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The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi
Vince Guaraldi was the real deal--an entertaining piano player with a funny personality and a keen sense of melody.
Vince GuaraldiThe Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi
Jazz Casual Productions
2016
In 1962, jazz pianist
Vince Guaraldi
piano1928 - 1976
How did it happen? A new two-hour documentary, The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi, tells the tale. It includes newly discovered black-and-white film created in 1963 by jazz journalist Ralph J. Gleason, including clips of Guaraldi playing with his trio, long-lost 50-year-old interviews with Guaraldi, his band, his producer and friends, and new interviews with many luminaries who were there, including fellow West Coast pianist
Dave Brubeck
piano1920 - 2012
Jon Hendricks
vocals1921 - 2017
Anatomy is a fascinating glimpse into the career of a musician who is often—and unfairly—dissed by jazz snobs as a symbol of light jazz. As the documentary shows, Guaraldi had the chops and he certainly swung as mightily as anyone on the planet. And as the documentary also reveals, Guaraldi was much more than the guy with the funny mustache who made all that Charlie Brown music.
In addition to "Fate" and Peanuts, Vince Guaraldi had two other exceptional career highlights. In 1965, a few months before the Peanuts special, Guaraldi wrote and performed with his trio a "jazz mass" for the newly completed Grace Cathedral in his native San Francisco. He also recorded, from 1963 to 1966, three wonderful albums with Brazilian guitarist
Bola Sete
guitar1923 - 1987
The documentary touches on all these phases of Guaraldi's career. It includes a technical breakdown of Guaraldi's technique and chord progressions. Pianist
George Winston
piano1949 - 2023
Professor Longhair
piano1918 - 1980
The film also explores the San Francisco jazz scene of the early-and mid-1960s, where rising musicians, comedians and hippies—including Guaraldi, Brubeck, Gregory and Lenny Bruce—hung together in the dingy basement of the hungry i nightclub. While Anatomy deals perhaps too much with Bruce and the comedians, and dwells a bit much on the civil rights protests of the time, it does put Guaraldi's music and social consciousness in historical context.
The film ends with two complete performances of "Cast Your Fate to the Wind"—a too-slow, too-sentimental version by singer
Barbara Ware
vocalsThe Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi is a delightful, long-overdue documentary that shows Guaraldi was, as he put it in one interview, "not just a nut with a mustache." He was the real deal: an entertaining pianist with a funny personality and a keen sense of melody—a true celeb in pre-Beatles, post-beatnik San Francisco.
Tags
Vince Guaraldi
DVD/Film Reviews
Marc Davis
Dave Brubeck
Jon Hendricks
Bola Sete
George Winston
Professor Longhair
Barbara Ware
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