A Charlie Brown Christmas by Lee Mendelson

Mendelson said they had no idea that Guaraldi’s song “Christmas Time Is Here” would evolve into a festive classic, but its nuanced shading makes it one of the least celebratory holiday standards ever written. The A Charlie Brown Christmas album opens with “O Tannenbaum,” and though it may be a simple Christmas carol, Guaraldi’s improvisations gave it an enchanting freshness. The one musician with a link to England – Swindon-born drummer Colin Bailey – was the percussionist on “Greensleeves.” He went on to play on an iconic album with Frank Sinatra and Antônio Carlos Jobim. Tom Harrell, the trumpeter on “Thanksgiving Theme,” played on five Blue Note albums with Horace Silver. The brush-drumming of Jerry Granelli adds to the record’s subtle power, as does the warm double bass-playing of Fred Marshall – a man who had been the house bassist at San Francisco’s famous jazz club, Bop City, and who had played with jazz legends Ben Webster, Joe Henderson, and Dexter Gordon.Įven the choice of guest musicians was inventive. “But I would like to be able to have people like me, to play pretty tunes, and to reach the audience.” He was in his 30s when he made his masterpiece album, working with two other talented jazz players. “I don’t think I’m a great piano player,” Guaraldi said in 1958. While his songs fitted in brilliantly with the animation in a show directed by Bill Melendez, they were also magical pieces of music on their own. Guaraldi’s tunes captured the contradictory emotions of joy and sadness that many people experience during Christmas. Schulz, who created the original comic strip Peanuts, had also told him he thought the music had been “critical.” “Vince Guaraldi’s music was crucial to the show’s success, because it was the first time a cartoon had used jazz, had used adult music, and that raised it a certain level,” said Mendelson. It was released by the Fantasy record label for the Christmas market and was soon selling out in record stores across the country. The show went on to win an Emmy and the music was acclaimed. The first indications the CBS chiefs were wrong came in a glowing review of Guaraldi’s music in Time magazine. They said, ‘We’ll have to run it because the showing is so close, but there won’t be any more shows.’ I thought we were doomed.” “They said it was too slow and too religious. “The two top people at CBS hated it,” recalled Mendelson. After the soundtrack had been completed at the Whitney Recording Studios in Glendale, California, Mendelson took the tapes to the executives at CBS. Things didn’t look good at the start of December 1965, however. Click to load video Initial worries about the soundtrack

A Charlie Brown Christmas by Lee Mendelson