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!

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.

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.