The Music of the Mark Twain Riverboat

Posted by SSrustworthy on 11/02/2022

Update 11/10/24

With the opening of Tiana's Bayou Adventure, the narration has changed yet again:

"The most famous landmark in this area is Tiana's Foods, built on an old salt dome and home to Tiana's Bayou Adventure. From here, you might spot guests making quite a splash at Princess Tiana's Party. Head on over when you get the chance. You're almost there."

Update 10/25/24

Sometime after the closure of Splash Mountain the Splash Mountain portion of the narration with "How Do You Do" was removed. A new portion was included by March 2024 with the song "Almost There" (with vocals).

"Beyond those levee walls on the port side is the bayou, the future home of Tiana's Bayou Adventure. Princess Tiana swears there's magic out there, and wherever you find magic, you're bound to find surprises. Blue skies and sunshine guaranteed. It's not quite finished yet, but we're almost there."

Frontier Landing Music

I have seen several mentions of the Mark Twain dock music, but I’ve sadly never heard it. I found some great information on the queue music (with pictures!) from the folks over at MiceChat. Forum member Westsider explained [1]:

In the 1950's and 60's there was an actual calliope in the covered queue area on the Mark Twain dock. It played songs constantly. In the 1970's it was falling apart due to exposure to the elements and it was replaced with a 60 minute recording of the original machine. But then in the late 1990's that 70's era analog recording fell into disrepair and the Pressler/Harriss era didn't have money to fix it. The recording was recently redone in digital format, and it now plays in the queue area via new speakers. It's a throwback to the 1950's, with a stop in the 1970's.

Specifically, the “calliope” was actually a Wurlitzer model LX orchestrion. Apparently the orchestrion had been acquired by Walt Disney when he bought the collection of a LA area collector [1, 14]. Some more information is provided by Mike Cozart [7]:

The Frontier Landing featured an actual mechanical orchestrion to entertain passengers. When Disney began selling off its massive collection or mechanical music boxes and band organs, Jack Wagner had the Mark Twain orchestrion recorded and is still used at the park today. It also was used for a time in the 90’s inside the Golden Horseshoe.

With regards to the actual queue music recording, we unfortunately seem to be empty-handed. The Mark Twain dock speakers are high up in the covered area and therefore too difficult to reach for an induction recording, and the loop doesn’t seem to be playing anymore in the last few years.

There is additional, albeit limited discussion of the Orchestrion in several other posts [2-6; 13].

Onboard Music

General Overview

Nailing down the onboard music is a bit difficult. Thanks to the newfound Disneyland Collection torrent, we have the following five tracks, which may or may not be correctly associated with year of first use:

Narration 1969
Narration 1979
Narration 1987 (versions 1 and 2)
Narration 1999

We also know that that the narration changed in 2010 (apparently on October 1) and in 2017 (it reopened on July 29, 2017). With all of these changes, the music sometimes changed too. Mike Cozart provided some insight on the music over the years (lightly edited) [7]:

To my understanding, the Mark Twain featured recorded “on board” music but used live narration until about 1968. […] The original Mark Twain “on board“ music was somewhat slow and sad sounding and was replaced in the mid 70’s with new music first recorded for the Richard F. Irvine Riverboat that began service in 1973. Disneyland used only 3 tracks from the WDW riverboat recorded music , but Jack Wagner bookended the three with 2 recordings by Ward Kimball’s Fire House 5 Dixieland Jazz Band. This music was used into the early 2000’s.

Today Disneyland’s original 1960’s onboard music can be heard on the Mark Twain at Disneyland Paris, intentionally selected to carry on some original Walt’s Disneyland into Europe!

Early Music (before the mid-70s)

So this music is still used on the DLRP Mark Twain, Mike says? Well hot dog! Here’s eyore’s description of that music [8]:

This is the BGM from the Mark Twain and Molly Brown at DLRP. The short tune loops over and over during the voyage. It's title (according to DLRP) is "Mark Twain" and was recorded for the ride.

eyore also provided a live recording of the track (with audible narration) on YouTube:

Mark Twain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBAy3i5WNWQ#

As luck would have it, this short snippet has popped up in a loop of length 8:23 in the Disneyland Collection torrent, where the loop plays repeatedly (12.5 times — it’s only 41.214 seconds long). The track is called “Rivers of America Music played just past Indian Village.”

Mid 70’s to 2010

Moving on to the early 70’s… Jack Wagner used those bookended Firehouse Five Plus Two tracks, which were actually a part of the narration track. You can hear them on the narration recordings included in the torrent. For reference, in the narration 1969 and 1999 track, these are

Come Back Sweet Papa - Firehouse Five Plus Two (played at launch, often under narration)
Milenburg Joys - Firehouse Five Plus Two (unload)

These appear to have switched around for the 1979 and 1987 narration tracks, and matches the order that RocketRodsXPR reported from a live 1992 reference track.

Mike Cozart also mentions that

There was also a sad-slow track that was the "hold" music on the boat when the exit/load took a long time - this was used at least until the early 90's.

which was the “Mark Twain” 40-second track mentioned previously [13]. Also, Mike says that this is when the tracks for the Richard F. Irvine Riverboat began to play [9, 10]. For ease of music identification, I started out with some onboard videos from 1995 and 1998.

Disneyland-Mark Twain Riverboat Ride. 1995.

https://youtu.be/ajZKLg-Ubj4

DISNEYLAND, Ca. Mark Twain 1998

https://youtu.be/XHIiKHqas0s

For the 1998 loop, I identified four tracks throughout the video, playing at several different times. “Come Back Sweet Papa” plays at loading, I also discovered that they all show up in Star Orion’s recording of the Tokyo Disneyland Tom Sawyer Island BGM. Who would have thought!

Tom Sawyer Island - Area Background Music | at Tokyo Disneyland

https://youtu.be/r0eV5DVHL8U

I’ve included the time markers at which these each play in Star Orion’s recording. Thanks to RocketRodsXPR, DisneyChris, and Mike Cozart for previously identifying two of these tracks [8, 10]:

Home, Sweet Home (?)
At 0:03 of the TDL loop; this is the first track of both the TDL Tom Sawyer's Island and WDW Tom Sawyer's Island loop; latter is circulating as 12:21 in length. Seems likely to be a simplified bluegrass rendition of “Home, Sweet Home,” but this is unclear.
Western Saloon
At 20:02 of the TDL loop
Goober Peas
At 36:25 of the TDL loop
Cripple Creek
At 48:12 of the TDL loop

In the 1998 video, the songs are on a continuous underlying loop and appear in the following order:

Cripple Creek Western Saloon

Home, Sweet Home Western Saloon Goober Peas Cripple Creek Western Saloon

The 1995 video plays the same tracks, although the footage is more choppy. The earliest Mark Twain footage with music that I could find was from 1987:

Disneyland's Mark Twain Riverboat 1987

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGzoiUV97lQ

In order, I heard the following tracks:

Goober Peas (last bit of the track; heard at 0:54, and again at 1:47)

Come Back, Sweet Papa - Firehouse Five Plus Two

Cripple Creek (beginning of track, 7:13)

Home, Sweet Home (beginning of track, 8:26, 9:01)

Western Saloon (beginning of track, 9:40, 10:50)

Goober Peas (11:35, 13:15)

Milenburg Joys - Firehouse Five Plus Two (~14:00)

It seems safe to say that this loop (which is separate from the attraction narration) played in the pattern as identified in the continuous 1998 video. I can confirm that all four of these tracks were still playing in 2002 and 2007 videos, but they seemed to have been removed with the 2010 narration change.

2010 - 2016

The Mark Twain’s musical journey changed in 2010 with the introduction of Pirate’s Lair on Tom Sawyer Island, and the release of Walt Disney Animation’s The Princess and the Frog. I looked at a video from December 8, 2010, taken two months after the change in narration. At this point, all music was now playing on the same track, and there is no continuous underlying loop.

Mark Twain Riverboat. Disneyland. Whole Ride. Wednesday. Dec 8. 2010.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U51IuW4ol4

Tiger Rag - Dutch Swing College Band (0:00)

Way Down in New Orleans (with vocals) - The Princess and the Frog OST (3:08)

How Do You Do - WDW Splash Mountain (5:24)

Red River Valley (Instrumental) - Paco Ship - Red River Valley (10:56)

Pirate’s Cove Medley - Toucan Pirates - Sea Changes of the Toucan Pirates (12:25)

Unclouded Day - Studio Musicians - Smoky Mountain Hymns (14:51)

Lord, Lord, Lord, You Sure Been Good to Me - Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band - Here Come da Great Olympia Band

These tracks lined up with others from videos in the same time period.

2017 - Present

The Mark Twain paused its voyages in on January 10, 2016 due to the construction of Star Wars Land. After the Mark Twain reopened on July 29, 2017, the narration had changed once again. I looked at a video from 2017 [12] and verified with an induction recording by doddles taken in March of 2022.

Tiger Rag - Dutch Swing College Band

Way Down in New Orleans (with vocals) - The Princess and the Frog OST

How Do You Do - WDW Splash Mountain

Cedar Falls 2613/3- Leon Hunt, Josh Clark - Banjo ANW 2613

Red River Valley (Instrumental) - Paco Ship - Red River Valley

Pirate’s Cove Medley - Toucan Pirates - Sea Changes of the Toucan Pirates

Salty Dog Blues - Benny Martin, Josh Graves

Unclouded Day - Studio Musicians - Smoky Mountain Hymns

Lord, Lord, Lord, You Sure Been Good to Me - Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band - Here Come da Great Olympia Band

Additional References

[1] https://discuss.micechat.com/forum/disney-theme-park-news-and-discussion/disneyland-resort/181329-carnival-music-in-mark-twain-queue

[2] https://mousebits.com/smf/index.php?topic=5975.msg47090#msg47090