Pooh's Heffalump Movie, the Walt Disney Pictures animated feature that opened in February 2005, didn't have enough music in it to justify a soundtrack album. But it did have material by folk-rock singer/songwriter
Carly Simon, who wrote or co-wrote a half-dozen brief numbers and performed most of them, while also singing a version of "Winnie the Pooh" from the original Winnie the Pooh cartoons. That only added up to about 16 minutes of music, however, so Walt Disney Records has added a short excerpt from
Joel McNeely's musical score along with a bunch of tracks from earlier Winnie the Pooh features to flesh out this compilation CD to just over 31 minutes. That's still pretty short, of course, but the disc was given a budget list price of $12.98 upon release, likely to result in a retail price under ten dollars.
Simon, who began her career singing "Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod" with her sister
Lucy Simon in the folk duo
the Simon Sisters, is no stranger to children's music, and she turns in some characteristic tunes that she sings enthusiastically with help from her grownup children
Ben Taylor and
Sally Taylor, as well as a chorus and assorted actors voicing characters from the film. This is not a major contribution to her record catalog, but it is a pleasant one, and the old favorites like "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" are as entertaining as ever. ~ William Ruhlmann