The Bay Area’s beagle-prints are all over what is arguably the greatest Christmas album of all time, the Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack, as jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi lived here when he wrote and recorded it.
With apologies to Mariah Carey, Josh Groban, and Bing Crosby, we would say that the "Charlie Brown Christmas" Soundtrack is the greatest Christmas album of all time. Kids and adults alike have loved the fiendishly detailed improvised jazz riffs and solos by the Vince Guaraldi Trio since the Christmas special first aired in 1965, and continued to air on network TV for 56 consecutive years (until Apple TV bought its rights).
But the Chronicle has the surprising finding today that jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi was a San Francisco native, and lived here when he recorded the famed Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack. A Lincoln High grad, Guaraldi recorded the three-piece jazz album in 1964, partially at the SF studios of Fantasy Records (which would later move to Berkeley, and serve as the recording place for Journey's Escape and Green Day's Dookie.)
And in another interesting aside, jazz legend Dave Brubeck actually turned the project down. His loss, as Guaraldi’s distinctive jazz-children's music album went platinum five times, and remains the second best-selling jazz album ever recorded, behind only Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (1959).
The Chron also points out that the children's chorus that appears on a few of the album’s tracks was actually San Rafael’s Saint Paul's Episcopal Church Children’s Choir. You can get a taste of that choir in the Christmas special’s opening scene above, a scene shot almost entirely without dialogue. That’s a tribute to how “A Charlie Brown Christmas” smashed the mold of a normal animated TV special, angering CBS executives with its lack of a standard laugh track.
Vince Guaraldi grew up in North Beach, but was from royal SF jazz lineage.
"Guaraldi’s immediate mentors were his maternal uncles, Joe and Maurice ‘Muzzy’ Marcellino, who were popular jazz band leaders in the city,” the Chronicle notes. “(Fun fact: Uncle Muzzy was also an accomplished whistler heard in television shows like “Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1950s and in the 1968 film, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."
But Vince Guaraldi would score the family’s most enduring work. Admire above how he is able to take one of the shittiest, most plodding Christmas carols of all, and razzle-dazzle it with sizzling piano improv and magnificent volume level adjustments.
Guaraldi initially recorded the album as the soundtrack for a documentary about Santa Rosa’s own Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, a documentary that never aired, but the album was released in 1964 as Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Charles Schultz was a huge fan of Guaraldi's work, and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” sponsor Coca-Cola insisted this soundtrack be used. That was over the objections of the suits at CBS, who did not appreciate putting jazz music in a children’s cartoon, because of the genre’s association with those people. (In the words of Lucy, “What kind of Christmas music is that?”)
“That all changed when people heard Guaraldi’s score,” the Chronicle points out. “Aided by the excellent teamwork of his back-up duo — bassist Fred Marshall and drummer (and yet another Italian American) Jerry Granelli — the music gives the program its pulse.”
Fair enough, but there were actually nine different musicians that the Vince Guaraldi Trio cycled through during these recordings. Guaraldi was… a demanding musician to work with.
And about that Saint Paul's Episcopal Church Children’s Choir from San Rafael. Guaraldi had already worked with the same children’s choir on his stylistically similar previous album Vince Guaraldi at Grace Cathedral, recorded live of course right here in SF at the famed Nob Hill church.
The Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack is available on Youtube and pretty much every music streaming service that exists, and we cannot recommend enough that you throw on this timelessly crowd-pleasing vintage album for some Christmas Eve or Christmas Day joy. After all, That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown!
Image: Lee Mendelson Film Productions
