Vince Guaraldi was born in San Francisco. He wore horn-rim glasses and a handlebar mustache. He started out playing boogie-woogie piano. "Jimmy Yancy was a great early influence on my playing. Also Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, but it was Yancy's way of handling the blues that really grabbed me."

His youth is full of work at legendary (and lamented) clubs in the San Francisco Bay area. As a young man he got a job playing at intermissions during Art Tatum gigs at the Black Hawk. "It was more than scary. I came close to giving up the instrument, and I wouldn't have been the first after working around Tatum." Later he got a steady job at the hungry i, fronting a trio. He spent some time on the road, first with Woody Herman, then with Cal Tjader. He sold almost 500,000 copies of a little tune called "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" from a soundtrack album he made called Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus. The single's title was several times larger than the album's on the cover.

He loved Tatum, Fats Waller, Willie "The Lion" Smith and Theolonious Monk. Paul Desmond loved him and insisted he could have been a great stand-up comic. He was a funny man by many accounts. He was also passionately driven to perfect his musicianship.

Most of all, his music caught the attention of a cartoonist named Charles M. Schulz. He was engaged to write the soundtrack music to a little cartoon called A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge one sunny day, an infectious tune came into his head, and "Linus and Lucy," one of the sunniest, happiest tunes ever written, was born. For another album (for another Peanuts cartoon special) A Charlie Brown Christmas, he added the sweet "Christmas Time is Here." His music became among the best-known and best-loved in all of jazz, but he lost any chance he had to get any professional respect.

Who needs respect? Well, that is a spiritual matter, and it is important. A man who has perfected his craft and done good work should be able to see the fruits of his labors. The perfection of his craft should be recognized. But Vince Guaraldi played "West Coast jazz." Too easygoing. No dissonance. No dares. No chances. No excitement. Ear candy for the Eisenhower years.

Yes and no. I love adventurous music. Most of the music I play for pleasure is far more dissonant than is to the taste of most folks. Vince Guaraldi's music does not have the pretensions or the challenges of that sort of thing. It is easy to listen to, and catchy, and lyrical: all the sins of the critics.

Vince Guaraldi himself went to an untimely death in the Seventies. His music is almost completely forgotten except for the Charlie Brown discs. But Fantasy still carries in print some wonderfully pleasant music, including the Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus disc, as well as another one entitled simply Jazz Impressions. (These impressions evidently became a Guaraldi trademark. The Boy Named Charlie Brown disc is labeled Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown).

Anyone who appreciates jazz piano will immediately recognize the understated artistry of Guaraldi's playing. And if he can't bring a smile to your face with "Linus and Lucy," you need to add something other than black turtlenecks to your wardrobe.

"Vince has big ears, a wide range of feeling and a poetically lyrical manner of playing and of writing jazz music. At the piano, he's all music, all lyricism and all jazz." -- Ralph J. Gleason