"The Spectrum Song" was written by the

Sherman Brothers The Sherman Brothers were an American songwriting duo that specialized in musical films, made up of Robert B. Sherman (December 19, 1925 – March 6, 2012) and Richard M. Sherman (born June 12, 1928). Together they received various accolades i ...

in 1961 under assignment from

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

to be a signature song for the fictional character

Ludwig Von Drake Professor Ludwig Von Drake is a cartoon character created in 1961 by The Walt Disney Company. He is the paternal uncle of Donald Duck. He was first introduced as the presenter (and singer of " The Spectrum Song") in the cartoon ''An Adventure in ...

. Nominally about different colors in the

spectrum A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors ...

, the song's lyrics initially consist of the repeated color names red, yellow, green and blue, but soon veer wildly off into cerise, chartreuse,

ultramarine Ultramarine is a deep blue color pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. The name comes from the Latin ''ultramarinus'', literally 'beyond the sea', because the pigment was imported into Europe from mines in Afg ...

and

plaid Plaid () may refer to: Fabric * Full plaid, a cloth made with a tartan pattern, wrapped around the waist, cast over the shoulder and fastened at the front * A synonym for tartan in North America * A plaid shirt, typically of flannel and worn du ...

Origin and purpose

The song was introduced in the cartoon segment " An Adventure in Color," which first aired on September 24, 1961 as part of the first-ever

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

episode of the newly renamed TV program, '' Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color''. The episode also introduced the Von Drake character. The cartoon tied in with a live action segment about color television and, like the song itself, was part of Disney's wider plan to promote the program in its new color format. The NBC premiere also introduced another song by the Sherman Brothers, "Wonderful World of Color (Main Title)". The Shermans had joined the Disney staff that same year (1961), having previously contributed music for ''

Zorro Zorro ( Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante w ...

'' and other Disney projects on a freelance basis.

Content

The song itself, sung by voice actor

Paul Frees Solomon Hersh "Paul" Frees (June 22, 1920November 2, 1986) was an American actor, comedian, impressionist, and vaudevillian. He is known for his work on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Walter Lantz, Rankin/Bass, and Walt Disney theatrical cartoons during ...

as Von Drake, was about different colors and color blending, and did not directly mention television. It did, however, quote from the lyrics of an earlier song, "

Lavender Blue "Lavender's Blue" (also called "Lavender Blue") is an English folk song and nursery rhyme from the 17th century. Its Roud Folk Song Index number is 3483. It has been recorded in various forms and some pop versions have been hits in the U.S. and ...

". After Von Drake is flummoxed by all the colors toward the end of the song, he says, "Whatever happened to just plain old 'Lavender Blue, dilly dilly,' dilly dilly... silly?" The opening stanza of "The Spectrum Song" tied each color to a specific note in a

major scale The major scale (or Ionian mode) is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at doub ...

, similar to the color-coding of a toy

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in ...

. Thus, the word "red" corresponded to the tonic, or

octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...

note (Do), yellow was the major third or mediant note (Mi) (and the fourth note, Fa), green was the perfect fifth or dominant note (So), and so on. The first four notes of the song thus formed a major chord, do-mi-so-do (red-yellow-green-red), a playful variant on the exercise of singing scales, similar to the

Rodgers and Hammerstein Rodgers and Hammerstein was a theater-writing team of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together created a series of innovative and influential American musicals. Their popular ...

song "

Do-Re-Mi "Do-Re-Mi" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ''The Sound of Music''. Each syllable of the musical solfège system appears in the song's lyrics, sung on the pitch it names. Rodgers was helped in its creation by long-time ...

" from ''

The Sound of Music ''The Sound of Music'' is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the 1949 memoir of Maria von Trapp, ''The Story of the Trapp Family Singers''. S ...

''. The Shermans thus compare colors to musical notes, stating in the lyric that "Color has its harmony".

Recording history

A slightly different recording of "The Spectrum Song" was issued in 1961 on as a 45 RPM single on Disneyland Records (DBR-34), again with vocals by Frees as Von Drake. This second recording was reissued on Disc Three of the CD set ''The Music of Disney: A Legacy in Song'' (1992, ). The accompanying booklet for the set describes "The Spectrum Song" as "a clever play on words and colors" and obliquely mentions the musical reference to "Lavender Blue". The booklet also reproduces the picture sleeve of the original 45 RPM record. The song also appears on the

Walt Disney Records Walt Disney Records is an American record label of the Disney Music Group. The label releases soundtrack albums from The Walt Disney Company's motion picture studios, television series, theme parks, and traditional studio albums produced by its ...

compilation ''More Silly Songs'' (1998, ) In 2023, a newly orchestrated instrumental version of the song was added as part of the new area music for the refurbished

Mickey's Toontown Mickey's Toontown is a themed land at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, two theme parks operated by Walt Disney Parks & Resorts and The Oriental Land Company respectively. At Tokyo Disneyland, this land is named Toontown. A similar land existe ...

section of

Disneyland Disneyland is a theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney initially envisio ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spectrum Song, The Disney songs Songs written by the Sherman Brothers 1961 songs