Not too long ago, La-La Land Records announced it had only one title due out March 15. Now they've revealed what score they've unearthed - but it's something that's been reissued before.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) is one of the most madcap comedies ever released by Hollywood. Part road picture - groups of people working against each other to find a hidden stash of cash in California - and part Tinseltown epic (dozens of comedians and movie stars appear in the film, including Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Spencer Tracy, Carl Reiner, Don Knotts, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton, Ethel Merman, Peter Falk, The Three Stooges and many more), the film was a smash hit.

An inevitably rearranged and re-recorded LP (on the United Artists label) of Ernest Gold's soundtrack was prepared at the time of release. A CD reissue on Rykodisc in 1997 featured that original presentation intercut with dialogue from the film; a subsequent reissue on Kritzerland last year restored the LP sequence and added seven bonus cues, presented directly from the film's sound track (with accompanying sound effects).

La-La Land will finally release a complete score presentation - alongside the original LP, naturally - next week. But it wasn't easy getting it to sound great. A note from the set's producer, Ray Faiola, says it all:

As one of those die-hard fans of IAMMMMW (my 16mm IB/Scope print is one of my most prized possessions), it has long been a wish of mine to have a recording of the complete original soundtrack score. For some time it was believed that the dubbing stems survived, but this turned out not to be the case. So, we’ve taken an extreme step and used the limited range rear recording angles from the original six-track composite soundtrack. This presented us with both positive and negative aspects of the materials. The positive was that, for the most part, the tracks were music-only. Only one cue had a major sound effect that commandeered the tracks, necessitating a portion of re-modulating and replacing those few bars of music. The negative was that while many of the cues were overt and took primary occupation of the track space, many others were dubbed far beneath dialogue sequences. This resulted in several cues having a noise-to-signal ratio of nearly 70 per cent. In bringing the music level to acceptable volume, the radically increased noise had to be suppressed as best as possible. Thus, some cues are of significantly lesser fidelity than others. Also, the entire soundtrack had to be corrected for audio-dipping during dialogue portions that lasted from moments to many seconds. All-in-all, many hundreds of edits, adjustments, transitions, and, yes, even a few artistic choices had to be made. The rear channels were, in fact, a single “split” signal, similar to the early Re-Channeled-for-Stereo LP’s had been. Rather than have two channels each with partial information, they have been recombined into two pure mono channels. Since all the “program” music (Overture, entr’acte, exit music) as well as the chorals from the main, intermission and end titles are in full stereo, the mono score channels have been separated by a third of a frame to give expansion and create graceful segues into the stereo chorals and program tracks. It should be noted that the harmonica solo at the beginning of “Exit Smiler Grogan” did not appear on the surround channels and is irrevocably combined with dialogue. Nor did the Shirelles’ “31 Flavors” appear on the surrounds. Finally, none of the rear surround music from the so-called “restored” sequences were available and our soundtrack represents the general release print of the film. The resulting disc is certainly not an optimum recording of the soundtrack score. But, given that these are the materials that survived we have made our best effort create a complete symphonic presentation.

The producer later confirmed that while the score would be a mix of mono and stereo, the LP would of course be presented in stereo. A track list will follow next Tuesday, when the limited-edition set (2,000 copies) is ready to order.