Tower of Terror music mystery - "Dear Old Southland"

[Bairstow]

So I've had a queue loop .mp3 for Tower of Terror for, I dunno, close to 13 years now. I've probably listened to it a hundred times or more. It's 1:03:09 long and I always assumed it was full and complete.

Then I listened to this:



I wasn't aware that Noble Sissle's recording of Dear Old Southland had a vocal section, which in this recording starts at 1:30. This part of the song is omitted from the MP3 loop I have.

So I'm wondering, is this part of the song audible in the actual attraction? Do I have an edited version of the official loop, or are there multiple versions of the loop that have been used over the years? Why would the vocals have been cut, either from the attraction or my .MP3?

To make things even more confusing, here's a non-reverb recording of the same song without the vocal section. I'm no expert on this, but appears to be the same recording and not a different take. I tried playing the two recordings at the same time and they appear to be note-perfect matches, though they eventually drift out of sync, which I would attribute to vinyl playback speed.

 

[Magenta Panther]

The tune's a little reminiscent of "St. Louis Blues"....

I don't think I've ever heard the vocal part of "Southland" at the Tower...I have heard the vocals of "We'll Meet Again" though. Anyway, "Southland"'s vocals are very haunting...as is the music, with its wailing clarinets at the beginning. I'm not surprised the Imagineers chose it for that ride...

 

[Gullywhumper]

A mystery indeed!

 

[ravenswood]

ive recorded the music straight from the speakers at the attraction and have listened to it tons of times over the years, there are no vocals at the actual attraction in that song, they just edited that part out

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

Hmm...Quite a mystery indeed...

 

[Bairstow]

Further questions:

1. What is the explanation for the first video I posted? It sounds as though it's been through the same post-processing the rest of the Tower of Terror loop as been through to add that "haunted echo" effect, though I suppose it's entirely possible that a fan or hobbyist like me used Audacity or some other editing tool to make their own version of the BGM. In fact, I've tried this before in the past, though my results aren't as polished as this. It also seems to have a different pattern of the artificial static/dust static "popping" noise you hear on the other post-processed Tower track, though it's so close it might just be my imagination.

2. Is it possible that the BGM loop for the California version of the Tower has a different loop than the Florida one? Or the French version, for that matter? Minor, inexplicable differences in track selection in regional Disney BGM loops have been observed before, notably in the parallel Jungle Cruise, Tomorrowland, and Main Street loops. Perhaps the original loop was limited to just over an hour in length for some sort of technological reason that existed in 1994 but no longer required the designers to make the same edits for time in 2004.

3. Assuming that the vocal-less version of the loop I have is indeed the one actually used in the attraction(s), was this edit made by Disney themselves or was it simply a result of Disney using a version of the recording which had already been edited? The second video I posted, the non-reverb version from 1937 that has the same (or almost the same) edit to remove the vocals as the version used in the attraction, is taken from a collection intended to accompany Ken Burns' PBS documentary "Jazz"
http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-best-of-ken-burns-jazz-mw0000103308
However, this documentary wasn't released until 2000, several years after the edited version of the track was presumably implemented at the attraction, in 1994.
The same edited version (2:37 long) was also released on a Sidney Bechet collection CD in 1995
http://www.allmusic.com/album/vol-3-1931-1937-mw0000172913
...but a full-length (3:03) version was featured on this 2007 Sidney Bechet collection:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/pre-war-classic-sides-mw0000452505

4. Assuming the music supervisor at Disney who assembled the loop had knowledge or access to both the original, full-length version of the recording and the edited version OR made the edit himself, could the decision not to use the lyrics have been motivated by something other than time constraints? Is it possible that the lyrics, though written in 1921 by Henry Creamer, an African-American, carried with them uncomfortable racial connotations for modern listeners? The lyrics were something of a source of discomfort even in the 1930s:

http://books.google.com/books?id=IVZ5QsMH-xwC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq="dear old southland" "Swanee shore"&source=bl&ots=b_wHUabtHr&sig=hQWKsSjp_ueEloFlFfl1DWN98vQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KnPWU6PIGPDisASI1YGIDg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q="dear old southland" "Swanee shore"&f=false

For reference, here's a 1933 recording from Gene Austin that features more lyrics than the Noble Sissle recording:

 

[Bairstow]

2. Is it possible that the BGM loop for the California version of the Tower has a different loop than the Florida one?

So I can confirm this firsthand. The loops are at least partially different in that the California Adventure version of the loop uses Turner Layton's rendition of "Deep Purple" while the original Florida version uses a recording by Bea Wain.

Sadly, I wasn't able to stick around at the DCA version of the Tower long enough to see which version of "Dear Old Southland" is currently being played.

 

[marni1971]

There's certainly a few fan made versions being passed as "official"