If you’ve glanced at the album cover
alongside these words, you already know the happy news.
And yes: It’s amazing.
The specialty soundtrack label Kritzerland,
known for its prestige handling of expanded, long unavailable and/or previously
unreleased scores, has produced a full-score album of the Academy
Award-nominated music from the 1969 film A
Boy Named Charlie Brown.
And it features lots of previously unavailable Guaraldi tracks, along with all the
clever Rod McKuen songs, and John Scott Trotter’s supplemental orchestral cues,
as heard in the film, and in gloriously clear stereo sound. But wait, there’s
more: The disc also includes a bunch of nifty bonus tracks!
(It should be noted — for archivists who pay
attention to such things — that this now is the third album with this title,
and is distinct from Guaraldi’s 1964 Fantasy album, and Rod McKuen’s 1970
Stanyan Records album.)
Additional information about this new
release can be found at Kritzerland’s web site. (No,
it won’t be available via Amazon, nor will it ever pop up in a brick-and-mortar
store.) Bear in mind, as well, that this is a limited-issue release of 1,000
copies. Some previous releases have sold out in a matter of weeks or even days,
so don’t delay. [Update on March 24, 2017: It sold out in a week!]
Honestly, I never thought this moment would
come.
In Chapter 13 of my book, I briefly discuss
the Columbia soundtrack LP produced to accompany the film upon release —
actually a “storybook” album that clutters all of its music with dialogue — and
I conclude with this paragraph:
Unfortunately, the soundtrack album went out
of print rather quickly and never was re-issued on CD. To this day, it remains
one of the great Holy Grails for Guaraldi fans. In the early 21st century, an
ambitious attempt was made to produce a music-only CD of the soundtrack, which
would have allowed some of Guaraldi’s best work to shine, notably with extended
versions of “Skating” and “Blue Charlie Brown.” But the rights issues had grown
labyrinthine with the passage of so many decades. Despite a heroic four-year
struggle, the project was abandoned.
That final
sentence understates the agonized frustration of those who tried so hard to get
that CD released. I watched from the sidelines.
Years passed. Occasional updates arrived,
but the prognosis began to look grim. Cinema Center Films had ceased to exist
as a production entity decades earlier, and Columbia Records had been swallowed
up by Sony. Numerous other entities also were involved.
Ultimately, it appeared that everybody on
our team had surrendered.
More time passed.
And then, suddenly, a flow of fresh
correspondence erupted toward the end of last year. Contrary to what I had
assumed, a few key people hadn’t
given up (and boy, more power to them, for patience and perseverance). Messages
flew back and forth during the past few months, and you can see the happy
result above.
I wrote fresh liner notes for the
Kritzerland release; that essay is supplemented by a track-by-track discussion
that you can find here. It was a lot of writing and editing in a very short
period of time, because — after so many years of inactivity — everything now
happened quickly. Not that I minded, because ...
... the long wait is over!