JAZZ: Vince Guaraldi Trio - Jazz Impressions of 'A Boy Named Charlie Brown’

Having just produced a documentary film on the career of legendary baseball player Willie Mays that aired on NBC in 1963, Lee Mendelson decided that the subject of his next production should be the worst baseball player in the world, Charlie Brown. To compose the score for his project, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Mendelson turned to Vince Guaraldi. At the time, the jazz pianist was still basking in the glow of his 1963 Best Original Jazz Composition Grammy Award for “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”. Guaraldi accepted Mendelson’s offer, and within two weeks had composed “Linus and Lucy”, the song that would come to define the Peanuts animated classics. Eventually, the musical score that Guaraldi wrote and performed with his trio for A Boy Named… formed his sixth studio album, released by Fantasy Records in December 1964. Mendelson’s documentary, however, was not so fortunate. Unable to secure sponsorship for the film, it would never air on television. Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can watch it in its entirety here.* (Ultimately, the partnerships that formed on this project led directly to the development of 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas).

Despite its birth as an orphaned soundtrack, the record is bursting with swinging Guaraldi numbers. The album marked the debut of “Charlie Brown Theme” and the aforementioned “Linus and Lucy”, unabashed classics that will be familiar to any Peanuts enthusiast. Guaraldi’s trio opens the album with the bouncy little bop “Oh, Good Grief”. The emotional range of the record is on display with “Happiness Is”–a delicate number with a title inspired by Schulz’s 1963 bestselling book Happiness Is a Warm Puppy. It’s my favorite song on the LP. Then there is “Schroeder”, a short, ragtime-inspired romp that sounds as if it were lifted from the soundtrack of that great caper film, “The Sting”. On the B-side of the record, Guaraldi’s fingers skip across the keyboard in trademark style on “Baseball Theme”, but its drummer Colin Bailey’s brushwork that keeps my attention.

NEAT: Cooperstown Rye

To pair with Jazz Impressions of 'A Boy Named Charlie Brown’, I chose one of my absolute favorite everyday rye whiskies, crafted by Cooperstown Distillery in the apocryphal birthplace of America’s pastime and home to the game’s great Hall of Fame. Cooperstown Select Straight Rye Whiskey is made with a mashbill of 80 percent New York state grown rye. Aged for at least two years, first in American oak barrels, then in used Cabernet barrels, it is bottled at 102-proof cask strength. Not for the faint of heart, this potent, rye-forward pour hits your palate with Shohei Ohtani-level power and speed. For that, it holds up well in a Manhattan or Old Fashioned, but I prefer it straight from the bottle. At around $55 a fifth, you can be liberal with your serving. The intensity of this rye is the perfect counterbalance to Guaraldi’s smooth West Coast jazz on the turntable. Sitting here as I watch the record spin, I ponder whether Charlie Brown might have won a few more baseball contests had he been old enough to relax with a glass of Cooperstown Rye the night before the next big game.

*Eventually, a full-length feature film using the same title and updated versions of many of Guaraldi’s 1964 songs was released in 1969.