Celebrate the 70th Anniversary of PEANUTS With 'Great Pumpkin Waltz' Video

Today marks the 70th anniversary of Peanuts, the beloved comic strip created by Charles Schulz. Craft Recordings celebrates this milestone with new music and video releases featuring Vince Guaraldi's original songs, which have helped define the Peanuts experience over the past seven decades. Families planning to celebrate the holidays at home this year will enjoy streaming playlists and new music videos, and to share new collectible editions of the Charlie Brown Christmas album with a new generation.

To kick off the 70th anniversary and the holiday season, a new animated video, "The Great Pumpkin Waltz" debuts today on the official Vince Guaraldi YouTube channel. The song is instantly recognizable from the 1966 animated television special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Craft Recordings also launched a "Peanuts 70th Anniversary Playlist" across music streaming services today, featuring 70 favorite songs from various television specials and compilations.

As part of the anniversary celebration, Craft Recordings also presents a one-time vinyl pressing of A Charlie Brown Christmas featuring a bonus "dancing" lenticular print of the original 1965 album cover with Schulz's iconic illustration. The LP has been pressed on a range of colors and picture discs for participating retailers.

The soundtrack album, featuring music from the 1965 animated television special A Charlie Brown Christmas, includes timeless classics such as "Christmas Time Is Here," "O Tannenbaum," and "Linus and Lucy." The certified 4x Platinum soundtrack album remains the second best-selling jazz title in history, and the animated show continues to be a signature television special every holiday season.

A native of San Francisco, Vince Guaraldi became one of America's most successful jazz artists of the 20th century. Though Guaraldi's legacy is most famously tied to his association with Peanuts, he was already an established, GRAMMY® Award-winning artist by the time that producer Lee Mendelson tapped him to score the first of many animated specials based on the comic strip by Charles Schulz. In a 2003 interview, excerpted from the biography Vince Guaraldi at the Piano (Derrick Bang; McFarland Books), Mendelson declared, "There was no doubt in my mind that if we hadn't had that Guaraldi score, we wouldn't have had the franchise we later enjoyed."

The 70th Anniversary of Peanuts vinyl releases are highly collectible; LPs released earlier this year are already sold out.

Watch the new video here:

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