of April 1955 there were three versions of “The Ballad Of Davy Crockett” in the Top Ten. And further on down, another one by someone Billboard is referring to as W. Schumann. Why are Billboard only using initials? They have enough room to print out the entire first name! Why not use it?
Keep an eye on “Unchained Melody” (and to a lesser extent “Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White”)… the same thing will happen to them soon.
Even all these records don’t quite capture how big Davy-Crockett-mania was. Total merchandise sales – including coonskin caps, bubble gum cards, bathing suits, jigsaw puzzles, pyjamas, lunch boxes – might give you a better idea:
They totalled $300 million. That was a lot of money back then.
There was such a shortage of coonskin caps – an industry that had previously been struggling – that the price of racoon tails quadrupled, and old racoon trappers came out of retirement.
Little boys loved their coonskin caps so much, they wouldn’t even swap it for… apparently anything.
Girls could also buy a Polly Crockett hat, the main difference being a lack of tail.
One of those Top Ten versions – but not the version at Number One – was by the actor that played Davy Crockett. That actor was Fess Parker, and he who would become so closely associated with the role that the only other role Hollywood would allow him was another frontier legend: Daniel Boone. If Fess wasn’t wearing a coon-skin cap, nobody wanted to know him.
Fun Fact: Walt Disney discovered Fess Parker when he viewed the sci-fi movie Them! the same movie that gave Van Morrison’s band their name!
I guess it was inevitable that Fess would record a version, even though it’s a little weird to be singing about himself? And even though he couldn’t carry a tune. Like, at all. Then again, judging by his portrayal of the great man, Davy could barely talk. (Fess’ version is a 4.)
Tennessee Ernie Ford – who was actually born in Tennessee – also recorded a hit version. At this point Ernie was about a year off of recording “Sixteen Tons” but was a semi-famous country-and-sometimes-pop singer, who had appeared on a few episodes of I Love Lucy portraying a country bumpkin.
Ernie was pretty much the perfect person to sing “Davy Crockett.” He had the baritone to pull it off. If anyone could have brought a sense of gravitas to proceedings, it was Ernie.
Ernie does not bring a sense of gravitas to proceedings. That’s a challenge even beyond Ernie. Particularly since I’m not entirely convinced that Ernie had ever seen the show. Or paid attention in history class. His version has a distinct sense of “I just got this lyric sheet handed to me… you want me to sing, what now?”- it is. Given the quick turn around between the show being aired and the record being made, this could very well be the truth. (Tennessee Ernie Ford’s version is a 3,)
There were also British versions, although they were mercifully not hits, not even in Britain. The French however sent Annie Cordy’s “La ballade de Davy Crockett” to Number One over there for five weeks. Here she is ten years later, just to prove to you that not everything is sexier in French.
The big Number One version, however, was by Bill Hayes. And if you are unfamiliar with that man’s work that’s okay, because I’ve already forgotten his name.
Oh, yes – it was Bill Hayes. Bill. That’s his name.
Bill got the gig for the big hit version of “The Ballad Of Davy Crockett” because his was the first version on the market. Archie Bleyer, the president of Cadence Records, a label rolling in “Mr. Sandman” money – The Chordettes were signed to them – heard it on TV and convinced Bill to record it the next day. It sounds like a rush job, and not only because they are playing it much too fast. And then they slow it down until it’s much too slow. Then they speed it up again. It’s all very, and unnecessarily, annoying. (Bill Hayes’ version is a 2.)
Desperate to come up with some way of continuing the franchise, despite the titular hero have been killed off, Disney came up with a prequel: Davy Crockett and the River Pirates. Unlike the original three, which were at least vaguely based on stuff that the actual Davy actually did, Davy Crockett and the River Pirates was totally made up. If there is such a thing as a “Davy Crockett” cannon, this isn’t part of it.
Davy Crockett and the River Pirates may however have invented the entire concept of prequels.
The Wikipedia entry on “prequels” doesn’t mention it, but the word did start to appear in the mid-50s, either invented by Tolkien to describe The Silmarillion, or in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
If, however, it was Davy Crockett and the River Pirates that was the first prequel, then… what did I say about cultural impact?
Meanwhile, in Sister Land:
“Sincerely” by The McGuire Sisters & also The Moonglows
And all of a sudden, sister acts were everywhere!
Open up any Billboard magazine of the period and the pages would be filled with, usually three, similar looking faces, often hovering disembodied in a sea of white.
There were The Fontane Sisters. The Taylor Maids. The Burton Sisters. The Laurie Sisters.
Not all of them were especially successful. But they all got a big push. They all dreamt that maybe they would be the next Chordettes (although The Chordettes themselves were not actually sisters).
But the biggest of all the sister acts were Chris (sometimes people called her Ruby), Dottie and Phyllis: aka the McGuire Sisters.
As might be expected from such a wholesome selection of sisters, The McGuire Sisters started singing as children, at their mother’s church.
She was a minister at the Miamisburg First Church of God. (This should not be a surprise: when the Church Of God began during the Third Great Awakening, two-thirds of their ministers were women!)
https://www.youtube.com/nJlVlH9cEUY
This was a big deal. Arthur Godfrey had the most popular TV show in 1951/1952. Admittedly only 15 million households had a TV, but of those households who had one, they were watching Arthur Godfrey. By 1954 he was down to No.18, but by then he also had a Arthur Godfrey And Friends night show.
By the time The McGuire Sisters hit big with “Sincerely”, they had already had a hit with a cover of The Spaniels’ doo-wop classic “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight.”
They’d also had a big hit with “Muskrat Ramble”, a Dixieland jazz tune from the deepest darkest origins of New Orleans Jazz: a song so old that it may have been written by Buddy Bolden, the very first jazz musician before he went crazy, when he called it “The Old Cow Died and the Old Man Cried.”
The McGuire Sisters probably didn’t know or care about that; they were probably ripping off The Andrews Sisters’ version. They did that a lot.
For their big hit though, The McGuire Sisters went back to covering more up-to-date doo-wop tunes.
This time by The Moonglows, a group started by Harvey Fuqua, nephew of one of The Ink Spots – the guitarist, the one whose plunky intros always sounded exactly the same!
A man whose life had already included a stint in the military when he was posted to Panama, having his two kids die in a fire, moving to Cleveland, and auditioning to radio DJ, Alan Freed, by singing down the telephone.
Alan Freed was The Man Who Introduced Rock’N’Roll To White Kids. “Rock’n’roll” was a phrase that a lot on his radio show and may therefore be the reason that we call rock’n’roll, rock’n’roll. At the time Harvey and his pals auditioned for Alan they were calling themselves The Crazy Sounds. Alan agreed to managed them, on the condition that they called themselves The Moonglows instead, because his nickname, that he used on his radio show, was Moondog. He’d initially wanted to call them the Moon-Puppies, but that was very obviously a terrible idea.
Alan had taken the name Moondog from a New York musician, blinded at the age of 16 after playing with a dynamite cap.
A cult-figure who spent the 60s walking around New York dressed like a Viking. A man who clearly had unconventional ideas about fashion as early as 1948, when he was dressing up like… I’m going to go with medieval monk?
Moondog released a record called “Moondog Symphony”, and that was the record that made Alan want to call himself that, and consequently, call The Moonglows that. Instruments include a gourd, Chinese blocks and a hollow log.
As part of his role as manager, Alan helped Harvey out with writing the songs. Alan and Harvey wrote “Sincerely” together. The real genius of “Sincerely” however, is whoever came up with the backing vocals: “ba-doh, ba-doh, ba-doh” and “ooh we-ooh hut-hut!” That genius may indeed be either Alan or Harvey. On the other hand “ooh we-ooh hut hut” might be the kind of thing that’s uncopyrightable.
This is what I love most about doo-wop songs:
Even when they are at their most sincere, even when the sincerity is baked into the song’s very title, they see no reason not to croon the most spectacularly nonsense-syllables in the background.
It’s incredible that the McGuire Sisters’ version was such a hit. The McGuire Sisters didn’t sing those nonsense syllables at all, although an orchestra quietly meandered its way through the melody.
The Moonglows had initially been on Chance Records where they recorded a cover of the Doris Day hit “Secret Love.” But Alan got them on Chess Records, the home of hardcore blues stars like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf; real blues for real men. Chess was also about to become the home of rock’n’roll visionaries such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Should we consider The Moonglows, who possessed a guitarist playing the gentlest of blues licks in the background, as some sort of blues/doo-wop fusion. Blues-wop, perhaps?
The McGuire Sisters may have gotten the big hit version of “Sincerely”, but since Harvey wrote the song he should still have gotten paid. He certainly did very well for himself:
- He discovered Marvin Gaye.
- He moved to Detroit to start a couple of record labels of his own, one of which was literally called “Harvey.”
- He discovered The Spinners.
- He joined the Motown production team.
- He married Berry Gordy’s sister.
- He produced Marvin’s “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”
- And: he left Motown to discover Sylvester and The Weather Girls, producing “You Make Me Feel Mighty Real.”
And that’s how you get from Top Rating 50s Talent Shows to Underground 70s Disco in I-don’t-know-how-many easy steps.
The Moonglows’ “Sincerely” is a 7. The McGuire Sisters’ is a 5.
Note: One of the other sister groups mentioned above, The Fontane Sisters, also had a huge hit with a cover of a doo-wop hit, in this case “Hearts Of Stone” by The Charms – itself a cover the original by The Jewels – but I feel pretty confident that its backstory doesn’t include a blind New York Viking making minimalist grooves on a hollow log.
Meanwhile, in Crooner-Land:
“In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning” by Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra didn’t come up with the idea of making concept albums full of crusty old covers, although he made an awful lot of them.
Peggy Lee had released “Black Coffee” in 1953, which was full of old songs, including future Sinatra classic “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, even if the selection was lacking any discernible theme. There had also been a bunch of albums featuring songs by specific Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths : Lee Wiley Sings Irving Berlin, for example.
This seems to have been what jazz singers thought albums were for.
Singles might be for new songs.
But albums were for Dinah Washington to sing Oscar Hammerstein II, and George Gershwin, and Cole Porter and Isham Jones, and Sarah Vaughan to sing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and “How High The Moon”, and pretty much everyone to sing “Summertime” and “Blue Moon” and “Stormy Weather” and “You Go To My Head.”
By the end of the 50s you could be forgiven for thinking that the Great American Songbook only contained about ten songs, recorded over and over again on virtually every vocal jazz album. As though they believed that there were no good new songs to sing; and perhaps there weren’t.
I mean, what’s the point in writing a new song, when you know that Ella and Louis are just going to record an album with nothing but songs from the 20s and 30s?
The music industry still seemed to be figuring out what albums were for. Half the album chart was made up of soundtracks from musicals and Jackie Gleason albums.
Albums that he admitted were designed to be “musical wallpaper”, to be played during romantic situations:
Based on the : “If Gable needs strings, what about some poor schmuck from Brooklyn?” Albums that I’m not convinced he played any role in actual recording.
But Dave Brubeck killing it five years before “Take Five”… who knew?
By the time he’d released “In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning” Frank Sinatra’s career had gone through two different lives; his love life very many more.
Back in the 40s Frankie had been the singer for Big Bands like Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, bands whose following all of a sudden got even bigger once teenage girls arrived to scream at him.
Frankie have been the first singer to be so popular the press had to come up with a whole new term to describe them: bobby-soxers.
Then there was early 50s when the bobby-soxers weren’t screaming at Frankie anymore. That’s because most of them were married. So he found himself working for Mitch Miller who was forcing him to sing songs about dogs. This is generally agreed to be the nadir of Frankie’s career.
With “In The Wee Small Hours” though, Frankie had come up with a whole new persona, one that he felt suited him better than singing songs about dogs; that of the sad, heartbroken grump, sitting at the end of the bar after it closed, drinking whisky.
Given that Frankie had, only a few short years earlier, been screamed at by bobby-soxers, you may wonder if Frankie had any experience with being a sad and lonely grumble-bum.
He did. Some say he attempted to commit suicide in 1951. Thrice! Also, and not unrelated, Frankie had dated, and married, and was in the process of breaking up with, Ava Gardner.
What a – in the parlance of the times, an in Frankie’s own preferred nomenclature – broad!
Frankie’s courtship of Ava had been… eventful.
This was at least partially because Frankie was already married to Nancy (mother of Nancy), and Ava had already been married to Mickey Rooney,
Artie Shaw (for less than a year both times, although, honestly, Mickey Rooney should feel grateful he even got that) and was in the process of dating Howard Hughes.
But that was in the past. In the present Frankie had to compete with a Spanish bullfighter.
Once they got married – 72 hours after Frankie and Nancy’s divorce had been finalised – things got even more eventful. Their marriage appears to have been nothing but arguments and make-up sex.
A typical conversation between Frankie and Ava:
- Frankie: ‘I bet Howard Hughes has got a bigger boat than this. I suppose you wish you were out here with him.’
- Ava: “I don’t care if he owns the Queen Mary. I’m not sorry I’m not with him. So shut up.’
- Frankie: “DON’T TELL ME TO SHUT UP!!!!”
This was when Frankie’s suicide attempts begin. One of which was a cry for Ava’s attention, an attempt at getting her back, slitting his wrists, hoping that she’d come and sit by him in the hospital. She didn’t. Frankie had to discharge himself from the hospital and drag himself over to see her. That’s when she broke off with him, instantly falling into the arms of another bullfighter; a different one than the first time. Clearly Ava had a type. Frankie wasn’t it.
The Frankie-Ava bust-up was one of the most publicized breakups in showbiz history – any history for that matter!
But by the time it was over, Frankie had earned the right to sing songs like “In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning.” For the first time in his career, Frankie could sing songs like that and be believable. Although it wasn’t able to outsell Jackie Gleason, “Wee” was a huge hit. But it didn’t help Frankie get Ava back; the clingy, sensitive side of Sinatra on display all over “Wee” had always gotten on Ava’s nerves. Presumedly Ava didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing with bullfighters.
The In The Wee Small Hours album was mostly covers of crusty classics:
“Mood Indigo”, “Can’t We Be Friends”, “I Get Along Without You Very Well” – with the exception of “In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning” itself. That was a new song. A song written by, David Mann and Bob Hilliard, at Bob’s house in New Jersey.
Now, Bob had previously written “The Coffee Song (They’ve Got An Awful Lot Of Coffee In Brazil).” Frankie had had a hit with that song, and it once helped me answer a trivia question. He’d also written “I’m Late” from Alice In Wonderland. Frankie has never had a hit with that song. It’s also never helped me at trivia at all.
Neither of these songs would suggest that Bob was in the least bit qualified to write a song for Frank’s first classic lonely-drunk album. And yet it happened.
Now, David wanted to go home. Because he was a New Yorker, and he was stuck in New Jersey. And also because it was after midnight. But Bob wouldn’t let him leave until he churned out a song. And so, together, they churned out “In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning,” in the wee small hours of the morning. It probably didn’t take long… it’s only two verses, then the second one repeated a second time.
That makes sense. After all, Frankie might not be able to sleep, preferring instead to think of the girl instead of counting sheep, but he’s still dead tired.
“In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning” is a 9.
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My daughter needs to be at school at an ungodly hour for a dance thing, hence my early comment.
“Sinatra doesn’t rate with Ava, says love-smitten bullfighter” is a fantastic headline.
I knew Sinatra had a down time before From Here to Eternity revived his career. Was unaware that Mitch Miller was there at the nadir, but of course he would be. I was playing and singing Tommy Dorsey’s 1940 #1 hit “I’ll Never Smile Again” at my monthly senior building gig last year and the residents informed me that Sinatra was the singer, which I somehow didn’t know. Considering that his success goes back that far, it’s pretty impressive he stayed on top as long as he did, and even more impressive that he was able to come back to even bigger things later on.
I don’t blame the 50s singers for mining the old songs. Having played different songs from the 30s to the 60s, there is something special about the 30s and 40s songwriting. I often say they don’t write em like that anymore, but I think that started to be true by the 50s. Not that there aren’t any good songs from the 50s. It’s just different. It’s interesting that the Marcels would have a #1 with “Blue Moon” in the early 60s. That’s some pretty impressive staying power for a song from the mid 30s.
Have a great day everyone.
Blue Moon was a hit here as late as 1980 for rock n roll revivalists; Showaddywaddy. As someone in the comments to this video pointed out, they’re the British Sha Na Na.
https://youtu.be/qysbIu57rUc?feature=shared
Blue Moon is also familiar in football grounds, sung by Manchester City fans. They play in a blue strip hence the choice of song though it wasn’t til the turn of the 90s that they adopted it as their anthem of choice.
‘Twas the song that would not die.
A British Sha Na Na was the last thing you guys needed, but here we are.
The only real question is whether you believe in the legend of Davy Crockett or not. If you do, then there should be no doubt in your mind that he died a hero’s death. If you do not believe in the legend, then he was just a man, and it does not matter how he died.
…or something like that
I seem to recall that there was a ratty old coonskin cap left over from my older brothers laying around the house, but I could be mistaken.
I’m very familiar with The Ballad Of Davy Crockett as it was on a 4 CD Disney songs compilation we had in the car when my daughter was small. We only listened to three of them as the other was Christmas songs and we pretended it didn’t exist. There was some good stuff on there (shout out to Lilo & Stich; Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride), some that really brought back my childhood and some that time hasn’t been kind to.
It was the Fess Parker version on there and at least it was catchy. Even if it’s only today that I’ve realised what the bar is that he kilt.
Come on Fess, work on your pronunciation. Not a problem on the British versions. Turns out two of them were minor hits, Max Bygraves went for an American twang and a fiddle accompaniment on his and got to #20. Dick James in his pre-song publishing phase got to #14 with a much more formal and British accented take. No worries with his pronunciation of bear. Both are highly inessential.
My favourite is the crazy French version. It may not be sexy, I may not understand all of the extra detail added in but it’s a lot more fun than any of the others.
I’m pretty sure it was the law that the “kilt a b’are” line had to be pronounced in olde yokel-speak even if every other line was pronounced properly. It’s in every American version I’ve heard… with the exception of Louis Armstrong’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w29rkFftQlA
Sinatra’s love life inadvertently created a hit for Tony Bennett. The Wikipedia entry for “I Want To Be Around” describes it succinctly.
“Sadie Vimmerstedt was a 52-year-old widow and a beautician in Youngstown, Ohio, who sent Johnny Mercer an idea for the song in 1957, as well as giving Mercer the opening line (“I want to be around to pick up the pieces, when somebody breaks your heart”). She was inspired by Frank Sinatra divorcing his first wife Nancy Barbato in order to marry Ava Gardner, only to then see Gardner leave Sinatra. Not knowing exactly where to send her letter to, Vimmerstedt simply addressed it to “Johnny Mercer… Songwriter… New York, NY”. The post office forwarded it to ASCAP, who in turn passed it along to Mercer, who was a member of the organization. Mercer wrote the song and agreed to share a third of the royalties and credits with Vimmerstedt. The song was published in 1962.”
Tony Bennett’s version hit #14 in 1963 and he performed it for the rest of his life.
That’s a great story! I want to be around tnocs to get great information like that.
So much for me to tell here about The Ballad of Davy Crockett! Where should I start, hmmm? OK, first, the “W.” in “W. Schumann” was Walter Schumann, a big writer/music director at the time. He won the Emmy in 1955 for Outstanding Music Composition for the TV drama Dragnet, where he composed the memorable theme (“Dun de dun dun!”). He also had a musical revue on Broadway in 1955 titled 3 for Tonight. Most importantly, he put together a singing ensemble of 12 men and 8 women and called them The Voices of Walter Schumann. They recorded some albums and even got a regular spot in 1956 on the TV series The Ford Show, a musical variety program Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. Yes, the same one who also recorded The Ballad of Davy Crockett. Sad to say, Schumann died from complications from open heart surgery in 1958, just two months shy of turning 45. The Voices of Walter Schumann continued on The Ford Show, but the group now called itself The Top Twenty. They stayed with the show until it ended in 1961.
Bill Hayes is better known to most Americans as the leading man Doug Williams on the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives from 1970 until his death just last year. He got to sing on that show a couple of times too. When The Ballad of Davy Crockett came out, he was still a struggling singer and occasional actor on a lot of TV variety shows, including the late genius Ernie Ford, er, I mean, Ernie Kovacs!
Finally, the section of the Disney TV show that inspired Davy Crockett, Frontierland, became part of several of the parks at Disney worldwide. But rumor has it that it may be phased out in the Magic Kingdom one at Walt Disney World in Florida because younger generations (including those up to GenXers, believe it or not) are nowhere near as interested in westerns as kids in the 1950s and 1960s were. Will that happen? Who knows? But I have to say that of all the dozens of hit tunes spawned by Disney, The Ballad of Davy Crockett is the one you’re least likely to hear at a Disney park by far.
You know who else was won over by the Disney Davy Crocket craze? Phil Collins. He wouldve only been 4 years old at this time, but he grew up romanticizing about the American frontier and particularly being obsessed with the Alamo. At one time he had amassed so much Alamo paraphernalia via auctions and other collectors that he ended up donating/selling a bunch back to the Alamo. A problem then arose in that some of the stuff Phil had bought over the years were actually suspected to be forgeries. I guess this is not an uncommon problem when you’re a high end collector of historical stuff.