Jazz Articles about Fred Marshall

About Fred Marshall

Album Review

Vince Guaraldi and Bola Sete: From All Sides

Read "From All Sides" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 11, 2026

When it comes to West Coast jazz of the highest order, Lester Koenig's Contemporary label set the standard, although Fantasy Records would also carve its own niche. Founded by the Weiss Brothers in 1949, Fantasy would be the home to two early jazz crossover artists, Dave Brubeck and Vince Guaraldi. With a taste for multiple genres, the label also documented the work of comedian Lenny Bruce and the country rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival. The latter group actually earned ...

Album Review

Vince Guaraldi: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Read "A Charlie Brown Christmas" reviewed by Marc Davis

by Marc Davis
December 19, 2015

A Charlie Brown Christmas is the corniest jazz-Christmas album ever made. And that's OK. It's even good. I know the dig. What Vince Guaraldi played wasn't jazz, it was lounge music. It was sentimental. It was lightweight. It was sappy. Yep. All of that. So what? Christmas time is about memories. That's what the smells, the sights, the tastes and the music are about. Some are family memories, some are communal memories. A Charlie Brown Christmas ...

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Album Review

Vince Guaraldi: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Read "A Charlie Brown Christmas" reviewed by Robert Gilbert

by Robert Gilbert
December 2, 2003

Only a handful of jazz albums find their way into the collections of music lovers who would never call themselves jazz fans. Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is one, Getz/Gilberto is another, and Coltrane's A Love Supreme also comes to mind. For Christmas time, though, the album is Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack to the 1965 special A Charlie Brown Christmas.A beloved (and rightly so) half-hour parable about the meaning of the holidays featuring the Peanuts gang, Guaraldi's music plays ...

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Album Review

Vince Guaraldi: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Read "A Charlie Brown Christmas" reviewed by Florence Wetzel

by Florence Wetzel
December 2, 2003

Just in time for the holidays, Fantasy has released a remaster of the classic soundtrack A Charlie Brown Christmas. The cartoon follows Charlie Brown's search for the true meaning of Christmas, and Vince Guaraldi's music is an integral part of this perennial holiday favorite. Guaraldi, born in 1928 in San Francisco and died in 1976 while resting between sets at a club, was part of the flourishing '50s California scene which produced the movement known as West Coast jazz. The ...

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Album Review

Vince Guaraldi & Bola Sete: Vince & Bola

Read "Vince & Bola" reviewed by Derek Taylor

by Derek Taylor
June 1, 2000

The ascendancy of the Bossa Nova ‘craze’ in the late 1950s and '60s was birthed by a succession of highly successful musical partnerships--Laurindo Almeida and Bud Shank, Sergio Mendes and Herbie Mann, Stan Getz and just about every major Brazilian musician of the day including Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto--all were major proponents of the style. One partnership that is often bypassed in discussions of the music is that shared between Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete and California-based cool jazz ...

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Album Review

Vince Guaraldi Trio: Charlie Brown's Holiday Hits

Read "Charlie Brown's Holiday Hits" reviewed by Douglas Payne

by Douglas Payne
October 1, 1998

This nice little holiday gift is easily confused with the popular soundtrack to the 1964 TV special,A Charlie Brown Christmas. But don't be fooled. Nine of the 14 tracks included here are culled from the 15 Peanuts holiday specials Vince Guaraldi scored before his untimely death at age 47 in 1976--and have never been released on disc before.Some will even startle Vince Guaraldi fans. The lovely, melodic waltzes you can hum along to are all here. But it's ...