A rather confused 'Boy'

Silly me: Until a few hours ago, I thought Fantasy's Max Weiss was solely responsible for the error-prone liner notes on Guaraldi's LPs, back in the day.

Turns out Columbia Records is equally guilty.

The Rod McKuen album

The past several hours of research and careful listening were prompted by a recent discussion in the Film Score Monthly message board, which undoubtedly resulted from the recent announcement of the CD re-issue (at long last!) of a Rod McKuen LP that is significant with respect to the Peanuts/Guaraldi oeuvre. The FSM thread's initial post is an honest attempt to distinguish between the Guaraldi combo's A Boy Named Charlie Brown album, with music drawn from the 1963 Lee Mendelson documentary that he never was able to sell to television; and the 1970 Columbia Records story-score LP, also titled A Boy Named Charlie Brown, and which served as the closest thing to an actual soundtrack for that 1969 film; and Rod McKuen's 1970 LP, also rather deceptively titled A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which appears to be a film score but actually is a collection of McKuen's music from the Peanuts film and three other movies he scored, Joanna, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Me, Natalie. It's worth noting, as well, that the McKuen album tracks are re-recordings and different performances, and not actual music from the film(s) in question.

Got all that?

Unfortunately, the initial FSM post and subsequent dialogue revealed misinformation regarding how many songs McKuen actually contributed to the 1969 Peanuts film, which piqued my curiosity ... and led to my discovery that the Columbia Records story-soundtrack LP is guilty of serious errors.

And, sadly, these mistakes have been repeated by no less an authority than the American Film Institute's Catalog of Feature Films 1961-1970, which has a blatantly wrong entry regarding A Boy Named Charlie Brown; this was duly cited by an FSM message board contributor who certainly had no reason to suspect an AFI publication.

All of which goes to show how pernicious bad data can become, once it migrates to the Internet.

This blog post, then, is an effort to set the record straight.

The film story/soundtrack album

First of all, the source of the problem: The Columbia LP is a condensed, storybook-style adaptation of the film, with excerpts of the dialogue heard above the score. For the most part, the LP employs the film's existing music cues, sometimes in the same places — sometimes not — and sometimes re-tracked behind newly recorded narrative "bridges" that describe primarily visual action. The LP also uses a few alternate takes not heard in the movie.

Each of the LP's two sides is a single long track. On the back of the LP sleeve, in the third column, an anonymous author attempted to divide each of these two tracks into distinct sections, by assigning sometimes arbitrary titles to each short "chapter." Each of these titles, in turn, is credited to one of five composers (or combined composers). And this is where the errors crept in, because McKuen is cited for all sorts of things that seem to be different songs ... but actually are reprises of the three songs he actually wrote for the film.

The misleading information, in part

To make matters even more confusing, these LP tracks employ the music in a way that has nothing to do with either the film's cue sheet, or a much more recent true score project which, alas, never saw the light of day (a lamentable situation I detailed in an earlier post).

I've therefore done what I obviously should have done years ago, and sussed out the actual contents of the Columbia LP, in terms of what you're hearing when, and who wrote it.

Starting with the latter, let's establish authorship.

As mentioned, McKuen contributed three songs: the title tune ("A Boy Named Charlie Brown"), "Failure Face" and "Champion Charlie Brown."

A fourth song, "I Before E," is by conductor/arranger John Scott Trotter (music) and Bill Melendez and Al Shean (lyrics).

Guaraldi used six of his own compositions throughout the film: "Charlie Brown's All-Stars," "Baseball Theme," "Blue Charlie Brown," "Linus and Lucy," "Skating" and "Lucifer's Lady."

Trotter delivered four of his own original compositions: "Cloud Dreams," "Catatonic Blues," "Bus Wheel Blues" and "Blue Puck." He also orchestrated "broader" instrumental versions of the songs by McKuen and Guaraldi.

Finally, one track must be credited to a certain Ludwig Van Beethoven.

The following lists give the LP's "chapter titles" first, followed by the actual compositions employed — which, in some cases, match the chapter titles — and who performs them.

So, let's begin with...

SIDE ONE:

0:00  "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" — vocal, sung by McKuen
2:45  "Cloud Dreams" — performed by the orchestra
3:49  "Charlie Brown and His All-Stars" — actually "Charlie Brown's All-Stars," performed first by Guaraldi's combo, which then is joined by the orchestra
6:30  "We Lost Again" — actually "Baseball Theme," performed first by Guaraldi's combo, and then orchestrated; at 8:00, this segues to an orchestral instrumental version of "A Boy Named Charlie Brown"
9:31  "Blue Charlie Brown" — performed by Guaraldi's combo
13:27  "Time to Go to School" — actually "Linus and Lucy," performed by Guaraldi's combo
14:17  "I Only Dread One Day at a Time" — actually an orchestral version of "Charlie Brown's All-Stars"
15:27  "Failure Face" — vocal, sung by the Peanuts gang
16:12  "By Golly, I'll Show 'Em" — actually "Catatonic Blues," by the orchestra
19:20  "Class Champion" — actually an orchestral instrumental version of "Champion Charlie Brown"
19:42  "I Before E" — vocal, sung by Charlie Brown and Linus
24:36  "School Spelling Bee" — a brief orchestral instrumental reprise, with mouth harp, of "I Before E"
25:14  "Champion Charlie Brown" — vocal, sung by the Peanuts gang

SIDE TWO

0:00  "Start Boning Up on Your Spelling, Charlie Brown" — dialogue only; no music
1:45  "You'll Either Be a Hero ... or a Goat" — actually an orchestral instrumental version of "Champion Charlie Brown"
2:50  "Bus Station" — also a piano/orchestral instrumental version of "Champion Charlie Brown"
4:27  "Bus Wheel Blues" — orchestral version
5:42  "Do Piano Players Make a Lot of Money?" — actually a snatch of the third movement of Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata in C minor, Op. 13
6:18  "I've Got to Get My Blanket Back" — actually a minor-key orchestral version of "Linus and Lucy," which segues (at 7:28) to an orchestral instrumental version of "A Boy Named Charlie Brown," and then segues back (at 9:02) to a slow combo version of "Linus and Lucy"
10:44  "Big City" — actually a slow combo version of "Linus and Lucy"
11:48  "Snoopy on Ice" — actually a combo version of "Skating," which segues (at 13:24) to an orchestral presentation of "Blue Puck"
15:54  "Found Blanket" — actually a combo and orchestral version of "Linus and Lucy"
16:28  "National Spelling Bee" — actually an orchestral instrumental version of "Champion Charlie Brown"
17:03  "B-E-A-G-E-L" — dialogue only, no music, until it segues (at 21:01) to a string-heavy orchestral instrumental version of "A Boy Named Charlie Brown"
21:52  "Bus Wheel Blues" — orchestral reprise, with mouth harp
22:26  "Homecoming" — actually an orchestral instrumental version of "Champion Charlie Brown"
24:17  "I'm Never Going to School Again" — actually an orchestral instrumental version of "A Boy Named Charlie Brown"
24:49  "Welcome Home, Charlie Brown" — a combo rendition of "Lucifer's Lady"
25:45  "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" — vocal, sung by McKuen

And there you have it. If anybody ever untangles the legal rights and re-masters this LP for CD release, let's hope they get it right...

MAY 2016 UPDATE: Although no progress has been made with respect to such a CD, I'm happy to report that gentle nudging has resulted in the AFI database information being corrected, which can be verified via the AFI's online Catalog of Feature Films. We can't do anything about the incorrect information in the print edition cited above, but maybe this more accurate online entry will overtake the existing errors that have been migrating via the Web.

The soundtrack that almost was...

In Chapter 13 of my book, I briefly discuss the Columbia soundtrack album produced to accompany the 1969 big-screen film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, 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 speak from experience, having been involved; I was hired to write a lengthy essay and track-by-track liner notes for the large booklet that would have been included. It was a wonderful assignment — at least, at the point we all thought the project would be brought to a successful conclusion — because I got to interview Rod McKuen, Lee Mendelson and several of the musicians who worked at Guaraldi's side. I wrote and submitted the essay and liner notes; then I sat back and waited. 

And waited. And waited.

Years passed. I got occasional updates, but the trend began to look grim. Cinema Center Films had ceased to exist as a production entity, and Columbia Records had been swallowed up by Sony. Ultimately, my associates had to surrender; they simply couldn't secure all the rights and permissions needed to make all the disparate musical entities and performers happy (or, to be more accurate, needed to reassure everybody that nobody else might be lurking in the woodpile, waiting to pounce with a lawsuit).

I never got paid for my work, which obviously was a major bummer ... but never unexpected, in the freelance writing business. Besides which, I felt much worse for those who would have written me a check; they had put far more effort into the project than I had.

[Update: The score finally was released by Kritzerland in March 2017. See this post for details.]

Happily, a good portion of my research and work didn't go to waste; major chunks of that essay were re-purposed and wound up in my book about Guaraldi. Not quite everything, though, which brings me to the point of this blog entry.

When it became obvious that Vince Guaraldi at the Piano was running long — eventually, a full 50,000 words longer than my original contract with McFarland had specified (and bless my editor for allowing that extra length!) — I went looking for things to trim. Bits and pieces flew by the wayside, although everything got saved; some of the specific LP information wound up in my online Vince Guaraldi discography, while other snippets landed in the Vince Guaraldi timeline. But I didn't really have a home for the deleted stray data from the A Boy Named Charlie Brown CD project.

Not wanting it to be wasted, I've decided to resurrect it here.