This year marks the 50th anniversary of Guaraldi’s first album of Peanuts
music, Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named
Charlie Brown, which debuted in December 1964. Next year, we’ll mark the
same anniversary for the album soundtrack of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Half a century. As Charlie Brown himself would say, Good grief!
I don’t remember precisely when I bought both albums, but it likely would
have been some time in 1966 or ’67. I still have both of those LPs, and they’re
still in pretty good condition ... which is amazing, considering how many times
they’ve been played.
Half a century. You’d think, by now, that Guaraldi’s essential
collaborators — his bassist and drummer — also could be acknowledged properly,
for both albums.
You’d think.
You’d be wrong.
Over the years, the most frequent Guaraldian queries I’ve fielded have
concerned either the sidemen credits for one or both of those albums, or the
degree to which the music on both albums does — or doesn’t — match what we hear
when watching the corresponding short films. Attempting to suss out the credits
remains a source of conflicting opinions to this day, as demonstrated by the
recent squabble that took place behind the scenes of Guaraldi’s Wikipedia
entry. (See this blog’s previous post for details.)
Comparing the albums to the actual scores, however, has been a
long-gestating project delayed only by my awareness of the effort involved: a
challenge that therefore sat on a back burner for several years. Gathering the
resources certainly wasn’t a problem: Copies of the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas are easy to
find, and the never-aired documentary A
Boy Named Charlie Brown is available on DVD, from the Charles M. Schulz
Museum.
Now, thanks to considerable assistance on the part of my good friend and
fellow Guaraldi fan Doug Anderson, it’s time to shed some light on both issues.
What follows raises fresh questions (with respect to credits) and contains some
intriguing surprises (with respect to how the music was used). I’ll divide the
results of recent analysis into three posts, starting with this one, which will
concentrate on who did — or didn’t — play what on which.
As Bette Davis comments in 1950’s All
About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy night!”
