Artist: Vince Guaraldi

Vincent Anthony Guaraldi was an American jazz pianist best known for composing music for animated television adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip. His compositions for this series included their signature melody "Linus and Lucy" and the holiday standard "Christmas Time Is Here". He is also known for his performances on piano as a member of Cal Tjader's 1950s ensembles and for his own solo career.

Guaraldi's first recording was an unreleased demo made with Tom Hart in mid-1951. His first official recording was made in November 1951 with Cal Tjader's Mambo Trio. The songs—"Chopsticks Mambo", "Vibra-Tharpe", "Three Little Words" and "Lullaby of the Leaves"—were released in1953 on the 10-inch LP record, The Cal Tjader Trio. By summer 1954, Guaraldi had formed his first trio, with Eddie Duran (guitar) and Dean Reilly (double bass), and regularly performing in the house band at the hungry i jazz club in San Francisco, backing the singer Faith Winthrop.

Guaraldi's first recorded debut as a group leader occurred in August 1955 during a live session held at the Black Hawk. Of the tracks recorded, two of them ("Ginza" and "Calling Dr. Funk" the former recorded as part of the Ron Crotty Trio) were original compositions. The sessions were eventually released by Fantasy Records in March 1956 on Modern Music from San Francisco.

He might have remained a well-respected but minor jazz figure had he not written an original number to fill out his covers of Antonio Carlos Jobim/Luiz Bonfá tunes on his 1962 album, Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus, inspired by the French/Brazilian film Black Orpheus. Fantasy Records released "Samba de Orpheus" as a single, trying to catch the building bossa nova wave, but it was destined to sink without a trace when radio DJs began turning it over and playing the B-side, Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” which became a hit.

Guaraldi ultimately won a Grammy for Best Original Jazz Composition. Guaraldi never minded taking requests to play it when he appeared live. "It's like signing the back of a check", he once remarked.

Guaraldi decided to experiment with combining Latin jazz and orchestral instrumentation on his next release, The Latin Side of Vince Guaraldi (1964).

Guaraldi composed music scores for the first sixteen Peanuts television specials plus one feature film, and was responsible for their signature theme, "Linus and Lucy"

Derrick Bang, Guaraldi historian and author of Vince Guaraldi at the Piano, commented that, "the importance of Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown and its successor, the score to the Christmas special, cannot be overstated; rarely has an entertainment icon been so quickly—and firmly—welded to a musical composition . . . indeed, to an entire body of work from one individual. Guaraldi defined the Peanuts sound, and it's just as true today as it was in the 1960s. The compositions themselves are uniformly sparkling; it's as if the jazz pianist and his trio were waiting for this precise inspiration.” Mendelson concurred: "There's no doubt in my mind, that if we hadn't had that Guaraldi score, we wouldn't have had the franchise we later enjoyed."

Further information about Vince Gauraldi’s life and achievements is found here.

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This content was excerted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Guaraldi, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

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