REVIEW: Charlie Brown – It’s The Great Pumpkin vinyl release

With the supermarket isles becoming jammed packed with devil horns, broomsticks and gigantic bowls of sweets there is only one release that fits the bill. It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown released via Craft Recordings is the enchanting seasonal long player to be given the vinyl treatment for the first time ever.

Composer Vince Guaraldi is the master behind the music leaving in his tracks a footprint on how to create lovingly cherished music in the same rich vein of form that Derek Griffiths showed with Bod and Oliver Postgate / Peter Firmin exhibited via Ivor the Engine. The soundtrack is taken from the original 1966 show but you wouldn’t think it with the expert remastering.

If this long player was not associated with a children’s cartoon the music would stand up on its own as a great popular jazz album, but it’s association with animation makes the music even more pleasurable to as you picture Charlie and his friends joyfully dancing to the music with heads held high and feet dancing to the addictive beat whilst Snoopy snoozes in his dog kennel.

There’s the familiar piano jive of opening track Linus and Lucy, with the likes of Graveyard Theme, The Great Pumpkin Waltz and Trick or Treat the Peanuts gang can be envisaged walking through brown leaves blown on the ground whilst they walk about the town on a scary dark night. The impact of Guaraldi’s playing is addictively playful, emotionally attached to the characters which makes its legacy only carry on for many more years to come.

There is simply nothing not to like here with a few extra special features to whet the pallet even more. Along with the black vinyl press is a special limited edition glow in the dark vinyl, with only 500 copies pressed plus liner notes and lovable archive pictures from the episode you’d be sure to pick up a treat and not a trick with this emphatically delectable release.

The album can be purchased from the Craft Recordings website.