So I just bought The Jungle Book soundtrack

[bluetoast]

because it's the shit. But I pop it in, and realize....what the fuck? They cut out a lot of the "incidental" dialogue in the songs.

The Bare Necessities is now a Baloo solo song. Mowgli's questioning of Baloo's eating habits are excised (no more "You eat ANTS?!") as is everything else he says.

Baloo and Bagheera's dialogue during "I Wanna Be Like You" is totally missing, instead replaced by a long bridge, followed by Baloo's (now unexplained) introduction into the song.

I don't buy animated soundtracks most of the time, but do they usually cut out whole parts of the song? I understand that since it's dialogue that may be the reason, but that dialogue added to the song, and also maintained the flow.

[Crocker Jarmen]

That is very common in musical soundtracks. There are a lot of logistical reasons why this is (the song is recorded before the movie is edited, the scripted dialouge is by someone else and would then share "songwriting" credit).

Whatever the reason, it always irriates me when the song in the movie was somehow different on the soundtrack recording. I can rememeber as a kid putting my ghettoblaster against the TV speakers so I could record the sountrack for Little Shop of Horrors because there were so many differences on the offical soundtrack.

[AsmodeusVice]

Funny you mention the missing dialog because I had this soundtrack on vinyl when I was a kid waaaaay back in 1975, and ALL of the incidental dialogue was in every song. I distinctly remember it. I would be pissed if I bought this and discovered that it all had been removed.

So at one point the soundtrack did have the dialogue in it. Disney strikes again with their stupid decisions.

[Buttmunker]

http://www.discogs.com/Walt-Disney-The-Jungle-Book/release/1001046
http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-150-1001046-1199807705.jpeg

You would need this to have it all. I had it when I was a kid waaaay back in 1975 - it enabled me to memorize the whole movie, verbatim, and I'd recite it to myself whenever I was bored.

I, too, expected the current CD soundtrack to be like what I had as a kid, so you're not alone. However, I did learn to enjoy the sparceness of the intro to "I Wanna Be Like You" without all that King Louie mumbling in the beginning. Great bongo drums.