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You might not know Jerry Granelli by name, but you know his music.  It’s been there every December for the past forty-five years, close as an old friend, comfortable as an old blanket.  Granelli was the drummer for the Vince Guaraldi Trio, which recorded one of the greatest Christmas albums ever made – A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Back then the Trio was a bonafide jazz act in San Francisco.  This was ground zero, dig . . . the site of the greatest artistic explosion of the twentieth century . . . in an era when music and art were experiencing a renaissance fueled by drugs and sex and Civil Rights and war and assassination . . . an era when people said things like “dig.”   Yes, San Francisco was the place – Ginsberg, Kerouac, Coltrane.  In this scene of giants, the Vince Guaraldi Trio stood hip as all hell.  Miles Davis came to their gigs.

In other words, these were some weird cats experimenting with music, drugs and life when they were called upon to score a heartwarming Christmas cartoon drawn by Peanuts creator, Charles Schultz.

The only way to describe the resulting TV special and album is to say that in half a century, nothing has come close to touching either one.  Granelli’s drumming on the album is one reason why.  It is elegantly understated, holding back where a lot of jazz drummers would have forced in too many notes.  Another reason is the fact that the music is bigger than Christmas music.  It is sophisticated yet childlike, hip yet conventional, sweet yet bittersweet.  And, the debut of the Peanuts’ theme, “Linus and Lucy,” didn’t hurt either.

However, the most interesting parts of Granelli’s life don’t involve Charlie Brown – parts like opening for Lenny Bruce in San Francisco in 1963, and the gigs with Ornette Coleman, Sly Stone and Mose Allison, and sharing bills with Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead.  In fact, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame lists Granelli as one of the early pioneers of psychedelic music.

Ultimately, Granelli found that the drug-fueled lifestyle wasn’t sustainable.  He became a Buddhist in 1970 and began teaching in 1976, which he still does.  He also has remained an active musician into his seventh decade, embracing hip-hop, electronic music and much more.

Recently, Granelli made time to talk to Thriller about Charlie Brown, Lenny Bruce and his upcoming solo album.

I watched a documentary on you called In the Moment, and one thing in it that I found very interesting was the connection between Buddhism and music – the fact that in both, you have to be completely in the moment.  If you stop to think about what you’re going to do, the moment is gone.  What has that meant to you throughout your career?

Well, I think it’s very interesting to find these two things in your life, you know?  And they clarify each other, and they support each other.  I didn’t go to Buddhism to become a better drummer.  That wasn’t my goal; I was just trying to learn how to live.  The music teaches the same thing, but it’s very difficult to draw that back into your life on a day-to-day basis.  More and more, I’m convinced by the fact that the natural state of things is spontaneity and improvised.  So, music is a direct reflection of life, and so is meditation, just being still and not trying to control the mind.  They’re constantly supportive of each other, and how to approach art.  The whole idea of self-expression is such bullshit from this point of view.  You’re just trying to express the music.  It’s like trying to manipulate your life, you know?  You can’t, man.  It’s out of control.  We agreed to have this conversation, right?  Behind that agreement was this fundamental belief that we were going to live long enough, which is not at all true.

Good thing we did.

Yeah, but I mean, the music, as you climb up on the bandstand or you sit down to play it, you have to let go of everything you bring with you, or you’re just trying to play the past.

I wanted to ask that first because it leads into A Charlie Brown Christmas. One of my favorite things about that album is the feel.  You get the sense, listening to it, that it could only have been created at that moment by those musicians with those microphones and instruments in that room.  I think that is something that’s lacking from a lot of modern music, the feeling that you’ve captured this one random and unrepeatable moment of beauty.  How did that happen?

It’s very interesting – for us, it was just a matter-of-fact thing.  Vince [Guaraldi] came to play every night, and he played for real every time, and that’s the way the Trio played.  So, it was like, “Hey, here’s this project,” and we go in, it’s far out, there’s Charlie Schultz, you know?  We just tried to play this music the best we could.  And those were the days when you did a record in three hours.  I think Vince might have paid us extra, so we did it in two sessions or something.  But, it was just very ordinary.  We knew the tunes, and Vince adapted some of them.  It was pretty much just, Go in and play really good [laughs].  You know, with that spirit.  That was the spirit of how you did it.  If you made a mistake, you had to do it all over again.  There was no correcting it.  And, the takes felt good, you know?  You’d listen to it and say, “That feels good, man.”  Then, what it became was something else altogether.  No one was more amazed about that than us.

What was the writing process like?  Or, I guess some of the songs were already Christmas songs and you adapted them.

Well, it was really straightforward.  It was like, “Hey, here’s the music.  Maybe we’ll make this a little longer.  Maybe we’ll vamp on that because he needs extra time.”  It was a perfect fit, is what it was.  Serendipity, really.  Vince – the way he plays, the humor of his playing, the swinging kind of humor and darkness to his life and playing, and the Trio, man. *CLICK TO LISTEN* It was like, yeah man, just, you know [sings the opening notes of “Christmastime is Here”].  It was so touching to hear him play that, and to hear those kids sing it.  The way Vince wrote was he would just say, “Hey man, I got this thing.  Check this out, I’ve been working on being able to go [sings “Linus and Lucy”].  And then it was like, “What are you going to do?”  Then he’d go, “Nope, don’t like that.  What are you going to do there?”  “Okay, give me a minute, play it a few more times.  Okay, I think I’ve got a part for at least the head.”  It was the same thing with Fred [Marshall] – he’d put a bass line in there.  And we were both there because we could do that to [Vince’s] music.  If we couldn’t, somebody else would have been there.  Most people don’t think of us as co-composers, but we actually are.

One of my favorite parts about the album is your drumming.  It’s so understated – like in “O Tannenbaum,” or “Christmas Time is Here” where you’re just using brushes, and in the swing parts you’re just playing straight eighth notes on the ride, and it has a really great, simple groove to it.  What made you play that way?

I think Vince once yelled at me.  He said, “You know, man, all that shit you’re playing, I don’t need it.  But, I want what makes you play that.  I want the energy of that.  Now, just cut it all away.”  It’s like, if you listen to Kind of Blue, for years I thought, “Why did Miles [Davis] use Jimmy Cobb?”  Then, one day I listened to it and I realized he used Jimmy Cobb because it was just so simple.  He didn’t need Philly Joe [Jones].  He certainly didn’t need Tony Williams at that point in his life for his music.  But Jimmy Cobb could get to that place, and if you listen to that record, he just does this very simple, wonderful feeling, this implied fire.  So, Vince wanted all this fire, but the way that music was, it was simple, and that’s what was the challenge, to play the brushes so they felt really good, but you don’t get to do much.  That has served me well over the years, to just learn to put a simple time feeling that feels really good, and nothing much really happens [laughs].

I think a lot of jazz drummers would have overplayed those songs.

Well, I think it’s whether you decide you’re there to serve the music or to serve your self-interests.  And Vince would put up with no self-interest [laughs].  I can never repay the training that he gave me.  That was a big break, man, for me at that age.

You were twenty-three when it was recorded, right?

Yeah, I was the youngest one in the trio, and playing jazz every night and getting paid like real money.

Another thing I like about the drums is the bossa nova influence.  On songs like “My Little Drum” and a few others, you’re almost doing bossa nova patterns with the cross-stick.

[Bossa] was just starting, and Vince was one of the first people to play it when he did the first record, Samba de Orpheus.  And he had this great collection of Brazilian music, not just bossa but real Brazilian music.  And he turned me on to it and insisted I learn how to play it.  Yeah, there was always a little bit of that influence in it, and the trick was how to combine them.

Do you remember hearing “Linus and Lucy” for the first time?  What did you think when Vince Guaraldi played it for you for the first time?

*CLICK TO LISTEN*Yeah, I remember he played it on the piano.  He had this big piano, see, in this really tiny room so all we could get in the rehearsal space was this huge, I don’t know, twelve-foot Steinway piano, but it was his baby.  And then the drums were kind of tucked in the corner – a tiny little room.  And he had been workin’ on that concept of going [sings the left-hand riff of “Linus and Lucy”], which comes out of the Latin thing, you know?  And then being able to have the independence to play [sings right-hand riff], you know, with this great rolling bass line, man.  It was literally – he said, “Check this out, man,” you know, “Check this out.”  It kind of appeared during the gigs sometimes, you know, when we were workin’ with the Trio.  So it had that combination of being not real Latin but kind of swinging.  I don’t even remember what I played right now, but it was really like, “Here it is.  Create a part that fits that’s going to pretty much be the same every time except you improvise with that.  But, it’s gotta catch the character of the piece.”  That’s all.

Did you have any idea that it would become such a huge song?

No, no no no.  Really, we didn’t.  There’s other tunes we recorded, like there was a tune called “Treat Street.”  We thought, “This is going to be a hit for us,” but it wasn’t.  No one in those days could really predict it.  I don’t think anybody can.

It’s funny that you also put “Für Elise” on this album because I think anywhere there is a piano, there are at least two songs that you can play that everyone will know – “Für Elise” and “Linus and Lucy.”

That’s right, man.

What about “Christmas Time is Here?”

*CLICK TO LISTEN*Yeah, that’s a beauty.  I remember just being in love with it when I heard it.  And it was just that [makes the sound of brushes] getting’ that nice swish, the old man Jo Jones thing.  Gettin’ that brush sound.  And it was calf heads, so you could get that sound.  But it was just really, again, putting that thing . . . you know, if you took all those tracks away, the drum track would just – I’m not bragging – but the drum track would just sit there and groove in its simple way.  And then that was my job, was to put that there, and everything else could just sit on that.  I was like the ice.  Everybody’s skatin’ on that, man, but I’m not movin’.  And trying to imply all of the emotion in that song and those kids’ voices, ultimately, with just a brush.

Did you see the cartoon before you made the music?  Did you write to the cartoon?

I don’t know if Vince actually saw it.  I think he saw some of it.  We didn’t play it to the screen.  Vince had times he was working with.

I know that you were pretty heavily into the jazz scene in San Francisco in the ’60s, playing so-called “free music” and experimenting with drugs.  Was this all going on during the same period as making A Charlie Brown Christmas?

Yeah, it was.  Fred and I were off paying with this piano player Flip Nuñez.  We were playing free, but we were there playing that music every night with Vince for real until it was over.  Then, we both quit the same weekend, because it was just obviously over.  It was not what I wanted to do.  I heard something else.  To me, if I hadn’t had the time with Vince, I don’t think I would’ve grown into the free thing.  It’s funny, you know, with this I went through a time where when it would come up, I would be like, “Oh yeah, uggh, I did that,” and not learn to appreciate the effect of this and the beauty of this.  Because I’ve learned that it touches people.  For a long time, I almost denied it.  I was so busy being hip.

It really does mean a lot to many people.

Yeah, I know.  Now, I view it as a great gift to have been a part of something that touches that many people in the world, man.  That’s pretty far out, like some weird little Beatles shit or something, you know?

You played with and knew so many legendary people – Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sly Stone, Lenny Bruce, and on and on – I always want the inside scoop on these people.  Like, which ones were cool, which ones weren’t . . .

I’ve been really lucky.  Some people who shall remain nameless were a pain in the ass, but I was a sideman and I did it.  It’s like everything else.  Some of us aren’t very nice, and as a small family, we know a lot about each other.  You can go, “Oh, I love so and so,” and somebody will go, “What a jerk.”  Probably there’s somebody somewhere saying that about me, and that’s cool.

What was Lenny Bruce like?

Lenny was wonderful.  He was totally nuts and great.  Lenny was inspiring and a good friend – as good a friend as anybody who’s that big a junkie can be.  Lenny was also an egomaniac but wild, man.  I feel lucky to have worked with him, to have known him, to hang out with him and walk around San Francisco day after day doing just totally bizarre things.  But, it was a great thing.  And of course, there are some people who are just a drag, who I’ve started conversations with, “Fuck you, motherfucker.”  But that’s part of the times, that’s part of the thing.  You don’t have musical lives, long lives, with those people because that is just too hard.  The music gets weird.  Most of the great musicians I’ve met have been really nice people, really good people.

What about Vince Guaraldi?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* Vince was the real deal.  That trio, man, we played in L.A., and Miles Davis was there every night, coming to listen to that trio, because he loved Vince.  So, that was a great musical credential.  You know, when I worked with Denny Zeitlin and Charlie Haden, that trio, we’d play the Triton on Monday night, it was like a Who’s Who of jazz in there, man.  Everybody who was in town came.  And Vince was rated the same way.  Vince wasn’t a sham.  Vince had his jazz credentials.  He could be-bop your ass right into the ground, man.  Miles was like, [in gravelly Miles Davis voice] “Come with me, man, come on, join my band.” [In high-pitched Guaraldi voice] “I don’t want to join your band.  I got a band.”  And he was a tough man to deal with a lot, you know, because he had a vision.  And he had paid a lot of dues, man.  Nobody knows how much dues that Vince Guaraldi paid and got laughed at and got humiliated.  And he never gave up.  You didn’t mess with him.  He had street credentials.  He could walk into Bop City and play.  I was glad to have that gig.  Everybody wanted that gig [laughs].

I wanted to ask a little about your new solo album.  Is it out yet?

It won’t be out until April.  I just did a solo record for Divorce Records.

What can we expect from a solo album by a jazz drummer?

I have no idea, man.  I went in and improvised for four hours, and they tried to make pieces.  It’s a different sound.  I’ll be curious to what people think of it.  I mean, I got some music down there, but that’s all I can say.  That’s my job.  I don’t think I’ll be doing another one right away.  Solo records – there’s nobody there.  Fuck that.  I realized I love to play in a group.

What’s it called?

I don’t know.  Haven’t named it yet.

I’ve seen video of you playing drums, and you really use the drum like a melodic instrument, and I’ve also seen you just banging on scrap metal and weird stuff to make melodic percussion.  That’s what I imagine the solo album will sound like.

That’s on there.  Something I’ve always wanted to do where I just overdubbed three drum parts, so it sounds like Pygmy music, kind of.  I would say this record’s pretty raw feeling.  I just did ‘em, man.  I’d say, “Run that back, and I’m going to play on it.”  It was just kind of an adventure.

I’ve read other interviews you’ve done, and I find it interesting how you can wax just as poetic about hip-hop and electronic music as you can about jazz.  You seem to be always exploring new things.

For me, it’s easy at my age to be a caricature of yourself.  I don’t want to be.  So I’m looking, I’m just doing a new trio project this weekend with two young musicians, and I just really try to keep following it and find my place.  My son said one of my things is that I can make myself really uncomfortable.  And I like that.  I hate it, but I like it because it means you’re learning something.  You’re going somewhere you haven’t been.

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Buy these albums now: A Charlie Brown Christmas | The Definitive Vince Guaraldi

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