The cover art is the same. The contents, however, are not. 

Four years removed from an imperfect release drawn from the 1966 television special’s audio that retained Peanuts dialogue in the music, Vince Guaraldi’s original soundtrack recording for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is back. The 2022 edition is culled from recently discovered session tapes “once thought to be lost forever.”

It expands the 20-minute 2018 iteration to 30 minutes with previously unheard alternate takes and finally sounds as it should. 

With this long-overdue release, the Great Pumpkin isn’t just for Halloween anymore. And despite an abundance of incidental music – 14 of the 24 cuts run less than 60 seconds – there’s something revealing in hearing “Linus and Lucy” outfitted with electric guitar, drums and woodwinds and Guaraldi telling the band he wrote the “Charlie Brown Theme” “in another key” as the musicians dissolve in laughter.