Impressions of Vince
Commentary, discussions and random thoughts about San Francisco-born jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi, beloved by many — including those who recognize his music, but not his name — and affectionately known as Dr. Funk
Friday, January 6, 2023
Chart success: 2022
Sunday, November 27, 2022
A jolly Guaraldi holiday 2022
Thursday, November 10, 2022
Publicity galore!
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Tuesday, October 11, 2022
Playing for Peanuts
Sunday afternoon was way too much fun.
Constant Companion and I were among the full house present at Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts this past Sunday, October 9, for the world premiere of Playing for Peanuts: The Music of Vince Guaraldi.
Jazz pianist David Benoit, well regarded as the primo torchbearer for Guaraldi’s Peanuts legacy, along with his trio — Roberto Vally, bass; and Dan Schnelle, drums — were joined by the impressively large Santa Rosa Symphony. (Honestly, I’m not quite sure how all those musicians fit onto the comparatively small stage.) The Symphony was directed by Francesco Lecce-Chong, although Michael Berkowitz earned the spotlight as Principal Pops Conductor (beginning his final season with the Symphony).
Berkowitz was an ideal choice as conductor; he’s almost as animated as Bill Melendez’s TV special renditions of Charlie Brown and his friends.
This ambitious project has been a collaborative effort, for the past couple of years, between Benoit, Sean Mendelson and Jason Mendelson. Designing, developing and fine-tuning these new orchestrations of Guaraldi’s music — all arranged by Benoit — kept all three occupied while they were sequestered by Covid.
Their approach was quite clever: blending Guaraldi’s iconic themes — along with equally delightful, but lesser-known score cues — into themed “medleys.” The long-term goal is to take these new orchestrations “on the road,” and also to make them available for orchestral units across the United States (and anywhere else in the world). For the most part, the medley sequencing is immaterial, as is the decision on how many to include in a given performance by an ensemble of any size. Two, three or four medleys could serve as one-third of an orchestral performance; alternatively, many could be blended to make a two-hour Peanuts Guaraldi extravaganza.
Sunday’s Santa Rosa performance, at slightly more than an hour, came somewhere in the middle.
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
Orpheus rising ... again!
Between the new and improved score for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (released on August 26) and the five-disc “Definitive, Super Deluxe Edition” of A Charlie Brown Christmas (coming on October 14), this already has been a banner year for Guaraldi fans.
As the old television advertising catch-phrase promised … But wait, there’s more!
Craft Recordings will release two enhanced editions of Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus in the next several months.
First up is the two-CD Deluxe Edition, scheduled for release on November 18. It also will be available in a digital configuration, and a three-disc vinyl format, the latter expected to ship by February 24, 2023. This edition features oodles of bonus tracks.
It will be followed by a Small Batch, One-Step Pressing vinyl edition of the original album (no bonus tracks), also expected to ship by February 24, 2023.
Additional details about both can be found here, and do check out this sleek promotion video.
I’ll also supply some pertinent data.
The Deluxe Edition features 16 bonus tracks, 12 released for the first time, with outtakes and alternate takes of nearly every track on the original 1962 LP. The package is produced by Nick Phillips, and includes new in-depth liner notes by Andrew Gilbert, a veteran jazz writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, KQED Arts and other outlets.
The track list is as follows, in the two-CD configuration:
Disc 1:
“Samba de Orfeu” 5:42
“Manhã de Carnaval” 5:50
“O Nosso Amor” 4:56
“Felicidade” 4:49
“Cast Your Fate to the Wind” 3:10
“Moon River” 5:21
“Alma-Ville” 5:00
“Since I Fell for You” 4:23
ALTERNATE TAKES
“Samba de Orfeu” (Short Version: Take 1, Set 3, Previously Unreleased) 3:29
“Samba de Orfeu” (Long Version: Take 1, Set 3, Previously Unreleased) 5:48
“Manhã de Carnaval” (Take 1, Set 3, Previously Unreleased) 6:32
“Manhã de Carnaval” (Take 2, Set 3) 6:17
Disc 2:
“O Nosso Amor” (Take 1, Set 3, Previously Unreleased) 5:08
“O Nosso Amor” (Take 2, Set 4) 5:00
“Felicidade” (Take 2, Set 2) 4:55
“Felicidade” (Take 4, Set 3 Previously Unreleased) 4:58
“Cast Your Fate to the Wind” (Take 2, Previously Unreleased) 3:02
“Cast Your Fate to the Wind” (Take 3) 3:04
“Cast Your Fate to the Wind” (Take 5, Previously Unreleased) 3:00
“Alma-Ville” (Take 2, Previously Unreleased) 5:03
“Since I Fell for You” (Take 3, Previously Unreleased) 4:21
OUTTAKES
“Jitterbug Waltz” (Take 1, Previously Unreleased) 6:53
“Jitterbug Waltz” (Take 1A, Previously Unreleased) 6:25
“Jitterbug Waltz” (Take 2A, Previously Unreleased) 6:36
Preview "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" (Take 5, Previously Unreleased) here.
(As wonderful as all these freshly released takes are, it's a shame this package doesn't include Ella Jamerson's vocal version of "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," backed by Guaraldi's trio, which still remains unreleased. That would have been a particularly delectable bonus.)
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The Small Batch edition is limited to 3,000 copies worldwide. Each pressing is individually numbered and encased in a foil-stamped, linen-wrapped slipcase featuring an acrylic inset of the original artwork. The vinyl disc — extractable through a frictionless ribbon pull-tab — is housed in a reproduction of the album’s original, tip-on jacket and protected by an archival-quality, anti-static, non-scratching inner sleeve.
This edition has new liner notes by Yours Truly, who is jazzed to note (apologies for the lack of modesty) that Craft’s publicity regards me as “the foremost Guaraldi historian.” That’s pretty cool.
So … fatten up your bank account, because it’s gonna be an expensive couple of months!
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Vinyl madness 2022
Saturday, August 20, 2022
The ghost of Christmas past
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Christmas comes early!
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
This definitely isn't a rock!
Friday, May 20, 2022
Another sales milestone!
Back in the day, such a count would have been tabulated by physical album sales: LPs and CDs. The RIAA included streams beginning in February 2016, so this Charlie Brown Christmas milestone is based on more than 4 million copies purchased over various formats, and 1.14 billion streams.
(The formula is 1,500 on-demand audio and/or video song streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sale.)
As always gets mentioned in the same breath, this makes A Charlie Brown Christmas the second-best-selling jazz album of all time, behind Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, which went quintuple platinum in 2019. And as I always point out — most recently in this post, when A Charlie Brown Christmas went quadruple platinum in December 2016 — these RIAA figures are based mostly on electronically recorded sales made subsequent to 1991, when Neilsen SoundScan began tracking data. Clearly, Guaraldi’s album sold many, many copies during the previous quarter-century … but because Fantasy’s record-keeping was so sloppy during those earlier years, a precise figure has been impossible to determine.
It’s therefore entirely possible that Guaraldi’s album has surpassed Kind of Blue … but we can only speculate. (In fairness, Davis’ album also sold plenty of copies prior to 1991.)
Meanwhile, this is merely the latest in a long line of accolades showered upon Guaraldi’s score. The album first was certified platinum in 1996; was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007; and was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2012. Just last December, as detailed in this post, the album reached its highest-ever Billboard chart position, 56 years after its original release. Nor can we overlook Billboard citing A Charlie Brown Christmas at the top of its 50-position Greatest of All Time Holiday Albums List (followed, for those who are curious, by Michael Bublé’s Christmas, Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas, and Mannheim Steamroller’s A Fresh Aire Christmas and Christmas).
Good ol’ Charlie Brown may not have shone during baseball and football place-kicking, but he’s certainly no slouch when it comes to album sales!