Line #12 YMMV/VinceGuaraldi


1	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Oh boy, where to start...
2	** The most obvious one would be ''A Charlie Brown Christmas''. Yes, all of it. Almost unanimously considered one of the best Christmas albums '''of all time'''... and thankfully staying away from the more {{Glurge}}-laden trappings of seasonal music. "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvI_FNrczzQ Christmas Time Is Here]]", for instance, will give you that instant Christmas feeling even on the hottest of summer days.
3	** Continuing in the ''Peanuts'' vein, we have the "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_luQ1x21_E Great Pumpkin Waltz]]", "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_Q5NksayvA Happiness Is]]", and "[[http://youtu.be/ZsXtq1GmBU4?t=23m Rain, Rain Go Away]]".
4	*** "Centrecourt", a tune that accompanies Snoopy's shenanigans on a tennis court, starts out rather quiet, with the only instruments being a piano and drums. About 45 seconds in, these really awesome and creepy synthesized strings kick in as Snoopy loses his temper.
5	** But we should not disregard his non-''Peanuts'' related work. It's just as good! "Yesterdays", "Manha de Carnaval", "Cast Your Fate to the Wind"... and that's just the tip of this iceberg.
6	* CriticalDissonance: Guaraldi had the bad luck of starting his career just as New York was starting to become the center of the jazz establishment and when more experimental styles of jazz were coming into vogue. As a melodically-inclined West Coast artist, he never enjoyed much critical respectability (except from the San Francisco-based Ralph Gleason) and usually only rates a brief mention (at best) in most jazz histories. But between "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" and ''Peanuts'' he's always had a following, and he had a reputation as a crowd-pleaser when he performed live. There are signs that Guaraldi's been VindicatedByHistory, and he has much more respect in the jazz world these days.
7	* GatewaySeries: Guaraldi's ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' specials scores, especially ''WesternAnimation/ACharlieBrownChristmas'', has introduced whole generations of kids to jazz.
8	* ItsShortSoItSucks: While ''Oh Good Grief!'' has some fan-favorite moments, with just 8 songs and clocking in at a total run time of 27:31 (more than 12 minutes shorter than ''Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus'' or ''A Charlie Brown Christmas''), the album has gotten some of this reaction over the years.
9	* MemeticMutation: There's an unwritten law that any self-respecting ''Peanuts'' parody must use "Linus and Lucy" (or a SuspiciouslySimilarSong) as its soundtrack. Some even go as far as using other Guaraldi-alike songs.
10	* MisattributedSong: [[http://impressionsofvince.blogspot.com/2017/05/setting-record-straight-again.html Two songs]] released on Fantasy Records' Guaraldi ''Peanuts'' [=CDs=] were actually cues written and recorded for ''The Charlie Brown & Snoopy Show'' many years after his death, a mistake Fantasy was slow to acknowledge.
11	* NeverLiveItDown: Can't really speak for the man himself, but his son, David, appears to not like his father being remembered as "the ''Peanuts'' guy," and to some extent it's hard to argue with the fact that his non-''Peanuts'' work is not as well remembered despite being of equal and/or better quality.
12	* NewerThanTheyThink: While ''WesternAnimation/ACharlieBrownChristmas'' and its soundtrack album debuted in 1965, "Christmas Time is Here" didn't become a Christmas standard until the 21st century. It didn't even get its first CoverVersion until 1982 (an {{Instrumental}} take by {{Jazz}} guitarist Ron Escheté), and only had a handful of them until 1998, when no less than three vocal versions were released (by Music/{{Chicago}}, Music/KennyLoggins and Shawn Colvin), which seemed to open the floodgates for the song.
13	* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing". Just... that.
14	* SignatureSong: "Linus and Lucy", ''Peanuts''' iconic BootstrappedTheme, and probably one of the most widely recognizable jazz instrumentals out there. Chances are you'll hear this song in the back of your head whenever you're reading the comics.
15	** "Cast Your Fate to the Wind", as well. Guaraldi didn't mind the constant requests; he equated it to "signing the back of a check," in his own words.
16	* StuckInTheirShadow: Beginning with ''WesternAnimation/ItsTheGreatPumpkinCharlieBrown'', John Scott Trotter (best known as Music/BingCrosby's longtime musical director) officially became Guaraldi's arranger for the ''Peanuts'' specials. Besides arranging, Trotter also composed some short music cues for the shows, leaving Guaraldi to write the longer pieces. As it turns out, a few of the catchiest ''Peanuts'' musical moments were actually composed by Trotter: the flute piece in ''Great Pumpkin'' during Snoopy's "behind enemy lines" fantasy, the uptempo jazz bit during Snoopy's hockey fantasy in ''WesternAnimation/ABoyNamedCharlieBrown'', and the bus motif in that same movie. But due to most people falsely (if understandably) assuming that all the ''Peanuts'' music was written by Guaraldi, they sometimes get attributed to him. (Incidentally, Trotter died in October 1975, about three months before Guaraldi.)
17	* SuspiciouslySimilarSong:
18	** "Oh Good Grief" has the same melody as "(Down at) Papa Joe's", a 1963 hit by The Dixiebelles. However, that particular piano line is a StandardSnippet that predates both songs by many decades.
19	** "My Little Drum" is a close musical cousin of "The Little Drummer Boy".
20	** He did it to himself as well. "Detained in San Ysidro" is a rewrite of "Treat Street".
21	** His score for ''It's Arbor Day...'' features almost exclusively cues that sound similar to his earlier work, if titled differently. [[HarsherInHindsight It's been posited that his poor health at the time may have played no small part in this.]]
22	** His arrangement of [[Music/TheBeatles "Yesterday"]] on ''The Eclectic Vince Guaraldi'' clearly borrows a lot of its style from "Christmas Time is Here".
23	* SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel: ''A Charlie Brown Christmas''.
24	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The 2006 CD reissue of ''A Charlie Brown Christmas'' was remixed from the original 3-track tapes, allowing for improved sound quality and unedited tracks ("O Tannenbaum" begins with a glissando that was edited out on previous releases, while "Christmas Time Is Here (Instrumental)" and "Skating" no longer fade out prematurely). However, they used different takes for "Linus and Lucy" (the full take used in the special rather than the album version, which was actually just a re-release of the ''Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown'' version of the song) and "Christmas Is Coming" (which Fantasy admitted was an error). This didn't sit well with longtime listeners of the album, accustomed as they were to its edits and imperfect sound (some accused Fantasy of using noise reduction on the entire album even though the label claimed they only used it on "Für Elise", which was recorded directly to 2-track), leading to Fantasy attempting damage control by reinstating the correct versions of "Linus and Lucy" and "Christmas Is Coming" on the CD, even offering replacement disks for free to customers who already bought the "defective" version. As a result, when Fantasy did their next remaster of the album in 2012, they stuck closely to the 1980s CD in terms of mixing, edits and takes used.

Context YMMV / VinceGuaraldi