One of the most underrated jazz pianists in history.
Life
Vincent Anthony Dellaglio was born on July 17, 1928 in San Fransisco. He did not begin performing until he was in college at San Francisco State College. Vince was active in the recording session scene there in addition to performing in bars, clubs, and other establishments. He played as many other engagements as possible; weddings, private parties, and high school concerts made up only a small amount of the work he did when he was beginning his career. Soon, Vince earned his first residency at the Black Hawk Club in San Fransisco, filling in between sets for Art Tatum. The experience almost made Vince quit his instrument all together, saying “it was more than scary.”
Around 1953, after gaining some notoriety for his engagement at the Black Hawk, Guaraldi recorded for the first time on Cal Tjader’s Vibratharpe. After his experience recording with Cal, Vince stepped away from the recording scene to hone his craft as a pianist and composer, although he continued gigging in the tough club scene in San Francisco with his own trio. In 1955 Vince, along with his trio, recorded two records: The Vince Guaraldi Trio in 1956, and A Flower is a Lonesome Thing in 1957. At the same time, he joined Cal Tjader again and made an impression on the jazz community with his performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
Vince left Tjader’s group once again in 1959 to pursue his own music. It wasn’t until he recorded Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus in 1962 - an album in response to the foreign film “Black Orpheus” - that he gained massive attention. The music written for the film had been riding the growing Bossa Nova wave in America, but when radio stations began playing Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate To The Wind,” it became a grassroots hit in the jazz world and beyond. His sound was nothing like what was being heard in jazz at the time, which showed in the public’s response, and in 1963 Vince won the Best Original Jazz Composition Grammy for “Cast Your Fate To The Wind.” In 1963 and ’64, Vince recorded a few successful follow-up albums and was on to his next history-making venture. For 18 months Vince worked with his trio, along with a choir of over 60 people, to create one of the very first “jazz masses” in history. The composition was debuted in 1965 on another critically successful album.
The year before, Charlie Schulz hired Vince to compose a score for what would be a television documentary called A Boy Named Charlie Brown after producer Lee Mendelson heard Vince’s “Cast Your Fate To The Wind.” After the TV show was put into motion, Lee asked Vince to compose the score for the Peanuts Christmas Special that was to be aired, and he took the job without hesitation. The first thing he wrote for the special was “Linus And Lucy,” followed by a tune called “Christmas Time Is Here” that went on to become a Christmas standard. The special, sponsored by Coca-Cola, shot Vince Guaraldi into even greater notoriety, now having a repertoire of tunes which the public loved. Although the next 10 years working on the Peanuts television show and specials were the busiest of Vince’s career, he did manage to put out six albums during this time and make the move from Fantasy Records to Warner Brothers Music.
In February of 1976, in between sets at a performance at Menlo Park’s Butterfield’s nightclub, Vince Guaraldi died from a sudden heart attack. Soon after, “It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown” aired on television. It was the last written work of Guaraldi’s to ever be heard heard on the program, and he had just finished recording it the night of his heart attack. Vince was just 47 years old.
Influence
Vince inspired generations of television viewers to listen to jazz. Charlie Brown was the very first children’s cartoon to incorporate “adult” music, and it was his music that helped Charlie Brown become such an iconic television show. Aspects of Vince’s phrasing, knowledge of harmony, and improvisational mastery have influenced other jazz musicians like Wynton Marsalis and Dave Brubeck, generally the Cool Jazz scene, and many more.
Style & Technique
The musicians who came out of San Francisco during the ’50s and ’60s have largely been heavily influenced by the cool jazz sound, which was made up of conservative harmony and tempos and smooth tones from horns and other instruments. Nothing can describe Vince’s sound better than the word “listenable”; his touch was light on the piano, which allowed for a mellow comping and soloistic sound; his sense of harmony was conservative and appropriate (not reaching for out tensions or lines when playing with his usual trio; and there were definite classical influences apparent in the way he played. All of these aspects made Vince and his music so accessible and beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfehIRBff8A
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