Charles Schulz’s Peanuts
comic strip was special because of its willingness to acknowledge the failures
of childhood. Its TV-special incarnation built on that specialness with the
refreshing move to cast actual child actors in the roles of Charlie Brown, Peppermint
Patty, and the rest of the gang, and Vince Guaraldi’s sophisticated yet
whimsical jazz score. The elliptical arpeggios of “Lucy and Linus” can still
launch a million memories for anyone who grew up watching Charlie Brown choose
the scrawniest X-Mas tree on the lot or Snoopy battle the Red Baron.
Guaraldi’s soundtrack to A
Charlie Brown Christmas was released in conjunction with that TV special in
December of 1965. Our fellow Peanuts have had to wait a lot longer for the
release of the soundtrack to the second most popular Peanuts special. Last
year, Craft Recordings put out a CD soundtrack for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Because original tapes of
Guaraldi’s score were apparently unavailable, the disc consists of music pulled
straight from the special’s soundtrack. That means audio fidelity is a bit weak
and non-musical sound effects are often audible. Sometimes this enhances the
mood, as when spooky groans and giggles intrude on the mysterious “Graveyard
Theme” or Snoopy weeps along with Schroeder’s rendition of “Roses of Picardy”.
Other times, incongruous plops and crinkles invade the music to baffle anyone
who cannot remember the accompanying visuals well. Because many of these pieces
are mere passing cues, they often fade out as soon as they fade in, and there
is a great deal of repetition. Versions of “Lucy and Linus”, “The Great Pumpkin
Waltz”, “Charlie Brown Theme”, and “Trick or Treat” each appear three times,
making for some pretty repetitious listening over the soundtrack’s skimpy
twenty minutes.
It’s the Great
Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: Music from the Original Soundtrack is now making
its vinyl debut just in time for Halloween season. Because it is so brief, all
seventeen short tracks are lumped on one side of the record. Side B is devoted
to one of those vinyl etchings that are becoming increasingly common, much to
the frustration of audiophiles who’d probably prefer that the music be spread
over both sides so that the disc could spin at 45 rpms instead of 33 1/3. Of
course, considering the lo-fi nature of this soundtrack, increasing its speed probably
wouldn’t make much sonic difference.
Nevertheless, Guaraldi’s music remains an evocative,
magically autumnal time machine to some of our happiest Halloween memories, so Craft’s
soundtrack album is still a nice souvenir…though it’s no substitute for sitting
down with the kids to actually watch
Linus waste his Halloween sitting in a pumpkin patch like the blockhead he is.
