No one expected these songs of off-key melancholy, imperfect singing and seasonal disappointment to succeed, but nearly 60 years on, the jazz pianist’s masterpiece endures Vince Guaraldi’s career, or ...

Mendelson unpacks why the iconic special and its music resonate with us today It might be the most famous jazz album in the country — Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas, which ...

It's story begins in 1965, when CBS asked producer Lee Mendelson if he could put together a Christmas special in six months. Jason Mendelson, Lee Mendelson's son, recalled: "My father called Charles ...

A Charlie Brown Christmas isn’t just a beloved holiday special. The 1965 cartoon’s soundtrack by the Vince Guaraldi Trio is also one of the most popular Christmas albums of all time. Producer Lee ...

Growing up, nothing excited me more than the holiday season. I would plan out my Halloween costumes and make my Christmas lists as early as January, hoping it would make time go by faster. I loved ...

Vince Guaraldi’s music for “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” perhaps the most beloved of all holiday specials, is getting a surprising new multi-disc release thanks to the recent discovery of ...

Only a handful of jazz albums find their way into the collections of music lovers who would never call themselves jazz fans. Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is one, Getz/Gilberto is another, and Coltrane's ...

Much less a Christmas record than it is a crucial staple of West Coast jazz culture, Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack possessed a dual cultural significance. Not only did it help ...

It’s that time of year. Most holiday Muzak seems to do little more than contaminate the air, but Vince Guaraldi’s contribution remains comparatively fresh. The four best tracks from “A Charlie Brown ...

That’s even less likely now, as jazz recedes into the history books or the background of dinner parties, said Nathaniel Sloan, musicologist at the University of Southern California and co-host of the ...

The greatest of all holiday specials, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” celebrates its 50th anniversary Wednesday, December 9. A few years back, I wrote about its soundtrack, which is some of my favorite ...