December 2024
In 1963, after two years of work at a local television station, Lee Mendelson and Sheldon Fay Jr. embarked on a production venture of their own, Lee Mendelson Film Productions (LMFP), in Burlingame, California, about a 25-minute drive from San Francisco.
In December of that year, the two put together a documentary titled A Boy Named Charlie Brown about Charles Schulz and his immensely popular comic strip Peanuts. While trying to find a sponsor to help market the documentary, the Coca-Cola Company asked Mendelson to produce an animated Christmas special featuring the characters from Peanuts. Schulz was amenable to the idea and suggested enlisting Bill Melendez to do the animation for the project. Mendelson hired jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi for the soundtrack. A Charlie Brown Christmas aired on CBS on December 9, 1965, and remains a holiday favorite. Other popular Peanuts animated specials would follow in the next 30 years.
A Boy Named Charlie Brown marks the beginning of a fruitful association between MLFP and Guaraldi. Although the documentary didn’t air, in December 1964 Fantasy Records released its soundtrack, Jazz Impressions of a Boy Named Charlie Brown. The following year, Fantasy released the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas, which to date has sold more than five million copies. Guaraldi would record two more Peanuts related albums: Oh, Good Grief! (1968) and A Boy Named Charlie Brown: Selections from the Film Soundtrack (1970).
Guaraldi would continue to record and write music for Peanuts specials until his death in 1976. LMFP, the publisher for Guaraldi’s music for the series, recently released three previously unavailable soundtracks from the specials: It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969, soundtrack released 2024); A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973, soundtrack released 2023); and You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown (1972, soundtrack released 2024).
You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown (Lee Mendelson Film Productions LM24NE01) is the first LP from LMFP to use eco-friendly materials. A note on the packaging informs us that the jacket, insert, obi strip, and the labels on the LP are “printed on paper utilizing sustainable forestry practices.” The reusable, clear outer wrapper is compostable and is claimed to be made of 99% renewable material.
What caught my eye more than anything else were the words, “Pressed on BioVinyl.” LPs are normally pressed on PVC sourced from petroleum; BioVinyl uses PVC made from biogenic waste, such as recycled cooking oil. I got in touch with Lee Mendelson’s son Sean, who together with his brother Jason produced the recent Guaraldi releases, and asked about LMFP’s adoption of this new material.
“It was important to us to reduce our carbon footprint in manufacturing,” Sean recounted in an email, “so we made inquiries about what sustainable options were available to us.” They got in touch with A to Z Media, of Portland, Oregon. A to Z offers a variety of services that help artists and independent record companies bring their products to completion on physical media and digital platforms. After hearing the BioVinyl audio proofs for the album they received from A to Z Media, having judged their sound fidelity superb, Sean and Jason decided to go ahead with BioVinyl pressing—“it was off to the races.”
Future albums, too, will be released in BioVinyl, Sean hopes. It is environmentally sound, and it sounds great, which listeners appreciate, Sean noted. “The only artist we knew of using BioVinyl when we started, at the beginning of 2023, was Billie Eilish. As a climate activist myself, I am so happy we’re pushing that needle forward . . . toward sustainability.”
A to Z’s senior director of sales and client relations, Chris Scofield, was eager to help LMFP fulfill its commitment to environmental sustainability and meet its goal of attaining the same sound quality of previous Vince Guaraldi releases. “Given that audio quality is paramount for Vince Guaraldi’s music to really shine,” Scofield told me, “I recommended we use BioVinyl via our partners at Optimal Media.”
Optimal Media, headquartered in Röbel/Müritz, Germany, is one of the world’s leading vinyl pressing plants. Optimal Media employs mostly traditional pressing materials, but since July 2023 it has been offering BioVinyl as an option. Finally, with the advent of BioVinyl, Scofield said, eco-friendly record pressing with no compromises to sound quality has become available.
BioVinyl is made up of approximately 42% ethylene derived from recycled cooking oils and 57% chlorine derived from salt water, Scofield informed me, adding that it is “a highly durable compound . . . that is 100% recyclable and can be reused to make new vinyl records.” He corrected my assumption that BioVinyl was an Optimal Media innovation. It was, in fact, developed by PlastChem, an ultramodern PVC manufacturer in Hardenberg, The Netherlands, specifically as an alternative to traditional PVC in record pressing.
Manufacturing processes that employ BioVinyl involve no specialized equipment or setup, according to Scofield. The record pressing process starts with BioVinyl pellets as in the traditional process and follows the same manufacturing method. Several plants already offer BioVinyl pressing, but none in the US yet. Scofield expects that to change in 2025, when the strict certification required to use the material become more readily attainable in the US.
The International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) monitors BioVinyl production to ensure that it meets environmental standards. As Optimal Media notes on its website, “The PVC used for BioVinyl production is subject to international ISCC PLUS certification [and] is therefore controlled throughout the entire upstream supply chain and is subject to the ISCC mass-balance approach. Only BioVinyl with ISCC PLUS certification provides reliable protection against deception in vinyl record production.”
For vinyl lovers, especially hi-fi enthusiasts, sustainable practices in packaging are all well and good, but we’re picky about our vinyl. How does BioVinyl sound? I was somewhat skeptical as I dropped the stylus on the lead-in groove on You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown, half expecting to hear something unusual—possibly unsettling. Instead, I heard near silence. And the music? Following the SoundStage! ratings format for music, I’d rate You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown as follows:
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
As with the other Peanuts soundtracks—as with soundtracks generally—You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown consists of many short vignettes as well as longer tracks that allow Guaraldi and his band to stretch out. He leads a sextet here that includes Seward McCain on bass and flute, Tom Harrell on trumpet, Glenn Cronkhite on drums, Mel Martin on woodwinds, and Pat O’Hara on trombone.
“Incumbent Waltz” helps establish the breezy tone that typified the Peanuts shows, sensitively portraying the innocent, sometimes frustrating lives of the grade-school kids the shows followed. At this point in his career, Guaraldi was mixing acoustic and electric piano in his music, and the electric piano lines give the track a bright, friendly feel, which McCain’s loping bass enhances.
Most of the album’s tracks, including “Cookin’ Snoopy,” “Blue Charlie Brown,” and “Linus and Lucy / Poor Charlie Brown,” are brief, and while they probably make more sense in the context of the cartoon, where they help establish a mood, anyone who has grown up watching the Peanuts specials will have a feeling for the scene the music is setting. “Linus and Lucy / Poor Charlie Brown” is partially mistitled, I think. The well known “Linus and Lucy” theme, a constant in Peanuts soundtracks, makes its appearance later on the LP, and it’s a different and more familiar melody. It’s also a durable and likable tune that never wears thin.
A high point on this album, as it was for last year’s release of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, is a track featuring Guaraldi on vocals. “Joe Cool” is a convincing slice of soul jazz that Guaraldi sings with casual charm. His vocals sound a lot like Jack Sheldon’s, the great jazz trumpeter/vocalist who is perhaps best known for his work on Schoolhouse Rock!. Guaraldi’s electric piano gives the tune the right touch of funkiness it needs, and his guitar blues solos, though brief, are affective. The band is loose and swinging, and McCain’s flute brings a unique touch to the arrangement. At a little more than five minutes, “Joe Cool” is the longest track on the album, which gives the group the room to explore and better develop musical ideas.
Nine bonus tracks help fill out You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown (though at 34 minutes of total play time, it’s still fairly short). Among those tracks are two additional takes of “Joe Cool,” both instrumental, and “African Sleigh Ride,” which was not in the original show, all very enjoyable. The bonus section also includes a set of three consecutive takes of “Incumbent Waltz,” which sheds good light on the nuanced variations Guaraldi and his band used to alter the feel and effect of a piece.
You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown and the other two soundtrack albums LMFP has released will appeal to Guaraldi completists and to fans of Peanuts. With these albums, a fuller account of Guaraldi’s legacy can be given, which Derrick Bang does in the liner notes, putting the music in the context of the pianist’s life and career.
I asked Sean Mendelson if the production of the CD version of You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown also adhered to sustainable manufacturing practices. “Yes!” he replied proudly. “[We chose] eco-minded domestic manufacturing for our CDs. We used a recycled tray, the same reusable/compostable polybag material in replacement of the shrink-wrap, and FSC-certified paper stock for the eight-page insert [FSC is the Forest Stewardship Council, a conservation organization]. We also used 100% recycled board stock for the packaging.”
My first experience with BioVinyl records quieted any misgivings I may have had about their sound quality—I was impressed with what I heard. I still had one concern, though: Can they last as long as conventional vinyl records? Scofield reassured me that BioVinyl lasts just as long as traditional PVC. In fact, being 100% recyclable, its service life is effectively much longer. I’d like to hear a few more BioVinyl pressings before I render final judgment on the matter, but my experience with it so far has made me hopeful that it succeeds in superseding conventional PVC in record pressing as an environmentally responsible alternative.
. . . Joseph Taylor
josepht@soundstagenetwork.com
