I wandered through several stores last evening and I think I heard the same song playing at some point in every one of them: "Linus and Lucy," as written and performed by Vince Guaraldi for A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's everywhere. In fact, it's the ringtone on my cellphone and when I heard it the other night while I was in a CVS Pharmacy, I thought at first I had a call.
It's a fine song, of course…and this jazz critic even thinks the soundtrack album from that much-loved Christmas special is "the most successful recording in the history of jazz." I'm sure, by some definition of "success," that's so.
What I find interesting is how popular "Linus and Lucy" is as a Christmas song since there are no lyrics to connect it with Christmas. I was thinking of that as I drove to and from that party this evening. I had on a local radio station that was playing holiday tunes, many of them instrumentals. When you hear a Christmas instrumental, there are only two things that causes it be about Christmas. One is if the arranger has called for a lot of bells, especially jingle bells. You hear bells, you think Christmas. The other is if the tune is sufficiently well known so that the listener does a kind of Mental Karaoke, filling in the unheard lyrics which are about Christmas. You hear "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dum…" and you think, "Oh, you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry…"
And that makes it Christmas music. You have to make the connection yourself.
Neither of these applies to "Linus and Lucy." There are no bells in Guaraldi's recording and there are no lyrics about Christmas for you to mentally supply. What makes it a Christmas song is that it reminds you of a Christmas TV special you watched and loved as a kid. (Come to think of it, there might be one other way in which the tune denotes the holiday. It may remind some people of Christmas just because you always hear it around Christmas. But at some point, that couldn't have been the connection. At some point, someone had to start playing it at Christmas just because it evoked memories of the Peanuts Christmas cartoon.)
I guess this attests not only to Vince Guaraldi's talent but Charles Schulz's as well…and also, Lee Mendelson, Bill Melendez and the other gifted folks who made A Charlie Brown Christmas. I watched it again the other night and it still works for me, still hits all the proper chords. Lee told me once, in greater detail than he has in most interviews, how he had to fight to get the show on the air and to keep its quiet, non-gimmicky manner (and Guaraldi's score) intact from network tampering. I'm glad he won those battles because it really is a wonderful show.