By the end of the 1950s Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip “Peanuts” had become a nationwide sensation with syndications in seven national US newspapers including the creator’s hometown Minneapolis Star, The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune.
With the everyday trials and tribulations of the “loveable loser” Charlie Brown, his iconic dog Snoopy and their ragtag bunch of friends becoming a global hit, TV producer Lee Mendelson hatched an idea for a documentary. While “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” never happened, it set in process one of the most viewed Christmas TV specials and successful yuletide soundtracks ever made.
For the score Mendelson had turned to pianist Vince Guaraldi. Raised in the North Beach area of San Francisco, Guaraldi was the nephew of Joe and Maurice “Muzzy” Marcellino, two prominent bandleaders in the Bay Area. It was through his mom’s two brothers that Vince got the music bug, starting on the piano when he was just seven. He got his break in 1953 when he appeared on The Cal Tjader Trio’s self titled 1953 album for Fantasy that helped introduce Mambo to mainstream America.
By the mid-1950s while still a member of Cal Tjader’s various ensembles, Guaraldi was leading groups of his own, recording albums for Fantasy like “The Modern Music of San Francisco” with his quartet as well his the debut as ”Vince Guaraldi Trio”. When he was invited to write a number for Antonio Carlos Jobim/Luiz Bonfá 1962 album, “Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus” the wind was firmly in his sails.
After the success of “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” Fantasy released the live album “In Person” followed by a series of Bossa Nova influenced albums with Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete. An unexpected turn came when Reverend Charles Gompertz invited Guaraldi to compose a jazz mass for the choir of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, with a subsequent album on Fantasy in September 1965. Both projects would prove pivotal in the story of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.
Two years earlier Lee Mendelson was driving over Golden Gate Bridge when he heard “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” on the KSFO radio show hosted by Al “Jazzbo” Collins. The mood of the piece (awarded a Grammy Award Best Original Jazz Composition in 1963) immediately connected with Mendelson who had his ears tuned to possible music for his forthcoming documentary. “It was melodic and open, and came in like a breeze off the bay. And it struck me that this might be the kind of music I was looking for,” he recalled in the book “A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Making of a Tradition.”
Introductions were made by music critic Ralph J. Gleason, and Guaraldi penned the first track of a then untitled number. That track would become “Linus And Lucy” from the album “Jazz Impressions Of A Boy Named Charlie Brown” released in 1964 despite the documentary for which it was composed never being made.
While the project was shelved because of lack of sponsorship, Guaraldi had so impressed Mendelson that he would turn to him again when he and Schulz were commissioned by Coca Cola to create the Peanuts animation “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.
Recorded by the Vince Guaraldi Trio (with drummer Jerry Granelli and bassist Fred Marshall) “A Charlie Brown Christmas” opened with a version of “O Tannenbaum” chosen as the show was based around Charlie’s search for the perfect Christmas tree.
Elsewhere on “Great Pumpkin Waltz” Guaraldi created one of his many lilting 3/4 time numbers, while “My Little Drum” updated “Menino Pequeno da Bateria” from Vince Guaraldi and Bola Sete’s 1964 album “From All Sides”.
Then there was “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” and “Christmas Time Is Here” where the pianist invited back the children from the Eucharist Chorus of San Francisco, for the two beautiful choral numbers that opened and closed the 30 minute animation that first aired on CBS on December 9, 1965.
Of the best known original composition “Linus And Lucy”, revisited for this Peanuts special, Mendelson captured the magic in the music when he recalled in “Vince Guaraldi at the Piano” a book by Derrick Bang from 2012. “It just blew me away. It was so right, and so perfect, for Charlie Brown and the other characters…There was a sense, even before it was put to animation, that there was something very, very special about that music.”
Such was the success of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that its precursor “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” was reissued to great acclaim, while Guaraldi went on to score another 15 Peanuts specials before he passed at the tragically young age of 47.
This edition comes in a beautiful package with vinyl pressed on festive green.
Read on… Christmas with Samara Joy & Gregory Porter
Andy Thomas is a London based writer who has contributed regularly to Straight No Chaser, Wax Poetics, We Jazz, Red Bull Music Academy, and Bandcamp Daily. He has also written liner notes for Strut, Soul Jazz and Brownswood Recordings.
Header image: Vince Guaraldi. Photo courtesy of Concord Records.