Which came first, the Peanuts cartoon or the song by The Coasters, and was there ever any “fallout”?
First time I ever heard the song was on my American Dad’s Army Base in Karlshuhe, Germany when some fire-fighter soldiers “acted out” Charlie’s “mistakes”.
It may have been the first-ever “video”, since this was in 1956! (Well, not really, since it wasn’t captured on film, but those soldiers did a GREAT job making us all laugh and making us remember that fire can be our friend as well as our enemy!)
Schulz used the name “Charlie Brown” four times in Li’l Folks, with one gag (“Good ol’ Charlie Brown…how I hate him!”) very similar to the very first Peanuts strip. Charlie Brown was an actual person, an associate of Schulz’s from the Art Instruction School who later went to work at a prison.
I never understood why the character in the Coasters song was called “Charlie Brown” until I saw some of the original Peanuts cartoons. I was used to the neurotic, low-self-esteem Charlie Brown, and didn’t know that his original persona was closer to Dennis the Menace.
