It’s a hip record. Forget the seasonal-only listening, as The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s soundtrack to Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is and forever will be great listening day or night, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Its memorable, engrained in your head melodies that are part of your pop-culture psyche are tunes that are straight ahead holiday classic that also break off into jazz that grooves and swings thanks to Guaraldi and band.
If you go
WHAT: Chuck Hank, Alec Mayes and Clarke Reid Play Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
WHEN: 7 p.m. Dec. 11.
WHERE: The iNDIGO ROOM at iAM Music, 1315 Main Ave. #207.
TICKETS: $20 advance/$22 door.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.iammusic.us.
Despite the recommendation to dig into this music on a summer road or river trip as it’s a great soundtrack for any activity, you’ll get a solid dose of it at holiday time, when local bassist player Chuck Hank, drummer Alec Mayes and piano player Clarke Reid perform the soundtrack to the 1965 television special in the iNDIGO ROOM at iAM MUSIC on Dec. 11. Joining the trio for the few vocal parts will be Dana Ariel.
Musicians are always looking for projects, and this was one Reid had on his list.
“We were talking about the season and just as musicians who play around town, it’s right after Thanksgiving. So am I going to play all these Christmas songs that I know this year? Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t,” Hank said. “I think probably everybody we know has basically grown up with the ‘Charlie Brown Christmas.’ The soundtrack is one of the most epic soundtracks of all time, and we’ve always loved it, so the idea kind of evolved and we said, ‘OK, we’re just going to learn all the songs from the album.’ So, I’m really excited, and I’ve got a lot of practicing to do.”
What these musicians are doing is trying to better themselves as players, as well as strike up those feelings of time, place and past that listening to certain pieces of music brings. If you were born between 1940 and now, this animated special and its accompanying soundtrack is universal viewing and listening and has been for most of everyone’s lives. It’s a trip into personal and family nostalgia.
“You really dive into the nuances, because there’s a lot of different levels of covering a song as a musician. You could play the song or just play an acoustic guitar version of a full band track; that’s on one side. But, when you really try to study a piece of music and get into the nuances of it, because what we’re doing is trying to cover the album, you know, we’re trying to play all of these little parts that make it so special, so epic and so well known,” Hank said. “And when you hear it, it’s hopefully going to give you those same feelings as when you first heard that record, and you feel like Christmastime is here.”
It’s also a swinging collection of songs. Guaraldi and his band managed to capture the sound of Christmas through the cuts on the album, while also breaking off to show that they’re a killer jazz trio that knows how to groove. A cut like “Linus and Lucy” features the melody that is synonymous with “Peanuts,” but go two minutes into the cut and you hear a trio laying down a thick groove. This local trio will showcase holiday and pop-culture familiarity along with hip jazz.
“It’s got ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, and one called ‘My Little Drum.’ They (Guaraldi and Trio) paid tribute to these amazing melodies, and then they go, ‘OK, now it’s time to swing it,’” Hank said. “There will be jazz swing in there with all the classics and classical Christmas melodies.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
