Vince Guaraldi’s Buoyant Jazz
Like many listeners, I came to know the jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi from A Charlie Brown Christmas, the 1965 album he released with his trio, which went on to become a seasonal staple. It’s certainly the holiday album I look forward to playing most, as twinkling, rainbow-colored cheer presses against the wintry dark.
A Charlie Brown Christmas contains the flexing dexterity of “Linus and Lucy,” but the true magic—the artistry kerneled in Guaraldi’s buoyant articulation—lies in “Skating.” Guaraldi’s fingers perform salchows and forward swizzles aplenty, gliding up and down as if the keys were actual ice. The warmth he evokes, the frivolity of his play, never fails to kindle an effervescent joy every December when the needle finally makes its way to that track. I hear it and drift toward the airy flight of imagination.
Beyond Guaraldi’s jazzy contribution to the holiday canon, I didn’t know much about his work. His reputation seemed firmly ensconced in “cartoon music,” thanks to his contributions to 15 network Peanuts specials. But, silly me, of course there were other worlds to explore. He experienced success with the original composition “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” originally released as a B-side to “Samba de Orpheus”—two singles from his 1962 bossa nova LP Jazz Impressions from Black Orpheus. “Cast” went on to win the 1963 Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Composition.
I ended up chasing Guaraldi down this rabbit hole because I recently had the good fortune of discovering a used compilation LP that pulled from his second and third albums, 1956’s Vince Guaraldi Trio and 1957’s A Flower is a Lovesome Thing. I’ve grown especially fond of the title track “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing.” Guaraldi finds a delicate, meandering interplay with the shivering electric guitar.
In fact, it’s the exquisite emotional quality he brings to the piano that has created the bridge I’ve fondly crossed from Peanuts to the rest of his catalogue. I hear in Guaraldi’s playing someone attuned to a composition’s affect, who sinks into its weight and floats along its larks. Where many a player uses the piano to converse with whichever composition they’re performing, stamping the process as interpretation, Guaraldi’s conversation seems to be with the instrument itself, as though they were chummy friends having a chinwag.
That style of play—familiar, nimble-fingered, and emotionally redolent—may have first come to my ear through the childlike splendor of A Charlie Brown Christmas, but what great good fortune to find it surfacing across genres and periods, all threaded through with Guaraldi’s resplendent affection for what he and the piano can discover together.
