Certainly, executives at the CBS network were horrified: at its pace, its simple animation, Shulz’s refusal to include the then ubiquitous canned laughter, and at Guaraldi’s soundtrack. Mark Smotroff is an avid vinyl collector who has also worked in marketing communications for decades. The super deluxe, 2LP and single CD editions follow on 2 December (was 14 October), via Craft Recordings.

Disc five delivers the new stereo mix in hi-resolution audio, as well as Dolby Atmos® on Blu-ray audio.The white “snow” color drops splattered in a base of clear vinyl plays with a steady and audible pfff… pffft… pffft in the background. The perfect Christmas album, have loved this album since i was a small boy ( i'm 67 now) the CD version has been mastered beautifully by Fantasy records. Let's face it, it's not always about fidelity: this music sounded OK issuing forth from the 4" speakers in Mom and Dad's TV console. Like Jenney, Guaraldi died young, and, like Jenney, he played with a succession of names more likely to crop up in jazz history books and documentaries than his own: in Guaraldi’s case, Stan Getz, Ben Webster and Woody Herman. We have about a dozen varied Christmas CDs from various artist pop CDs to jazz piano via Sinatra and Buble: all are good.

Seriously, though, I use that copy mostly as a decoration during the holidays, on my annual holiday “Record Tree.

As much as I love my trusty SACD edition (albeit with its curious alternate cover art), I still had dreams of scoring a nice vinyl copy for the collection. The CD comes in a nice digipack with a nice 14 page booklet which includes lots of info about the special with lots of the original artwork and adverts for the first time it was aired on TV. Opens in a new window Opens an external site Opens an external site in a new window Newbury Comics - A Wicked Good Time! The score for A Charlie Brown Christmas was such a triumph that Guaraldi composed the music for 17 Peanuts television specials in all, a spectacular streak ended only by his untimely death in 1976 at the age of 47. Disc one features the new stereo mix of the album, plus the original remastered 1965 mix, while disc two through four offer more than 50 never-before-heard outtakes from five recording sessions, as Guaraldi and his bandmates craft cues like “Christmas Is Coming” and “Skating.