Vince Guaraldi: It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown/Charlie Brown's All Stars

The series of complete Peanuts television special soundtracks put out by Lee Mendelson Film Productions continues with a delightful disc coupling music from 1976's It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown with seven brief cues from 1966's Charlie Brown's All Stars. Vince Guaraldi's inimitable compositions and Latin jazz piano stylings first brought Charles Schulz's comic strip world of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang to animated life in 1965 with the evergreen A Charlie Brown Christmas. Apart from its crucial role in the successful transfer of Peanuts from the printed page to television screens, Guaraldi's music also served as a gateway to jazz music for generations of children and their parents. The legacy looms large, and kudos goes to the late Peanuts producer Lee Mendelson's sons, Sean and Jason Mendelson, for their dogged detective work in uncovering many original master session tapes and high-quality film sound elements. Their work has enabled a stunning series of album releases, many with whimsical Record Store Day variations, since 2023. It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown/Charlie Brown's All Starsappears in digital, CD, and vinyl formats in time for these specials' 50th and 60th anniversaries, respectively. With both specials revolving around baseball, a unique ball-and-glove-shaped vinyl variant has been crafted for the April 2026 Record Store Day.

While the soundtrack album that defined the genre, the now-5x platinum A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy, 1965), consisted of full-length jazz trio tunes that were excerpted at key points in the television show, Guaraldi's growing expertise in scoring for Peanuts means that later soundtracks consist of shorter cues that, when listened to as an album, resemble a series of themes and variations. Tunes are recast within and between specials in different tempos and moods, with horns, guitars or synthesizers sometimes added to Guaraldi's core trio. For It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown, the band consisted of Guaraldi on (primarily) Fender Rhodes electric piano, longtime bassist Seward McCain, and Jim Zimmerman on drums, with occasional overdubs of additional pianos or the ARP String Ensemble. Befitting Charlie Brown's "lovable loser" character, Guaraldi's cues often have a wistful quality, with a tangible underlying pathos even when the bossa nova or waltz rhythms are lilting. This becomes even more poignant when we learn, through the wonderfully informative liner notes courtesy of the Mendelson brothers and Guaraldi biographer Derrick Bang, that the pianist, only 47 at the time, passed away from an aortic aneurysm at a gig in Menlo Park, California on February 6, 1976, just hours after he completed the recording of this soundtrack.

The electric piano and ARP tie It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown's music to the mid-70s, but at root the music harkens back to Guaraldi's earliest specials a decade earlier, with some tunes also appearing in the extant music from Charlie Brown's All Stars. Arbor Day's "Flatten Platten" is really All Stars' "Baseball Theme" (first heard on Jazz Impressions of Charlie Brown (Fantasy, 1964)) with a new introduction and faster tempo. "Rain, Rain, Go Away" also appeared in both specials, and the decade-spanning comparison in approach is fascinating: the stately 1966 version features acoustic piano and drummer Lee Charlton's gentle brushes, while the 1976 recording has a deeper melancholy, setting McCain's fluid bass against the gorgeous, bell-like tones Guaraldi coaxes from the Rhodes. Madly swinging highlights include Arbor Day's Brazilian-toned "Sprinkle Your Bird," "Lucy's Home Run" and "Snoopy at Bat," along with All Stars' frantic drum and walking bass workout "Charlie's Run." The earlier special also features a short version of the classic theme "Oh, Good Grief" cast in an Ellingtonian setting with dapper trumpets, as well as a tantalizing 10-second (!) cue, "Charlie Brown's All Stars!" which is really a snippet of "Linus and Lucy" with groovy guitar and clip-clop Western movie percussion.

A great find here is All Stars' "Surfin' Snoopy," a swinging piano tune with call-and-response trumpets that will immediately sound familiar to anyone who has seen A Charlie Brown Christmas (which is, essentially, everyone). As Bang's liner notes relate, this music underlies the scene in that 1965 show where Snoopy decorates his doghouse, but it was first recorded for 1966's Charlie Brown's All Stars. How is this possible? The animators had to rush to finish the Christmas show in time for its debut airing, leaving many awkward edits and rough scenes. For its repeat showing the next holiday season (and in every rerun, videocassette, DVD, and Blu-ray ever since), the show was tightened up and new music was added, including "Surfin' Snoopy" repurposed as the Christmas decorating theme!

For vinyl enthusiasts, these Lee Mendelson Film Production Peanuts releases offer a special feature especially appropriate for the Arbor Day holiday (and its modern April counterpart, Earth Day). They are pressed on BioVinyl, a compound in which the PVC is sourced from used cooking oil or industrial waste gases rather than petroleum. It looks just like regular black vinyl and the pressings are flawless and audiophile-quality, with no surface noise. Combined with the colorful gatefold sleeve and extensive full-size booklet, the physical package is first-class, providing a fitting tribute to Vince Guaraldi's legacy, a lasting cultural impact that continues to bring jazz into millions of homes worldwide.

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