Wednesday, December 09, 2015

AccuRadio Song Of The Day-Vince Guaraldi

Artist:Vince Guaraldi
Song:Cast Your Fate To The Wind
Album:The Very Best Of Vince Guaraldi





Pianist Vince Guaraldi is best known for composing the music for the Peanuts TV specials like A Charlie Brown Christmas. But before that, he scored a hit single with Cast Your Fate To The Wind in 1962. That song won him a Grammy award. He was born July 17, 1928 in San Francisco. For most of the 50s, Guaraldi was a member of The Cal Tjader Trio. He left in 1959 to start his own band. He signed with Fantasy Records and his first album was Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus in 1962. Half of the album was jazz interpretations of the music from the popular 1959 film Black Orpheus including Manha de Carnaval. The other half of the album included Cast Your Fate To The Wind. Musicians on the album were Monty Budwig on bass and Colin Bailey on drums. Cast Your Fate To The Wind was the B side for the single Samba de Orpheus. DJs preferred Cast Your Fate To The Wind and flipped the record over. It reached #22 on the Billboard Hot 100. I'm sure no one was more surprised by this than Vince Guaraldi. It also won a Best Instrumental Grammy. In 1964, the song was a top ten hit for the British group Sounds Orchestral. There are lyrics for Cast Your Fate To The Wind but as an instrumental, it's a jazz standard. And the song got Guaraldi the Peanuts gig. Peanuts producer Lee Mendelson heard Cast Your Fate To The Wind and hired Guaraldi to write and perform the music for A Charlie Brown Christmas. And the rest is history. This budget comp is a good intro to Guaraldi's music but Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus is also available as a budget CD with bonus tracks. Here's a video for Cast Your Fate To The Wind by Vince Guaraldi.

4 comments:

  1. I love his music. He like Dave Bruebeck was one of my first introductions to Jazz music. I still listen to his music like Bruebeck and enjoy it a great deal.

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  2. Just as a follow up, another person who I listened to early on was Grover Washington Jr and his big hit "Just the Two of Us". He was one the first three Jazz artist I listened to when I was much younger.

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  3. Washington was much younger than either Brubeck or Guaraldi. Washington's first album was in 1970. He got to record it when Hank Crawford was ill and unable to turn up to the session.

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  4. Wow.., Frank. Talk about luck and timing. I am glad he was able to record that album. He is a very talented Jazz performer.

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