For this Sunday - and a couple more this year - very few things are going to come close to Sunday mornings and Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas.

First released on the Fantasy label in December 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas is the soundtrack to the iconic Peanuts Christmas TV special from Bay Area pianist and composer Vince Guaraldi. Often described as the best holiday album of all time, it is so much more. A quintuple platinum seller (that’s more than five million copies), it is likely the second best-selling jazz album of all time (only behind Miles Davis' iconic 1959 Kind of Blue) and was both voted into GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 2007 and was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry’s list of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” American recordings. What began modestly as a kids television commission has grown over the last sixty years to become a cultural touchstone and a beacon of Christmassy sweetness.

By the early 1960s, Vince Guaraldi was an established figure on the West Coast jazz scene, known for lyrical, approachable playing and a crossover sensibility that produced the hit Cast Your Fate to the Wind. His work drew the attention of producer Lee Mendelson, who, while developing a documentary about Charles Schulz, commissioned Guaraldi to write music for a proof-of-concept reel. The short piece included early versions of what would become “Linus and Lucy,” forming the creative foundation for their future collaboration. The success of that test score led directly to Guaraldi being hired to compose the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Guaraldi approached the project with a desire to keep the music grounded in jazz while matching the gentle introspection of Schulz’s characters. Working with bassist Fred Marshall and drummer Jerry Granelli, he recorded the bulk of the album over a swift set of sessions at Fantasy Studios to meet the television special’s tight turnaround. The trio revisited traditional carols - O Tannenbaum, What Child Is This and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - with loose, swinging arrangements and added original compositions that captured the Peanuts tone - playful, full of melodic bounce, and always with an air of melancholy in the background. Good grief!

One of the album’s hallmarks - the inclusion of children’s choir vocals - actually came late in production, prompted by Mendelson’s wish for a more overtly seasonal atmosphere. Because a lyricist was not available, Mendelson wrote the words to Christmas Time Is Here himself in less than an hour. The choir from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church sang their parts with minimal rehearsal, giving the final recordings a natural, imperfect charm. Though the musicians reportedly viewed the recordings as routine work - and expected very little from the sessions other than the paycheck - the combination of jazz trio’s tight-looseness and the youthful voices created a distinct sound world that quickly distinguished the special.

Annual rebroadcasts turned the soundtrack into a seasonal fixture, slowly building its audience until it became one of the most widely recognised jazz recordings in North America. In no uncertain terms, the soundtrack - and Guaraldi's subsequent work that would become inseparable from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts world - helped broaden jazz’s presence in mainstream American households. Its themes formed a musical identity for the Peanuts world and introduced generations of listeners - often children - to acoustic jazz.

I think I've only actually watched the TV special about three or four times over the years, but I must have listened to this beautiful soundtrack hundreds and hundreds of times. It is a perfect half an hour, a very Christmassy half an hour, but a perfect half an hour of big feelings, sweet sentiments and charming perseverance. I mean, it is the right time of year for it! Oh that we, could always see, such spirit through the year.







This year, we have three different special pressings for you, with a limited Gold Foil sleeve, Snowstorm White vinyl and 'Christmas Tree Vinyl' with a holographic sleeve.