Vince on the Web: 2024 update

This topic hasn't been revisited since 2014, and it's definitely time for another look. Rather than link back to that earlier post, I'll simply repeat, modify and update it here.

Guaraldi fans are lucky; all of the albums under his own name have remained in print and been readily available since their initial release, with new ones arriving rapidly these days. 

But what about material that saw limited commercial release, or none at all?

Quite a few nuggets exist, thanks to the Web. Some are housed in authorized online archives that share them with the general public; others are bootlegs that (shall we say) lack that level of legitimacy, but nonetheless can be enjoyed by folks who haven't yet discovered them.

Onward!

Our first stop is SugarMegs Audio, "where live music lives since 1996." The site hosts a massive archive of more than 120,000 concert recordings, in whole or in part. Most are rock/pop, but you'll find other things as well. (One can get lost in this site for days...) On the homepage, scroll down to where THE STREAMING AUDIO COLLECTION is headlined, then click on the "database interface" link below. That'll bring up a page with a small white SEARCH box on the left. Enter the name "Guaraldi," and — as these words are typed — you'll get 15 hits. Most are other performers covering one or more Guaraldi songs, but two entries actually feature Vince. From the top, they are:

• A shared billing with no less than Carlos Santana, during a benefit for the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, on the afternoon of October 7, 1972. The band also included Coke and Pete Escovedo; other personnel, if present, remain unnamed. Although numerous sources agree that the entire show was broadcast by a local radio station — some claim KPFA, others KSAN — only two fragments seem to have survived: a portion of a jam running just shy of 7 minutes, and a second, longer fragment from an extended jam version of "Evil Ways," which clocks in at about 15:38. You'll find them both here, stitched together as a single file. Guaraldi's electric keyboard can be heard quite clearly throughout both fragments, although the melodic quality of his contribution is open to debate. Mostly, he delivers the extemporaneous riffs that characterized his occasional rock-inflected appearances at the Matrix, during this part of his career. This file's nice bonus, however, is the DJ who speaks over the music at roughly 20:40, to identify Santana on guitar, and Guaraldi on electric piano.

• The massive jam during the final night of the five-day farewell party for San Francisco's Fillmore West, which ran June 30-July 4, 1971. Guaraldi was part of the final evening's "San Francisco Musicians Jam," which included Van Morrison, the Tower of Power horn section, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Cold Blood, Hot Tuna, the Loading Zone and even rock impresario Bill Graham, on cowbell. The entry labeled "FillmoreWestFinalNightJams1971" focuses on that set. Guaraldi played electric organ. You'll be hard-pressed to hear him over the chaos, but you're welcome to try!

A message from 1967

It tantalized me for years.

The San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive is a marvelous resource: an endeavor that has preserved great chunks of Northern California's television history, whether it originated on film or broadcast video, from the dawn of television to 2005. Best of all, much of the archive's contents have been digitized and made available for online viewing by all, at no cost.

You can check out a nifty video introduction of the archive here.

The archive's deposits are a fascinating window into the past, affording the sort of "You're really there" experience that simply doesn't come from the oh-so-phony "re-enactments" beloved by many of today's cable and satellite channels.

Jazz fans will find tantalizing items, albeit only after some digging. George Lewis and his Ragtime Jazz Band come to life during a 1953 performance at the Hangover Club. Dave Brubeck discusses his former mentor, Darius Milhaud, in a two-part documentary first aired on KQED in 1965. In a 1974 KPIX Eyewitness News report, San Francisco jazz critic Ralph Gleason — also a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine — reflects on the death and legacy of Duke Ellington.

The archive's collection is sizable, and growing all the time: far faster than its dedicated staff can tabulate, digitize and post the contents. And therein resided the source of my frustration.

A search on Guaraldi, during the research phase of my book, yielded three entries: all of them "waiting to be processed." I was lucky; thanks to relationships cultivated with the many individuals I interviewed, I was able to obtain copies of two of these three items. 

The first, 1965's Bay of Gold, was an hour-length documentary about the San Francisco Bay; it was directed and produced by Lee Mendelson, who later that same year made history with Guaraldi when A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on television. As the two men already had become friends and creative partners, Mendelson hired Guaraldi to write and perform the score for Bay of Gold, and you'll hear themes and improvisations that never appeared elsewhere (along with a few themes that Guaraldi did later recycle). 

Vince on the Web

Guaraldi fans are lucky; most of the albums under his own name have remained in print and been readily available since their initial release. That's true of his entire Fantasy catalog, not so much his latter projects for Warner Bros. Oh, Good Grief was (and is) the most popular and easily obtainable of that trio; The Eclectic Vince Guaraldi and Alma-Ville require more digging, but even they're not too hard to find on either LP or CD.

But what about material that never saw commercial release?

Happily, a few nuggets exist, several of which are available via the Web. Some are housed in authorized online archives that are willing to share them with the general public; others are bootlegs that (shall we say) lack that level of legitimacy, but nonetheless are waiting to be enjoyed by folks who haven't yet discovered them.

Onward!

Our first stop is SugarMegs Audio, "where live music lives since 1996." The site hosts a massive archive of more than 67,000 concert recordings, in whole or in part. Most are rock/pop, but you'll find other things as well. On the homepage, scroll down to where THE MAIN COLLECTION is headlined, then click on the "database interface" link below. That'll bring up a page with a small white SEARCH box on the left. Enter the name "Guaraldi," and — as these words are typed — you'll get six hits. (They're at the bottom of the page, so be sure to scroll down far enough.) Three are simply more recent performers covering one or more Guaraldi songs, but the other three entries actually feature Vince. In chronological order, they are:

• The massive jam during the final night of the five-day farewell party for San Francisco's Fillmore West, which ran June 30-July 4, 1971. Guaraldi was part of the final evening's "San Francisco Musicians Jam," which included Van Morrison, the Tower of Power horn section, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Cold Blood, Hot Tuna, the Loading Zone and even rock impresario Bill Graham, on cowbell. Guaraldi played electric organ. You'll be hard-pressed to hear him over the chaos, but you're welcome to try!

• A shared billing with no less than Carlos Santana, during a benefit for the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, on the afternoon of October 7, 1972. The band also included Coke and Pete Escovedo; other personnel, if present, remain unnamed. Although numerous sources agree that the entire show was broadcast by a local radio station — some claim KPFA, others KSAN — only two fragments seem to have survived: a portion of a jam running just shy of 7 minutes, and a second, longer fragment from an extended jam version of "Evil Ways," that clocks in at about 15:38. You'll find them both here, stitched together as a single file. Guaraldi's electric keyboard can be heard quite clearly throughout both fragments, although the melodic quality of his contribution is open to debate. Mostly, he delivers the extemporaneous riffs that characterized his occasional rock-inflected appearances at the Matrix, during this part of his career. This file's nice bonus, however, is the DJ who speaks over the music at roughly 20:40, to identify Santana on guitar, and Guaraldi on electric piano.

Guaraldi also shared the stage with Van Morrison
on December 1, 1972, during a benefit designed
to help save the Alhambra Theater in Sacramento,
California. (Sadly, that effort failed.)

• Unfortunately, the third item — Guaraldi's presence as part of Van Morrison's back-up band, for a concert at the Lion's Share, in San Anselmo, California, on February 15, 1973 — appears to have been removed from SugarMegs. Alternate sources, at The Midnight Café and Guitars 101, also no longer have active links; more's the pity. At this point, the only options appear to be much dodgier BitTorrent sites, so proceed with caution.

Morrison played two sets, and Guaraldi joined the band for the entire second set. To quote my book:

Perhaps inspired by Guaraldi's presence, Morrison devoted much of the second set to covers of standards that included "Misty" and "White Cliffs of Dover." The fit was awkward; Morrison did much better on his own hits, such as "Listen to the Lion" and "Hard Nose the Highway."

Even so, Guaraldi was allowed generous solos; he riffed on electric keyboard midway through "White Cliffs of Dover" and comped quite enthusiastically behind an oddly up-tempo handling of "Misty."

You can judge for yourself. Guaraldi spent about half a year with Morrison, from late 1972 through the spring of 1973, but this is the only known recording of their work together.

Missing in action

I lament the ones that continue to elude me.

During the early years of Guaraldi's long association with Lee Mendelson, the jazz pianist and composer worked on several projects outside the realm of Charles Schulz and his Peanuts characters. The most noteworthy was a 1965 documentary, Bay of Gold, which told (and I'm quoting here) "the dynamic history of San Francisco and the Bay Area." I discuss the film at some length in my book, and note that it's available for viewing here, thanks to the kind folks at the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive. Take a look, and enjoy Guaraldi's background score.

Aside from Bay of Gold, Guaraldi also scored a few short industrial films for clients such as Sunset Magazine and the Leslie Salt Company. I've never been able to find a copy of the latter, a 1966 film titled An Adventure with Spice Islands, which — according to Lee Mendelson's production index — existed in both a 26-minute and 15-minute format.

Here's the description, from the same Mendelson document:

An Adventure in Spice Islands is a documentary on the history and operation of the Spice Islands Company. A "typical housewife" who discovers the Spice Islands spices and herbs in her search to learn the art of good cooking is a humorous link which ties the shows together. On-camera interviews and an original music score enhance the entertainment value of this film.

Ah, the 1960s ... you gotta love it. The mind doth boggle, wondering how that "typical housewife" behaved on camera.

The Leslie Salt Company, once the largest private land owner in the San Francisco Bay Area, was absorbed by Cargill in 1978. Queries to the latter went nowhere, and from there the trail went cold. All that's known of Guaraldi's score is his "Spice Islands Theme," one of the tracks on his album Vince Guaraldi with the San Francisco Boys Chorus. (At least, I assume said theme is from the film in question. Seems too strong a coincidence to be otherwise.)

I did, however, just come up with this droll little squib from the Wisconsin Rapids (Wisconsin) Daily Tribune, published August 4, 1969, on the society page:

The film "An Adventure with Spice Islands" will be shown when St. Luke's Lutheran Ladies Aid meets at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, members to note change of time. On the hostess committee are Mrs. Leland Hagen, Mrs. Edgar Klingforth, Mrs. Elmer Lueck and Mrs. Carl Polansky Jr.

Okay, so it's clear that copies of the film were circulated, and we all know what that means: Somebody, somewhere, still has one. Needless to say, if any of this blog's followers can think of any leads, do let me know.

While we're on said subject, Guaraldi also scored at least a couple of 1966 TV commercials that Lee Mendelson produced. One was a 30-second spot — or perhaps a series of 30-second spots — for Granny Goose Potato Chips, to promote the company's new "Green Onion" brand of chips. The other was a 60-second spot for the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company. Titled "Susan," this short film was designed (again quoting from the Mendelson document) "to generate interest in young women to seek employment as service representatives for the Telephone Company. This was accomplished by presenting — in a documentary manner — the friendly people, atmosphere and conditions that the company offers — through the eyes of a young woman employee."

As of this writing, YouTube offers one Granny Goose TV spot from the 1960s ... but clearly not the right one. The few Pacific Telephone spots I've been able to unearth from that era also offer no joy.

Once again, though, I remain hopeful. I'm sure they're out there someplace...