Ultimate Disney did a great article with Interview with John Musker and Ron Clements: The writing-directing duo behind The Princess and the Frog where they said some wonderful things about working with Jim Cummings. I’ve just pulled out the quotes specifically about Jim Cummings below but I do encourage you to read the whole article here. It is a great read!

Q: I had the pleasure of interviewing Ray’s animator Mike Surrey a few months back. He said Jim Cummings made his job easy. What made you choose him for Ray? 

John Musker: Jim Cummings was a riot to work with. We have worked with him in the past but what we didn’t know was that he had spent years in New Orleans where he worked alongside Cajuns whose speech patterns he picked up.

Q: Being a Louisiana native, it’s eerie and extremely entertaining how well you got the Cajun character down. Was there a lot of research involved in Raymond and the film as a whole?

John Musker: We wanted to do right by Louisiana and the culture there including the great Cajun populace. John Lasseter really wanted authenticity, so we took several trips down there. We met with a number of people including a man named Reggie who was our bayou tour guide. We noted his speech patterns, and picked up more phrases at jazz Fest. We also did research where we read stories written in a “Cajun” voice and found Cajun glossaries online. Best of all though, we cast Jim Cummings as our firefly. When he auditioned, he did a great Cajun accent and we learned he had a home there for several years and had worked with Cajuns in the Merchant marines. He was able to improvise in his Cajun speak, so he added a lot of flavor to our gumbo.

I wanted to give you a sneak peek at Jim Cummings’ two songs as Ray in the upcoming The Princess and The Frog.

I have been trying for a while to get my streaming audio player to work and I just can’t get it to cooperate so I am posting these on the honor system. These are meant for you to listen to as a preview so listen to them and enjoy but then, please, delete the file and support Jim Cummings’ career by purchasing the music yourself.

Gonna Take You There
performed by Jim Cummings featuring Terrance Simien on Accordion

Ma Belle Evangeline
performed by Jim Cummings featuring Terence Blanchard on Trumpet

If anyone knows of a good plugin or other tool for posting audio on Wordpress, please let me know. The search has been frustrating!

Here is a little trick or treat for Jim Cummings fans. The Halloween episode from the Disney Channel classic Dumbo’s Circus.

Look for Jim Cummings as Lionel the Lion (dressed like a skeleton for most of the episode).

Happy Halloween!

I’m sorry for getting “The Day the Spooky Circus Came to Town” stuck in your head.

There is a great, 15 minute interview with Jim Cummings available to listen to in full here.

Jim Cummings fans will love this new interview from ABC News.

There was another big feature on Jim Cummings this weekend in the Ventura County Star which is the same website that did the feature on JC when he was selling his house a while back.

Long time readers will recognize this video from the article about Jim Cummings selling his house a while back but since Ventura County Star repeated this video with their newest article I figured I would repeat it here in turn. If you didn’t get a chance to watch it the first time, it’s a great interview with Jim doing multiple voices.

“This year I’m going with either Vanessa or Amy,” Cummings said, summing up his competition. “I think folks go down the line and go: ‘Jim Cummings? I don’t really know who that is. Oh, Joan Rivers, Vanessa Williams, I love her; let’s vote for her.’ You can’t fight that. I understand why they do it.” [SOURCE]