Little Black Rain Cloud

"Little Black Rain Cloud" is a song from the 1966 musical film featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. An instrumental version is played in the next featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. The song was also subsequently incorporated into the 1977 musical film, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which is an amalgamation of the three previous Winnie-the-Pooh featurettes including "Honey Tree". In the song Winnie the Pooh comments about the on-screen actions where he is pretending to be a "Little Black Rain Cloud", as the title implies. It's Pooh's hope that the Honey Bees will not notice him as he approaches their coveted honey.

The song was written by Robert & Richard Sherman who have written most of the music for the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise over the years. This musical number also appears in the Sing Along Songs series of Disney videos.

Anecdote

In 1964, when the Sherman Brothers were preparing to demonstrate the song for Walt Disney, Robert Sherman reminded his brother Richard that Disney was from the midwest and that he didn't pronounce the word, "hover" like Californians would. Instead he would pronounce it more like, "hoovering". This is how a midwesterner would say it. As Richard played the piano and sang, he repeatedly stumbled over the lyric, unable to get past the second line of the song. After a few tries Disney reportedly said, "Why don't you just tell us about it, Dick."

Literary sources

• Greene, Katherine; Richard Greene (2001). Inside the Dream: The Personal Story of Walt Disney. New York: Disney Editions. ISBN 0-7868-5350-6.
• Peterson, Monique (2002). The Little Big Book of Pooh. New York: Disney Editions. ISBN 0-7868-5364-6.
• Sherman, Robert B. (1998). Walt's Time: From Before to Beyond. Santa Clarita, Calif.: Camphor Tree. ISBN 0-9646059-3-7.