For Mary Poppins and disney music fans!
Infos posted by HOPEMAX at
www.magicmusic.net"Hi, I normally just lurk, but I did attend the NFFC convention. I'm not sure there is as much info about the DISNEYLAND set as you would like. Randy Thornton spent a lot of time talking and playing snippets from Mary Poppins. Here are what I have from my notes, I hope I haven't messed anything up too badly. I wrote this for another Disney board, so some of the stuff I explain for them.
First, Randy started talking about the Wonderland Music Project. If you visit the 20th century music shop, at Disneyland you will find some kiosks where you can order music. Randy's goal is to get everything that was ever released on vinyl on those kiosks so you can get them on CD. The covers on the CD's will look like the original album covers, the labels on the CD will look like the labels on the original albums, the original product numbers, etc.
Eventually, these kiosks will also be made available at WDW and hopefully the World of Disney stores. The plan is to add approximately 5 titles per quarter, the kiosks opened with 50 titles. The next two quarters will be light on park stuff because they focused on the Storytelling Albums, since they are are easier to produce, so Randy could focus on...
The Mary Poppins 40th Anniversary 2-Disc set.
They've been trying to get this project off the ground for 15 years. And one day at work, when Randy was working in the tape room he came across a reel called "Mary Poppins pre-demo." Mary Poppins, was Randy's high school band teacher's favorite movie, and he was the one who taught Randy how to edit and clean up tapes. And if he could get a great MP soundtrack made, that would be kinda a way to say, "Thanks." So when his bosses came by and asked what they should do, Randy said Mary Poppins. The boss wasn't too sure, they had done a soundtrack before, hadn't done too well, (Randy said, of course not it was a bad vinyl pressing and the cover art made Julie Andrews look like a dancing girl) they would need to do something to make it special to get it approved by management. Randy pulled out the pre-demo and said, "Does anyone know that this is here?" No one did, including the Sherman Brothers. So that became the impetus for the new project.
So they still had this stuff to work with. And then one day, Randy was with Dick Sherman and Dick brought out 6 reels, 7 hours of tapes of the early story meetings with Walt, P.L. Travers, Dick & Bob Sherman and a few other top people.
On the second CD will have 41 minutes of these meetings. All the songs that didn't make the film, like the compass sequence. There is a 12 minute interview with Dick Van Dyke, Julie Andrews, Sherman Bros and Irwin Kostal (arranger and conductor) done by the Hollywood Spotlight Microphone, the radio spots, the Sherman Brothers interview that did make it on the restored soundtrack, snippets from the orchestra sessions. The first CD will have 26 new minutes of score added to the soundtrack. The soundtrack now comes in at a total of 79 min 48 sec which gives them 12 sec to spare on the CD. Definetely a jam-packed album.
A few tidbits: Cherry Tree Lane is based on Mrs. Travers house, 90% of the whistling in the movie was done by Julie Andrews, Dick Sherman played the Kazuu in the Jolly Holiday sequence and Irwin Kostal did the softshoe sounds for the penguins.
Randy spent so much time playing tidbits from the album and chatting about Mary Poppins, that he ran quickly through the rest of his stuff.
Walt Disney Records will be celebrating its 50th anniversary next year. It started because it occured to Roy O. Disney that they didn't need to have to work with some other label, "they should just do this ourselves." They are writing a book on the history of Disneyland / Walt Disney Records. And next April an retrospective exhibit of the history of Walt Disney records will be opening at Paul Allen's Experience Music Project in Seattle.
He talked only briefly about the CD set that will be coming out for DL's 50th birthday. Bruce Gordon and Stacia Martin will be doing the booklet. And that they did take some liberties with the material to "fluff it up." Instead of just having the spiel for the Mark Twain, or an instrumental piece you might hear in the queue, they layered the two together. "So it didn't sound like school."
There's the six disc version and there will be a 2-disk version for the more casual listener. It will be the same stuff as on the larger set, but snippets instead of full ride-thru. Things I remember him mentioning: the Barker Bird in Adventureland, a new HM ride-thru, Country Bears shows, CoP. Silly me, I thought I could remember everything and didn't take better notes."
