Jerry Granelli
Jerry Granelli | |
---|---|
Born | San Francisco, California, U.S. | December 30, 1940
Genres | Jazz |
Occupation | Musician |
Instrument | Drums |
Jerry Granelli (born December 30, 1940) is an American-born Canadian jazz drummer. He is best known for playing drums on the soundtrack A Charlie Brown Christmas with the Vince Guaraldi Trio.
Biography
Born in San Francisco, Granelli was involved with the city's hard bop scene from a young age. A day spent with drummer Gene Krupa in 1948 informed his passion for percussion[1] and eventually led to him studying with Joe Morello.
In the 1960s he recorded and toured with the Vince Guaraldi trio,[1] appearing on Vince Guaraldi, Bola Sete and Friends and A Charlie Brown Christmas. Granelli was only paid $120 dollars for the recording session of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and has never received any royalties from the television special or its soundtrack.[2] Despite this fact, Granelli says he is not bitter: "It’s become one of the soundtracks of people’s lives,” he says. “There is such a human quality to it.”[2]
Jerry also acted as a session drummer during this period. Among his many sessions was the recording of the Sylvia Tyson penned "You Were On My Mind" by folk group We Five, which won a Grammy award in 1965 for Best Performance by a Vocal Group. Later in the decade, he joined the Denny Zeitlin trio with Charlie Haden.[3] The soundtrack went on to become a triple-platinum award winning album.[4]
Since the 1990s, Granelli has lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1999. In 2010, he released his first solo album, 1313.[5] Granelli tours jazz festivals and holiday venues with his one-man show Tales of a Charlie Brown Christmas, which retells the three-hour recording session in 1965 that culminated in the timeless Christmas classic.[4] Granelli recalled in a 2016 interview: "We did it all in one day over three hours, but Vince did us a favour and paid us for two sessions."[2]
Discography
- With the Vince Guaraldi Trio
- Vince Guaraldi, Bola Sete and Friends (Fantasy, 1963)
- The Latin Side of Vince Guaraldi (Fantasy, 1964)
- Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown (Fantasy, 1964)
- From All Sides (Fantasy, 1965)
- A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy, 1965)
- With Jane Ira Bloom
- Art and Aviation (Arabesque, 1992)
Selected
- Sound Songs (JMT/Winter & Winter, 1986)
- As Tears Go By & Some More Songs (Jazzwerkstatt, 1987)
- Koputai (ITM, 1988)
- One Day at a Time (Koch, 1990)
- A Song I Thought I Heard Buddy Sing (ITM, 1992)
- Another Place (Intuition, 1994)
- News from the Street (Intuition, 1995)
- Broken Circle (Intuition, 1996)
- Enter, a Dragon (Songlines, 1998)
- Forces of Flight (Select, 1999)
- Crowd Theory (Songlines, 1999)
- Iron Sky (Love Slave, 2001)
- The Only Juan (Love Slave, 2002)
- Sandhills Reunion (Songlines, 2005)
- 1313 (Divorce, 2010)
- Music Has Its Way with Me (Traumton, 2000)
- What I Hear Now (Addo, 2015)
- Dance Hall (Justin Time, 2017)
- Plays Vince Guaraldi & Mose Allison (RareNoiseRecords, 2020)[6]
References
- ^ a b Bang, Derrick (2012). Vince Guaraldi at the Piano. McFarland. p. 114. ISBN 9780786490745.
- ^ a b c Jerry Granelli Tells Tales of a Charlie Brown Christmas. Robins, Marks. September 16, 2019.
- ^ Wong, Herb; Fingerote, Paul Simeon (2016). Jazz on My Mind. McFarland. p. 177. ISBN 9780786496402.
- ^ a b Tales of a Charlie Brown Christmas. www.vancouverpresnts.com.
- ^ Galloway, A. Scott. "Bio". Jerry Granelli. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
- ^ "Jerry Granelli | Album Discography | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 26 July 2018.
External links
- Official website
- Charlie Brown Christmas drummer reflects on iconic soundtrack
- CBC News: Meet Jerry Granelli