Three Cheers For Pooh! Happy

Sep 06, 2006 09:12 PM Filed in: Now Playing
3Cheers
Today I found a treasure on eBay, Three Cheers For Pooh. I first ran across this recording somewhere back around 1982 or so in a library in West Lafayette, Indiana. It's a collection of songs based on A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh poems, and it tickled my fancy to no end. In the 1920's Harold Fraser-Simson set many of Milne's Pooh poems to music, and in 1981 Robert Tear and Philip Ledger decided to record several of these songs as formal recital pieces in the traditional classical music style. The end result can only be described as charming, and I fell in love with what I heard.

I made a tape of that album, and for the next 20 or so years carried that cassette around with me playing it from time to time. It never failed to put a smile on my face. Every so often during those years I would do an internet search to try to find out more about the songs themselves and also to see if the recording had ever been released on CD. To this day it is difficult to find much information at all about either the songs or the recording, but bit by bit I've been able to piece together much of it, and with the help of Amazon.com (you can find anything on Amazon) I have managed to find a copy of each of the six Harold Fraser-Simson songbooks. I now have the sheet music to all 27 songs that Robert Tear and Philip Ledger chose to record, as well as to the 40 additional songs they passed over. Through it all, however, I had no luck finding a CD of the recording, so finally, about 2 years ago, I decided to digitize the tape that I had to make my own CD from the music. It was a labour of love, and I have since inflicted The Pooh Songs upon many of my unsuspecting friends. Members of The Tenor Tribe (Leon, David, Rich, Steve, & Dan!) in the TFC can attest to several hours spent riding around the Berkshires in my truck listening to Tear and Ledger sing of Winnie-the-Pooh. It actually provided a nice little break from all those classical heavy weights!

Anyways, with today's lucky eBay find I have now added the original LP to my collection of the song books, and I just wanted to celebrate by sharing some of the treasure (booty) on Little Delving. Here are a few samples, and if you enjoy what you hear a free download of the complete set of 27 songs can be found here. I'm happy to spread the word about these little musical gems. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

The Songs Of Winnie The Pooh:
Words by A.A. Milne, Music by Harold Fraser-Simson, Decorations by E.H. Shephard

The Pooh Song Book; 1961, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., a collection that includes:
     The Hums Of Pooh; 1929, London: Methuen
    The King's Breakfast; 1925, London: Methuen
    Fourteen Songs From When We Were Very Young; 1926, London: Methuen

Teddy Bear And Other Songs From When We Were Very Young; 1926, London: Methuen
Songs From Now We Are Six; 1927, London: Methuen
More Very Young Songs; 1928, London: Methuen

Three Cheers For Pooh; 1981, The Musical Heritage Society, Robert Tear (Tenor), Philip Ledger (Piano)
Pooh
1. Isn't It Funny
2. How Sweet To Be A Cloud
3. Cottlestone Pie
4. Lines Written By A Bear
5. Three Cheers For Pooh
6. The More It Snows
7. Poor Little Tigger
8. Oh! The Butterflies Are Flying
9. I Lay On My Chest
10. Here Lies A Tree
11. Christopher Robin Is Going
12. Down By The Pond
13. Sneezles
14. The Friend
15. Furry Bear
16. The Emperor's Rhyme
17. Wind On The Hill
18. Twice Times
19. Forgiven
20. Shoes And Stockings
21. Spring Morning
22. Disobedience
23. The Four Friends
24. Bad Sir Brian Botany
25. Buckingham Palace
26. At The Zoo  
27. The Christening

ps - I often tease my musical friends by telling them that if I ever get serious again about singing that my first recital will be made up of these 27 Winnie-the-Pooh songs.
And the joke in that is that actually I'm not kidding. Winking