The inspiring Vince Guaraldi
Our family digs jazz great Vince Guaraldi, and it's sparked some neat projects.

Vince Guaraldi was the jazz genius behind all those Peanuts TV special soundtracks. The first—the standout, the standard-setter—was the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965. Guaraldi's Peanuts music, especially "Linus and Lucy," is how most of us were first introduced to jazz. Some jazz aficionados look down their nose at him a bit, but c'mon, you'd have to be an awful killjoy to be down on Guaraldi's music.
My personal favorite from A Charlie Brown Christmas, "Skating," by Vince Guaraldi
My husband, Rich, plays piano (and other instruments, but mostly piano). He studied music in college, and continues to play, sometimes for his own band, sometimes in others', and most often these days he has his own musical rabbit holes he follows.

A few years ago, Vince Guaraldi became his focus. It probably started with wanting to play some of the Guaraldi Christmas tunes during the holiday season, but it grew into decoding Guaraldi's style a bit. He started to notice what little quirks made a song sound like a Guaraldi song.
This happened to coincide with a musical development from another family favorite: the long-running web comic Homestar Runner. Rich and I have always loved Homestar Runner, and a few years back Wanda developed a full-on obsession (she's memorized the extensive fan-created wiki). For the Decemberween season in 2022, the creators of Homestar Runner started posting a daily "advent calendar" of sheet music for the songs from Homestar Runner's expansive universe.
Well.
This was perfect for Rich. Every morning, he took the day's Homestar Runner sheet music, recorded it in the style of Vince Guaraldi, and posted it online. It was a hit. Day by day, he was creating a Peanuts-flavored Christmas album of Homestar Runner music. Two albums, actually! You can download those albums from Rich's Bandcamp page. (I created the cover art!)
The Homestar Runner song "Skills of an Artist" in the style of Vince Guaraldi, arranged and performed by Rich Trott
That whole project was so, so fun for Rich. It made his year (and Wanda's, too). Rich's interest in Vince Guaraldi continued, and he went deeper, reading a detailed biography by Derrick Bang, seeking out rare Guaraldi recordings, and learning to play every Guaraldi song.
"Pebble Beach," by Vince Guaraldi
Wanda and I were along for the ride. I fell in love with one particular Guaraldi song, "Pebble Beach," one of his earliest Peanuts recordings, from the 1964 album Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown. It has become my cooking soundtrack in the kitchen; I often play it on repeat while prepping ingredients. It's an instrumental, but I joke that it has one lyric, right at the beginning: "Oh! Pebble Beach!"—because Wanda always says that when it comes up on a playlist and she hears the first notes.

For Christmas 2023, Wanda and I (mostly Wanda) created a bust of Vince Guaraldi for Rich, a nod to the bust of Beethoven on Schroeder's piano. I created a basic, featureless form, and Wanda added all of the details to turn it into Vince Guaraldi. Wanda and Rich watched every single Peanuts special, movie, TV series, and documentary together. (On her own, Wanda also has a deep, deep love for the Peanuts comics and specials.)

Guaraldi was a San Francisco guy, born and raised here, and the clubs of North Beach were his jazz home. He was born in North Beach, lived in Daly City and Mill Valley as an adult, and died in Menlo Park in the middle of playing a gig. He was only 47; it was a heart attack. He's buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma (San Francisco buries its dead in the suburb of Colma). We visited him there to pay our respects.
"He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown" by Vince Guaraldi, performed by Rich Trott
The San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park has an annual weeklong event where they put a bunch of pianos throughout the gardens for everybody to play. Rich went just about every day last year, early in the morning, and played Guaraldi songs. He recorded them to share online.
Fate's hand swept in. Those Peanuts specials were produced by Lee Mendelson, who was also based here in the Bay Area. He died in 2019, and now his sons are going through all of his archives—which happily includes some fantastic tapes from the Guaraldi recording sessions for the Peanuts specials. They have been releasing new, deluxe, remastered versions of the soundtracks for each of the Peanuts specials (on vinyl, too!). Rich has happily snapped these up.
"Heartburn Waltz" by Vince Guaraldi, original 1974 recording. At the beginning, you can hear the chatter of the musicians before they start playing.
The newest of these releases is the remastered soundtrack for Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, from 1975. To mark the release, there will be a special members-only Valentine's party at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. Mendelson's sons will be giving a talk about the holiday special at the party—and they asked Rich if he would be willing to perform songs from the soundtrack at the event! They had seen the videos of him playing Guaraldi tunes at the Botanical Gardens.
Rich found a wonderful bass player and drummer to accompany him, and the three of them have been having a lot of fun practicing. Wanda loves the Schulz Museum. It'll be a special treat to get to see Rich perform there.