Two tunes have been rattling around in my head over the last week or so and I can’t seem to jar them free. The tunes are “Joe Cool” and “Little Birdie”, two songs sung by Vince Guaraldi for those wonderful Charlie Brown animated shows from the 60’s. When I was a kid, I always thought that the songs were being sung by some older, gray-haired black man with a wise gaze and a perpetual grin. I had no idea it was in fact Guaraldi who was singing the tunes.

How awesome was that guy? Guaraldi is one of the main reasons why I love jazz so much. As a kid, I devoured the books of Charles Schultz and the escapades of the Peanuts gang. And I never missed a Charlie Brown special or the perennial broadcasts of the Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas shows. Whether I was consciously aware of it or not, it was Guaraldi’s music that kept me coming back for more. I remember two songs that completely knocked me out as a five or six year old and had me glued to the television each time they played. One was the song “Angela” by Bob James, better known as the theme from the television show Taxi. The other was Guaraldi’s version of “O Tannenbaum”. Pure bliss every time I heard it.

I didn’t watch the Charlie Brown shows simply for the characters or the animation. What really sold me was the music. What a perfect pairing - Schultz’s wonderful ideas and Guaraldi’s timeless tunes. Over forty years later and we’re still drawn towards those early specials, even though more shows premiered after Guaraldi’s untimely death in 1976. In my opinion, the shows were never as good in the later years as they were when Guaraldi provided the musical backdrop.

I guess worse things could be rattling around my head right now.

Joe Cool

Little Birdie

O Tannenbaum