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Vince Guaraldi’s Christmas Sauce: Adding Spice to Charlie Brown Vanilla
Courtesy Charlotte Jazz Room
Children liked the music because they didn't question it.
—Vince Guaraldi
Vince Guaraldi
piano1928 - 1976
Like Santa arriving undetected down the chimney without raising any alarms, A Charlie Brown Christmas is said to have gifted jazz upon more new listeners than even
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
In May 1965, the same year as the Charlie Brown special was first broadcast, Guaraldi was four months ahead of
Duke Ellington
piano1899 - 1974
He gently pushed rhythms with slight pauses between notes to complement melodic leaps. He frequently used a "double stop" on the keyboard in which two notes are played at once, the top note is held or repeated, and the bottom note changes. For Guaraldi, it's sliding the bottom note up the keyboard to create minor thirds, a blues device. He used enclosures, by which a tone within a chord precedes and follows the chord itself, frequent in bebop. Basslines of tritone walkdowns descend between chords sharing a common tone. Jean Schulz, the widow of Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, said that Guaraldi captured in his music the way children "walk and bounce a little bit," just as in the animations. Children liked the music, Guaraldi said, because they didn't question it.
Flexibility Beyond Christmas
Guaraldi composed for sixteen Peanuts programs, and applied his music freely across varied themes within that series. Unlike the sounds of "Jingle Bells" or "Sleigh Ride," which convey dashing through the snow even without lyrics, there is nothing inherently "Christmas-y" about "Linus and Lucy" or "Skating" from A Charlie Brown Christmas until made indelible with the holidays by words and images. The left hand bass notes at the beginning of "Lucy and Linus" are boogie woogie, followed by swing. A similar bass line pulses energy into "Skating," before the cascading notes of the melody. His most famous pre-Peanuts composition, "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," also begins with a repeated bass line, before the melody is introduced, and traces can be identified in "Linus and Lucy."Different arrangements of "Linus and Lucy" can be heard in the familiar Charlie Brown Christmas; an earlier effort, Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown; orchestrated for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving; and at faster tempo on a later presentation, Oh Good Grief. In the animated film A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the same driving left-hand and a more urgent pace establishes a "Mission Impossible" spy theme as Linus searches for his lost blanket in New York City.
Brad Mehldau
pianob.1970
Wynton Marsalis
trumpetb.1961
A dissertation by Alec Huntley of the University of North Texas found rhythms and harmonies of Afro-Cuban music everywhere in Guaraldi. Peanuts compositions, like most of Guaraldi's other material, often followed standard jazz "head" form: statement of a prevailing theme, followed by improvisation over a repeating chord progression sandwiched between interpretations of a composed melody. But Huntley observed that many of Guaraldi's compositions use a form more common to Afro-Cuban music than to jazz or even bossa nova. "Although they begin and end with a statement of the head, the middle section over which Guaraldi improvises repeats a short chord progression like those found in mambo sections. The middle portion of 'Christmas Is Coming,' for example, is a repeating progression that contrasts with the head that precedes and follows it."
The Holiday Whirl
Concert and stage performances continue beyond the recordings.
David Benoit
pianob.1953
Four different venues in Seattle have each done full presentations in the same years. December 12 of this year, the
Jose J. Gonzales
pianob.1967
Adam Shulman
pianob.1979
This season retailers from Barnes & Noble to Walmart and Urban Outfitters offer individualized specialty pressings of the Christmas album on a potpourri of vinyl from Craft Recordings: red, green, translucent, red and green splattered, peppermint and metallic gold and green swirls, snowflake, glitter-infused clear, picture embossed, silver-foil wrapped, and, for the formal: standard black. Not to miss out, this publication offers a holiday edition raffle: Enter the giveaway.
The Library of Congress recognizes the Christmas album as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important." It has sold in the millions, with numerous repackaged iterations, promotional tie-ins, reissues, and remixes. Some devotees obsess over slight variations, fadeouts replaced with more complete versions, synthesis of different takes, discrepancies in liner notes and sidemen credits, retrieved histories, recovered samples, and collectible editions.
Acquiring Knowledge
Guaraldi was born in 1928 in San Francisco's Italian North Beach, the hilly streets overlooking the bay, above Broadway and the old Barbary Coast district that came to house jazz nightclubs. The city had always been a port town, with music and cultural imports from around the world.
Jelly Roll Morton
piano1890 - 1941
He took piano lessons while in high school, graduating in 1946, and rather quickly thereafter stepped onto professional bandstands. By summer three years after graduation he was with former
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Cal Tjader
vibraphone1925 - 1982
Benny Goodman
clarinet1909 - 1986
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Ben Webster
saxophone, tenor1909 - 1973
Coleman Hawkins
saxophone, tenor1904 - 1969
Sonny Stitt
saxophone1924 - 1982
Woody Herman
band / ensemble / orchestra1913 - 1987
Tjader had caught wind of a developing mid-century craze for samba and bossa nova, pursued those as styles, and learned on the job through Latin musicians and stylists brought into his band for authenticity. He ventured to Spanish Harlem in New York to listen and learn at live performances of timbales master
Tito Puente
drums1923 - 2000
Machito
vocals1909 - 1984
Billy Higgins
drums1936 - 2001
Scott LaFaro
bass1936 - 1961
Joining Tjader more formally was bassist
Al McKibbon
bass, acousticb.1919
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
Victor Feldman
multi-instrumentalist1934 - 1987
Steely Dan
band / ensemble / orchestrab.1972
Mongo Santamaria
percussion1917 - 2003
Willie Bobo
percussion1934 - 1983
Guaraldi's immersion in all this, combined with more standard jazz language, during a decade as apprentice and journeyman, became distilled in his fingertips.
Larry Vuckovich
pianob.1936
Oscar Peterson
piano1925 - 2007
Bill Evans
piano1929 - 1980
Vuckovich says the mid-century music should be heard not only as an artifact of its era, but with appreciation for the imagination in its creation. "It was fresh at the time," he instructs. "Music is never dated when it comes from the heart." Vuckovich points to "Viva Cepeda" from 1958 by Tjader and Guaraldi, an enthusiastic dedication to a past San Francisco Giants first baseman, Orlando Cepeda, as a piece that would be current today. Guaraldi recorded "Autumn Leaves" independent of Tjader that same year. There are two versions easily available: one shorter and delicate, the other takes more time to tell its story in a ten-minute rendition with deeply-felt solos by Guaraldi and bassist
Monty Budwig
bass, acoustic1929 - 1992
At his best, Guaraldi plays with grace, and joy. Within and outside of the Peanuts canon, Guaraldi can move from slow contemplation or jazz waltz at the head, then swing through middle sections, and/or pepper with those Latinisms. Vuckovich says it reveals the underlying musical knowledge that supported the work, lacking today in players who rush toward whatever is new but lack historical foundations. "You must have knowledge!," he exclaims.
The Winds of Chance
Guaraldi continued his explorations in partnership with Brazilian guitarist
Bola Sete
guitar1923 - 1987
"Cast Your Fate" has a breezy existential openness, a thoughtful and improvisational middle, and hopeful send-off. It had been consigned to the B-side of a single promoting another number from Black Orpheus, and issued at all only due to Guaraldi's strong insistence. Enterprising disc jockeys in Sacramento uncovered it and gave it airplay. The Grace Cathedral Jazz Mass was commissioned after a clergyman heard the song on the radio and sought out its composer to make the ecclesiastical more contemporary. Film producer Lee Mendelson heard the song while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge; he recalled it as melodic and open, like a breeze off the bay, and contacted Guaraldi to score a documentary on cartoonist Schulz.
That project did not find commercial support, although its music was released as the soundtrack for a CBS special that never was, A Boy Named Charlie Brown; that same title was used several years later for a different animated film for theater release. The music also saw life packaged as a Guaraldi studio album, Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown (Fantasy, 1964). Some of that music, including "Linus and Lucy," was recycled into A Charlie Brown Christmas when Mendelson created that project. Executives at CBS television hated the special in a preview: too slowly-paced, the suits thought; the animation and music both strange to them. Only because TV schedules had already been printed, and Coca-Cola signed on as a sponsor, did the show proceed. The result was a smashing success: almost half the viewing televisions in America were tuned in, and additional Peanuts specials were immediately ordered.
Guaraldi devoted much of his efforts to subsequent Peanuts animations, with limited other recording. Even after his Peanuts successes, he chose to remain mostly on the West Coast, living in the San Francisco Bay Area, content to play smaller auditoriums and club dates. Arrangements of his tunes were made by John Scott Trotter, orchestrator for
Bing Crosby
vocals1903 - 1977
What It's About
Guaraldi did not write out extensive scores; he started with a head sheet notations and then improvised, "completing" a number by woodshedding it with this bandmates, but leaving it open for finishing touches and variations in the moment. That process was initially disconcerting to the highly-trained youth choir used for "Christmas Time Is Here," until they were encouraged in spontaneity. Being slightly off key in the moment was found charming.Transcriptions of his most played songs are contained in Hal Leonard's The Definitive Vince Guaraldi and The Vince Guaraldi Collection, along with other volumes of many arrangements of the Christmas pieces. His Jazz Mass was not transcribed until 50 years after its performance, and only then by a Presbyterian pastor and bebop pianist outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Bill Carter, who was looking to freshen his own services.
The last surviving members of Guaraldi's trios passed away in 2021, both drummers:
Colin Bailey
drums1934 - 2021
Jerry Granelli
drums1940 - 2021
He recalled the experience of the recording sessions. "We knew the feeling of Charlie Brown; we knew the feeling of Charlie Schulz. We had a relationship with Charlie and his wife and family. Charlie Brown is pathetic, sarcastic, wise, and playful, all at the same time, very much like Vince Guaraldi. We were just trying to catch the feeling of it. Vince had these tunes—some of which had been written for other things—and he pulled one or two out. He'd bring another in, and we'd rehearse it, play it out on a gig, and then we just went in and did it. It was really simple. And honest. Vince always demanded we played our hearts out. We played our best." *
* From a 2017 Aquarium Drunkard interview by Jason P. Woodbury.
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History of Jazz
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