71 years ago, a little cricket named Jiminy reassured children everywhere that "when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true" in Walt Disney's film Pinocchio. Well, the dreams of many film score collectors and Disney enthusiasts are indeed coming true thanks to tonight's announcement by Intrada Records. The California label, a 25-year veteran in the soundtrack business, put to rest weeks of rumors and tonight confirmed a new partnership with The Walt Disney Company. The inaugural title in the Walt Disney Records/Intrada co-branded series is the commercial CD premiere of Michael Giacchino's Academy Award-winning score to 2009's Up. It's available for pre-order now and will begin shipping tomorrow. Up is joined by a release from the vault of Disney-owned Touchstone Pictures, John Scott's 1988 score to Shoot to Kill, under the Intrada Special Collection banner.
Intrada's initial statement promises that the release is the "start of [a] new series of long-awaited soundtrack treasures from Disney vaults, presented from original session elements lovingly restored, all spotlighting premiere CD releases from animation and live action classics appearing throughout [the] esteemed studio's history!" Walt Disney Records' Randy Thornton elaborated: "Walt Disney Records will be producing and manufacturing this new line exclusively for Intrada - hence the dual logos." Disney's legacy is intertwined even more closely with music than most realize; the very first commercially-issued soundtrack album in history was Victor's 1938 release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a set of three 78s, two songs per disc!
Despite a rich catalogue of titles from both Disneyland and Buena Vista Records, the modern Walt Disney Records family of labels has never been a major player on the reissue front. We here at The Second Disc have been vocal in encouraging the Mouse to take advantage of its vast library. That said, what has escaped from the Disney vault, however, has been choice: mainly archival projects like Walt Disney and the 1964 World's Fair (2009), The Sherman Brothers Songbook (2009) and A Musical History of Disneyland (2005). A line of soundtrack expansions in the 1990s and early 2000s spearheaded by Randy Thornton was devoted to many of the classic animated films, but the series stalled. Kiosks at the Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resorts offered many classic LPs as burn-on-demand CDs, but the system wasn't profitable, and many of the titles slated for theme park release were relegated to iTunes. Perhaps most distressingly to longtime fans, the soundtracks to Disney and Pixar's Up and Toy Story 3 didn't receive CD releases despite the high profile names of Michael Giacchino and Randy Newman, respectively. The teaming with Intrada seems a promising sign that the entertainment giant is serious about making available the assets it has so painstakingly preserved over the years. I know I got a thrill seeing the classic, long-retired Disneyland Records logo in the top right corner of the Up cover! Chances are many of you will, too.
Hit the jump for details on this exciting launch, including track listings and order links!
One of the most striking sequences in Up is the bold opening montage, capturing the essence of a married couple's entire relationship in a wordless four minutes. The sequence doesn't pull any punches, sensitively depicting very adult topics like miscarriage, failing health, death and grief in flashback form. The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan accurately described it as "a small gem that will stay with you for a lifetime," and part of the reason is the beautiful musical accompaniment of Michael Giacchino. His score is rousing, heartfelt, nostalgic, charming, suspenseful and affecting, all of the qualities that distinguish the film itself. For both of you who haven't seen the film, Up tells the story of the 78-year old Carl, who wards off urban developers by strapping balloons to his house and literally taking flight, and his unlikely friendship with a young boy named Russell. The Intrada/Walt Disney Records edition duplicates the track listing of the iTunes digital download, totaling 26 tracks and over 53 minutes. (A longer "Cast and Crew" CD promo was released privately containing 70 minutes of music.) The CD has been mastered from the original digital scoring elements under the supervision of composer Giacchino (who will supply liner notes) and Disney's own engineers. This initial release is capped at 10,000 copies.
Long before she hit the ballroom on Dancing with the Stars for Disney's ABC television network, Kirstie Alley starred opposite Sidney Poitier and Tom Berenger in director Roger Spottiswoode's 1988 thriller Shoot to Kill. Poitier's FBI Agent Stanton is on a hunt for a brutal murderer portrayed by Clancy Brown, who joins a group of sportsmen on a fishing trip in the forests of Washington. Brown's Steve plans to kill them and compel their guide (Alley) to lead him through the woods to the Canadian border. For the gripping, taut adventure score, Spottiswoode called on John Scott, a British musician and composer who played with The Beatles, Tom Jones and The Hollies as well as film score legends Henry Mancini and John Barry. Intrada's release contains the complete score, including alternate takes and source music cues, all taken from the original 32-track scoring session elements housed in the Walt Disney Studios vault. They have been newly mixed and mastered. Jeff Bond writes the liner notes for this 2,000-copy limited edition which is not in the Intrada/Disney co-branded line but rather part of the Intrada Special Collection. (Thornton confirmed that "Intrada will continue on as they have with their previous efforts - licensing and producing their own releases like Something Wicked This Way Comes, and their recent Shoot to Kill.")
Intrada's Roger Feigelson has revealed that another five titles are in the works, with the next one tentatively scheduled for early August release. He also stated that "there may not appear to be rhyme or reason" as to which titles are part of the co-branded line and which are standard Intrada label releases, but it's clear that the Disney vaults are open, at last, both for titles with classic out-of-print soundtracks and those films and television programs that have never had their scores released. What Disney titles would you like to see get the Intrada treatment? We're all ears, pun intended. Drop us a line below, and watch this space for some very exciting Disney features brewing at The Second Disc. See ya real soon!
Michael Giacchino, Up: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Disney/Intrada D001372702, 2011)
- Up with Titles
- We're in the Club Now
- Married Life
- Carl Goes Up
- 52 Chachki Pickup
- Paradise Found
- Walkin' the House
- Three Dog Dash
- Kevin Break'n
- Canine Conundrum
- The Nickel Tour
- The Explorer Motel
- Escape from Muntz Mountain
- Giving Muntz the Bird
- Stuff We Did
- Memories Can Weigh You Down
- The Small Mailman Returns
- He's Got the Bird
- Seizing the Spirit of Adventure
- It's Just a House
- The Ellie Badge
- Up with End Credits
- The Spirit of Adventure
- Carl's Maiden Voyage (Sound Effects)
- Muntz's Dark Reverie (Sound Effects)
- Meet Kevin in the Jungle (Sound Effects)
All tracks previously unreleased on commercial CD.
John Scott, Shoot to Kill: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Intrada Special Collection 173, 2011)
- Main Title
- Kill My Wife Next
- Boat Chase
- The Road Block
- Bishop's Falls
- Happy Campers
- Blazing Saddle
- I Hate the Woods
- Behold the Gorge
- It's A Long Way Down No. 1
- It's A Long Way Down No. 2 (Parts 1 & 2)
- Climbing Trek
- Not A Bear
- And the Killer Is
- Who's Jonathan
- The Bodies
- Say Your Name
- The Chimney
- The Storm (Part 1)
- The Storm (Part 2)
- Mr. Bear
- Sara's Best Shot
- Bingo
- Torching a Fence
- Let Her Go or Die
- End Titles
- Kill My Wife Next (Original Version)
- Bishop's Falls (Original Version)
- It's A Long Way Down No. 2 (Part 2) (Revised Version)
- Climbing Trek (Original Version)
- Roller Rink Source No. 1
- Roller Rink Source No. 2
All tracks previously unreleased on CD.
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I'm hoping that the restoration of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that has only appeared on iTunes will get a disc based release under this program.
I second that, Robert! I'd wager that Paul Smith's "20,000 Leagues" is a serious contender, much like John Barry's "The Black Hole." All of the possibilities really do boggle the mind!
Great news, Joe! I've got my fingers crossed for former iTunes exclusives "20,000 Leagues," "The Black Hole," "Babes in Toyland," and finally, "Slue Foot Sue's Golden Horseshoe Review," the soundtrack to the classic Disneyland stage show, which would be especially timely considering that its two leads just passed away a few weeks ago, a mere two days apart.
An expanded edition of the "Pete's Dragon" soundtrack with the actual movie versions of the songs would be awesome. Several songs in the movie are significantly different than the versions on the soundtrack album/CD. ("I Saw a Dragon" and "There's Room for Everyone" are two that come to mind.)
I would also love to see a nice multi-disc collection of music from the original "Mickey Mouse Club."
Brian and Scott, those are all sensational choices! And Brian, you may be in luck with some of the titles you mention, as Randy Thornton specifically said that the line will bring to physical CD some of the prior digital-only releases! Here's hoping...
An expanded Pete's Dragon would be great!
I'd especially love it if it had the four bonus tracks from the "Pete's Dragon" promotional EP, which contained Helen Reddy's Capitol studio versions of four of the soundtrack songs -- Candle on the Water, Brazzle Dazzle Day, It's Not Easy, and There's Room for Everyone. The audio for these were included on the Pete's Dragon High-Flying Edition DVD, but they've never been released on CD.
The Australian company Raven Records wanted to licence them as bonus tracks for a CD reissue of a Helen Reddy album from the same time period, but were unable to do so as, for some reason, they are owned by Disney, not Capitol Records.
I love Giacchino, but surely he knows at least one Jew at Pixar who could've told him the right way to spell "tchotchke."
A nice, full-scale remaster/reissue of Elmer Bernstein's score for The Black Cauldron would be nifty--the existing CD fetches $500 on Amazon.
And I, for one, would happily pay for big collector's editions of the scores from the late-80s/90s musical films--Little Mermaid, etc--with demos, foreign vocals, and full score tracks, preferably in film order. The Menken/Ashman demos were released as part of the now OOP box set The Music Behind the Magic, but I wouldn't complain about having demos and rare tracks from the later films as well. (I speak, for example of the additional pop covers released only on the European version of the Hercules soundtrack (e.g. Boyzone's recording of the cut "Shooting Star"), the unused songs that Stephen Schwartz wrote for Mulan, and clean versions of Menken's demos for Hunchback.)
Well, I'm certainly sold, Seth! I'd salivate at the prospect of any of those titles you mention, and with all of that material, natch. And while Giacchino selected the truncated album version of his UP score to appear on the new disc, one hopes that future scores receive the complete treatment with all of those supplemental goodies!
I'd also be very, very surprised if The Black Cauldron doesn't appear soon, along with John Barry's The Black Hole...fingers crossed. Those two are very definite biggies!
Another pipe dream to throw in there would be a reissue and expansion of the underappreciated album of songs from the early-90s syndicated cartoon block known as the Disney Afternoon. The album was released in 1990 or thereabouts and included themes and additional songs from the original four shows that made up the block: Gummi Bears, Chip'n'Dale: Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, and DuckTales, but later additions such as Darkwing Duck, Bonkers!, Goof Troop, and (the all-time masterwork) Gargoyles never received CD releases of their music (there's a short promo CD of some of Carl Johnson's score for Gargoyles, but that's it).
Another wonderful idea. I remember buying that Disney Afternoon compilation on cassette when it first was released; I upgraded to a CD(-R) much later at the Walt Disney World CD-on-demand kiosks that sadly no longer exist. (I will now have the DuckTales theme in my head for the rest of the evening and probably the week, thank you verrrry much!) An expanded edition would be a perfect nostalgia trip. And I'm confident Gargoyles would be a big seller thanks to the genre market that gobbles up so many limited-edition soundtrack titles -- great suggestion!
I know, Joe, I am CRUSHED that they got rid of the CD-on-demand kiosks. Those things were burned from full 1411kb wav files too, not from MP3s like with the popular Mix-and-Burn kiosks that they have at FYE. (I know this because I did spectral analysis on them with Cool Edit Pro. Lossy compression is very obvious when looked at with Spectral View... which is why I won't purchase the lossy files on iTunes or Amazon.)
I really regret not buying "Babes in Toyland" and "Slue Foot Sue's Golden Horseshoe Review" while I had the chance, but I did get some of the great non-soundtrack "soundtracks," like the Darlene Gillespie-sung "Alice in Wonderland" and the re-recorded version of "Lady and the Tramp." (For a time, Disney did not own the rights to some of its soundtracks, so they did their own re-recorded versions of several of them in the late '50s.)
Reminds me of another iTunes exclusive Disney soundtrack I hope Intrada will release -- "That Darn Cat."
Those "studio cast" soundtrack recreations would be terrific candidates for reissue. And how about a That Darn Cat with Bobby Darin's original vocals on the title track? Hope springs eternal...
Another vote for those "studio cast" albums, many were done by the best voice doubles that worked in Hollywood-Marni Nixon & Bill Lee to name two. Those of us with cheapskate parents had those albums, not the official soundtracks. Also Louis Armstrong & Louis Prima did Disney albums. Bring them on!
Oh, hell yes, Eric! I was be all over that Marni Nixon-Bill Lee "Mary Poppins" studio cast album! I would love to see the studio cast albums as part of the Intrada-Disney series.
A very good friend of mine got me a copy of that Marni Nixon/Bill Lee "Mary Poppins" album on vinyl not too long ago. I'd not even known it existed! (And you have to love the irony of Julie Andrews' beautiful voice being supplemented by the also-great Marni Nixon, who sang for Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady" - and of course, Hepburn won the Eliza Doolittle role over Andrews, the originator of the role on Broadway but as-yet-untested on film...but Andrews won the Oscar over Audrey for "Mary Poppins"!)
Friends, I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that this is one of the most exciting catalogue announcements since The Second Disc set up shop. And make sure to keep your eyes peeled, because we've got some neat features inspired by the new deal coming your way very soon!
And of course, Marni played Sister Sophia in the film of "The Sound of Music," wondering "(How Do You Solve A Problem Like) Maria?" about...Julie Andrews!
For anyone interested in Nixon's remarkable career, her autobiography "I Could Have Sung All Night" - co-written with the talented songwriter Stephen Cole - is a must-read. Let's all send good thoughts her way; she lost her son (with first husband Ernest Gold), Andrew Gold, just weeks ago. Talent certainly ran in the family.
Louis Armstrong's Disney Songs The Satchmo Way made it to cd. I picked up a used copy a couple of years ago and for under $10.
Louis Prima and Gia Maione's "Let's Fly With Mary Poppins" has also been released on CD, back in 1998. It's not too hard to find a copy of this swingin' classic used, and it's well worth it!
Richard Sherman himself performed a fun version of "I Love to Laugh" on that studio "Poppins" - bring it on! I know that the original soundtrack to "Mary" has been wonderfully expanded by Walt Disney Records numerous times in the past, but the Nixon/Lee album would make a great, great supplement when the inevitable 50th anniversary edition rolls around in 2014! 😉
Here's hoping that there will be a re-release of The Rocketeer soundtrack - hopefully in expanded form. I suspect that The Black Hole might also get a release. That would be welcome as I'd like to retire my "unofficial" copy as it's not the best in the world.
(I wouldn't mind if Disney also released the film on Blu-Ray in the appropriate aspect - one can dream...)
Adding another one to the wish list, although I think I added it back when the "Mary Poppins" CD was covered... oh well! 🙂
I keep hoping for a CD release of some of the foreign language stuff, but most especially "Mary Poppins en Francais" (Buena Vista STER-3335, late 60's?) I found a still-sealed copy online some years ago and burned myself a CD... but it ain't the same.
wondering if they will release toystory 3 soundtrack intrada?
Restored cd releases of the wonderful Paul J. Smith scores from Disney's True Life Adventures (Living Desert, Vanishing Prairie, erc) would be a real treasure! The soundtracks were released many years ago on Buena Vista and Disneyland Records lp's, (originally on RCA Victor records). Hearing this music again in digitally remastered sound would be a delight! Any plans, Randy?
Marc in Glendale 5/19/12