Of late my good buddy (and fellow Guaraldi fan) Doug has been researching Dave Brubeck's early work, in the course of which pursuit he has spent considerable time with the newspapers.com archives. I buried myself in the same site while gathering information for my Guaraldi biography, but that was seven years ago; it's clear, based on Doug's explorations, that the site has added considerable regional content since then.
Not one to waste a subscription fee, Doug also utilized the same access to investigate Guaraldi on my behalf. The results came to me on a thumb drive that contained roughly 140 full-page scans from various newspapers. I'd already seen many of them (mostly from the Oakland Tribune and San Mateo Times), but the San Rafael Daily Independent Journal hadn't been among the newspapers.com holdings, back when I did my research. Some of the relevant articles, photos and ads duplicated items and events I'd already seen in other papers, but an impressive amount proved new ... and, in some cases, quite enlightening. I've already updated and amended entries in my Guaraldi timeline, and added a few entirely new ones, but some of the more engaging discoveries definitely deserve additional exposure here. I'll present them in chronological order; unless otherwise specified, everything comes from the Daily Independent Journal.
By far the best ad is the one at left, which ran October 1, 1964. I'd already known that Guaraldi had been booked to perform at this particular event, but hadn't seen an ad for same. It's definitely a blast from the past; can you imagine a similar ad running today, in a newspaper, for similar candidates? For that matter, can you imagine a jazz performer being the featured entertainer, at such a function?
The Santa Cruz Sentinel's early March TV listings show that Guaraldi was a guest on Lloyd Thaxton's afternoon chat/variety show, at 5 p.m. March 3, 1965. Similar TV listings two months later cite one of the fabled 5-minute "bumpers" that Guaraldi and his trio recorded, to fill 30- and 60-minute time slots on National Educational Television (NET) channels which — as the precursor to the nationwide PBS network — ran without commercials. I've included the listing here; you can see that Guaraldi and his combo performed a tune titled "Twilight of Youth" ... which (more's the pity) he never recorded on an album. It's one of a dozen or so compositions that he registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, and no doubt performed live on numerous occasions, but never found the time to include on an LP.
Various scraps of information have been settling into my files for awhile now: none worthy of blog entries by themselves. But they're all interesting, if slight, and the (digital) stack has grown tall enough, that it seems appropriate to gather them into this single post.
To cases, then:
The first bit of news warrants a fist-bump for my good friend and radio colleague, Bill Buchanan, who has solved The Mystery Of The Ages: the identity of the "mystery track" on the second disc of the 2011 CD release, An Afternoon with the Vince Guaraldi Quartet. Contrary to what the liner notes claim, it most definitely is not "Autumn Leaves" ... even though Sound Hound and various other web sources now insist as much, having propagated the error (an issue I covered at length in this previous post). Bill and I discussed this situation at length, when I brought the song to his attention earlier this year; unknown to me, he kept chewing at it ... convinced that he recognized the melody from somewhere. Well, he was right; he did recognize it, and the penny finally dropped a few weeks ago.
The song is "Sunny Goodge Street," which made a splash in October 1965 on Fairytale, the second album from British singer Donovan. The tune took a few years to become a pop hit, and then was covered by the likes of Judy Collins and Tom Northcott. The arrangement performed by Donovan is the closest to Guaraldi's take, which you can hear by comparing Vince's version with Donovan's, thanks to this YouTube clip.
So, mystery solved. I'm forever indebted to Bill, and of course will take this opportunity to give his Davisville radio show another plug. Indeed, Bill and I just yesterday recorded our annual discussion of upcoming holiday movies: a show that should go live in about another week. Do give us a listen.
