Craft Recordings Marks It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown 60th Anniversary With Zoetrope Vinyl

Craft Recordings is heading back to the pumpkin patch, and this one should hit hard for anyone old enough to remember watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on television before Halloween became a month-long retail hostage situation. To mark the 60th anniversary of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Vince Guaraldi’s 1966 Halloween soundtrack returns on August 7th in collectible zoetrope vinyl and limited-edition pressings, featuring “The Great Pumpkin Waltz,” “Graveyard Theme,” “Linus and Lucy,” and rare outtakes from one of the most beloved Peanuts TV specials ever produced.

The timing is not accidental. Peanuts and Charlie Brown have become one of the hottest nostalgia licenses in music and hi-fi, with Craft Recordings continuing its run of Guaraldi reissues after releases tied to A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown!, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, and It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown.

eCoustics has covered that vinyl revival closely, including Craft’s Record Store Day releases and the 60th anniversary A Charlie Brown Christmas zoetrope pressing. 

And it is not just records. The Peanuts revival has spilled directly into audio hardware, including Pro-Ject’s limited-edition Peanuts 75th Anniversary Turntable, a themed T1 BT-based deck with built-in phono stage, Bluetooth transmission, and enough Charlie Brown energy to make even Schroeder consider upgrading his rig. That is where this latest Craft release fits: part soundtrack restoration, part collectible vinyl, part proof that Guaraldi’s jazz scores have become a very real corner of the modern hi-fi and vinyl economy.

Craft Recordings Gives the Great Pumpkin the Collectible Vinyl Treatment

Arriving August 7th and available to pre-order now, Craft Recordings’ 60th anniversary reissue of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown brings Vince Guaraldi’s 1966 Halloween soundtrack back to vinyl in multiple collectible formats. The main release is a 45 RPM zoetrope LP featuring memorable animated scenes from the special on each side, along with a new essay by Sean Mendelson.

Because apparently one pumpkin was not enough, Craft is also rolling out several limited-edition variants through exclusive retail partners. Target will offer an Orange 4-inch Tiny Vinyl beginning July 17th, with “The Great Pumpkin Waltz” on Side A and “Graveyard Theme” on Side B. Pumpkin-shaped pressings arrive August 21st in several colorways, including Electric Pumpkin Patch at Barnes & Noble, Pumpkin Spice at Walmart, Ghost White at Target, and Candy Corn through Craft Recordings. The Orange Pumpkin pressing also returns by popular demand at all major retailers.

That may sound like a lot of plastic gourds, but the demand makes sense. Peanuts remains one of the strongest nostalgia licenses in music and hi-fi, and Guaraldi’s scores have become a legitimate gateway drug into jazz for listeners who first encountered them while waiting to see whether Linus was finally going to be vindicated.

Vince Guaraldi’s Halloween Score Finally Gets Its Due

By 1966, Vince Guaraldi was still in the early stages of what became a long and fruitful creative partnership with producer Lee Mendelson. Mendelson originally approached the Bay Area jazz pianist to score a documentary about Charles M. Schulz and the Peanuts comic strip. That film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, never aired, but the collaboration survived and led directly to A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965.

That special, written by Schulz, animated by Bill Melendez, and produced by Mendelson, became an immediate success, and Guaraldi’s soundtrack became one of the most enduring holiday albums ever recorded. The following year, Mendelson brought Guaraldi back for two more Peanuts specials: Charlie Brown’s All-Stars!, which aired in June, and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which debuted on October 27, 1966.

Recorded only weeks before its broadcast at Desilu’s Gower Street Studio in Hollywood, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown marked an important shift in the sound of the Peanuts specials. Guaraldi had handled the music for the first two specials largely on his own, but this time he was joined by seasoned composer, arranger, and conductor John Scott Trotter, best known for his long run as Bing Crosby’s music director. Trotter helped bring more structure to the sessions, shaping Guaraldi’s jazz writing into shorter, television-ready cues without draining the personality out of the music. A small miracle, considering what network television can do to anything interesting.

Guaraldi’s core trio included bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Colin Bailey, with additional color from Emmanuel “Mannie” Klein on trumpet, John Gray on guitar, and Ronald Lang on woodwinds. Together, they gave the special its autumnal texture: warm, slightly mysterious, and just melancholy enough to remind you that Charlie Brown was never getting a normal Halloween.

The centerpiece remains “The Great Pumpkin Waltz,” a sophisticated and beautifully restrained theme tied to Linus’ unwavering belief in the mythical figure he insists will rise from the pumpkin patch. Other highlights include the eerie “Breathless,” the playful “The Red Baron,” the familiar “Charlie Brown Theme,” and the immortal “Linus and Lucy,” which remains one of the most recognizable pieces of music ever attached to an animated television special.

When It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown premiered, it captured a 49 percent audience share and earned an Emmy nomination. Unlike A Charlie Brown Christmas, however, it did not receive a proper companion soundtrack at the time. Select tracks appeared on compilations over the years, but the first comprehensive soundtrack release did not arrive until 2018. Craft reissued it again in 2022 after the discovery of the original session tapes, adding more material from the recordings.

Guaraldi would go on to score 15 Peanuts specials before his death in 1976. His music remains a major part of the franchise’s identity, not because it was cute or merely nostalgic, but because it treated children and adults like they could handle real melody, real swing, and a little emotional ambiguity. Imagine that. A children’s special with better musical taste than half the people in charge of streaming playlists.

Where to buy: $36.98 at Amazon | Craft Recordings (ships August 7, 2026)