Pure Imagination

Like, I literally, I'll never forget this.

I was sitting at a local show and a guard did Pure Imagination.

And I remember the judge saying, now you have to be careful when you use this music.

A lot of people use this music.

Thank you.

Come with me and you'll be In a world of pure imagination Take a look and you'll see Into your imagination We'll begin with a spin Traveling in the world of my creation, what you'll see will define explanation.

And if you want to view paradise, simply look around and view.

Anything you want to do and want to change the world, there's nothing to it.

Dawn Weber.

That's music from a 2017 CD called Dawn Weber and Friends Jazz Album.

Pure Imagination is the name of the song.

Dawn Weber on trumpet and vocals.

What's not to love here? And of course,

Pure Imagination.

your imagination is

amazing.

And I'm like, OK. Yeah,

but no one has imagination anymore.

No one has pure imagination anymore.

Well, Grandpa Joe certainly didn't.

Oh yeah, this has got

the Candyman, Cheer Up Charlie, Lucky Charlie, I Got a Golden Ticket, Pure Imagination, Oompa Loompa, The Wondrous Boat Ride, Everlasting Gobstoppers, The Bubble Machine, I Want It Now, The Wonka Mobile, and The Wonka Vader.

I mean, this, partially because this is such a childhood memory movie for me.

I mean, looking back at it now, I'm like, I should have been scared to death of that movie as a small kid.

And while you might not know his name, you know the songs he wrote.

Feeling Good, Goldfinger, Who Can I Turn To, What Kind of Fool Am I, Once in a Lifetime, I've Got a Golden Ticket, Pure Imagination, The Candyman, and the list goes on and on.

Newly's ego was cultivated at an early age like a defense mechanism due to a tumultuous upbringing in East London during the 1930s.

He never knew his father, and his single mother made Layla Rogers look like an absent mother.

song from Willy Wonka?

I do Pure Imagination, yeah.

And then I also do I Can Go the Distance from Hercules.

That's

But what if you were up there singing one of your core ones, like New York, New York, and people started singing along? Would that bother you?

No, New York, New York, again, is one that I encourage people to sing along with and to get up and dance with.

If I'm singing pure imagination, as long as you're not singing louder than I am and close enough to me that I can't hear my own self sing, sing your heart out.

What about you?

[laughs]

It's like, uh, that Willy Wonka song, Pure Imagination, except-

Yeah

... it's Pure Communication.

I spoke to Peter Ostrum, better known as Charlie Bucket; Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt; Paris Themmen, AKA Mike Teavee; and Rusty Goffe, an iconic Oompa-Loompa, to preview the event and reflect on working with Gene Wilder.

Stay tuned until the end as we join together to sing Pure Imagination.

Hey, we, this is a very special episode of Beyond the Fame.

Uh, I'm Jason Fraley, and today we're being joined by the original 1971 cast of the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which is celebrating its 55th anniversary this year.

Yeah.

All the Oompa-Loompa songs, great stuff.

Uh, but the one that I wanna leave with is Pure Imagination.

We walk in there.

Kinda, yeah, actually.

Whoa, we're going into Pure Imagination.

You two have a lot of issues going on.

A lot.