Egg-citing news!

Guaraldi’s full score for 1974’s It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown will be available for purchase on on March 21. The album can be pre-ordered on CD or black vinyl at Amazon and the MVD Shop, as well as other online retailers and your favorite brick-and-mortar record store. (As always, it also will be available digitally.)

An "Easter Purple" colored vinyl variant, limited to 2,000 individually numbered BioVinyl copies, is available solely at independent record stores. Check with your local store, to reserve or purchase a copy. Recordstoreday has a list of stores, but the list is incomplete; best to give your preferred store a call, even if it isn't on the list.

As an additional bonus, the folks at Lee Mendelson Film Productions also announced a Record Day exclusive of this album: individually foil-stamped and numbered, on — are you ready for this? — egg-shaped vinyl. To drive folks even crazier, the LPs will come in five different colors ... and they’re “mystery colors.” You won’t know what you’ve got, until you take it home and check it out.

Additional details about the Record Store Day release can be found on the official LMFP press release, and full details about all of the album’s iterations are available on this LMFP master release.

Three sample tracks can be streamed here, and ordering links for all iterations are here.

During an unusually busy half-year that began in October 1973, Guaraldi scored an unprecedented three Peanuts animated TV specials. His music for It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown — last on a list that began with A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and It’s a Mystery, Charlie Brown — was completed during three 1974 sessions at San Francisco’s Wally Heider Studios, on January 30, March 1 and April 9. He was joined by Seward McCain, bass, while Glenn Cronkhite and Eliot Zigmund split the chores on drums.

Guaraldi favored electric keyboards on this score, with varied cues that are as larkish as the on-screen action. The title theme is a fleeting little number, and he sprinkles fragments of “Linus and Lucy” and “Peppermint Patty” throughout the show. A shopping sequence is blessed with the show’s longest cue: “Woodstock’s Dream,” a whimsical melody that offers droll counterpoint as the kids travel up and down escalators, while searching this massive store for eggs.

This album features a particularly special bonus track: a medley of "Woodstock" tunes performed nearly 50 years later by pianist David Benoit, alongside original Guaraldi sidemen Seward McCain (bass) and Mike Clark (drums), recorded at the same San Francisco studio — now called Hyde Street — where the Easter Beagle soundtrack originally was recorded. 

The track listing:

1. Peppermint Patty

2. Easter Theme / Easter Theme (Reprise)

3. Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 3 in C Major, Op. 2 No. 3 - I. Allegro con brio

4. Snoopy and Woodstock

5. Linus and Lucy

6. Woodstock's Dream

7. Snoopy’s Gumballs / Sally and Linus

8. Woodstock's Dream (Reprise)

9. Marcie's Song (Kitchen Music)

10. Linus and Lucy (Reprise)

11. Woodstock’s Pad

12. Woodstock’s Dream (2nd Reprise)

13. Music Box Dance (Minuet in G Major, BWV Anh. 116)

14. Woodstock’s Dream (3rd Reprise)

15. Easter Egg Soup (Kitchen Music 2)

16. Linus and Lucy (2nd Reprise) / Linus and Lucy (3rd Reprise)

17. Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 - II. Allegreto

18. Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 - I. Poco sostenuto - Vivace

19. Salting Eggs / Linus and Lucy (4th Reprise)

20. Bonus Track: Woodstock Medley (Woodstock’s Wake-Up / Little Birdie / Woodstock’s Dream / Thanksgiving Theme / Little Birdie (Reprise))