NPR's All Things Considered ran a nice review and commentary of the music Vince Guaraldi wrote and performed for A Charlie Brown Christmas. Check the link below to hear the clip:
This is, in my opinion, one of the best Christmas albums of all time. I worked in a record store for four years. Each time Christmas came up, we had to carefully pick what we would play as so to keep the store from getting too saccharine. This album was always a shoo-in because everybody loves it.
The album was recently added to the stock at the iTunes Music Store, and got at least as high as #2 for a while before Christmas (as I write this, it's currently #9, and the song "Christmas Time is Here" from it is #100).
I burned a custom CD, in which I added "Surfin' Snoopy" and "The Charlie Brown Theme" and got rid of the annoying "My Little Drum." It is a great album.
I wish I could get my marsupial paws on the jazz waltz version of "O Tannenbaum." The LP version is in 4, but the TV version is in 3.
