There are many Christmas TV specials and classics, and we all have our favourites. To be honest I've never been a big fan of A Charlie Brown Christmas, although my brother Eric loves it, in no small part because of the music. I listened to an interview with the drummer from the jazz trio which wrote and performed the score and it piqued my interest. Here is a description of the development of the half hour animated show from that unimpeachable source, Wikipedia:
Peanuts had become a phenomenon worldwide by the mid-1960s, and the special was commissioned and sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company. It was written over a period of several weeks, and animated on a shoestring budget in only six months. In casting the characters, the producers went an unconventional route, hiring child actors. The program's soundtrack was similarly unorthodox: it features a jazz ccore by pianist Vince Guaraldi. Its absence of a laugh track (a staple in US television animation in this period), in addition to its tone, pacing, music, and animation, led both the producers and network to wrongly predict the project would be a disaster preceding its broadcast.
Sadly, Guaraldi died before the age of 50 but the drummer, Canadian Jerry Granelli is still going strong at 77. He reminisced that the execs figured jazz didn't make sense for a children's special and that the program would be "one and done." No one could have predicted the enduring love and staying power for more than 50 years.
I happened upon A Charlie Brown Christmas the other evening and decided to give it another look. Charlie's sadness over the commercialization is even more timely, and it is so...Christian! Near the end Linus quotes from the King James Version of Luke 2, which is the go-to passage about the birth of Jesus. Schulz was a devout Christian and nearly 600 of his comic strips have faith themes. He was a Sunday School teacher and a voracious reader of biblical commentaries and the bible itself. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/the-spirituality-of-snoopy/479664/
I'm glad I saw the special again, with it's jazz and Jesus. Hey, every once in a blue moon a kid brother gets it right.
Comments?
1 comment:
Jazz and Jesus do go well together - along with the other great musical styles. My seasonal fave is the Muppets' Christmas Carol .... I am going to curl up with that this evening.
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