A Charlie Brown Christmas [Expanded]

No, this is not your father's A Charlie Brown Christmas album. As has been pointed out here already, there's a different mix and alternate takes. But some points should be brought to a prospective buyer's attention so as to truly appreciate what's been done here.

The remix by Stephen Hart serves 1 purpose - to clean up a poorly recorded (even by mid-sixties standards)soundtrack. Noise reduction was used to remove excessive hiss, and the new mix was re-eq'd to accomodate listening by today's standards. It had been suggested that some left hand work by Vince is lost in this mix, but that is highly unlikely since, although probably recorded on a 4-track machine, the trio appeared to have had each of their instruments recorded in mono. Stephen merely places each instrument slightly to the left,center, or right in order to give a "live club" spaciousness to the sound, rather than the typical studio panned mixes we hear today.

In my opinion, people who are disgruntled with the actual sound of this disc have just been used to the original mix for so long that this appears foreign to them. They're just not used to it. If they long for a 60's sounding disc - they should simply convert their vinyl album to cd-r!

As for the replaced takes...that's another story altogether. Regarding the "wrong take" of "Linus & Lucy": the one presented on this reissue is actually the one that was used in the film (and this marks the first time this take was made commercially available). All previous issues of this soundtrack album used the version from the A Boy Named Charlie Brown documentary soundtrack.

We've NEVER had a commercially available version of the take of "Christmas Time is Here" (either the vocal or instrumental version) from the film, and this reissue is no exception, it is as the initial Fantasy release had it. The excerpt from "Christmas is Coming" in the film is to short to determine what take was finally used in it. The version on the new disc is NOT the one on the original issue, nor is the alternate bonus track.

Also, the take of "O Tannenbaum" is not an alternate version, but rather offers an arpeggiated chord introduction that apparently was overdubbed as an afterthought and was later cut out from the initial release. The version of "The Christmas Song" is the same as the original, not another take which was previously reported.

On a last note, there's a pleasant surprise at the end of "Skating," which is the same take as the original issue, but dosen't fade out and we're able to hear Vince's trio finish the song outright. Ditto for the instrumental track of "Christmas Time is Here" (though the effect is less dramatic). Jazz tunes were not meant to fade out!!

Should more care have been taken in letting the consumer know about these changes? Absolutely! But in spite of their...um... carelessness, this new reissue is a must have for all Vince & Charlie Brown Christmas fans.

I bought the original CD reissue of this album back in 1986; it has remained an essential part of my holiday listening ever since. I skipped the subsequent reissue, since I really didn't need to have "Greensleeves" badly enough to warrant buying the disc again.

That said, I was happy to hear that A Charlie Brown Christmas had been given the proper remastering treatment and reissued with bonus tracks and restored artwork.

However, I was not happy once I started listening.

1. The recordings have clearly been squashed using compression and limiting. As a result, the average level is comparable to that of a current pop release. Like classical music, jazz is supposed to have dynamic range. This new master doesn't have all that much (or not as much as it should, anyway). Sure, there was plenty of room to increase the volume somewhat (since early CDs often failed to take advantage of the headroom that was available), but there was simply no good reason to resort to compression. When it comes to remastering old(er) recordings, the number-one rule should be to provide the most faithful reproduction of the original recording possible, not to re-create the recording as if it had been made today. If I wanted to induce listening fatigue, I'd listen to whatever this month's new flavor is instead.

2. The mix sounds sterile, and bears little resemblance to the mix we've all been living with.

3. As folks have already pointed out, the version of "Linus and Lucy" presented here is a different version.

So, I think I'll ditch this edition and go buy that 1988 reissue instead. I'd recommend that you do the same.

The perrenial Christmas favorite returns for its third incarnation on compact disc. The original Fantasy release (which is still in my possession) is now 20 years old. George Horn returns to master this new edition as he did the previous releases, but the entire project is shaken up by going back to the original multitrack master tapes, and being newly remixed by Stephen Hart, and this is where the new project no longer bears a resemblance to its original (and well-mixed) parent.

More than one track on this issue has been mistakenly taken from incorrect alternates (and yet we have a few additional alternate takes as bonus material), notably 'O Tannenbaum' and the signature tune 'Linus And Lucy', and modern noise reduction and digital effects have reduced tape noise, but have also sacrificed definition in the left-handed work of composer Vince Guaraldi, especially on the "wrong" take of 'Linus And Lucy'. The choral tag 'Hark, The Herald Angels Sing' is the most noticeably changed, with a more dominanant organ, and considerably reduced vocal levels. In this case, it isn't necessarily a bad thing, since I always cringed at the extreme difference in volume from the childrens' "Ooh"'s to their off-key, boisterous lyric performance.

On the whole, the entire album has a sound that is too 'modern', thanks to current digital reverb technology, a far more sterile environment than the huge echo and reverb chambers of vintage recording studios. They do go the extra mile in the packaging, in attempts to provide new liner notes, as well as vintage album artwork in an all-new digipack, but on the whole, consider this a supplement, and not the authentic broadcast version we're used to hearing.