When I saw the Day Thread, I knew this had to be the subsequent Night Thread. Let’s remember the time an animatronic bear sang about a cowboy with a smashed skull in Disney parks!

“Blood on the Saddle” is, somehow, a real song released in 1960 by Tex Ritter, a prominent singing cowboy actor and Country Music Hall of Fame inductee who also voices Big Al. Tex’s family is also made up of actors with ties to Disney; his son John began his career in The Barefoot Executive and was the lead in ABC’s “8 Simple Rules” when he passed away, his grandson Jason voices Dipper Pines in Gravity Falls, and his grandson Tyler was briefly in the MCU as Grant Ward’s brother Thomas in Agents of SHIELD.

The Big Al animatronic was reportedly modeled after Imagineer Al Bertino. Big Al has sung a few different songs over the years. In the summer Vacation Hoedown he sings “I Got Lost On My Way To Your Heart”. Al sings “Another New Year” in the American Christmas Special, and “Auld Lang Syne” in the Japanese version. In the new Musical Jamboree, Al sings “Remember Me” from Coco before breaking down into uncontrollable sobbing. Because Ritter passed away in 1974, Peter M. Klimes became Al’s new voice for the Vacation and Christmas shows. It’s not currently known who voices Al in Musical Jamboree.

Big Al existed, briefly, as a massive inflatable at a bafflingly igloo-themed snack stand in a 1992 Tokyo Disneyland “World Fair” event, the rare Disney thing I can’t find any information about online. He wanders the parks as the least creepy of the Country Bears walkaround characters. And for you Book Nookers, here’s “Big Albert Moves In”, a 1971 storybook that provides DEEP LORE for the then-brand-new attraction.

Have fun posting!