It may technically have been the UNICEF pavilion, but the Pepsi logo was splashed all over the place, and Pepsi was the company that sponsored and requested it, so I’ve always thought of it as the Pepsi Pavilion.
And if you’re listing the Disney contributions to the 1964-5 World’s Fair, don’t forget the GE pavilion, with the Carousel of Progress. It featured yet another song by the brothers Sherman – “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”
That’s where I first heard it. It stayed with me long before Disney World came into being. Infectious, it is!
Once. That’s a good one.
Try about eighty times.
And that is why you are NEVER to put her in a nursing home, young lady!
It is the only Disney song not to be copyrighted so it was free for people to play and perform.
Yes, now that I think about it, I believe it was.
*The claim that the song “It’s a Small World” (which began as the centerpiece of a Disney World theme park attraction of the same name in 1964 and has since been a popular tune for children’s musical toys) being un-copyrighted is false.
Of course the song is under copyright! The original 1963 registration was given the number EU0000793673, and its 1991 renewal was given the number RE0000548478. If you factor in the Copyright Act 1976, which passed prior to the song’s renewal in 1991, the 1963 copyright status was increased to 75 years, to end in 2048. The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act (also called the Sonny Bono Act and, humorously, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act), adds still another 20 years.
One of the song’s writers, Robert Sherman, died in 2012, but his brother Richard is still alive, so more years will have to be factored in before it is possible to sing this song in public without being caught by the legal police.*
I don’t hate it but I would list it as one of the ten most effective earworms.
I knew I was missing one. I saw that at Disneyland also.
I think of it as the UNICEF pavilion because when I was in junior high my friend and I did a raffle for UNICEF and brought the proceeds to some very confused people at the pavilion.
Me too. I associate it with the blessed air conditioning that was so elusive in Lake Buena Vista County.
It just doesn’t sound like a “Disney Song” to me. It has the same characteristics of older public domain songs, with it’s simple harmonic progression. I heard it in the same places I originally heard “Old MacDonald” and “Three Blind Mice”–those children’s song tapes.
I honestly just learned from this post that it was actually written for Disney, and not them repurposing an existing song.