Thurl Ravenscroft
Thurl Ravenscroft
Ravenscroft’s voice has been heard in many Disneyland and Walt Disney World attractions, past and present. He is the voice of “Buff”, the buffalo head in the Country Bear Jamboree; lead vocalist on the theme song Grim Grinning Ghosts in theHaunted Mansion and Phantom Manor (his face is on the Uncle Theodore singing bust that many people have mistaken for Walt Disney); both “Fritz”, the German-accented parrot, and one of the Polynesian god totems in the Enchanted Tiki Room; Narrator on the Disneyland Railroad (not the voice that announces the train boarding or departing); the original voice of the First Mate on the Mark Twain Riverboat; several singing (and drunk) pirates in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction; the singer of the theme song for “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure”, the Hardy Boys serial from the Mickey Mouse Club TV show; The singer of the theme of the theme song for “Boys of the Western Sea”, a serial also used from the “Mickey Mouse Club TV show; the singing frogs in Splash Mountain and one of the bass voices in the chorus of ”it’s a small world”. He is sometimes mistaken for Paul Frees, who provides the “Ghost Host” narration for the Haunted Mansion attraction, because Ravenscroft was the narrator on Disney’s The Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion vinyl record. He also provided narration on the original Pirates of the Caribbean vinyl recording, as well as singing several pirate-themed songs.
Thurl Ravenscroft
He sang 2 songs from the Disney album “Peter Cottontail and Other Funny Bunnies”, which were “Thumper’s song” and “Twitterpated”.
One of the computer-animated singing busts in the 2003 film The Haunted Mansion was modeled after his features; another was made to resemble Paul Frees.
Ravenscroft also provided the voice of Kirby in The Brave Little Toaster, the voice of Paul Bunyan in the animated short of the same name, and voiced the animated pig in the “Jolly Holiday” sequence of Mary Poppins. He can be heard in many Disney features, including One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, and The Aristocats, as well as on the soundtracks for Dumbo, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, and The Jungle Book. In The Jungle Book film, Ravenscroft was mistaken as the singing voice of Shere Khan the tiger, and was actually the singing voice of one of the elephants in Hathi’s herd. George Sanders, an accomplished singer, provided both singing and speaking for his character in the film. Ravenscroft also sang a cover version of Bing Crosby’s song about the headless horseman from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (in a similar fashon to Louis Prima singing a cover of Phil Harris’ song from Robin Hood).
Thurl Ravenscroft
With other members of the Mellomen, he provided the barks, whines, and other utterances for the chorus of pound dogs in Lady and the Tramp, who perform “No Place Like Home” and back-up to Peggy Lee on “He’s a Tramp.”
Thurl Ravenscroft was inducted as a Disney Legend in 1995 for his work in Disney animation.