Did anyone else notice Vince throws in hints of Linus and Lucy at 1:28, 3:14, 6:43? They last just a few seconds but they seem more than coincidental, as they stand in stark contrast with the rest of the piece, and they are even in the same key and tempo as Linus and Lucy.
I’d love to know what was going through Vince’s head when he did that.
This Bola Sete live session was recorded in 1963, and Linus and Lucy wasn’t released until 1964, and was not a hit until 1965.. but it is quite possible that in 1963 he was in the middle of composing it for the Peanuts special.
The following blurb from Wikipedia seems to bear out the timeline:
“The genesis of “Linus and Lucy” began when Peanuts executive producer Lee Mendelson heard Vince Guaraldi’s hit, “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”, on the radio while driving his car over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.”
[Note: Cast Your Fate to the Wind was released July 1962]
“Mendelson then contacted San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, who put him in touch with Guaraldi. Mendelson believed Guaraldi would be a good fit for a documentary he was working on entitled A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Guaraldi gladly accepted the offer to compose several jazz tunes for the documentary.[5]
Within several weeks, Mendelson received a call from an excited Guaraldi who wanted to play a piece of music he had just written. Mendelson, not wanting his first exposure to the new music to be marred by the poor audio qualities of a telephone, suggested coming over to Guaraldi’s studio. Guaraldi enthusiastically refused, saying “I’ve got to play this for someone right now or I’ll explode!” He then began playing the then untitled “Linus and Lucy” for Mendelson, who agreed the song was perfect for Schulz’s Peanuts characters.[5”
oh definitely, you know that he had these things in mind. From what I remember of the story, the producer of the Charlie Brown series called Vince and wanted a theme song and if I remember correctly, Vince had the music to him in two weeks. So obviously he had been thinking about doing something like that, in that style.
and second, I’ve often wondered how much Bola influenced Vince? And in that vein, how much was the music of the Peanuts series influenced by Bola? Quite a bit I bet.