Wednesday, November 12, 2008

"You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" and Happiness Songs



This is a fun album of happy-type songs. (And why not, it's from Happy Time Records.) The thing I found so unusual about this album is that the front cover is exactly like you see above, just a cute picture of this little boy with nothing to identify what the record inside was and what songs were on it. In fact, the title "'You're a Good Man Charlie Brown' and Happiness Songs" was the only identification of the contents on the record label itself. (The individual songs weren't listed.) I went online to see if I could get more information about the actual album. Imagine my surprise when I saw a picture of this record that's somebody's selling on Amazon.com:



This album lists most (but not all) of the songs on mine. And take a look in the bottom left corner. That's right, it's that same little boy. And you can tell it's from the same picture as mine because if you look at the right on my cover, you can see part of the little girl's hair next to him. Why was the cover redone? I have no idea, except for the fact that that picture of the boy makes me laugh for some reason. (Maybe because it looks like he's in the middle of yelling, "Play ball!!")

As for the songs themselves, this sounds like another patchwork job of songs from numerous sources. I like this version of "Sidewalks of New York" sung by kids that are really belting it out. I also have this exact same version of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" on another album (that just has songs from that show) that I'll probably dig up eventually. Anyway, take a listen. I think you'll enjoy this one!

Here's the track list:
  1. You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
  2. Happy to Be Me
  3. Hail Hail the Gang's All Here
  4. Wishing Pond
  5. The Candyland Merry Go Round
  6. Big Rock Candy Mountain
  7. The Sidewalks of New York
  8. London Bridge
  9. All Around the Mulberry Bush
  10. One Two Buckle My Shoe
  11. Nick Nack Paddy Whack
  12. Pat-a-Cake
  13. The Happy Polka
Click here or here to download!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I bet your copy was a mistake at the printers, like the famous upside-down stamp!

Depending on how it happened, there might be 8? more, each from a different section of the master cover...

Anonymous said...

My parents have the same album. It has the close-up pic of the little boy with bat on the backside of album cover. The front side is the full group pic with the album title and songs listed.