'Round Springfield

"'Round Springfield" is the twenty-second episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on April 30, 1995.^[1] In the episode, Bart is hospitalized after eating a piece of jagged metal in his Krusty-O's cereal and sues Krusty the Clown. While visiting Bart, Lisa discovers her old mentor, jazz musician "Bleeding Gums" Murphy, is also in the hospital. When he dies suddenly, she resolves to honor his memory. Steve Allen (as himself) and Ron Taylor (as "Bleeding Gums" Murphy) guest star, each in his second appearance on the show. Dan Higgins also returns as the writer and performer of all of Lisa and Bleeding Gums' saxophone solos.

The episode was written by Joshua Sternin and Jennifer Ventimilia – based on a story idea by Al Jean and Mike Reiss – and was the first episode directed by Steven Dean Moore. Jean and Reiss, who were previously the series' showrunners, returned to produce this episode (as well as "A Star Is Burns") to ease the workload of the show's regular staff. They worked on it alongside the staff of The Critic, the series they had left The Simpsons to create. The episode marks the series' first time that a recurring character was killed off, something the staff had considered for a while. The episode features numerous cultural references, including Carole King's song "Jazzman", the actor James Earl Jones and the Kimba the White Lion/The Lion King controversy.

The episode also features the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", used by Groundskeeper Willie to describe the French. The phrase has since entered the public lexicon. It has been used and referenced by journalists and academics, and it appears in two Oxford quotation dictionaries.