Dave Paulson

dnpaulson@tennessean.com

Kenny Loggins was a 17-year-old high-school senior, staring down his impending adulthood, when he wrote "House at Pooh Corner." The song was inspired by A.A. Milne's 1928 book "The House at Pooh Corner," a collection of short stories about Winnie the Pooh and the rest of the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood.

But by 1970 — when the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band wanted to record the song — Pooh had been turned into a Disney character, and the company's lawyers tried to stop the song from being released. That's where fate stepped in.

The song was also included on Loggins and Messina's 1971 album "Sittin' In." Loggins told the story of "Pooh Corner" to Bart Herbison, executive director of Nashville Songwriters Association International.

Bart Herbison: I find this incredible that you had, first of all, that level of craftsmanship as a senior in high school.

Kenny Loggins: Well, I didn't consider it craftsmanship.

You write it when you're 17 years old? Take me back to that idea and the writing of the song.

Well, (I was) going on graduation in high school, and for some reason, I was thinking about that last chapter in "The House at Pooh Corner." It was the first book I ever read. The last chapter is where Christopher Robin is leaving the Hundred Acre Wood, and he's telling everybody goodbye. I felt like that was akin to what I was going through in high school. Some part of me knew that I was leaving my childhood behind. I didn't really think it through like that. It just sort of came through.

I think there's an incredible story behind how the song got recorded, and copyright issues.

... I wrote this song about Winnie the Pooh, but I was 17, and I didn't really have any awareness that I wasn't allowed to write a song about Winnie the Pooh, and that there were people who owned that copyright. In those days, as a songwriter, you'd go around to different parties, much like what's happening here in Nashville where you have writers in the round. Different songwriters would show up at parties, and we'd all take turns showing whatever we'd written that week. The parties kept me writing, so that I'd have something new to play at the next party. At this one party that I went to, there were a couple of guys from a band called the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. They were an up-and-coming act, and they loved that song. They said, "We're looking for songs for our album. We want to record that."

I was really excited, and I'd never had a song recorded. About a month later, I got a phone call from John McEuen, who at the time seemed to be the leader of the Dirt Band. He says, "Kenny, I'm really sorry, but we won't be able to record that song. We've been inundated with phone calls from Disney lawyers for the last few weeks, telling us that we're not allowed to record a song about Winnie the Pooh."

I was going on a date that night, and I mentioned to my girlfriend, "I'm kinda bummed tonight because I thought I had my first song recorded, and it's not gonna happen. The Disney lawyers put the kibosh on it." She looked at me and says, "Disney lawyers? Let me to talk to Daddy about that." I did not know that I was dating the daughter of the CEO of the Disney corporation.

And then you came back to that song.

Twenty-something years later, (I was) about to have my fourth child, and my first thought was, "Oh my God, I'm going back into the land of Barney (the Dinosaur) again. This is going to be like, ugh, somebody shoot me." I had been there three times before. But then I thought, "Why doesn't somebody make an album for kids that parents could love as much as the kids?" Because when kids get into music, they'll play it a thousand times.

I started, and the first thing that struck me was, "Write a new verse to 'House at Pooh Corner,' " because I wrote that as a kid, and now I have a completely different perspective on it as a dad. So I wrote a third verse, and my oldest boy named it "Return to Pooh Corner." And then he went on to be a songwriter, too.