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Jerry Granelli

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Jerry Granelli
Born(1940-12-30)December 30, 1940
San Francisco, California, U.S.
DiedJuly 20, 2021(2021-07-20) (aged 80)
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
GenresJazz
OccupationMusician
InstrumentDrums

Jerry Granelli (December 30, 1940 – July 20, 2021) was an American-born Canadian jazz drummer. He was 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, Granelli 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 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 said he was not bitter: "It’s become one of the soundtracks of people’s lives,” he says. “There is such a human quality to it.”[2] The soundtrack went on to become a triple-platinum award winning album.[3]

Granelli 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.[4]

From the 1990s until his death, Granelli lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1999. In 2010, he released his first solo album, 1313.[5] Granelli toured 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.[3] 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]

Personal life

On July 20, 2021, Granelli, age 80, died in his Halifax home.[6]

Discography

With the Vince Guaraldi Trio
With Jane Ira Bloom

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)[7]

References

  1. ^ a b Bang, Derrick (2012). Vince Guaraldi at the Piano. McFarland. p. 114. ISBN 9780786490745.
  2. ^ a b c Jerry Granelli Tells Tales of a Charlie Brown Christmas. Robins, Marks. September 16, 2019.
  3. ^ a b Tales of a Charlie Brown Christmas. www.vancouverpresnts.com.
  4. ^ Wong, Herb; Fingerote, Paul Simeon (2016). Jazz on My Mind. McFarland. p. 177. ISBN 9780786496402.
  5. ^ Galloway, A. Scott. "Bio". Jerry Granelli. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
  6. ^ Mullin, Morgan. "Jerry Granelli, iconic drummer and teacher, dies in Halifax". The Coast Halifax. Retrieved 21 July 2021.
  7. ^ "Jerry Granelli | Album Discography | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 26 July 2018.


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