Vince Guaraldi Trio -- Charlie Brown Theme

Wikimedia Commons

Earlier today, just purely by accident, I found out that the late jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi would have celebrated his 98th birthday today (he passed away in 1976 at the age of 47). He does have a file here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" since my love for "Peanuts" and he's basically been the guy for "Peanuts" soundtracks. In fact, I can say with confidence that Guaraldi was the first piano player that I'd ever heard as a baby because of his fabulous work on "A Charlie Brown Christmas", the legendary Xmas animated special.

Speaking of "A Charlie Brown Christmas", I hadn't known until recently that this special and perhaps the entire "Peanuts" mass media franchise can thank their existence because of a documentary about the popular comic strip "Peanuts" that had been planned to air back in 1963 simply couldn't come to fruition due to financing woes. "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" was to have been the title for this documentary (the title was then used later for the 1969 feature film) by Lee Mendelson.

And yet, Guaraldi did come up with a 1963 soundtrack called "Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown" that contained the iconic "Linus & Lucy" which would become the theme for the overall "Peanuts" franchise and included in the soundtrack for the Christmas special a couple of years later. For years, I'd assumed that "Linus & Lucy" was the Charlie Brown theme and not the song titled after Chuck's best friend and biggest thorn in his side respectively. So, you can imagine when I finally found out the truth, I remarked that this would be a typically Charlie Brown development...the most famous song in the round-headed kid's world doesn't even have his name attached to it.

In fact, it wouldn't be for many more years that I discovered that there was a "Charlie Brown Theme" by Guaraldi. By that time, I was living in Japan and getting into jazz so picking up a few Guaraldi and "Peanuts" albums was becoming normal. Upon this discovery, I also found out about its inclusion in the 1963 soundtrack for the unaired documentary. Getting to hear it, it starts out sounding as if the jazzman had been imagining how Charlie Brown has lived his usual life: ambling laconically his way to and from school as Guaraldi plays with his keys. Then, the pacing and complexity amp up some more as Chuck handles his alternately contemplative and frustrating relationships with Linus, Lucy, Snoopy and everyone else in his world. It all reaches a surprisingly triumphant climax before the tune settles back down to the main ambling melody. Afterwards, I assume that Chuck hits bed or the bath to commiserate about why he can't talk to the red-haired girl or throw a decent pitch in baseball.

The fact that the documentary project failed ended up galvanizing Mendelson and a lot of other parties who loved "Peanuts" to get even more intense about getting something on the air, and they finally pulled it off in 1965.