On top of which, this also marks the 50th anniversary of You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, which won an Emmy Award after its debut back on October 28, 1975. It was the 14th Peanuts special to feature a Guaraldi score.
The special's story, inspired by Schulz's son Craig's then-interest in motocross, finds Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty competing in a charity motocross race, trying to overcome the challenges of crashes, mud and the antics of a strangely familiar Masked Marvel.
By way of celebrating that double-anniversary Lee Mendelson Film Productions has announced that Guaraldi's complete soundtrack will be released on July 11, 2025.
The album features the 14 tracks that make up Guaraldi's full score, along with a bonus track of unused cues originally intended for the special's beginning (but were left behind when something else was inserted instead).
But — as the saying goes — that's not all, folks!
The album also includes four tracks of music that Guaraldi composed, and his trio performed, for Bicycles Are Beautiful, a now quite obscure 1974 non-Peanuts film — also produced by Lee Mendelson — that promoted bicycle riding and safety.
The performers on Good Sport are Guaraldi (piano, electric piano, clavinet, ARP String Ensemble, and Rhythm Ace Drum Machine), Seward McCain (bass) and Mark Rosengarden (drums and guiro). The Bicycles are Beautiful tracks feature Guaraldi (electric keyboard), McCain (bass) and Glenn Cronkhite (drums).
The album was produced by Sean and Jason Mendelson; mixed at WonderWorld Studio by Grammy and Emmy Award-winning mixing engineer Clark Germain, and restored and re-mastered by Vinson Hudson (who has mastered all the LMFP releases). All tracks have been mastered from the original session tapes.
The soundtrack will be available on CD, vinyl and digitally, and can be pre-ordered from Amazon and other sources now.
(The Zoetrope will be the only version of the vinyl; there will be no regular black version and no store exclusive color variants.)
The physical albums feature rare photographs; track-by-track analysis by album producer Sean Mendelson; notes from album producer Jason Mendelson; an essay giving historical context by my own self; and a short essay by Craig Schulz, who discusses the special's inspiration.
Additional information:
• The Lee Mendelson Film Productions webpage for the album
• Short preview samples for several tracks on Soundcloud
• The complete "Motocross" track on YouTube
The track list:
You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown
1. Motocross
2. Peppermint Patty
3. You’re a Good Sport, Charlie Brown (Centercourt)
4. Fanfare / Fanfare (Alternate Take) / Hospital Scene / Hospital Scene (Bonus)
5. Bass Blues
6. Linus and Lucy
7. Motocross (Reprise)
8. You’re a Good Sport, Charlie Brown (Unused Opening Cues)
9. The Great Pumpkin Waltz
10. Motocross (2nd Reprise)
11. Motocross (3rd Reprise)
12. Motocross (4th Reprise)
13. Motocross (5th Reprise Extended with Additional Piano)
14. Lunch Theme / Motocross (6th Reprise)
15. You’re a Good Sport, Charlie Brown (Reprise)
Bicycles are Beautiful
16. Bicycles are Beautiful (Reprise)
17. Bicycle Ballad (Medley)
18. Bicycle Bounce (and Reprise)
19. Bicycle Wizard (and Reprise)
I know, I know ... July is too far away, right?
Anticipation always makes the eventual purchase that much more exciting!
As for what might be next ... keep watching this blog!
3 comments:
Wow! That's a LOT of motors! :-)
But I'm really looking forward to this one, especially the Zoetrope vinyl. Glad that they're only doing 1 vinyl variant.
And this year isn't even halfway.........
Is it known how many documentaries and commercials Vince scored for Lee Mendelson?
Information is hard to come by unfortunately as not much is documented well online. I was able to find a few other names from an old post of yours (Bay of Gold, An Adventure with Spice Islands , Granny Goose Potato Chips, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company)
I do feel though that there’s probably more (the Mendelson brothers said previously they’ve found Guaraldi material they weren’t sure of what it was). Perhaps an updated post about all his non-Peanuts work for LMFP could bring more to light.
Well, this release will include some cues from 1974's "Bicycles Are Beautiful," so that's a start. You missed 1967's "67 West," which was done for Sunset Magazine, but otherwise — as far as is known, so far — that list is complete. "Bay of Gold" can be viewed online, and "67 West" (the film) exists in private hands; scores for those and the others are (we hope) waiting to be found.
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