We're now in September, meaning the holiday season is less than four months away. In preparation for the special time of year, a deluxe reissue of Vince Guaraldi’s classic score for A Charlie Brown Christmas has been announced.
The beloved 1965 album will be re-released in multiple formats via Craft Recordings, including a colored vinyl version available September 16 and super deluxe box set available October 14. Ahead of the reissue, an unreleased take of “Skating,” billed as “Skating (#7, Take 1),” has been released.
Believe it or not, A Charlie Brown Christmas remains one of the highest-selling jazz albums of all time – right next to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. The reissue will include the original 11-track album upgraded with a new stereo mix, unreleased songs, outtakes, a hardcover book, and more. The book will feature in-depth liner notes by Peanuts historian Derrick Bang, as well as a message from the family of Lee Mendelson: the late producer and co-creator of Charles M. Schulz’s beloved cartoon.
“The wealth of music captured in these half-dozen sessions is—in a word—amazing,” Bang wrote in the liner notes. "It’s also fascinating to observe how a given tune evolves, over the course of the six weeks these sessions took place, from September 17 through October 28, 1965...Along the way, you’ll hear all manner of false starts, initially terrific takes that collapse when Guaraldi fluffs a few notes, and outré experiments that sound almost nothing like what we know today. Consider this a ringside seat—a place of honor, watching and listening from the recording engineer’s booth—as the individual songs for this historic album were fine-tuned and ultimately laid down."
Previously, Craft Recordings released a new 2022 edition of Vince Guaraldi’s It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. That score is available now on CD and digital formats, with a vinyl version to come soon.
Pre-order your copy of A Charlie Brown Christmas here.
Listen to "Skating (#7 Take 1)" below.
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Article Image: An image from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" printed onto a stamp: Charlie Brown peeks into a mailbox while surrounded by snow. (spatuletail via Shutterstock.)
