The Music Plays On — Vince Guaraldi Trio A Charlie Brown Christmas
One of the great contributions to U.S. culture by Bay Area luminaries Charles Schulz, Lee Mendelson, and Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas — both its animation and music — is in the pantheon of must-sees during the holiday season, alongside A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and It’s a Wonderful Life.
Vince Guaraldi was born in San Francisco in 1928 and was raised in North Beach. He attended Lincoln High School and San Francisco State and served as a cook in the U.S. Army in the Korean War. The music of the bohemian and beatnik culture of 1950’s San Francisco was jazz, and Guaraldi was a leading force. In 1953, Guaraldi became the pianist for the Cal Tjader Trio but by 1955 he had formed his own trio.
Guaraldi’s first success was not the music he wrote for the Charlie Brown projects but for a track from his 1962 album Jazz Impressions from Black Orpheus called, Cast Your Fate to the Wind. While Guaraldi’s version achieved a certain amount of success and won him the Grammy for Best Original Jazz Composition, a cover version in 1963 by the British group Sounds Orchestral got into Billboard’s Top Ten. Cast Your Fate to the Wind is one of the inspiring and uplifting tunes I know —
