As Disney celebrates its centenary – and a decade of Frozen shows no sign of dimming Let It Go’s hold on tots – we remember the cursed cats, R&B hounds and self-actualisation anthems that defined our childhoods
“Look – for – the” – and then the pub-piano thump of that first chord triggers a singalong reflex I’ve been unable to suppress these 50 years – “bare necessities, the simple bare necessities / Forget about your worries and your strife!” The Dixieland parp of brass and jangle of banjo strings, with Phil Harris’s easygoing delivery, lasered into my seven-year-old mind. Baloo’s classic song to Mowgli from the 1967 classic The Jungle Book advocates the good life, the easy life, a radical Zen refusal of possessions: “When you find out you can live without it and go along without thinkin’ about it!”
