Electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey, who wrote famous Disney parade jingle, dies

Jean-Jacques Perrey, the French composer and pioneer of electronic pop music who was best known for co-writing Baroque Hoedown used as the music for the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disney theme parks, has died at age 87.

Perrey died in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Friday “from a very quick and violent lung cancer,” his daughter, Patricia Leroy, said.

Electronic music composer Dana Countryman, in a tribute to his frequent collaborator posted on Facebook, noted that Perrey began recording electronic music in 1952, long before the Moog synthesiser was first offered for sale in 1967, calling him “truly the pioneer of popular electronic music.”

“His crazy, happy music has been heard everywhere, from commercials to Sesame Street — in hip-hop songs, in dance remixes and most famously, for decades in the delightful featured music in Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade. In recent years, his music has even made appearances on The Simpsons and on Comedy Central’s South Park,” Countryman wrote.

Watch: Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade

In the mid-1960s, Perrey teamed with the American composer Gershon Kingsley to record two groundbreaking electronic pop music albums, The In Sound From the Way Out and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Electronic Pop Music From Way Out! The latter included Baroque Hoedown which became known to millions of people worldwide when it was used as the music for the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland and other Disney theme parks.