Released 1966 (1966) | Label Disneyland | |
Writer(s) Robert & Richard Sherman "Up, Down and Touch the Ground"
(2) "Rumbly in My Tumbly"
(3) | ||
"Up, Down and Touch the Ground" is a song from the 1966 musical film featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. The song was also subsequently incorporated into the 1977 musical film, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which is an amalgamation of the three previous Winnie-the-Pooh featurettes including The Honey Tree. In the song Winnie the Pooh's exercise makes him hungry, and although he over-eats (it leads to his stuck-in-Rabbit's door incident later in the film), he is proud of his fat stomach and he exercises to gain weight and grow even rounder. Halfway through the song however, he bends down too far, accidentally ripping the stitching on his bottom as a result of becoming fat, but upon seeing his bottom in the mirror, he quickly ties it together again. By the end of the song Pooh has rationalized his over-eating by calling his hunger, "healthy".
The song was written by Robert & Richard Sherman who have written most of the music for the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise over the years.
Anecdote
When first approached by Disney to write the songs for Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, American songwriters Robert & Richard Sherman struggled with the concept. The insight and inspiration for the Pooh songs came from an unlikely source, as is explained in the Sherman Brothers' joint autobiography, Walt's Time: