"Cast Your Fate to the Wind" isn't Guaraldi's most famous composition at this late date — that honor probably belongs to "Linus and Lucy," with "Christmas Time Is Here" coming up rapidly — but it was his first hit, and certainly the only one to win him a Grammy Award.
The song's generally accepted copyright dates back to 1961, when it was registered with the Friendship Music Corporation, a collaborative endeavor between Guaraldi and good friend Frank Werber, who at the time was well-regarded for having turned the Kingston Trio into touring and recording stars. But Guaraldi had been noodling around with "Fate" for several years before that; one former Daly City neighbor recalls hearing him working on it in the late 1950s, when she was a little girl whose mother pointed to Guaraldi as an example of the way somebody should faithfully practice the piano.
"I'll tell you when I wrote it," Guaraldi later recalled, during an interview with his longtime friend and advocate Ralph Gleason. "I think it was in '58, just about when I left Cal. In fact, I brought it to Cal, but I never played it until after I left Woody, when I was at Outside at the Inside, in Palo Alto."
Outside at the Inside — initially known as Caffe Court — opened August 7, 1959. Guaraldi backed singer Valerie Knight during the first week of business, and then he joined Herman's band for a week in Las Vegas. Next up was a long stint down in Southern California, with the Lighthouse All-Stars, after which Guaraldi returned north and began a yearlong residency at Outside at the Inside in the spring of 1960. So if Guaraldi remembered the details accurately during that chat with Gleason, we can assume this is when the pianist publicly unveiled "Cast Your Fate to the Wind."
Why, then, wasn't the song copyrighted sooner?
Ah, but it was ... and therein lies a tale.
Casual Guaraldi fans may have raised an eyebrow at the implications in the previous post, which discussed Shelby Flint's charting version of "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" ... and, thanks to the informative comment added by Chris Lee, the additional information about the very brief chart appearance male vocalist Steve Alaimo enjoyed with the same song.
But wait, I hear you cry. Isn't "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" an instrumental composition?
Indeed yes, as recorded by Guaraldi in 1962, and later covered — as the decades passed — by other jazz artists ranging from Quincy Jones and George Benson to Dave Brubeck and Guaraldi's protégé, Larry Vuckovich.
But as a purchase of the song's sheet music reveals, "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" also has lyrics that are credited to Carel (sometimes spelled Carol) Werber. And those lyrics allowed cover versions by vocalists such as Flint, Alaimo and other famous folks including Johnny Rivers and Mel Torme.
Fair enough. But why, then, didn't I mention the lyrics — or Carel — in my book?
Very simple: I never was able to get a line on her, regardless of how her first name was spelled. She's vexingly MIA on the Web, never mentioned at all in any of Ralph Gleason's San Francisco Chronicle jazz columns — or in any other vintage interviews with, or articles about, Guaraldi — and journalistic caution precluded commentary without at least some first-person input.
Imagine the mixed feelings that emerged, then, when my buddy Doug in D.C. sent a link to an interview Carel Rowe (her maiden name) granted KRTS 93.5 FM a few months back, on February 13. Host Ross Burns invited Rowe on his program, "Talk at Ten," to reminisce about her time with the Kingston Trio and the group's manager, Frank Werber, who married Carel after a whirlwind courtship in the summer of 1961. My feelings were mixed because it was great to hear a first-person account of her activities back in the day, but frustrating because it would have been far better to have that information before my book went to press. But that's the way it often goes (as I've lamented elsewhere in this blog).
Although booked to chat about the Kingston Trio, Carel spent far more time discussing how she met and married Werber, and how she subsequently met Guaraldi, and how she came to write the lyrics for "Cast Your Fate to the Wind." Indeed, Kingston Trio fans let their displeasure be known in the blogosphere, particularly since Carel (to put it as kindly as possible) damned the famed trio with very faint praise. But that really isn't our concern here.
The scoop, then, as recounted on Burns' radio show:
Carel began her college career while living at home and commuting to the University of Arizona, Tucson, where she became a cheerleader. The folk scene was a big deal in Tucson in the early 1960s, just as it was everywhere else, and she spent a lot of after-class hours hanging out with various musicians. One of these troubadours was Travis Edmonson, a rising folksinger soon to achieve fame as a member of the Gateway Singers, and also with his own duo, Bud (Dashiell) and Travis. Carel dated Edmonson and viewed the budding relationship as serious: serious enough that, when he left Arizona for San Francisco as the 1961 summer break started, she followed.
