Vince Guaraldi Trio - Peanuts Greatest Hits

(Picture Disc Vinyl LP)

                              Cat: CR02589    

70th Anniversary Picture Disc Vinyl LP Pressing featuring Snoopy On Side A and Best Friend Woodstock On Side B!

Craft Recordings offers two vinyl reissues in 2020 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Charles M. Schulz's beloved Peanuts comic strip, which debuted in seven newspapers across the country on October 2, 1950. The first is a picture disc of Peanuts Greatest Hits, featuring the faces of Snoopy and Woodstock with window jacket packaging. The second release is the very first vinyl pressing of Peanuts Portraits. Both titles feature the enduring music of the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Peanuts Portraits, meanwhile, includes several recordings from Guaraldi and pianist George Winston which have never been available on vinyl.

While the Peanuts comic strip appeared daily in newspapers across the world, Vince Guaraldi’s music helped bring the gang to wider audiences through his jazzy Peanuts television and film soundtrack recordings. Charles M. Schulz created the world of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy from his outpost in the Midwestern city of St. Paul, Minnesota. Meanwhile, westward in California, pianist Vince Guaraldi was helping put San Francisco on the jazz map through a series of early recordings with the likes of Cal Tjader, Woody Herman and Conte Candoli.

In early 1964, when Lee Mendelson began work on a television documentary about the world of Peanuts, he heard Guaraldi’s Grammy Award-winning instrumental hit “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” on the radio, while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Mendelson knew he’d found precisely the right musical foil for Peanuts. Over the next decade, Guaraldi composed and performed scores for numerous Peanuts TV specials — including the evergreen A Charlie Brown Christmas — along with a feature film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown.

Peanuts Greatest Hits is a 12-song survey of some of the most popular music from the Guaraldi Peanuts soundtracks. The compilation features "Linus and Lucy," the song that most frequently comes to mind when one thinks of Peanuts, as well as "Oh, Good Grief" and several seasonal pieces ("Great Pumpkin Waltz," "Thanksgiving Theme," "Christmas Is Coming"). Most selections feature Guaraldi backed by one of his long-time trios: Monty Budwig, bass; and Colin Bailey, drums; or, in later years, Fred Marshall, bass; and Jerry Granelli, drums. You'll also hear some notable additions to the core trio format: "Little Birdie" features Guaraldi's own vocals, with the addition of horns as well. Two versions of "Christmas Time Is Here" appear: one by the trio, the other adding the young members of the St. Paul's Church Choir.