Before Charlie Brown had a Christmas tree, he had a theme song. The trouble was, the show it was written for couldn’t get on television.
In the early 1960s, producer Lee Mendelson was making a documentary about Charles M. Schulz and his newspaper comic strip, Peanuts. He needed music. Then he heard “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” on the radio, a jazz instrumental by San Francisco pianist Vince Guaraldi. That was the sound Mendelson wanted, so he hired Guaraldi to score the film.
Guaraldi later called Mendelson and played an early version of “Linus and Lucy” over the telephone. Imagine hearing that bouncing piano riff for the first time through a telephone receiver. No Snoopy dancing. No Charlie Brown looking miserable. Just a piano and a producer on the other end of the line.
The documentary didn’t get a television slot, but Fantasy Records released the music in 1964 as Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown. For a little while, you could buy the soundtrack to a show you couldn’t watch. And if that album title sounds familiar, there’s another wrinkle: A Boy Named Charlie Brown was also the title of the animated feature that came out in 1969. The 1964 record was for the documentary.
Then Coca-Cola wanted a Christmas special. Mendelson teamed up with Schulz and animator Bill Melendez, who had already worked with the Peanuts characters on animated Ford commercials. This time, they had a whole half hour to fill. Guaraldi came back to write new music, and “Linus and Lucy” finally got its moment on television.
The result was an odd proposition for network television. The children were voiced by actual children. There was no laugh track. The score mixed jazz with traditional Christmas music. And at the point where another cartoon might have gone for a big gag, Linus walked into the spotlight and recited the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. The special trusted that children would listen and that grown-ups could sit through a quiet moment.
Of course, it also trusted that viewers would enjoy watching a roomful of kids dance as though each one were hearing a different record. That’s where “Linus and Lucy” fits so well. The tune is almost all momentum: a repeating left-hand piano figure with a melody that bounces over it. Schroeder could talk about Beethoven all day, but Guaraldi supplied the number that got the rehearsal moving.
A Charlie Brown Christmas aired on CBS on December 9, 1965, and was a hit. Guaraldi went on to score more Peanuts specials, and “Linus and Lucy” became the gang’s musical signature. The Christmas soundtrack was eventually added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. Quite a turnaround for music that started out attached to a project Mendelson couldn’t get on the air.
There’s nothing especially Christmassy about “Linus and Lucy” on its own. It has no lyrics, no sleigh bells and no mention of snow. But play those first few notes and people can see the whole thing: the crooked little tree, the blue blanket and Snoopy dancing like he’s the only one who knows what he’s doing.
