" Baby Elephant Walk " is a song written in 1961, by Henry Mancini , for the 1962 released movie, Hatari! .
Brass instruments (including repeated blasts from the tuba ) and woodwind elements are combined to convey a large and plodding elephant toddler that is filled with the exuberance of youth.
The catchy, jazzy
simplicity of the tune has made it one of Mancini's most popular works,
appearing on many compilation albums.
As the allmusic.com album review
states, "if Hatari! is memorable for anything, it's for the
incredibly goofy 'Baby Elephant Walk,' which has gone on to be musical
shorthand for kookiness of any stripe. Get this tune in your head and it
sticks." Hal David composed lyrics to Mancini's tune, which appear in the printed sheet music and were later recorded by Pat Boone , released by Dot Records in 1965.
In 1962, the song earned Mancini a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement.
The tune was written for an impromptu scene in Hatari! in which Elsa Martinelli led three baby elephants to a pool to bathe. Mancini used a calliope
introduction to suggest the sound of a circus. A cheeky melody was then
played over this on a clarinet. The overall style was that of boogie-woogie
as Mancini explained, "I looked at the scene several times I
thought, 'Yeah, they're walking eight to the bar', and that brought
something to mind, an old Will Bradley boogie-woogie number called ' Down the Road a Piece ' ... Those little elephants were definitely walking boogie-woogie, eight to the bar. I wrote 'Baby Elephant Walk' as a result".
The cheerful tone, like that of Mancini's " The Pink Panther Theme ", presents a stark contrast to more melancholy Mancini standards such as " Moon River ".
Due to its "goofy" sound, it is often used in a humorous context. It
was also covered by a number of performers in the 1960s, including the Fabulous Echoes on their LP album Those Fabulous Echoes with the Hong Kong -based Diamond Records in 1963 and Bill Haley & His Comets who recorded a version for Orfeon Records in 1964.
Mancini's version was not released as a single. The Billboard Top 100 singles were by Lawrence Welk and the Miniature Men.
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