Released: 1995
Tracks: Linus & Lucy; Buggy Ride; Peppermint Patty; On Peanuts Playground; Oh, Good Grief!; Wright Brothers Rag; Charlie Brown; Little Red-Haired Girl; Pebble Beach; Snoopy & Woodstock; Little Birdie; Why, Charlie Brown; Joe Cool’s Blues (Snoopy’s Return)
Best track: very hard to choose…I really like Peppermint Patty
Tracks to skip: Wright Brothers Rag & Little Birdie
This is one of my wife’s CDs…surprising since usually I’m the one into jazz. Oh well. I don’t listen to this one too much, and honestly most of the previous listens didn’t impress me too much. I mean, if I want to hear Charlie Brown stuff I’ll pull out my Vince Guaraldi CD (which rules). So, here we are, me actively listening to this for the purpose of reviewing. Oh, before I get all into that, this album is a collaboration between trumpeter (and son) Wynton and pianist (and dad) Ellis. It’s kinda misleading since the two never actually play on the same tracks together. The tracks are split between Wynton’s septet and Ellis’ trio. Except for Linus & Lucy, the Ellis group takes on the Guaraldi compositions and Wynton takes on his own compositions. Little Birdie has an extended Ellis group with annoying vocals. I don’t think Guaraldi wrote those words and it should’ve stayed an instrumental.
So, for my active listening session earlier, I sat down here at my computer and actually enjoyed this thing. The Guaraldi compositions are excellent in themselves, and so naturally the Ellis trio is perfect at playing them. The surprise, however, are Wynton’s compositions. After his appearance on Ken Burns’ Jazz, I lost a bit of respect for him. I just thought he was extremely arrogant and acted like he knew everything (kinda like me, then?). But, I think my opinion of him changed a good bit by hearing this. Damn, the things he wrote for this are GOOD. Everybody gets a turn to solo, but naturally his trumpet gets the most. I don’t mind, he’s a really good player. The only song of Wynton’s I didn’t like was Wright Brothers Rag. I absolutely can’t stand that Dixieland kind of jazz and it does not fit with the rest of the music on this CD. I find that type of stuff really annoying and it’s (IMO) the worst kind of jazz. Oh, I don’t consider “Smooth Jazz” to be Jazz at all…it’s more like pure evil masquerading as music. Wright Bros. Rag is better than smooth jazz, but I still don’t like it. Anyway, the vast majority of this is quite good. I still prefer Guaraldi’s original stuff, but the songs Wynton wrote are good in their own right.
Rating: 84
Write a comment