That One Melody From Aladdin (1992) is 92 Years Old

Before you read any further, note that this post has nothing to do with the topics usually discussed on this site - punk, Chicago punk bands, etc. Maybe quarantine has gotten the best of me but I want to take a little time to talk about something that has been eating at me for the past few months. That one melody from Aladdin (1992) is 92 years old.

I was a kid in 1992. Old enough to have spotty memories of the first Bulls 3-peat (start watching The Last Dance if you aren't already), but let's just say my memories of the second 3-peat are much clearer. While Chicago basketball was experiencing a one-of-a-kind run, Disney was on a tear of its own. The hand-drawn animated features came one after the other, each as big as the last. Between 1989 and 1996, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame each grossed more than $100 million domestically. Some of them grossed well north of that figure. Aladdin fell smack in the middle of that run, pulling in about $217 million stateside.

Aladdin opens with the grand "Arabian Nights", an introduction to the vast desert and its hidden treasures. Shortly following this, we are introduced to the street markets of Agrabah. The eponymous hero and his simian companion attempt to trick their way to free food through the jaunty number "One Jump Ahead". Can you think of a better word to describe 1920s music than jaunty?

I was driving up the highway on my way to work a few months ago (what a time to be alive) when I heard a particularly jaunty piano riff playing on a jazz station. It immediately carried with it that haunting sense of deja vu - I've heard this before, but where? By the end of the song I had put it together. This was the melody from "One Jump Ahead" in Aladdin, recorded decades earlier.

The piano riff I heard in the car that day was Fats Waller's "Love Me or Leave Me", recorded in 1929. The original version was actually a year older. "Love Me or Leave Me" was written by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn in 1928, for the Broadway play Whoopee! This, it turns out, is only the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of versions of "Love Me or Leave Me", recorded by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Peggy Lee to Miles Davis, Olivia Newton-John and Rod Stewart.

The remaining question is, does everyone already know about this? Finding no mention of the connection between "Love Me or Leave Me" and Aladdin online, I have to think some people will be equally surprised. I rounded up 15 of the versions of this song over on Spotify.