Vince Guaraldi

• Genre: West Coast Jazz
• Hometown: San Francisco
• Vince Guaraldi Website

About

You love Vince Guaraldi's piano jazz whether you know it or not. Guaraldi wrote and performed the delightful scores for the Peanuts cartoons. This San Francisco native added his hard hitting yet sensitive piano skills to Cal Tjader's Latin Jazz band after a stint with the great Woody Herman. Guaraldi's keyboard style mixed the beauty of Bill Evans' melodic explorations with Horace Silver or Ramsey Lewis' crowd pleasing funkiness. He formed his own trio and had a Top-40 hit with "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" in 1963. His sublime work on the Peanuts television specials got no finer than on A Charlie Brown Christmas, which brings a touch of bittersweet tenderness to holiday cheer. Though he died young at the age of forty-seven in 1976, Guaraldi had already made his musical mark.

- Nick Dedina