Vince Guaraldi was a well-respected jazz pianist whose greatest success came from avenues usually closed to contemporary jazz artists: he enjoyed a hit single at a time when jazz had largely been exiled from the pop charts, and he scored a series of very successful animated television specials, a medium where cookie-cutter pop music was traditionally the order of the day.
Vincent Anthony Guaraldi was born in San Francisco, California on July 17, 1928. A loyal son of the Bay Area, Guaraldi graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in the city's Sunset District, and after serv...