Song of the Day 5/17: Samuel E. Wright, “Under the Sea”

A Florida man has set a new record for living underwater without depressurization — at this point, 78 days and counting. University professor Dr. Joseph Dituri intends to stay in Jules’ Undersea Lodge, which bills itself as the only underwater hotel in the United States (it’s at the bottom of a 30-foot lagoon off Key Largo) for 100 days to study the effect on his physiology. He said the only thing he misses about life on the surface is the sun.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he spends his days humming this infectious number from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” It won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1989 for lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken, and from what I understand it’s now ubiquitous at Disney properties.

Ashman had Sebastian the Crab, voiced by actor and singer Samuel E. Wright, lay out the case for abandoning the surface world. In Wright’s long career on Broadway and in Hollywood — jazz fans might remember him playing Dizzy Gillespie opposite Forest Whitaker’s Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood’s passion project “Bird” — Sebastian was the role that brought him the most fame. No thanks to Disney, though. When the Mouse House released the song as a single, it was credited to “Sebastian C.”

The calypso beat and Sebastian’s Trinidadian accent — Wright said he learned it when he roomed with two islanders at South Carolina State — call out for steel drums. They feature in the film arrangement, but Ravon “Steely” Rhoden puts them front and center.