New album release of It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown and Charlie Brown's All Stars soundtracks by Vince Guaraldi

In April 1951, Vince Guaraldi gave his first known professional performance, which means 2026 marks 75 years of Vince Guaraldi's music.

As part of the commemoration, Lee Mendelson Film Productions will release the complete soundtracks from two Peanuts television specials - It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (1976) and Charlie Brown's All Stars (1966) - together on one album, arriving March 20, 2026.   This is the first official release of music from those shows.

There will be two releases of the album - a regular, "wide" release available everywhere on March 20, 2026; and then a special limited-edition Record Store Day exclusive LP version of the album, available only at participating record stores on April 18, 2026. More details on both below.

The full 34-minute soundtrack album includes 24 tracks comprising the scores from both specials: 17 tracks from Arbor Day, including two bonus alternate tracks, and the Charlie Brown’s All Stars score mixed into 7 tracks.  See below for a full track list.

Note that while nearly all of the Arbor Day tracks are in stereo sourced from the original studio session tapes, the original tapes for All Stars haven't been found, so those tracks in mono and are pulled from a 35mm negative soundtrack tape.

You can listen to excerpts from several tracks on Soundcloud, and also stream three full track released as digital singles:

• Young Man's Fancy
• Sprinkle Your Bird
• Rain, Rain, Go Away (Rain, Gentle Rain)

The pairing of the two soundtracks is apt, since both specials are baseball-themed, and the music is also thematically linked. Guaraldi debuted the track "Rain, Rain, Go Away" in Charlie Brown's All Stars, and then used it again a decade later in Arbor Day.  Through the book-ended presentation, the listener can compare and consider the evolution of Guaraldi across the years that he composed and performed for the Peanuts specials.

“Rain, Rain, Go Away (Rain Gentle Rain)” on the Arbor Day soundtrack is also notable as one of the final tracks Guaraldi ever recorded. Laid down on the afternoon of February 6, 1976 at Wally Heider Studio in San Francisco, Guaraldi unexpectedly passed away (far too young) while performing at Butterfield’s in Menlo Park a few hours later that evening.

As usual, physical copies of the album include liner notes with a track-by-track analysis by album producer Sean Mendelson, notes from album producer Jason Mendelson, and a historical essay on both the specials and soundtracks by Derrick Bang, author of Vince Guaraldi at the Piano (and FiveCentsPlease.org co-host).

In addition to the environmentally friendly materials used for both the LP and packaging, for this release Lee Mendelson Film Productions has partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant a tree in a forest of need for every physical copy of the album purchased in 2026 (with a minimum annual support of 12,000 trees planted).

The "regular" wide-release version of the album, to be released March 20, 2026, will be available as a 12" 33 RPM Black BioVinyl LP and also as a special Forest Green-colored 12” 33 RPM BioVinyl LP, both in gatefold jacket packaging; plus also as a regular CD, and digitally.

The regular versions will be available at all retailers; it can be purchased or ordered from your favorite local record retailer, or pre-order links for select retailers and digital providers can be found here.

The Record Store Day (RSD) exclusive version, coming April 18, 2026, is a nifty set of two records in one package - a 10" clear "baseball" 45 RPM LP of It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown and a 12" brown die-cut glove-shaped 45 RPM LP of Charlie Brown's All Stars.

The RSD exclusive will only be available at participating Record Store Day locations, in limited quantities; you'll need to go to a store in person to buy a copy. You can view the details of the release at recordstoreday.com, find a list of participating stores here , or call your local store to see if they're participating and expecting copies.

Note that the RSD exclusive LP set has only 22 tracks; the two bonus alternate tracks that are on the regular album version are not included on the RSD version.

To read more details about all the album and its releases, visit the Lee Mendelson Film Productions website:

• Regular album version: album information and press release
• Record Store Day exclusive ball & glove version: album information and press release

The full track listing for the album:

It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown

1. Rerun’s Lament*
2. Rerun’s Lament (Reprise)*
3. Ships Sail into Arbor
4. Laughter in the Library
5. Flatten Patten (Baseball Theme)
6. Young Man's Fancy
7. Jay Sterling Morton Jazz
8. We're the Visiting Team
9. Seeds for Thought (Joe Cool)
10. Don't Forget the Shovel
11. Sprinkle Your Bird
12. Snoopy at Bat
13. Lucy's Home Run
14. Rain, Rain, Go Away (Rain, Gentle Rain)
15. Happy Arbor Day, Charlie Brown
16. Jay Sterling Morton Jazz (Bonus Alternate Take)**
17. Happy Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (Bonus Alternate Take)**

Charlie Brown’s All Stars!

18. Charlie's Run*
19. Charlie Brown's All Stars!*
20. Baseball Theme (Medley)*
21. Oh, Good Grief!*
22. Surfin' Snoopy (Air Music)*
23. Pebble Beach*
24. Rain, Rain, Go Away*

* Tracks pulled from a 35mm negative soundtrack tape (all the rest from the original 2” 16 track session tapes)
** Bonus material not in the special; included on the regular version of the album, but not on the RSD LP version.

*******

And here's several recent videos from Lee Mendelson Productions that Peanuts and Guaraldi fans can enjoy right now to start celebrating 75 years of Vince!

• A very rare, not seen for 60 years television broadcast of Vince Guaraldi performing "Linus & Lucy" from 1964
• A video montage of various social media artists performing covers of Vince Guaraldi songs, compiled by Sean Mendelson. Lots of great and fun interpretations.
• A playlist of Vince Guaraldi Peanuts tracks, with occasional commentary by album producer Sean Mendelson, originally created for a Record Store Day listening party in October 2025, and now avaialble on YouTube. It's a nice selection of tracks pulled from the albums they've released so far.

Peanuts book highlights for spring/summer 2014

In addition the new Complete Peanuts volumes I posted about a few days ago, there are several other recent and upcoming Peanuts books worth mentioning. All the books can either be ordered from their publishers (see the links below), Amazon, or your local comic book store.

Recently published:

The large and comprehensive Complete Peanuts books aren't the only Peanuts project at Fantagraphics. Batter Up, Charlie Brown is the first in a line of small, themed Peanuts strip collections. Out now, it's a small hardback (about six inches square) containing selected baseball-themed comic strips. The strips are presented one-a-page in a square format, as opposed to the "normal" strip format - recall that the syndicate originally marketed Peanuts as a strip with four equal-sized panels that could be rearranged to run in a line horizontally, or a line vertically, or in a square, and Fantagraphics has taken advantage of that. If you've been buying the Complete Peanuts volumes, you have all the strips in this mini-collection, but you might be just the thing it if you're looking to give someone a little book of Peanuts strips about baseball. Batter Up, Charlie Brown is 64 pages long, lists for $9.99, and you can see a 10-page preview (and place an order) at Fantagraphics' website.

The next two mini-collections from Fantagraphics, titled Waiting for the Great Pumpkin and Snoopy's Thanksgiving, will be out this fall.

Peanuts Volume Three from Boom! Studios collects issues Volume 2 #5 through Volume 2 #8 of the Peanuts comic book into a single trade paperback volume. All the stories and classic Peanuts Sunday strips from those four issues are included, and in addition you get a new cover featuring a gathering of minor Peanuts characters and a gallery of the original covers and "first appearance" variant covers, which is nice, since most readers of the comic book probably never saw them. The compilation is 128 pages long, has a list price of $13.99, and you can buy it now from Boom! Studio's website.

Two new, and very different, books are coming in June:

The Beagle Has Landed, Charlie Brown is Boom! Studio's third Peanuts graphic novel (following It's Tokyo, Charlie Brown and the adaptation of the TV special Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown), and will be on sale Wednesday, June 11. The publisher's blurb for this all new book-length comic says: "While the kids play space, Snoopy has got troubles of his own with The Cat Next Door, who has taken Snoopy’s supper dish! Will our favorite beagle get his dish back in time for dinner or will he have to travel to the moon on an empty stomach?" The Beagle Has Landed, Charlie Brown graphic novel will be a 96 page-long trade paperback with a list price of $9.99. It can be ordered directly from Boom! Studio's website ; you can read a 10-page preview at Comic Book Resources.

(Long-time Peanuts collectors will remember that there was a Peanuts Parade comic strip collection from the 1970's titled The Beagle Has Landed. This graphic novel is not a reprint of that book.)

Charles Schulz's Peanuts: Artist's Edition is a massive hardcover also coming in June from IDW Publishing.

IDW is a newcomer to the world of Peanuts books, but not to comic book and comic strip collections. They've published an impressive line of books collecting strips such as Terry and the Pirates, Bloom County, Dick Tracy, L'il Abner, and many others. They also produce a series they call "Artist's Editions," which reproduce the original artwork of comic books at the art's original size (comic art is typically drawn a good bit larger than the size it's ultimately printed in comic books or newspapers), scanned from the original drawings so that they show all the fine details, as well as the artist's original guidelines, paste-overs, corrections, printed on paper that is selected to appear as close as possible to the original art board.

Now for the first time a comic strip is getting the "Artists's Edition" treatment - and that comic strip is Peanuts. If you've ever been to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, you know it's a joy to see the details and craftsmanship of Schulz's originals drawings. They're over two feet wide - quite a difference from the seven-inch reprints in The Complete Peanuts!

The Peanuts Artist's Edition attempts to replicate that experience. As a result, the book will be quite large - 19.5" by 11" - but even at those dimensions, the strips will be reduced somewhat from their original size (apparently, and likely sensibly, IDW decided a book that was 2 1/2 to 3 feet wide would be too unwieldy). It will have 140 pages, and based on a sample page - which you can see in this Tumblr post from IDW - there will be two daily strips per page (hopefully some Sunday strips will be included as well, but IDW's advance information doesn't specify). Presumably the strips will represent a selection from over the years, but that's another bit of info that IDW has yet to detail. Due to the size and quality of paper used, in addition to its large dimensions, the book will have a large price of $100.

Charles Schulz's Peanuts: Artist Edition can be pre-ordered directly from IDW or from Amazon, and will start shipping in late June.

Two Peanuts-related articles: Baseball in the Peanuts comic strip & Jean Schulz interview

The Herald, a newspaper serving the community Rock Hill, South Carolina, recently published two nice articles of interest to Peanuts fans.  The first, On the mound, Charlie Brown was America's beloved loser, discusses the role of baseball in the comic strip.  (The article does include a quote from Derrick Bang, co-author of fivecentsplease.org, but we would have linked to it regardless - honest!)

The second article is an interview, Jean Schulz discusses why her husband's comic strip has staying power.  We thought fans might want to take a few minutes to read both!