Album Reviews

This year's (2006) showing of this 1965 animated special drew a huge audience. I don't have the numbers but I think it beat everything in its time slot.

The music has held up equally well, beginning with Guaraldi's startlingly melancholic take on "Oh Tannenbaum," which shocked an America used to nothing but overblown musical good cheer. Even "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer," a sad story if there ever was one, was a chipper tune.

If the TV sound version of this is embedded in your sonic DNA as it is in mine, when you hear how superbly well recorded it really is, you'll be in for a more than pleasant shock.

Guaraldi's piano, along with the bass and drums, are given a natural, relaxed recorded treatment in the magical mid-sixties analog recording style.

The Hoffman/Gray, Gray/Hoffman collaboration yields another truly special-sounding LP. Even if you only whip this out around Christmas time, it's worth picking up, as it will put you in a real Christmas mood, not an artificial one.

Guaraldi's arrangements have a swinging, appropriately simple charm and his playing a clarity that suits the material to perfection.

Add a super recording that's also a model of clarity (though the instruments are a bit too isolated for the recording's own good) and you have a winning package that's easy to recommend, if a bit pricey.

However, it's guaranteed to warm both your heart and your audio system, and as they say in the Mastercard commercials, that's priceless