Talk: Happiness Is (Parnes/Evans)

Titles

I'm not sure this article is about the right song, or alternately, this *and* another "Happiness Is" were used. According to Talk:Consider Yourself, on Songs from Sesame Street, the song is listed as "Happiness Is (Different Things to Different People" with episode numbers for 25, 53, and 96. That currently links here, but it's a different song, written by Paul Evans and Paul Parnes and recorded by the Ray Coniff Singers and later Count Basie. Lyrics can be found here. It's *possible* that the one in Episode 0007 and on Susan's albums is the You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown song, especially since it just uses "Happiness" in the album listings (which is how the song is listed on many official albums and so on) but it would be worthwhile for someone, if possible, to actually listen to the albums and confirm. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 02:34, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The thing is, that talk page info also says that the first appearance of the song was Episode 0025. But the page for Episode 0007 says that Susan and Bob sings it then. So either both versions were being sung, or the album is wrong, or Danny's info from the CTW archive is wrong. Incidentally, the cover of the album just calls the song "Happiness Is".

As for which appears on the Susan albums, in the ASCAP listing, "Susan" is one of the recording artists for the Charlie Brown version, which is at least tentative supporting evidence, along with the "Happiness" title, that it's the one she recorded sometime.... I can't imagine why she would record a different version for "Susan Sings Songs from Sesame Street" than she sang on the show; the other album is supposedly a re-release of the first album's songs with extras to pad it out so they should match. -- Wendy (talk) 02:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

On a side note, here are the lyrics for the Charlie Brown version. -- Wendy (talk) 02:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The lyrics Andrew posted are the same ones on the album, so it's not the one from the Charlie Brown musical. There is a reference to this other song, though, in All About Sesame Street in which Oscar has an alternate version, and provides a couple of lines that sound very similar to the Charlie Brown version, but it's possible that this version is from Season 2. According to the "First Season Show Content", there is a segment that says "Oscar's Version: Happiness Is" which adds more to the confusion.

The album is not perfect; it fails to mention a few other episodes that the songs are from. -- MuppetDude 17:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

So that confirms that the Parnes version was used on Songs from Sesame Street album, and according to that album, on several early episodes of the show. So it should get its own page. What we don't know is what "Happiness" is on Susan's albums, although the use of the common title and her name in ASCAP suggest it's the Charlie Brown version. However we don't know whether it also appeared on the show; and if so, when, and who sang it. We're also not entirely sure whether Episode 0007 or Episode 0025 was the first appearance of the Parnes version. Would that be about right? -- Wendy (talk) 03:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't know if this was still considered to be in the Stumping category, but I just pulled out both versions. Yes, the Songs From album is the "Different Things to Different People" song. Susan's album is the Charlie Brown song. -- Ken (talk) 22:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok. That at least clears up that we need a page for both songs; I've created "Happiness Is (Parnes/Evans)", and "Happiness Is (Gesner)" to cover that. I'm also going to unstump for now, although we still don't know when/how/if the Gesner was used on the show, beyond the 1st/2nd season Oscar reference Tony found in All About Sesame Street. Still, since we have lots of songs from albums that we don't know when (or if) they appeared on the show I don't think it's stump-worthy anymore. -- Wendy (talk) 02:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)