Trees and Jamaica Daddy

This was the first of a short-lived series of UPA cartoon shorts featuring Ham and Hattie. Now those characters I just mentioned aren't a team, in fact, each appears in separate segments separated by the "and" in the above title. Hattie actually stars in the first one titled Trees. She's a little girl who plants seeds that grow into trees. An offscreen singer warbles about trees and how they grow and various other characters inhabiting them like a cat and a toy bird he chases. That segment lasts 3 minutes. The other 3 minutes forms the segment called Jamaica Daddy. Hamilton Ham stars in this one and he's one of the singers who tells the story of a man who raises a family of about 25 children. This one is done to a Calypso beat and is infectious to see and hear! That's the better of the two segments in this animated short. In fact, this one was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cartoon. So on that note, I highly recommend Trees and Jamaica Daddy.

This is a bit like buying a 7" single this, with one cartoon about "Hattie" on one side and then another from "Ham" on the other. She kicks us off with a cheery little ditty about how lovely and useful trees are whilst her clockwork bird manages to wind up a local cat and ensure the cat manages to annoy the gardener just as much. "Ham" keeps the tree theme going, in a more calypso style, as his little song is all about how to "perpechuate the fam-lee" one. Using a series of "Flintstone" style characters this rather crass second feature suggests that all a man need do in life is marry and have baby after baby after baby... The pair don't appear to be connected in any way and at best the first is an innocuous giggle whilst the second is vaguely irresponsible and frankly a bit crude.

This is actually two cartoons inside a framing device and the two cartoons are basically animated songs. In fact, in my opinion, the song for Jamaica Daddy is more memorable than most of the Best Song nominees for the 1957 Oscars! The cartoon is on one of the Columbia Classics Series although not listed on the box. The one in question also has Robin Hoodlum and The Tell-Tale Heart among others. The whole tape is excellent and Trees and Jamaica Daddy are delightful.

The first of the Ham and Hattie cartoons from UPA consists of two illustrated songs. "Trees" is a charming coffeehouse ode to trees, and "Jamaica Daddy" is a fun little Calypso number.

UPA had been an early proponent of breaking out of the 'candybox' style of character design and backgrounding, and as the rest of the industry followed them -- for financial reasons -- UPA nonetheless kept the lead; unlike the other cartoon factories, they liked what they were doing. Sometimes that makes all the difference in the results.