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Back in 1964, Fantasy Records did something that was pretty rare: they released the soundtrack to a TV program that never aired. The name of the program, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, was a 60-minute documentary about Charles Schulz that was created by producer and director Lee Mendelsohn. Even when Mendelsohn shaved the program down to just a half hour, none of the TV programmers of the day felt it was worthy of putting on the air.
Thanks to the executives at Fantasy, however, the accompanying album of Vince Guaraldi-penned jazz pieces, released under the name Jazz Impressions of a Boy Named Charlie Brown, got its due, albeit to rather muted response by the general public.
A year later, when a second set of Guaraldi tunes accompanied the airing of the now iconic A Charlie Brown Christmas, a different path was set in motion for the pianist. Guaraldi’s unique sound became a cornerstone of jazz on television and, paired with the popularity of the latter release, what would simply become known as A Boy Named Charlie Brown became one of the most widely heard jazz records in the history of the medium.
Fifty years later Concord Music has lovingly restored the original master tapes of Jazz Impressions of a Boy Named Charlie Brown for release this May 13 on both CD and vinyl under the title, A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Both versions include new liner notes from Peanuts historian Derrick Bang, while the vinyl edition includes 8 x10 lithographs of the Peanuts characters and will spin on your turntable in orange vinyl.
Musically, the album includes the original nine tracks from the 1964 release plus one track that wasn’t on the original album, “Fly Me To The Moon,” and a previously released alternate take of “Baseball Theme.” Though the content here is well-trod, the sound created by remastering engineer Joe Tarantino makes this an album worthy of another listen.
Of the opening piece, the strolling Ellington-inspired “Oh, Good Grief,” Bang says “music historians familiar with early 20th century honky-tonk rags no doubt smiled the first time they heard ‘Oh, Good Grief,’ a familiar melody that had been used in other pop contexts prior to being ‘borrowed’ by Guaraldi.” The subtle bossa nova of “Pebble Beach” is presumed by Bang to have been intended for the segment of the long-form program that included an interview with Arnold Palmer. The confident “Freda (With The Naturally Curly Hair) is presumed to have been for a segment about the girl of the same name, who was to appear in all her animated glory. The brief one minute 51 second “Schroeder” is as beautiful today as it was 50 years ago, a gentle meditation that falls somewhere between Beethoven and Scott Joplin, a parlor song from a young man at practice.
Both versions of “Baseball Theme,” allow Pigpen to stir up a little extra dust around home plate while the oft-played “Linus and Lucy” takes its original place in history here (well before it was repackaged for Christmas use). Says Mendelsohn of “Linus And Lucy”: “It just blew me away. It was so right – so perfect – for Charlie Brown and the other characters. I have no idea why, but I knew that song would affect my entire life. There was no doubt in my mind that if we hadn’t had that Guaraldi score, we wouldn’t have had the franchise we later enjoyed.”
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