It's variant season!

Summer is almost here, which means — among other things — that it's vinyl variant season.

Craft Recordings will celebrate the upcoming 60th anniversary of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with an impressive variety of new releases. The centerpiece is an eye-catching 45 RPM zoetrope LP, arriving August 7, which will feature memorable scenes from the special on each side, along with a new essay from Sean Mendelson.

Additional pumpkin-shaped color options will be available on August 21 from Barnes & Noble ("electric pumpkin patch"), Walmart ("pumpkin spice"), Target ("ghost white"), Craft Recordings ("candy corn") and Target (a 4-inch tiny vinyl, available July 17, and previously mentioned in an earlier post). Additionally, the conventional "orange pumpkin" pressing once again will be available at all major retailers. All of these options can be pre-ordered here.

Recorded on October 4, 1966, at Desilu's Gower Street Studio in Hollywood, just weeks ahead of its October 27 television debut, the Halloween special marked a new era in Peanuts scores, with the participation of seasoned composer, arranger and conductor John Scott Trotter. While music for the first two specials was managed entirely by Guaraldi, Trotter — best known for his three-decade run as Bing Crosby’s music director — brought a sense of order to the sessions, helping the jazz musician better tailor his music into short, TV-friendly cues. Joining Guaraldi were his trio members (bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Colin Bailey), plus Emmanuel “Mannie” Klein (trumpet), John Gray (guitar), and Ronald Lang (woodwinds), who added warm textures to the autumnal score.

********

But wait ... that's not all!

It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown also is getting two more vinyl variants:

• A "mysterious magenta" from Urban Outfitters, available August 21, which can be pre-ordered here; and

• A "mystifying teal" from Barnes & Noble, available August 20, which can be pre-ordered here.

Later in the year, new vinyl variants for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and A Charlie Brown Christmas are anticipated, but details haven't yet been announced ... so watch this spot!

Colin Bailey: Gentleman drummer

Colin Bailey, Monty Budwig and Vince Guaraldi, performing at The Trident — their
favored "home" for a few years — likely during the autumn of 1961.

“I learned so much from Vince: how to be a better jazz player. He made me play good. He inspired me. When I first started playing with him, I was in over my head; I was quite inexperienced with jazz, at that level. To play with him — that caliber of player, every night — was incredible. I got used to it. Vince improved my playing, just by playing with him and Monty [Budwig].”

 

Sigh.

 

It has been a rough summer.

 

We lost Jerry Granelli on July 20, and I just learned that Colin Bailey left us this past Monday, September 20. He’d been hospitalized with a case of pneumonia, after having recovered from Covid-19. At age 87, the poor guy never had a chance. 

 

He was the final link to Guaraldi’s first two classic trios. Monty Budwig died comparatively early, on March 9, 1992: well over a decade before I even considered writing a Guaraldi bio. Eddie Duran was next, on November 22, 2019; Dean Reilly went earlier this year, on March 9.

 

Colin was one of my most gracious interview subjects, and I loved chatting with him. He and Chuck Gompertz were the most candid, enthusiastic and helpful; I’m hard-pressed to determine which of the two I spent more time with, in person and on the phone … but I’m pretty sure it was Colin.

 

I first met him — after a few phone chats — on April 23, 2010, at his apartment in Martinez. It was a lunchtime visit; I stopped at a sandwich shop en route, and picked up a couple of subs. (I was armed with his preference.) I remember wondering, as I parked at the apartment complex, how a drummer could possibly rehearse at home, without driving half a dozen neighbors out of their minds. The answer was an eye-opener: He’d had a special sound-proofed “cubby” installed in one corner of his living room, with clear walls on two sides. It was just large enough for his kit, and his chair. (Such accommodations may be common among drummers, but it certainly was new to me.) We had lunch, chatted for several hours, and then he happily obliged when (of course!) I asked him to strut his stuff … which he did, for a breathtaking 20 minutes.

 

It was a marvelous afternoon, well worth battling Bay Area traffic during the drive home.

 

Colin was born in Swindon, England, and began playing drums at age 4; by 18, he was working with English name bands. He moved to Australia in the late 1950s, and became a staff drummer at Sydney’s TV Channel 9, which allowed him to work with visiting jazz luminaries such as Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan. Colin subsequently joined pianist Bryce Rohde’s Australian Jazz Quartet, which soon was hired to tour the United States as the opening act for the Kingston Trio.

 

“My wife and I got green cards, and sold everything we had. We came over not knowing what would happen; we didn’t have a lot of money. We arrived in the States in 1961, and played San Francisco on the final weekend of the tour; it was a Friday night, May 26. Vince and Monty came by and heard me, and Vince said he liked the way I played, and invited me to sit in during their Monday night gig at the Jazz Workshop.

 

“The next week, I was at a drum shop, just hanging out, and the owner said ‘Hey, there’s a phone call for you.’ It was Vince, saying that he’d like to have me in his trio.

 

“I couldn’t believe my luck; I’d only been in the States for seven weeks, and here Vince was offering me a steady gig. Talk about being in the right place at the right time!”

 

Colin joined Vince’s trio in July 1961, replacing Benny Barth. Colin remained with Guaraldi until January 27, 1963, when he left to join Victor Feldman’s band in Hollywood. Even so, he and Monty continued to worked with Vince occasionally, during the rest of the 1960s.

 

I can’t begin to do justice to Colin’s subsequent career in this space, but his web site has an excellent biography.

 

Colin was present for — and recorded — Guaraldi’s two most significant songs: “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” and “Linus and Lucy.”

 

Colin vividly remembered the sharp learning curve “Fate” forced upon him.

 

“It took a lot, getting to know the logistics of that song, from a drummer’s point of view. I had to learn how to get that cymbal bells Latin sound, and I had to do it with the ring at the end of the brush, because there wasn’t enough time to change brushes to sticks. I also had to use the floor toms — on which I usually keep the sticks or brushes, when I’m not using them — because I had a solo. To this day, I don’t remember how I managed to do that. It was one of the hardest logistical things I’ve ever had to deal with.”

 

Dean Reilly, Colin and Eddie Duran.

Colin and I stayed in touch, which wasn’t true of everybody I interviewed. A few months after my book was published, I had the opportunity to assemble a “dream team” for a private concert on June 30, 2012. I gathered Colin, Dean and Eddie — along with “youngster” Jim Martinez, on piano — for a fabulous 90-minute performance in front of an audience of 100 or so. Talk about a night to remember!

Colin and I lost touch when he and his wife moved south to Port Hueneme, in Ventura County, three years later.

 

The first appendix in my Guaraldi bio is a series of personal comments about him, from the many sidemen who played with him over the years. I concluded the several dozen warm observations with a brief, wistful remark from Colin, which seemed the perfect coda for the book. And it’s the perfect way to end this post.

 

“I wish [Vince] were still here, so we could play again.”

I wish all of them were still here.

Dr. Funk and the high school entrepreneur

Daniel “Danny” Scher spent the final 24 years of the 20th century working alongside famed San Francisco Bay Area music impresario Bill Graham. Danny’s accomplishments were significant, and included some of the company’s biggest projects. He created and produced the annual New Orleans by the Bay Festival, the largest New Orleans food and music festival outside of New Orleans itself; developed the famed outdoor Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California; and booked venues such as San Francisco’s iconic Winterland Ballroom and the massive Day on the Green concerts at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

Danny remains quite active in the music and concert world, and has been in the news lately for facilitating the release of a vintage live performance by Thelonious Monk; the album, titled Palo Alto, debuted this past summer.

 

In the autumn of 1967, Danny was a junior at Palo Alto (Paly) High School. Even then, he wanted to be a concert promoter.

 

He began with Vince Guaraldi. Danny turned 16 on October 19 that year; shortly before that milestone birthday, the ambitious young man cold-called Guaraldi, to “invite” him to perform at Paly High. And Guaraldi accepted.

 

But let’s back up a bit.

 

Danny was born with music in his blood. He has played drums his entire life, ever since attending Palo Alto’s Herbert Hoover Elementary School. He grew up bold; as a child of 8 or 9, attending dinner shows and concerts with his family, he’d sneak backstage in order to get autographs from the performers. He fronted a Dixieland jazz band in junior high school — The Dukes of Dixie — and was principal percussionist and timpanist with the California Youth Symphony.

 

He also was something of an anomaly, during a time when kids his age were obsessed by rock ’n’ roll. “I started studying jazz,” he recalls, “and giving reports on its history in my eighth and ninth grade classes.”

He desperately wanted to see the many big names booked into San Francisco’s clubs during the height of the city’s jazz scene, but his age was an insurmountable barrier.

 

“You had to be 21 to get in. That was one of the reasons I wanted to start promoting in high school; I couldn’t see these guys any other way. The only exception was Basin Street West, which allowed minors, because they served food.”

 

(The Blackhawk also briefly maintained a section for minors, separated from the rest of the bar by chicken wire. But that practice ceased in 1953 or ’54, by order of San Francisco Mayor George Christopher; besides which, the club closed in July 1963.)

 

Danny saw Dave Brubeck perform at Basin Street West when he was 14. The excursion involved bus fare, a door admission fee and a pair of Cokes, to accommodate the two-drink minimum: a month’s wages from his newspaper route. “The best money I ever spent,” Danny insists, to this day.

 

Eddie Duran: Guitar maestro

My fondest personal memory of jazz guitarist Eddie Duran came early in the summer of 2012. The Gods smiled upon me; I was able to hire him, drummer Colin Bailey, bassist Dean Reilly and pianist Jim Martinez for a performance at that year’s Beaglefest (an annual convention for fans of Charles M. Schulz and Peanuts).

Eddie Duran, "in the moment" during a private concert
June 30, 2012. (The arm at upper left belongs to
drummer Colin Bailey.)

It was a reunion of Vince Guaraldi’s former sidemen, from his “classic” early trios: Eddie and Dean, at Vince’s side for a lengthy gig at San Francisco’s hungry i nightclub, and while recording his first two Fantasy Records albums; and Colin, who with bassist Monty Budwig put Vince on the map with the release of 1962’s Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus and its breakout single, “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” Jim, the (comparatively) young pianist who stood in for Vince that evening, likely couldn’t believe his good fortune. The appreciative audience definitely couldn’t believe it, as this quartet — never before having performed together, or even rehearsed — breezily powered through a couple hours of Guaraldi jazz classics. (Including, of course, plenty of Peanuts melodies.)

The three Guaraldi veterans were the epitome of graciousness. They joined us earlier in the evening for a banquet dinner, sitting at different tables in order to interact with as many attendees as possible. Once they started playing, a few hours later, they were wholly in the groove. As one would expect, distinct personalities emerged; Colin and Dean, all smiles, were quick with an occasional quip between — and sometimes even during — numbers. But Eddie was all business. his gaze was wholly absorbed by his guitar, particularly during his positively magical solos.

Several years earlier, he’d been one of my favorite interview subjects, while assembling the wealth of material for my Guaraldi biography. Eddie had a terrific memory for detail, and he vividly painted “word picture” descriptions of the hungry i environment, and the hilariously Spartan, spit-and-bailing-wire simplicity of the Fantasy recording sessions, circa mid-1950s. “[The first album] was recorded in the garage of a building south of Market. They didn’t do any extensive preparation for sound-proofing; it was just a bare garage … although they did spread some carpets on the floor.”

Eddie spun wonderful anecdotes about club gigs with Vince, several of which were much too coarse to have made it into my book. (I rapidly came to the conclusion that jazz musicians tell the best stories … and also the filthiest!) Eddie enjoyed a remarkably prolific career, with and beyond Vince, as this San Francisco Chronicle article recounts briefly. (Additional details, although still woefully incomplete, can be found at Wikipedia.)

Eddie was lucky enough to make a successful career out of doing what he loved, and he maintained a performance schedule right up to the very end. We lost him November 22, 94 years young. I like to think this was merely a change of venue, and that — somewhere, somehow — he has been reunited with Vince, and they’re both enjoying the most amazing jam sessions with all manner of other jazz cats.

A Man Called Charlie Brown

In a brief untitled squib that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 13, 1964, jazz columnist Ralph Gleason mentioned that Vince Guaraldi would write the music for a TV film about Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts newspaper strip: a documentary to be titled A Man Called Charlie Brown.

The documentary eventually re-christened A Boy Named Charlie Brown, directed and produced by Lee Mendelson, never aired on television; in 1964, no sponsor was willing to bring Charlie Brown and his friends to the small screen.

Decades passed, after which Mendelson's film finally found a home — and obtained distribution — at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, in Santa Rosa, California. The 30-minute documentary regularly screens in the museum's theater; it's also available for purchase, on DVD, from the museum's online store.

Thus armed with copies of the film, inquisitive Guaraldi fans found fresh reasons for raised eyebrows ... because the documentary's musical contents don't precisely correspond with what we've all enjoyed on the soundtrack album, which Fantasy released back in 1964. Most notably, several songs — "Blue Charlie Brown," "Charlie Brown Theme," "Freda (sic)" and "Pebble Beach" — aren't in the show at all. Were they extras that Guaraldi simply tossed in, to round out the album?

Likely not.

As originally detailed in the April 1964 issue of San Francisco magazine, Mendelson conceived his film as a 60-minute special: a logical choice, given that his previous hit documentary — A Man Named Mays, which profiled baseball great Willie Mays — had been produced at that length.

A few months later, on June 9, Fantasy Records' Max Weiss issued a press release that read, in part, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown has been eight months in production, and features such notables as Bing Crosby, Willie Mays, Dean Martin, Arnold Palmer and Frank Sinatra. Vince Guaraldi has written, scored and recorded the soundtrack, and Fantasy Records is readying an album of the original soundtrack, featuring Guaraldi and his trio."

Bing Crosby? Arnold Palmer? Frank Sinatra?

Folks who own the DVD know full well that they're nowhere to be seen. So ... what happened?

The score, the whole score, and nothing but the score...

[Important note: Although the information below was accurate when originally posted, is has been superseded by 2022's deluxe, five-disc Charlie Brown Christmas set, mentioned here.]

Sharp-eared Guaraldi fans love to analyze every single note heard in A Charlie Brown Christmas, in part because that’s the only Peanuts TV special to have generated its own soundtrack album. Many times over the years, I’ve fielded this question: “What’s being played about seven minutes into the show, as Charlie Brown watches Snoopy decorate his doghouse? That music isn’t on the album!” Answer: “Air Music,” also known as “Surfin’ Snoopy” ... and while it’s true that tune doesn’t appear on the soundtrack album, it is included on the CD Charlie Brown’s Holiday Hits.

For quite awhile, my interest is this particular topic was confined solely to such easy album/soundtrack comparisons. But when what we can call the “sidemen controversy” erupted anew late last year — regarding which of Guaraldi’s bassists and drummers performed on the special’s TV soundtrack, and/or the subsequent album, as detailed at length in this blog’s previous post — I realized that Fantasy’s long-standing justification for the credits, as given since the album’s re-release in 1998, required further scrutiny.

The assumption, as I explained, is that one set of sidemen (bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Colin Bailey) recorded the show’s actual soundtrack, in Hollywood; and a second set of sidemen (bassist Fred Marshall and drummer Jerry Granelli) subsequently recorded the album’s music, in San Francisco.

But can this theory be supported by the evidence?

In a word ... no.

At least, not completely.

Credit where due?

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Guaraldi’s first album of Peanuts music, Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which debuted in December 1964. Next year, we’ll mark the same anniversary for the album soundtrack of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Half a century. As Charlie Brown himself would say, Good grief!

I don’t remember precisely when I bought both albums, but it likely would have been some time in 1966 or ’67. I still have both of those LPs, and they’re still in pretty good condition ... which is amazing, considering how many times they’ve been played.

Half a century. You’d think, by now, that Guaraldi’s essential collaborators — his bassist and drummer — also could be acknowledged properly, for both albums.

You’d think.

You’d be wrong.

Over the years, the most frequent Guaraldian queries I’ve fielded have concerned either the sidemen credits for one or both of those albums, or the degree to which the music on both albums does — or doesn’t — match what we hear when watching the corresponding short films. Attempting to suss out the credits remains a source of conflicting opinions to this day, as demonstrated by the recent squabble that took place behind the scenes of Guaraldi’s Wikipedia entry. (See this blog’s previous post for details.)

Comparing the albums to the actual scores, however, has been a long-gestating project delayed only by my awareness of the effort involved: a challenge that therefore sat on a back burner for several years. Gathering the resources certainly wasn’t a problem: Copies of the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas are easy to find, and the never-aired documentary A Boy Named Charlie Brown is available on DVD, from the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

Now, thanks to considerable assistance on the part of my good friend and fellow Guaraldi fan Doug Anderson, it’s time to shed some light on both issues. What follows raises fresh questions (with respect to credits) and contains some intriguing surprises (with respect to how the music was used). I’ll divide the results of recent analysis into three posts, starting with this one, which will concentrate on who did — or didn’t — play what on which.

As Bette Davis comments in 1950’s All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

Why I hate Wikipedia, Part One

Many concepts seem great in theory. Then people get involved, and the so-called “great idea” rapidly goes to hell.

Communism is a perfect example.

So is Wikipedia.

I applaud the premise behind Wikipedia: an expanding roster of experts supplying information about the topics they know best. What could go wrong?

Plenty, as it turns out.

Drummer Jerry Granelli, bassist Fred Marshall and Guaraldi, as captured on camera
for Ralph Gleason's documentary, Anatomy of a Hit. Guaraldi's trio was filmed during
its long run at The Trident, in the summer of 1963.

Wikipedia’s all-access submission model grants equal credence to anybody wishing to add, enhance or outright change an entry ... regardless of said individual’s actual credentials, and, most particularly, regardless of whether said individual might have an impish streak, or an axe to grind. Thus, some fantasy fan vexed over the omission of unicorns from a thorough discussion of equine history can simply add a reference to the horned critters, and hey, presto! An article of fact has been corrupted forever.

Okay, yes; I give Wikipedia’s “monitors” credit for modest efforts to weed out egregious examples of that nature. Unfortunately, most errors and fabrications aren’t that obvious, and therefore don’t get caught; Wikipedia simply doesn’t have the staff (or the inclination, in my humble opinion) to fact-check everything ... unlike, say, the folks behind centuries of The Encyclopedia Britannica, who do fact-check everything. Or even the editors at your local newspaper, who try their best to do the same. Information presented as authoritative deserves — nay, needs — to be vetted. Thoroughly.

Wikipedia authors, upon publication, don’t get vetted by anybody. Worse yet, mounting anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that the Wikipedia culture can be biased against efforts to correct untruths. Attempts to do so often anger those who posted the ludicrous blather in the first place, and they simply change it back. Make the attempt often enough, and you — the individual attempting to strike a blow for indisputable fact — risk getting branded a “troublemaker,” and subsequently blackballed.

Rather than a resource offering reliable information from that theoretical roster of experts, Wikipedia actually is an Internet outlet for those who shout the loudest and fight the hardest for “their” version of reality. Hardly the same.

And in the Internet age, bad information is much, much worse than no information at all ... because bad information spreads just as rapidly. Indeed, Wikipedia’s bad information spreads even faster, because this “resource” enjoys an undeserved reputation as an “authority.”

I’d laugh, if it weren’t so tragic.

Guaraldi's actual, for-sure CD debut

It was a small but vexing detail.

When, precisely, did Fantasy first release Guaraldi's score for A Charlie Brown Christmas on CD?

I didn't immediately embrace this new technology, back in the 1980s; I stubbornly clung to LPs until new albums began to arrive solely in digital. (And, for the record, I've kept all my vinyl and recently upgraded my original turntable to a newer, sleeker model. I've nothing against CDs, but — call me old-fashioned — LPs somehow suggest more romance.) As a result, I didn't purchase a digital version of A Charlie Brown Christmas the nanosecond it came out, which obviously would have answered the question above when, decades later, I began working on my Guaraldi biography.

By the time I did start researching Guaraldi's history on CD, ambiguity reared its ugly head. To this day, numerous sources cite 1986 as the year A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted in digital; others give 1988 as the relevant date. Grab a random copy, new or used, of the "original" disc in a music store — as opposed to the re-mastered versions issued in 2006 and 2012 — and you're almost guaranteed to find a 12-track version dated 1988. Indeed, the liner notes I wrote for the most recent (2012) re-mastered version cite "the original 1988 CD release." Several years earlier, however, I elected to go with 1986 in the final draft of my Guaraldi bio.

So ... which is correct?

Both, in a way. But 1986, ultimately.

Thanks to fellow Guaraldi fan Rich Marek — who deserves a massive shout-out — I now have a copy of the fer-shur 1986 CD release of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which faithfully and precisely duplicates the original 11-track LP. The mastering engineer was George Horn, and the relevant proof is displayed both inside the CD cover insert and on the back of the tray insert, as shown at right.

Two years later, Fantasy issued an "updated" version of the disc, this time with the 12th bonus track — an extended version of "Greensleeves" — that has remained part of the package ever since. This 1988 release also credits George Horn for the mastering, but he recently confirmed that his "new" efforts were restricted to the bonus track; the first 11 tracks simply were lifted from the 1986 disc.

Which was discontinued and has, over the years, all but vanished.

Mystery solved.

For the purposes of my book, then, 1986 was the right choice (although I freely admit that I wound up flipping a coin, at the time ... nothing beats living lucky!). For the purposes of my more recent liner notes for the 2012 re-mastered version of the album, 1988 also was the right choice, because that commentary discusses the "original" 12-track release.

It's interesting to note, as well, that the 1986 CD — like the 1965 LP — cited only Guaraldi, and failed to identify the trio's bassist and drummer. That oversight was corrected with the 1988 CD, which listed bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Colin Bailey ... a claim that ignited a firestorm when bassist Fred Marshall and drummer Jerry Granelli insisted that they had supported Guaraldi on that album. This kerfuffle has been detailed several times, most notably in my book and a December 1998 piece written by Robert Wilonsky for the Dallas Observer (and syndicated in several other papers throughout the country). The controversy eventually prompted Fantasy to re-issue the 1988 CD anew in August 1999. The music didn't change — in other words, no fresh mastering — but the credits more properly divided the 12 tracks between Budwig/Bailey and Marshall/Granelli. Additionally, the Charles Schulz illustration on the CD cover was modified slightly: Snoopy is looking left, not right, and Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus are posed differently.

So, there you have it. Completists now must track down three early discs:

• The 11-track 1986 version
• The 12-track 1988 version, citing only Budwig and Bailey
• The 12-track 1999 version, citing all four sidemen

And that, I hope, will lay the matter to rest!

Still spreading the word

I love libraries; I faithfully biked to our local library every Friday afternoon after school, pretty much from the time I was old enough to make such a trip (about four miles) on my own. This continued through high school, at which point I then transitioned to the majestic main library at UC Davis, where I completed my undergraduate work. I subsequently learned that it's by no means the largest library in the University of California system, but it sure impressed me at the time: four floors of books, plus a basement, in a structure so immense that one could get lost in the crazy-quilt section between the second and third floors, in the oldest part of the building. (Indeed, one freshman rite-of-passage involved getting "accidentally" locked in the library overnight, a feat easily accomplished in that section.)

More recently, I lost myself for untold hours, days, weeks and months in the UC Davis library's microfilm section, poring over old newspapers, while researching Vince Guaraldi at the Piano. (Sadly, they've a long way to go before that entire newspaper archive gets digitized.)

I'm therefore delighted to be presenting my Guaraldi dog-and-pony show in a library this week: the first time I've been able to "give back" to one of the venerable lending institutions where I've derived such pleasure over the years. I'll be reading an excerpt and then giving a brief overview of Guaraldi's life, accompanied by photos, audio and video clips: a program very similar to the one I gave at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, back in late June. This one will take place in a few days, at 7 p.m. Thursday, September 13, at the St. Helena Public Library. That's part of the wine country, as folks in Northern California know: very close to Charles Krug, one of my favorite wineries.

This gig was set up by one of my partners in crime — and publishing — Don Fraser, a longtime Peanuts licensee who retired from active duty in that realm, but has remained quite active among those of us devoted to highlighting Charles M. Schulz's fame at every opportunity. Don and I co-edited Security Blankets: How Peanuts Touched Our Lives a few years ago, a project that (alas!) delivered far more delight in prep and production, than in eventual sales. (Ah, well; they can't all be winners!) Don and his wife live in St. Helena, so it came as little surprise when he contacted me one day and confessed to having rather aggressively pitched me as a worthy candidate for his local library's speaker program. Apparently, they weren't able to refuse.

My presentation will be free, so if you've no other plans Thursday evening — and the commute wouldn't be too onerous — please drop by.

*****

KCSM Jazz Radio, not too much farther away in San Mateo, aired its Guaraldi special — Vince Guaraldi: The Story of Dr. Funk — last Friday between 7 and 9 a.m. (PST); the show, divided into distinct parts, was one of the featured specials presented during the station's pledge drive. On-air host Alisa Clancy interviewed quite a few folks for the show, including Colin Bailey, Eddie Duran, Dean Reilly and Lee Mendelson; she also spent a delightful 90 minutes with me earlier in the summer. She did an accomplished job in production, blending music, commentary and interview material, and I'd like to think it was the highlight of that day's pledge activities. Alisa and colleague Chris Phillips also maintained a lively patter during the pledge breaks themselves, and I was delighted to hear that copies of my book were among the thank-you gifts for pledges at or above a certain level. (Frankly, Alisa enthused about my book so much that I blushed.)

Why do I mention all this, since the show aired last week? Well, The Story of Dr. Funk was such a hit that KCSM will repeat it this weekend: from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, September 16. So, if you missed it the first time, you've got a second chance. The station streams its content from its Web site, which you'll find linked above, so you can listen from anywhere in the world. Best of all, Alisa admits that last Friday's version was truncated a bit, since the morning activities also included a birthday tribute to Sonny Rollins; she promises that her complete edit of Dr. Funk will air this Sunday.

Heck, I thoroughly enjoyed the "short" version; I can't wait to hear the rest!