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In rare cases, it only takes five minutes to produce a masterpiece.
it took at least that much time Peanuts creator Lee Mendelson To come up with the indelible lyrics of the holiday classic “Christmastime Is Here”, which would go on to become the theme song 1965 tv special, A Charlie Brown Christmas,
written by Vince Guaraldi, jazzy score Originally it was without songs.
Mendelson’s son Jason recalled, “The beginning of the show, that waltz, ‘Christmastime Is Here’, was great, but it was a little slow.” People In a new interview. They decided it needed a song.
Jason said his father called everyone in Los Angeles and asked if anyone could write a song, “and no one could do it. No one responded or could do it.”
“So my dad sat down,” Jason said. “On the back of an envelope, he wrote poems. ‘Christmas time has come, joy and cheer, fun for all, what children call their favorite time of the year.’ He wrote it in five minutes.”
Once Mendelson sent Guaraldi the lyrics, “they went to the local church, they got the choir to sit and sing those words,” he said. “And it was done hastily, without any planning, in an emergency, and it became the main song of the entire show and went on forever… but it was all done on a napkin in five minutes.”
Jason recalled: “Guaraldi wrote, ‘It’s beautiful, it’s amazing,’ and if you look at the album, it’s on there twice. How many albums have his song there twice? There’s the instrumental version and then the lyrical version with the amazing kids who did the singing.”
A Charlie Brown Christmas It was created by Lee, Guaraldi, director Bill Melendez, and Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. It first aired in 1965.
The four continued their partnership until their deaths, Jason said. His father died on Christmas Day 2019 at the age of 86, while Guaraldi died in 1976 at the age of 46; Schultz died in 2000 at the age of 77; And Melendez died in 2008 at the age of 91.
Jason, who, with his brother Sean, now produces for Peanuts Records, said that whenever “Christmastime is Here” plays, “I hear my father’s voice again.”
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He added that he thinks his father and his colleagues knew that Peanuts was going to have an impact – that it was “going to outlive them all and they left the world that great legacy and piece of art that will live on.”