It Christmastime, and the Vince Gualdi Trio’s Linus and Lucy is getting its share of play on local radio due to the connection between the song and the Charlie Brown Christmas special.
That song, and indeed a whole repertoire of Guaraldi songs, are inexorably linked to Charlie Brown and his gang, thanks to the continued business relationship between Guaraldi and the producers of the Peanuts features.
What I’m wondering is if Charles M. Schulz himself was a fan of Guaraldi, or even jazz, or even if the two ever met. Neither man’s wikipedia entry mentions this.
Neither Schulz nor Guaraldi liked to stray too far from home. Since Schulz moved from Minnesota to the San Francisco Bay area (where Guaraldi already lived), it’s hard to imagine that they would never have met.
Guaraldi broke through a lot of barriers to jazz with “Cast Your Fate to the Winds” in the early Sixties before the Charlie Brown TV specials made him super famous.
