Vince Guaraldi

An innovative and highly original jazz pianist, composer and arranger, Vince Guaraldi and his trio earned a kind of immortality by creating the music for the animated version of the Peanuts strip cartoon, including the films A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, You're Not Elected Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown & Charles Schulz and It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Raised in the Bay area of San Francisco, Guaraldi (the name of his stepfather) was inspired to play piano by the boogie woogie and jazz players Jimmy Yancy, Albert Ammons and Peter Johnson after serving as a cook in the Korean war. Hearing Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans diverted him into jazz, at which point he also took up guitar. A distinctive figure with his horn-rimmed glasses and handlebar moustache, he became a fixture on the San Francisco jazz scene and got his first major break playing with vibraphonist Cal Tjader on his first album, the beginning of a productive, long-lasting collaborative partnership. He formed the Vince Guaraldi Trio in 1956 with Eddie Duran on guitar and Dean Reilly on bass, winning much acclaim for their first album of standards. Guaraldi made a big impact at the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival, after which he began to spread his wings and experiment with world and Latin music on the 1962 album Jazz Impressions Of Black Orpheus and went on to have a crossover hit with Cast Your Fate To The Wind (covered in the UK charts by Sounds Orchestral). Guaraldi then collaborated successfully with guitarist Bola Sete, playing bossa nova and experimenting with electric piano. He created a new Vince Guaraldi Trio with bassist Fred Marshall and drummer Jerry Granelli to play the music for the Peanuts cartoon animations, eventually resulting in 17 TV specials and one feature film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown. He'd just finished recording the music for another Peanuts animation, It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown, when he had a heart attack and died in 1976, aged 47.