FUN FACT: For my demoreel I used the song: Firehouse Five Plus Two - I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire
— javier Pedreño (@j_pedreno) March 28, 2021
The Firehouse Five Plus Two was a Dixieland jazz band, formed in 1949 by Ward Kimball, consisting of members of the Walt Disney Studios animation department. pic.twitter.com/uL0uv5ezLq
In the 1940s, Disney Animator Ward Kimball and a few friends from work discovered they shared a love for jazz. They started a band and played together, sometimes at work during lunch. They went through a few names and finally settled on The Firehouse Five Plus Two (because there were seven of them at the time). The band was asked to play at parties, and then found paid gigs, and before you know it, they were recording artists. Walt Disney didn't mind the side hustle, and was proud of the band, even using them on some Disney productions. That is, until Kimball started getting a bit too much admiration for his music, and the band had a falling out with Walt. The Firehouse Five Plus Two recorded 13 albums up into the 1970s.
Cabel Sasser tells us the story of The Firehouse Five Plus Two, and then how he came into the possession of a collection of acetate records of their early practice sessions from the 1940s. He had the records digitally copied, because they were quite fragile. The songs show us how the group worked out new tunes, labeled the recordings with different rude band names that were never meant to be seen, and marked them with "please destroy." These songs are shared on Sasser's site, but the very last one is a rare treasure. It contains a song that was long in the making, but the sequence was deleted from the 1950 Disney movie Cinderella.
Go on, hit play. And as you listen, take a moment to let it sink in that you’re one of the first people to hear this music in nearly 75 years.
You'll also learn the story behind the deleted scene. Even if you don't care about Dixieland jazz, you'll enjoy reading about this piece of musical history. -via Kottke