Plant a tree ... and batter up! (plus a few more notable items)

Vince Guaraldi's first known gig, on my timeline, was at San Francisco's Cable Car Village, as part of saxman Chuck Travis' Quartet. The booking began on April 12, 1951, and ran for an unknown number of days, or weeks.

That makes this year — 2026 — the diamond anniversary of the world's initial exposure to Dr. Funk's popular and immediately recognizable music.

Bearing that in mind, the folks at Lee Mendelson Film Productions are getting the year off to a roaring start, with the debut of full scores to 1976's It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown and 1966's Charlie Brown's All Stars! — the 15th and second Peanuts TV specials, respectively — packaged together on a single release.

I must confess, though, the moment is bittersweet. My obvious delight in this album's arrival is compromised by the knowledge that Arbor Day was the last Peanuts score Guaraldi completed, before his untimely death (about which, a bit more below). 

The album features 24 tracks: 17 from Arbor Day, including two bonus alternate tracks; followed by the music from Charlie Brown’s All Stars!, mixed into seven tracks. Both scores include "Rain, Rain, Go Away,” one of Guaraldi's most soulful compositions. Their book-ended presence here allows listeners to see how Dr. Funk's approach to the tune evolved during the intervening decade.

The version for Arbor Day was one of the final songs Guaraldi recorded. He and his combo laid it down on the afternoon of February 6, 1976, at San Francisco's Wally Heider Studio. That same evening, he unexpectedly passed away while performing at Butterfield’s, in Menlo Park. Guaraldi was only 47. 

All Stars! features a sextet: Guaraldi is joined by John Coppola and Frank Snow, trumpet; Eddie Duran, guitar; Eugene “Puzzy” Firth, bass; and Lee Charlton, drums. Guaraldi returned to his trio roots for Arbor Day, performing alongside Seward McCain, bass; and Jim Zimmerman, drums.

(Note: The tracks for All Stars! were pulled from a 35mm negative soundtrack tape, because the original studio session tapes haven't yet been found.)  

The 34-minute album will be available March 20, on a 12-inch 33 RPM black or "Forest Green" BioVinyl LP in a Gatefold Jacket, and on CD and digitally.

They can be preordered here.

Physical releases feature liner notes by album producers Sean and Jason Mendelson; and an historical essay by Mine Own Self. The liner notes also feature rare photographs and images from the specials.

Lee Mendelson Film Productions also is partnering with the Arbor Day Foundation: For every physical copy of this album purchased in 2026, LMFP will plant one tree in a forest of need, with a minimum annual support of 12,000 trees. 

Read the full LMFP press release here, where you can hear brief samples from five tracks.

Three full tracks can be streamed as digital singles:

Young Man's Fancy

Sprinkle Your Bird

Rain, Rain, Go Away (Gentle Rain)

Track Listing:

It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown 

1. Rerun’s Lament

2. Rerun’s Lament (Reprise)

3. Ships Sailinto Arbor

4. Laughter in the Library

5. Flatten Patten (Baseball Theme)

6. Young Man's Fancy

7. Jay Sterling Morton Jazz

8. We're the Visiting Team

9. Seeds for Thought (Joe Cool)

10. Don't Forget the Shovel

11. Sprinkle Your Bird

12. Snoopy at Bat

13. Lucy's Home Run

14. Rain, Rain, Go Away (Rain, Gentle Rain)

15. Happy Arbor Day, Charlie Brown

16. Jay Sterling Morton Jazz (Bonus Alternate Take)

17. Happy Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (Bonus Alternate Take)

Charlie Brown’s All Stars!

18. Charlie's Run

19. Charlie Brown's All Stars!

20. Baseball Theme (Medley)

21. Oh, Good Grief!

22. Surfin' Snoopy (Air Music)

23. Pebble Beach

24. Rain, Rain, Go Away

But wait ... that's not all!

On April 18, participating Record Store Day brick-and-mortar outlets will feature a special version of these scores, on two discs in a single package: a 10-inch "Clear Baseball" 45 RPM LP of It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown, and a 12-inch, die-cut glove-shaped 45 RPM LP of Charlie Brown’s All Stars! The first disc will feature all but the two bonus tracks from Arbor Day, and the second disc will feature the full score from All Stars! 

The LMFP press release for this special item can be read here.

The RSD exclusive will be available solely at participating Record Store Day stores, in limited quantities; you'll need to visit a store in person, to buy a copy. The RSD Store Finder page can be found here, or you can contact your local brick-and-mortar shop to see if they're participating, and expecting copies.

Better get in line early!

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Not to be outdone, Craft Recordings has just announced a new edition of 1965's From All Sides, the second of three album collaborations between Guaraldi and guitarist Bola Sete. The set list features eight tunes delivered in a cool bossa nova style; highlights include "The Girl from Ipanema," "A Taste of Honey," a sassy Guaraldi original titled "Ballad of Pancho Villa," and "Menino Pequeno da Bateria." Listeners will immediately recognize the latter is an early incarnation of "My Little Drum" ("Little Drummer Boy"), soon to find its way into the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

This new edition of the album is released as part of the Original Jazz Classics Series, on 180-gram vinyl pressed at RTI, with all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray, from the original stereo tapes (AAA) at Cohearent Audio, and a Stoughton Tip-On Jacket.

It will be available on both vinyl and as high-res digital, released on February 27. (No CD version.)

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To add more fun to this year's 75th anniversary celebration of Guaraldi's music, check out this playlist of Vince Guaraldi Peanuts tracks, with occasional commentary by Sean Mendelson, originally created for a Record Store Day listening party in October 2025, and now avaialble on YouTube. It's a nice selection of tracks, pulled from the albums released thus far.

Bits & bobs

Photo courtesy of Peggy Tillman

Ever more research resources continue to appear online, and each new discovery often adds a tantalizing nugget — or two, or 20 — to Guaraldi’s career. My most recent find is the California Digital Newspaper Collection, which seems devoted primarily to small, late 19th- and early 20th-century regional newspapers. But the database also includes a healthy number of high school and college newspapers, which delivered some nice nuggets. Several more stops on the Guaraldi/Sete Quartet’s October 1965 California college tour were added to my Guaraldi timeline, and — better yet — a few of the colleges publicized and reviewed the performances.

It’s always fun to see how Guaraldi was perceived at the time, and what he played, and — if interviewed — what he discussed.

 

The quartet performed at Sacramento City College on October 12. Five days earlier, the campus newspaper — The Pony Express — published an article to help promote the upcoming concert. Most of the information clearly was lifted from the publicity packet that the college received ahead of time, which must have been the source of this intriguing second sentence:

 

Pianist Guaraldi and Sete were ordered to combine their acts by “President” Dizzy Gillespie, after they appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1962.

 

I possess copies of several Guaraldi publicity packets, which became more informative as the 1960s progressed; I’ve never before seen that statement. It’s true that Gillespie “discovered” Sete in the spring of 1962, while the latter was performing solo at San Francisco’s Sheraton Palace. And yes, Guaraldi and Sete both performed at the fifth annual Monterey Jazz Festival, in late September … but separately. Sete subsequently joined Gillespie’s band long enough to be part of the trumpeter’s next album, New Wave. Sete then flew to New York City and fronted his own trio at the Park-Sheraton Hotel for four months. When that gig concluded, he returned to San Francisco and began a seven-week solo stint at Sugar Hill. According to Fantasy Records’ then-“official” biography of Sete, written by jazz critic Russ Wilson, that’s where Guaraldi caught up with Sete in July 1963.

 

No mention of Gillespie’s helpful “edict,” although it certainly could have been an encouraging suggestion, at some point.

 

Further along in the same Pony Express article, the anonymous author injects a bit of opinion:

 

Guaraldi rose to national attention after KROY (a Sacramento station) disc jockey Tony Bigg played the “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” track from a Guaraldi recording of jazz impressions of the film Black Orpheus.

 

The recording was surprisingly accepted by the teenagers who make or break popular records.

 

You gotta love that second sentence. “Surprisingly”?

 

The article concludes with the following promise of things to come:

 

Recently, Guaraldi composed music for a Mass at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and he will soon complete another composition, “San Francisco Suite.”

 

Alas, we know that didn’t happen.

 

Photo courtesy of Peggy Tillman

The quartet’s performance was reviewed in The Pony Express — again anonymously — on October 21. The writer noted that the set list included “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” two “Jazz Impressions of Charlie Brown,” a “delightful” rendition of the Jimmie Rodgers tune “The World I Used to Know,” and a “swingy waltz” called “Skating.”

That’s the only reference I’ve found, to “The World I Used to Know”; Guaraldi never recorded it on an album. But the presence of “Skating” is more of an eye-opener, as it likely means that sparkling jazz waltz was a regular part of the entire tour’s set list … a couple of months before it debuted for the world in A Charlie Brown Christmas.

 

One of the tour’s final stops — perhaps the final stop — was at Citrus College, in Glendora, on October 29. The performance was reviewed on November 5 in the Citrus College Clarion, and journalist Frank Cernelli combined that coverage with an interview with Guaraldi.

 

The lengthy article includes these tidbits:

 

[Guaraldi] also plays, but not professionally, the guitar and organ, and is building a harpsichord in his spare time. “I like putting things together,” he declared.

 

……..

 

After finishing a round of 26 California college concerts, [Guaraldi] will tour Oregon. He is also considering the possibility of touring England early next year.

 

……..

 

Summing up his musical philosophy, [Guaraldi] said, “I strive for freedom of musical expression, and clarity of thought.”

 

That final remark is a bit … well … pompous, and seems to have more to do with Zen meditation than performing jazz. But, whatever.

 

Building a harpsichord, eh? Could be true; if so, he may even have used it during local gigs.

 

He may well have toured Oregon in November 1965; I have absolutely no information about his movements that month. (I need to find a comparable Oregon digital newspaper collection!) But he definitely never made it to England in early 1966, or any time thereafter.

And that’s it for now. 

Archival gold

Hang onto your hats; this one is huge.

The first tantalizing seed was planted at some point in 2009, during the research phase of my Guaraldi bio (a few years before I began crafting the actual text). One of San Francisco Chronicle music critic Ralph Gleason’s columns — on July 16, 1964 — briefly mentioned that Guaraldi and Bola Sete soon would record some short programs, known as “fills,” for National Educational Television (NET) member stations. That’s all I would know for more than a decade, despite extensive investigation.

 

In early 2011, I began what quickly became a warm and friendly email and phone correspondence with a fellow Guaraldi fan named Doug, who worked (still works) on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. His proximity to the Library of Congress — and his willingness to lend his investigative talents — proved quite helpful, on numerous occasions. In mid-June, I mentioned the NET fills, wondering whether there might be any reference to them in the Library of Congress (LoC), and/or whether any leads might point to former NET (now PBS) stations possessing additional information … or, better yet, copies of old tapes. During the next several years — to my grateful surprise, when he later detailed this effort — he exchanged more than 180 emails (!) with “various and sundry folks” while trying to confirm existence and contents. A few individuals provided encouragement and direction, although — alas — every potential lead went nowhere.

 

My Guaraldi bio was published in April 2012. The filmography (Appendix C) includes a listing for the NET fills, along with a frustrating final sentence noting that “no tapes have been found thus far.”

 

And that’s where the matter remained, for nearly a decade. I re-checked the LoC databases every year or so, to no avail.

 

Then, in early May 2020, I stumbled upon the LoC’s recently added NET Microfiche Special Collection … and the picture rapidly expanded. I learned that the Guaraldi/Sete fills had been made specifically to accompany an imported 13-episode Granada-TV anthology series titled Stories of Guy de Maupassant; I even was able to determine which episodes were attached to Guaraldi and/or Sete performances. (The full story of that discovery is detailed in this earlier blog post.)

More bits and bobs

My ongoing dive into newspapers.com continues to reveal all sorts of informational nuggets. Most wind up in my Guaraldi Timeline, which is expanding at an exponential rate, but others are worthy of a few paragraphs here.

Enjoy!

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San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason interviewed Guaraldi while the pianist still was a member of Cal Tjader's Quintet, for a feature story that appeared November 30, 1958. Vince's comments included these revealing passages:

"I first heard boogie woogie on Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall [a radio variety program that aired from 1933 to 1949]. Some guy played it and explained the different basses. I learned my first tune in G-flat, played on the black keys. It's an easy way to learn to play the piano. At first I just played in the house, though.

"Boogie woogie has helped me a lot, for a blues taste. Those cats had a good time; I still have their albums, and I still play them. You can adapt a lot of what they do to Latin music, for instance."

And, when asked to name his favorite musician, Guaraldi replied, "Zoot Sims is my favorite saxophone player. He can make me cry. He's a guy that it's in his soul to play. It's beautiful. It's not out-of-the-book-let's-go-to-school. He's a human being."

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The national tour with Dick Gregory and vocalist Margie McCoy, in late 1963, hit quite a few colleges and universities. One such stop, on October 31, was at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, in California. In anticipation of that visit, a journalist for the campus newspaper — the El Mustang — ran a feature article that included this intriguing information about Guaraldi, along with a few quotes:

The pianist is one of the few recording artists to double as both recording director and producer.

"I plan to record new talent as well as established artists," Guaraldi says, "and will make a special attempt to discover the unknown artist of today."

The director-composer calls a great deal of this country's music put out under the label of bossa nova "sheer nonsense."

I have to say "Do tell!" to the first comment. The sole A&R (Artists & Repertoire) credit Guaraldi possesses, to my knowledge, is for Bola Sete's 1965 Fantasy album, The Incomparable Bola Sete. And Guaraldi can hardly claim to have "discovered" Sete.

The second comment generates a raised eyebrow and thoughts of sour grapes...

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When the Gregory/Guaraldi/McCoy show was reviewed by El Mustang's Lynne Prindle a few days later, on November 5, she gave a droll opening to the paragraph devoted to the trio:

Vince Guaraldi's Trio, headed by a little man covered with a handle bar mustache, banged out its impressions of such songs as "Limehouse Blues," "Fly Me to the Moon" and their interpretation of Henry Mancini's "Mr. Lucky." Highlight of the trio set was the song Guaraldi wrote and recorded, "Cast Your Fate to the Wind."

Think we should give Prindle credit for intentionally including the word impressions?

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The Gregory/Guaraldi/McCoy tour subsequently stopped at the University of California, Davis, on November 3. In the review that ran November 5 in the campus newspaper, the California Aggie, the unnamed critic concluded the paragraph about Guaraldi thusly:

The trio finished up with their popular "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" and the Fats Waller tune, "Litter Bug Waltz."

(Oopsie!)

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Richard Haddock's terrific interview with Guaraldi, in the San Francisco Examiner on March 29, 1964, includes these highly informative quotes:

"I listen to everybody," Vince replies, to the usual question about musical influences. "There were really only three main departure points in jazz piano: James P. Johnson, Earl Hines and Bud Powell. They're all great, but Powell had the biggest influence on me.

"I also like the awkward grace of Thelonious Monk very much. And then there are Art Tatum and Duke Ellington: each in a class by himself, over and above the rest. I hear Chopin in Tatum, and the classical composer in Duke."

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Finally, Herb Caen's April 17, 1964, column — which appeared in numerous San Francisco Bay Area newspapers — had this to say about an upcoming documentary about Charles M. Schulz:

Producer Lee Mendelson's TV special about Charles Schulz, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, will have Vince Guaraldi playing the piano for Schroeder, and Cal Tjader beating the vibes as Snoopy."

Well, we know that turned out to be half correct...!

A memorable piano lesson

As the years have passed, and this blog’s status has risen via Google searches, I’ve occasionally heard from first-time visitors eager to share their long-ago “Guaraldi encounters.”

This is a good one, courtesy of a lovely woman named Peggy Tillman, who — way back in the day — unexpectedly found herself seated alongside Guaraldi, on his piano bench.

 

But that’s getting ahead of things.

 

Sonoma State College — in Rohnert Park, California, just a few minutes south of Santa Rosa — opened to 274 students in the fall of 1961. Because the campus still was far from completed, many of the classrooms and other key activities took place in leased buildings within the city.

 

Peggy transferred into Sonoma State in the fall of 1963, her sophomore year; she remembers the still-gestating state of affairs. “Our ‘library’ was built as a grocery store,” she laughs, “and after we moved out, a few years later, it became a grocery store.”

 

The student body, still quite modest, included a disproportionately large percentage of adults: either working folks looking to secure credits for a long-delayed graduation, or retired individuals with the time to enhance their knowledge. “The joke,” Peggy recalls, “was that the average age of the student body was higher than the average age of the faculty. When school administrators sought input on the creation of a school mascot or symbol, somebody suggested a rocking chair.”

 

Jokes aside, these “returning students” were a challenge. “They were tough competition: far in advance of us, because they had life skills, better study habits, and often were taking only one or two classes, whereas we younger students were taking a full load.”

 

Peggy entered as an education major, with an eye toward teaching, but — as luck would have it — California changed its academic requirements that year, mandating a fifth year of post-graduation instruction in order to obtain a teaching degree. Preferring to graduate in the planned four years, Peggy switched majors and entered the psychology department.

 

Toward the end of her junior year, the campus Concert and Lectures Committee booked the Guaraldi/Bola Sete Quartet for a performance on April 5, 1965. Since Sonoma State did not yet have a performance hall, the gig was scheduled into the nearby Cotati Veterans Memorial Auditorium. Admission was free to students, and $2 for the general public.

By this point, Peggy had become one of the three people who made up the college’s fledgling audio/visual department; thanks to her experience as campus photographer during her high school career, she stepped into that same role for Sonoma State. One of her psychology department professors, Dr. Frank Siroky, was doing research on the body postures of people, as they listened to music; he hired Peggy to take pictures of the audience during the upcoming Guaraldi/Sete concert.

 

(Ah, such innocent times. It’s an intriguing research premise, to be sure, but it’d never fly in today’s hyper-vigilant era of privacy concerns.)

An appeal for Jerry Granelli

“Jazz isn’t a style; it’s a way of life.”

The speaker is Jerry Granelli, evoking singer/activist Nina Simone, who famously said, “Jazz is not just music; it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.”

 

Granelli makes this comment toward the beginning of Colin MacKenzie’s 2002 documentary, Jerry Granelli: In the Moment. The 51-minute film can be viewed at Granelli’s richly informative web site, which traces the deservedly famous drummer’s impressively varied career.

 

Right now, Jerry could use our help.

 

Just before his 80th birthday, this past December, Granelli suffered a near-fatal case of internal bleeding while at home in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He spent the next two months in a hospital ICU, followed by almost two more months in hospital, while being stabilized. He finally was able to return home a few weeks ago, but he now faces six to eight months of recovery that will involve extensive physical therapy, at-home caregivers and special intravenous feedings.

 

It’ll be expensive, and his family has set up a GoFundMe campaign. Details are here.

 

Regular visitors to this blog are quite familiar with Granelli, as the drummer in the third of Vince Guaraldi’s early great trios. Alongside bassist Fred Marshall, Granelli can be heard on Vince Guaraldi/Bola Sete/And Friends, The Latin Side of Vince Guaraldi, From All Sides, portions of The Eclectic Vince Guaraldi, and the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. Granelli can be seen in the Jazz Casual episode that features Guaraldi and Sete, which debuted September 25, 1963 (the audio of which was released in 2001 by Koch Jazz). Granelli also gets considerable screen time in 1963’s Anatomy of a Hit, when he anonymously stands in for Colin Bailey, during a Fantasy studio sequence where Guaraldi pretends to record “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” for the first time.

Marshall already was working with Guaraldi when Granelli joined the trio in early 1963 — replacing Bailey — during a February 21-23 gig at a Sacramento venue dubbed The Berry Patch. They remained together until the end of May 1965, which also encompassed most of the time that Sete transformed the combo into a quartet. And although Granelli then became a member of Denny Zeitlin’s trio for the next few years, he continued to work occasionally alongside Guaraldi until the end of the 1960s; Granelli even did some of the drum work for 1969’s big-screen Peanuts film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown.

 

Granelli’s approach to his craft was quite Zen; as the years passed, he would come to think of himself less as “just” a drummer, and more as “an artist.”

 

“The people I really learned from,” he acknowledges, also in MacKenzie’s film, “were the people I was willing to surrender to.”

 

I find it ironic — for a guy who spent the bulk of his later career embracing free jazz, acid jazz, psychedelic and experimental jazz, alongside talents such as Zeitlin, Mose Allison, Bruce Frisell, Ornette Coleman, Jamie Salt and Anthony Braxton — that Granelli’s first lengthy gig was as a member of Guaraldi’s mainstream, gentle bossa nova combo.

 

But hey: We’ve all gotta start somewhere, right?

 

I spent several lengthy sessions with Jerry back in 2010, while preparing for my Guaraldi biography; he was, by far, one of my most articulate and passionate interview subjects. And, much more recently, he chatted with me again — while still hospitalized — to bring me up to date on his more recent activities.

Which, as Canadian fans know, have for the past several years included an annual “Tales of A Charlie Brown Christmas” concert tour each December.

Granelli is one of the very few sidemen still with us, from Guaraldi’s early days. Let’s help ensure that he’ll again be where he belongs: seated at a drum kit, once more rejoicing in his “lust for being on the cutting edge.” 

Orpheus Rising

My friend Scott recently posed an intriguing question:

 

Was Guaraldi the first jazz artist to cover the music from Black Orpheus in an album?

 

The initial assumption is to say yes, due to the timeline. Although the film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1959 — where it took the Palme d’Or — it didn’t reach the States until a screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival, on November 24 that same year. General release came a month later, on December 21; it went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film on April 4, 1960.

 

Guaraldi likely had seen the film several times by then. “I dug the soundtrack, and I dug ‘Samba de Orpheus,’ the tune and that scene in the movie,” he said to Ralph Gleason, several years later. “I was playing ‘Samba de Orpheus’ for a long time before I ever put [the notion of an album] together.”

 

That means he must’ve been performing that tune (and others from the film?) since early 1960, because he “put the notion together” in the summer of ’61, when he cut a demo tape of the four primary Jobim/Bonfa selections — “Samba de Orpheus,” “Manha de Carnaval,” “O Nosso Amor” and “A Felicidade” — with bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Colin Bailey. He shopped the tape to Capitol Records and then Columbia Records, both of which turned him down; he then snagged a one-album contract from Fantasy in early autumn. The resulting album, Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus, was recorded in November 1961 and February ’62, and released on April 18, 1962.

 

So … could somebody else have moved faster?

Flautist Herbie Mann certainly came close. His album Right Now, which includes a cover of "Manha de Carnaval," was recorded in March and April 1962. Alas, it wasn't released until November.

 

Mann aside, the most likely suspect, at that point in time, was Stan Getz. He grew infatuated with bossa nova in the early 1960s, and devoted several albums to that rapidly emerging genre. (That said, his iconic collaboration with Astrud Gilberto on “The Girl from Ipanema” wasn’t released until May 1964, although it had been recorded a year earlier.) And yes, his album Big Band Bossa Nova includes a cover of “Manha de Carnaval.” But the tracks were recorded August 27-28, 1962, and the album didn’t debut until October. Guaraldi beat him by half a year.

 

Next up for consideration: Quincy Jones. His album, also confusingly titled Big Band Bossa Nova — most famous these days for having introduced “Soul Bossa Nova,” now better known as Austin Powers’ theme — also includes a cover of “Manha de Carnaval.” Ah, but — once again — the tracks were recorded between June and September of 1962, and the album was released in November.

Trombonist Bob Brookmeyer's Trombone Jazz Samba includes covers of "Samba de Orfeu," "Manha de Carnaval" and "A Felicidade." Alas, the tracks were recorded in August and September 1962, and the album didn't appear until November.

 

This brings us to Ramsey Lewis, a veritable music-making machine by this point in his career. His trio’s Argo album, Bossa Nova, includes covers of both “Samba de Orpheus” and “Maha [sic] de Carnaval.” But he, too, came later to the party; the tracks were recorded on September 22 and 25, 1962, and the album also was released in November.

(On a sidebar note, during the research for this post, I noted — with delight — that this Ramsey Lewis Trio album also includes a cover of Guaraldi’s “Whirlpool,” with which I was previously unaware. And which immediately prompted an update of this post.)

Guaraldi's colleague Bola Sete seems a logical candidate, and yes: His album Bossa Nova includes a cover of "Manha de Carnaval." But it was recorded in October 1962, and not released until February 1963.

As 1962 drew to a close, George Shearing hit the studio in December, to record the tracks for his album Shearing Bossa Nova; it also includes a cover of "Manha de Carnaval." But, again, the album wasn't released until May 1963.

December 1962 also found Luiz Bonfá in the studio, no doubt wanting to take advantage of the music craze he helped ignite. Luiz Bonfá Plays and Sings Bossa Nova — arranged by no less than Lalo Schifrin, early in his career — includes a cover of "Manha de Carnaval." The album debuted in April 1963.

 

“Samba de Orfeu” popped up on Bud Shank’s Brasamba!, also released in April 1963. That tune also appeared on Bill Perkins’ Bossa Nova with Strings Attached, released the following month.

 

By this point, you must be remembering that Guaraldi’s friend and former “boss,” Cal Tjader, had gravitated toward Latin music in the late 1950s; surely he would have gotten a jump on his one-time pianist. But no: Although Tjader’s album Soña Libré includes a cover of “Manha de Carnaval,” the tracks weren’t laid down until January 28-30, 1963; the album didn’t drop until May that year.

 

Paul Desmond was next; his album Take Ten includes covers of both “Samba de Orfeu” and “Theme from Black Orpheus.” The tracks was recorded in June 1963, and the album debuted in October.

 

Interest subsequent expanded exponentially:

• “Manha de Carnaval” is on Gerry Mulligan’s Night Lights (December 1963).

• “Manha de Carnaval” is on the Modern Jazz Quartet’s The Sheriff (April 1964).

• “Samba de Orfeu” is on Ray Anthony’s Hit Songs to Remember (May 1966).

• “Samba de Orpheus” and “Manha de Carnaval” are on Charlie Byrd’s Byrdland (January 1967).

• “Manha de Carnaval” and “Samba de Orfeu” are on Oscar Peterson’s Soul Español (March 1967).

• A lengthy Black Orpheus medley — with “Manha de Carnaval,” “A Felicidade” and “Samba De Orfeu” — is on Bola Sete at the Monterey Jazz Festival (July 1967).

 

And so forth. Both “Manha de Carnaval” and “Samba De Orfeu” have become jazz standards.

 

So, does that mean Guaraldi scored first?

Emphatically ... not!

Harry James and his Orchestra released an MGM single in February 1961 (!). The A-side selling point is "Jersey Bounce," and the B-side is -- drumroll, please -- "Theme from Orfeu Negro (Manha de Carnaval)." James therefore wins the lottery.

And, indeed, Guaraldi wasn't even second. Hard bop saxophonist Rocky Boyd and his quintet hit the studio in March 1961, to record their album Ease It; the six tracks include a cover of "Samba de Orfeu." The album was released in mid-September.

 

Saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s came close with his third album, Wayning Moments, which includes a cover of the Black Orpheus theme. (The digital re-release features a second take.) The original LP was recorded on November 2 and 6, 1961; it hit stores in July 1962. 

But close doesn't count. We now know that Harry James and Rocky Boyd did indeed beat Guaraldi to the punch.

The De Maupassant connection

On July 16, 1964, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ralph Gleason reported that Guaraldi and Bola Sete were scheduled to record some short programs — known as “fills” — for National Educational Television (NET) member stations; San Francisco’s KQED Channel 9 was one such station. (NET existed from 1952 to October 4, 1970, at which point it was replaced by the PBS network we know today.)

Guy de Maupassant

As with PBS, NET programming aired without the advertising spots found on commercial networks such as ABC, CBS and NBC. The aforementioned short spots therefore were used when a series — often imported from the UK — ran only 54 minutes or so, which required the NET network to “fill” the remaining time with a short subject of some sort.

Guaraldi, Sete, Tom Beeson (bass) and John Rae (drums) recorded their fills during a single session at KQED's studio on August 21. Sete did two of them solo, then joined the Guaraldi Trio for "Star Song." Sete then departed, and the Guaraldi Trio performed two takes of "Linus and Lucy," followed by two compositions never recorded on an album: "Twilight of Youth" and "Water Street." Finally, Guaraldi did two takes of "Treat Street" as solos.

On January 27, 1965, Gleason reported that “a series of solo ‘fills’ of five and six minutes, which Guaraldi did for Educational TV, now is being shown on KQED before dramas.” 

Despite the fact that numerous copies of these fills must’ve circulated among the country’s many NET stations, none has surfaced. (I can’t help feeling that tapes are Out There somewhere, in some station’s storage room, or some retired line producer’s attic.) These fills therefore remain high on the list of Guaraldi’s most-wanted video appearances.

Indeed, until just a few weeks ago, I hadn’t even figured out how many existed, and how they were used. That said, I’d seen tantalizing clues over the years, although their significance was difficult to judge. Scattered among the results of generic Internet searches on “Vince Guaraldi,” I’d see occasional newspaper TV listings at odd hours of the evening, which read something like this:

Channel 7, 10:55, “Vince Guaraldi: Twilight of Youth.”

(Since I didn’t learn that “Twilight of Youth” was an unrecorded Guaraldi composition until several years after my biography was published, I didn’t immediately suspect it might be one of the aforementioned fills; it sounded more like a short interview segment.)

Stanford unlocks its vaults

If the relevant Facebook post can be taken as gospel, as of last September 2, Stanford University made the entire contents of its campus newspaper available online: every issue of The Stanford Daily, from 1892 onward. That's ... quite impressive.

It also represents a fresh windfall for researchers seeking Northern California-based information, as I recently discovered. One of my many Guaraldi-themed investigations happened to pull up a page from the Daily last week, which raised eyebrows and quickly led to the archive home page. A search on the term "Guaraldi" gives 78 results, a good many of which yielded fresh information and/or served as supplementary sources for already established details (always a good thing). A 79th hit pops up when searching for the incorrectly spelled "Guraldi," which once again proves that one must remember to explore alternate spellings of desired terms.

As with all well-designed archives, the results include both articles and advertisements that include Guaraldi's name; the latter are always fun to see, and I snagged several to enhance the visuals on my extensive Guaraldi timeline.

June Cochran, back in the day

As a result of one such ad, I now know that the Guaraldi Trio's appearance at Grodin's Music Festival — on September 29, 1963 — found Dr. Funk sharing the stage not only with Dave Brubeck, The Four Freshmen and The Brothers Four, but also Carol Brent, Georgie & Teddy, and "Top Rock Stars" ... along with "7 Playboy Playmates, including June Cochran, Playboy Playmate of the Years."

Goodness, what an afternoon that must have been!

A few years further along — on April 23, 1965 — a mischievous music brief mentions that Guaraldi and Bola Sete are at El Matador, and that "As an extra added attraction, bullfight movies will be shown on Sunday night, to jazz accompaniment, no doubt."

The first substantial treat appears May 9, 1966: a review of the previous evening's benefit concert at Stanford's Frost Memorial Amphitheater, which featured headliner Glenn Yarbrough, with an opener by Guaraldi's combo. Despite that billing, staffer Aaron Ross' (somewhat harsh) critique actually devotes more space to Guaraldi, beginning with the first paragraph and continuing onward:

Cool, relaxed, easygoing, that's the mood set by Vince Guaraldi at the Sunday concert for the Convalescent Home. Vince first gained recognition in 1960 with his album "Black Orpheus," taking the sound track from that movie and setting it to jazz.

I'm sorry to say, Vince's music hasn't changed much from those days; he still uses many of the same compositional formulas today. His solos are sometimes interesting, but on the whole are filled with standard clichés.

I don't mean to say that he's a prostitute, just that he's safe. He sticks to the security blanket that brought him fame and fortune. This is sad, because he's a very talented and capable musician. Someday, I hope he shows it.

Vince, for the past few years, has featured a guitarist. The first was Bola Sete, who was such a success, he took off on his own. More recently, he's been featuring George Morel, a semi-classical guitarist from Buenos Aires, Argentina, a very fine technician who has brought a refreshing change of pace.

A little of this, a little of that ... Take 3

Referencing Kathy Sloane's Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club — in my recent post about drummer Carl Burnett — prompted a more thorough search of the book, which revealed an intriguing nugget. The book's preface is written by author, essayist and California Poet Laureate Al Young, who grew up in Detroit but moved to the greater San Francisco area in 1961, in order to attend UC Berkeley. He held a number of odd jobs on the side during the next few years, including a stint as a DJ at San Francisco's KJAZ.

Young's preface to Sloane's book is a poetic overview of the entire San Francisco music scene, broken down by memory, region and venue. It includes this paragraph:

Across the Golden Gate Bridge in exotic Sausalito, pianist Vince Guaraldi — now famous for the scores he composed for the Peanuts TV specials in general, and for the songs "Lucy and Linus" [sic] and "Christmas Time Is Here" in particular — used to broadcast live from the Trident. We carried his Saturday night show over KJAZ. Just then, in 1962, Guaraldi was pushing "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," a number that would become his first international signature hit, and find its way onto his big-selling Fantasy album: Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus.

Fascinating, eh? Chances of any of those broadcasts having been recorded, and surviving to this day, are slim and none ... but boy, what a tantalizing thought!

********

Further on the subject of books, chasing an obscure detail led to Don Alberts' 2009 release, A Diary of the Underdogs. Alberts is a veteran jazz pianist and San Francisco native, having shared stages with the likes of Chet Baker, Shorty Rogers and Bud Shank, not to mention serving time as house pianist at Jimbo's Bop City: as demanding a job, in terms of requiring skilled jazz chops, as could be imagined. Alberts also fancies himself a writer, having penned short stories and a novel set within San Francisco's jazz world, along with collections of poetry and this sorta-kinda memoir/oral history of his home town's 1960s jazz scene.

Childhood Fantasy

Researchers rely on the kindness of friends and strangers, who occasionally point us in the direction of something — a key piece of information, a fascinating anecdote — that we wouldn't otherwise have found.

In that way, I'm grateful to a good friend for calling my attention to a delightful online profile of Dogpaw Carillo, the sort of cheerful, colorful figure who typifies San Francisco's still-quite-lively counter-culture vibe. Dogpaw — and that's how he prefers to be called — is the star of this engaging and informative article by Viktorija Rinkevičiūtė, which she wrote during her post-graduate stint as a master's student in media, journalism and globalization, while at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. She subsequently returned to Lithuania, where she maintains an engaging blog and looks back fondly on the time she spent in Northern California.

As you'll discover, reading Viktorija's charming piece, Dogpaw spent part of his childhood living directly adjacent to the Treat Avenue headquarters of Fantasy Records. He grew up in a house at 841 Treat; Fantasy was next door, at 855 Treat.

(A quick sidebar: We have become conditioned to assume — thanks in part to a Vince Guaraldi composition — that Fantasy's most famous early home was on Treat Street. But Guaraldi's tune isn't the only source; this slight error has been promulgated by scores of musicians who refer to the good ol' days, when "Fantasy was on Treat Street." Many of them are quoted saying as much in my book. The lapse is understandable; "Treat Street" rolls more swiftly off the tongue, and the rhyme is hard to resist. But it's a mistake nonetheless: Although San Francisco does possess a tiny Treat Street, it's nowhere near the Mission District locale where Fantasy Records made its home ... on Treat Avenue.)

Aside from being absorbed by Dogpaw's childhood memories, I was drawn to the several times he mentioned Guaraldi. Viktorija had no reason to pursue these references to Dr. Funk, since her story focused more generally on Dogpaw, then and now. But I sensed that he'd have more to say about Guaraldi, and so I contacted Viktorija. She kindly shared Dogpaw's contact information, and she also sent along several additional photos that she hadn't used in her article.

I found Dogpaw just as amiable — just as eager to chat about his Treat Avenue days — as I would have expected. And he did, indeed, have a great deal more to share about Guaraldi and Fantasy.

(I've tried to avoid too much overlap with the information in Viktorija's article, although some basic details are necessary.)

Dogpaw examines the exterior of 855 Treat Avenue, the
once-upon-a-time home of Fantasy Records, and now
headquarters of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
(Photo by Viktorija Rinkevičiūtė)

Dogpaw grew up in the house at 841 Treat, and remained there through his teens; his adolescence coincided perfectly with the 1960s, when Fantasy blossomed from a modest jazz label that went "13-1/2 years without a hit" — at which point Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" came along — to the more ambitious operation that expanded into rock 'n' roll and most famously signed the band that became Creedence Clearwater Revival.

"Fantasy was literally right over the fence," Dogpaw recalls. "They shared the property with a lumberyard; this guy would come in maybe once in a blue moon, and chop and saw some wood, and then take off. His buzz-saw was right next to the studio! But they must've worked it out, because he never made noise when Max [Weiss] wanted to record something.

"At first, I thought the place next door might be a radio station, because you'd see instruments being loaded off vehicles, and going in, and later coming back out again, and all these radio-looking people. That was the vibe, so we kids knew it had something to do with music. Initially, we all thought that every neighborhood had one of these places, like every neighborhood had a playground or a library. This was just normal to us, having a studio on the block.

"But of course it wasn't normal. Growing up on Treat was very, very special."

The Santana connection

Carlos Santana is known to have jammed with Guaraldi during at least one public concert: on October 7, 1972, during a benefit at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California. Santana acknowledges this on his own website, without giving any other specifics about the gig. And while the entire event apparently was broadcast by a local radio station, only a few short fragments have survived, as I discussed in a previous post.

I've been reminded of this Santana/Guaraldi connection by the recent arrival of the former's autobiography: The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light, published on November 4, 2014. Curiosity prompted a perusal of this volume, to see whether Santana chose to discuss Guaraldi to any degree. The answer is yes, and while the citations are brief, they're certainly respectful.

The first occurs as Santana looks back on the summer of 1963, when he's "almost 16":

Carlos Santana, circa the mid-1960s

San Francisco was like that jukebox [at the Tic Tock Drive In, at Third and King, where Santana "began his career as a dishwasher"]. Actually, San Francisco was a jukebox. The Mission was full of nightclubs, and I had friends there who had stereos. And San Francisco in general had lots of clubs and radio stations playing a variety of styles. KSOL — "Kay-Soul" — was one of the city's black stations. That's where Sly Stone started as a DJ. "Hey, you groovy cats..." He had his own thing that early. I heard a wild jazz organ on KSOL late at night — someone named Chris Colombo doing "Summertime" and just killing it. KSOL introduced me to Wes Montgomery, Bola Sete, Kenny Burrell and Jimmy Smith. They played Vince Guaraldi a lot. ... Basically, the city was a cornucopia of music — more than I had ever expected. I started hearing about clubs I would later try to sneak into — like the Jazz Workshop, all the way down Van Ness and over on Broadway, near the North Beach area. Just a few doors down was El Matador, where I would hear Cal Tjader and Vince Guaraldi for the first time, and later Gábor Szabó. El Matador was where I heard the amazing Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete for the first and only time.

The next mention comes a bit later, in late 1965:

That fall, I met Michael Carabello for the first time. He was a friend of Yvonne's [Christian] and would have been at Mission High except that his baseball skills got him into San Francisco Polytechnic. He remained close with his friends in the Mission, where he lived. Carabello had gotten hooked on music when he played congas in these informal jam sessions at Aquatic Park, very close to North Beach, and had even sat in once with Vince Guaraldi.

And, finally, a few more years along, in May 1969:

We weren't the only band getting it together [at San Mateo's Pacific Recording Studio] at that time — Vince Guaraldi was rehearsing there, too. At one point, he came over to our room and said, "I got to tell you, man, I was listening to your music, and I can tell the direction you guys are going — you guys are going to be big, man. Big." That was an amazing confirmation of what we felt. I used to see Guaraldi a lot, because we played in a lot of the same benefits. I also saw him play at an outdoor show at Stern Grove with his trio, and Bola Sete and John Handy were on the bill, too. It was my first love-in, and everyone was smoking weed, but the music was amazing. It felt like Guaraldi stepping in and giving his approval helped turn things around.

That Stern Grove show likely would have been one of Guaraldi's many appearances at the annual summer "Jazz in Stern Grove Musical Festival," probably in 1966 or '68 (since both those shows also featured John Handy's combo).

Guaraldi clearly was one of the smaller ships passing in the wake of Santana's blossoming career, and yet the latter's acknowledgment obviously is sincere, even grateful. Guaraldi rarely gets any sort of mention in jazz biographies or overviews, so it's double nice to see this shout-out by an icon from an entirely different portion of the music world.

A visit with the Doc

Guaraldi continues to elicit interest from jazz critics and historians, which of course is marvelous. Late last year, I was contacted by Richard "Doc" Stull, a jazz fan, writer and radio host whose CV reveals that he also dabbles as a musician and entertainer. You can learn more about him at his quite engaging web site.

Anyway, Doc wanted to chat about Guaraldi, and my book; we eventually enjoyed a lengthy phone conversation on February 4. Doc was well prepared, and his questions touched on everything from Guaraldi's childhood to his legacy, with stops along that way that covered bossa nova, the Grace Cathedral Jazz Mass and (of course!) the Peanuts gang.

I was particularly pleased to spend several minutes discussing Guaraldi's recording and performance association with Bola Sete, pictured here. For roughly two years, from March 1964 through February 1966, the Guaraldi/Sete Quartet was the hot ticket in the greater San Francisco area. Their debut run at Berkeley's Trois Couleur was extended repeatedly; they performed together at the 1964 Monterey Jazz Festival; and they wrapped lines around the building during numerous bookings at El Matador.

"The joy in Guaraldi's jazz is a priceless and timeless gift to music lovers," Doc wrote at one point, during our many e-mails. I couldn't have expressed that sentiment better, and Doc's appreciation for Dr. Funk is evident throughout the lengthy podcast that resulted from our chat. It went up April 3 on the New Books in Jazz website, where you'll also find Doc's generous review of my book. The interview runs 73 minutes; you can either play it via the site's pop-up player, or download it for later listening at your leisure.

Thanks again, Doc. It was great fun.