Vince Guaraldi Day (locally)

The opening line of a brief announcement published in Wednesday's Napa Valley Register couldn't help catching my eye:

Mill Valley Mayor Jessica Sloan has proclaimed Sunday, Sept. 24, as "Vince Guaraldi Day."

Seriously?

Indeed yes. And the official proclamation is pretty fancy:

It seems an oddly random choice of day. Guaraldi was born on July 17, and died on February 6. Near as I can determine, nothing of consequence ever happened to him on a September 24 (although Shelby Flint's vocal cover of "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" did peak at No. 11 on Billboard's Top 40 Easy Listening Chart, on September 24, 1966).

So, I had to wonder ... what will take place, on Vince Guaraldi Day?

A speech by Mayor Sloan? A parade? A screening of the recent Toby Gleason/Andy Thomas documentary, The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi? All-day screenings of the many Peanuts TV specials he scored, including A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Boy Named Charlie Brown, for which he "may be most known"?

Apparently not.

Near as I can tell, the only event scheduled is a Guaraldi-themed concert by the Larry Vuckovich Quintet, taking place at 3 p.m. at Mill Valley's Throckmorton Theatre. (Ticket information is available here.)

Which makes it seem as though Mayor Sloan's proclamation mostly is a well-timed boost for Larry's concert. I guess it's great to have friends in high places!

And I look forward to ever-more-ambitious programs, when Mill Valley celebrates each Vince Guaraldi Day, in years to come...

Christmas 1966: Choral memories

It's no more than several quick paragraphs in my book:

On Dec. 13 [1966], Guaraldi and Charles Gompertz were in the audience for a rather unusual performance of the music for the Grace Cathedral Mass ... at Tamalpais High School.

"This was a kid, Brian Mann, who was a music major," Gompertz recalled. "He had memorized the Mass, and was a really good piano player. He could 'play Vince' the same way Vince played!

"The music department phoned and asked if I could get Vince's permission for Brian to do the concert, and then have Vince and me come up afterwards and say a few words, and answer questions. So we did, and Brian did a great job. Vince was blown away, and really taken with this kid; he saw himself at age 20.

"Vince gave him some tips after the performance, and then they sat down at the piano together and played stuff. It was a wonderful evening."

The entrance to Tamalpais High School, early 1967, as seen in an archival photo
extracted from a KPIX-TV Channel 5 news story.

Just a few paragraphs, because I hadn't been able to find Brian Mann or anybody else associated with that performance. 

With what I know now, that short anecdote could — should — have blossomed into several pages. If not more.

But let's look on the bright side. That's what this blog is for, right?

During one of my bookstore signings in 2012, a vivacious woman handed me a book and asked me to personalize it for "Brian." In response to my observation that she didn't look much like a Brian, she laughed, said her name was Linda, and explained that she knew Brian Mann from "back in the day," when they were members of the Tamalpais High School Advanced Choir. She was buying the book as a gift for him.

My heart didn't quite stop, but it certainly paused.

"Brian Mann?" I asked. "The Tam High School performance of the Guaraldi Mass?"

She nodded.

"Please," I said, as persuasively as possible, "ask him to get in touch. I'd love to chat with him about that performance, and everything that led up to it."

Linda did that, and more. She put me in touch with both Brian and John Terwilliger, who played drums in that Tam High School trio. Better still, she gave me a copy of the program handed out to audience members that evening in 1966, and dubbed a copy of the performance itself ... which, wonder of wonders, had been recorded and pressed as a small-run LP that was given to all the choir members.

Having now listened to that recording at least a dozen times, I can confirm that Chuck Gompertz wasn't exaggerating: Brian did sound just like Vince. More to the point, the audio quality of this recording — given its age — is nothing short of stunning; for my money, it sounds better than Fantasy's recording of the 1965 Grace Cathedral performance.

But I'm getting ahead of things. Let's hear the story unfold as it actually happened.