Among the mass-media images burned into my brain from the 1950s is a 45rpm recording of this song by a Dixieland band called “The Firehouse Five Plus Two.”

That group had an interesting back story: all the members were employees (mostly animators) for Walt Disney Studios. While recording and performing, they hung onto their day jobs. For instance, the group’s founder and trombonist, Ward Kimball, was one of the so-called “Nine Old Men” who formed the core of the animation department during Disney’s run of classic cartoons: Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia… You can certainly see the Disney influence in the “self-portrait” at right.

I wish I could play that version for you today, but alas — can’t find a copy. Instead, I’ll tell you what I know about the song, and offer up a couple other performers’ takes on it.

The song’s composer of record was jazz trombonist “Kid” Ory. I say “of record” because Ory apparently sort of dashed off the song in 1926 as a composition for Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five band. That band didn’t have a lot of hits, but “Muskrat Ramble” was one of them, and Armstrong evidently felt a sense of proprietorship towards it. As recounted (second hand) in Gene Henry Anderson’s book, The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong:

Ory says he originally conceive [“Muskrat Ramble”] in Los Angeles, revising it out of an exercise in a saxophone study book: “I wrote it back around 1921 when I was playing in a taxi dancehall at Third and Main in Los Angeles. It had no name then. Lil Armstrong gave it that title at the record session.” But Louis Armstrong told Dan Morgenstern in Down Beat [15 July 1965, 18]… “I wrote Muskrat Ramble. Ory named it, he gets the royalties. I don’t talk about it.” On the other hand, Sidney Bechet once remembered “Muskrat Ramble,” or at least its second theme, as an old folksong he heard in his youth, “The Old Cow Died and the Old Man Cried” [Jazz Record (July 1945)].

Bechet’s vague memory aside, the one thing I get from that passage is that Armstrong and Ory didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye on its composer. Nevertheless, Ory had the copyright (eventually getting paid those sore-point royalties for it).

Here’s Armstrong’s Hot Five version:

[Below, click Play button to begin Muskrat Ramble (Louis Armstrong). While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:32 long.]

In 1950, lyricist Ray Gilbert added lyrics befitting the raucous — and yes, rambling — feel of the music. (It’s possible that Gilbert himself worked for Disney, although I haven’t confirmed it: he also wrote the lyrics to “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” from Song of the South.) Among performers who had a hit with this version were The McGuire Sisters; their take on it went to Billboard #10 in 1954:

[Below, click Play button to begin Muskrat Ramble (The McGuire Sisters). While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:16 long.]

[Lyrics]

Of course, I guess I should say, many of a certain generation (and later) may not know this tune as “Muskrat Ramble” at all — let alone with these lyrics. For that audience, the more familiar interpretation might be Country Joe McDonald’s solo performance of his “F-I-S-H Cheer / Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” enshrined in this recording of the Woodstock film (and yeah, he modified the “F-I-S-H Cheer” for this):

[Lyrics]

(McDonald was sued by Ory’s descendants in recent years for violating copyright on the tune. They lost the case, though, on the grounds that they’d waited too long — decades — to make their case.)