You're finally a film score, Charlie Brown!

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!