Ideas - A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Musical Genius of Jerry Granelli

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

A profile of the legendary jazz drummer and composer Jerry Granelli who passed away in 2021. Over his career, he accompanied many of the greats: Mose Allison, Sly Stone and The Grateful Dead. Most famously, he was a member of the Vince Guaraldi Trio that recorded the iconic album: A Charlie Brown Christmas. *This episode originally aired on December 21, 2021.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. If you listen to Vince Guaraldi records, you know,

I've never played that simple in my life. Deceivingly simple, though, right? Yeah, it's, boy, that's my heart. People go, oh, you know, because they know the Christmas, Charlie Brown Christmas and Christmas time is here. The brushwork for people has meant a lot. And they go, how do you do that? And I honestly say, I just pour my heart and soul, all my emotions, everything I have into making these circles on the drumhead.

Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Today, the world-renowned drummer Jerry Grinelli. Here he is, late December 2020, on the eve of his 80th birthday and the 55th anniversary of creating and playing the drum part for a Charlie Brown Christmas. Christmas time is here. So I'm picking a point. There's a point right here where the tempo is. Like, bumble, two, three, one, two. So I'm trying to just find this little point to push. But it's all internal.

Jerry Grinelli was the last surviving member of the Vince Garaldi trio who played on that iconic album. Born into a storied time of jazz in San Francisco, he was a drumming prodigy. While other kids were playing ball, he was practicing five hours a day on the drums. At night, when those same kids were tucked in bed, at the tender age of six,

he started hanging out at jazz clubs with his father and uncle, listening to Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, among other greats. When he was 22, Vince Giraldi, already famous, invited Jerry to become a member of his trio. But after two and a half years, he left to explore free jazz and spontaneous composition. He hung out with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Jimi Hendrix, played on albums with Sly Stone, the Kingston Trio, and Moe's Allison, toured alongside the Grateful Dead,

taught with Allen Ginsberg, and opened for Lenny Bruce, and was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for pioneering psychedelic music. Up until COVID, Grinelli had been teaching drumming and touring around the world. Since 1987, he had recorded 25 of his own albums. But for 50 years, he refused to play the songs from A Charlie Brown Christmas, refused to be defined by it. A few years ago, he was finally ready to play the music again. Since the late 1980s, Jerry Grinelli, a devoted Buddhist, had been living in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

It was there that he sat down with Ideas producer Mary Link. Jerry. Yes, Mary. Thank you for this. Thank you. I'm delighted. I really am. I'm delighted to be with you. We first aired this program, Ordinary Magic, the musical genius of Jerry Grinelli, in late

December 2020. Sadly, six months later, on July 20th, 2021, Jerry Grinelli passed away. We're re-airing the episode in celebration of this remarkable and utterly delightful artist. Jerry, I'm curious because on my computer I have a quote, and it's from Miles Davis. And it's on a little yellow sticky paper. And it's that famous one where he says that sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself.

Oh, it takes forever to sound like yourself. And you're going to be in a week's time? 80. 80. Yeah. How long did it take to sound like yourself? Well, that's great, you know, because I know everything I've stole from all those great masters. And I guess it began to dawn on me.

And what happened was one night, the Trident and Sausalito, I guess this would be the moment. And I was playing with my quartet and I'd already had been through Vince and all that, so I had a good rep. People knew who I was, and three of the great American drummers came in that night.

All good friends, all had taught me. Elvin Jones, drummer with John Coltrane. Papa Joe Jones goes back to Count Basie, considering, well, the roots of our drumming technique. And Joe Morello, who was a drummer with Dave Brubeck, who was my personal mentor, dearest friend our whole lives. And they come in, and they sit in the front row. The guys in the band didn't tell me,

but I saw them out from the back and all i could say to myself well i said well here it is you know they know everything you've stolen from them so you better go out there and be yourself and i did i was able to and they were wonderful. It was like... Did it change that night in how you played because of that? No, I think the confidence changed.

The realization then that I did have a way that I felt about it. I wasn't searching. And it was like being brought in, given a seat at the table. They treated me like an equal. Now, I saw now that they had treated me a long time like that. But I felt it.

Because unless you know it, it doesn't matter. Right. It doesn't matter. But how does it, how does, if your music didn't change, how does your confidence impact the music? How did that, how did you, how did that impact your music when you're playing? I think it allows you to relax and to take some chances and not to pretend you're trying to be something else.

I hear it different. I just hear it different. Part of it's being dyslexic, probably. I hear it different. What do you hear different? Sometimes I can't find out where one is. Sometimes I'm listening to the radio in the car or something. It's going like, boom, bap, boom.

I mean, that's simple, right? I can't figure out. It sounds complicated to me. My mind flips it around, and I hear all kinds of wonderful things. And then I go, you're doing it again. But I just hear it that way. And now people hear a record and I'm delighted that they know it's me. You know, think about it. If you put a seed in the ground, it takes a lot of water before you get a tree. So why should you wake up one day and find your voice?

You have to find your voice and you have to sound like somebody else. You know, Miles Davis spent a lot of time trying to sound like Dizzy Gillespie. No way, he doesn't have those kinds of chops. But you can be the best, I can be the best Jerry Grinelli, the most honest Jerry Grinelli in the world. And that's, I have to be happy with that.

At the same time, always torturing myself, striving to get better, striving perfection. But that's my own work. Are you still striving for perfection right now at 80? Because you still practice all the time. Yeah. Last week, I had to keep from setting fire to my drums. It was just so really terrible, really terrible. You mean, oh, I thought you meant musically.

You were just frustrated and you wanted to set fire to your drums? Yeah, really. I went down and I was like, okay, I'm going down. Everybody who knows me, they go, what are you doing? I said, I'm going down to face my drums. I haven't touched them for a week and a half and two weeks. Your drums are in the basement downstairs. In the basement, yeah, from your condo.

And so I went down there and I started to do these simple, just technical things. I'm 80. So now I just want, I'm never going to be like, you know, I can listen to a record when I'm 24 and I'm not going back there. Well, there's a huge physicality to it. Yeah. So I can keep myself really good shape

and be pretty amazing as an 80-year-old guy doing what I'm doing. And part of it is the connection between me and the instrument. Morello once told me, when you put a drumstick in your hand, your hand no longer ends there. It comes out to the end of the drumstick now. When you hit the drum, you are now connected to the drum. So it's all one loop. So I couldn't find that.

It was too stiff. It was too hard. It wasn't even. I didn't have control of the instrument. I couldn't make love to it. It wouldn't give me a sound. It was torturous. Is that the first time? No, it happens if I leave it alone now for a while.

But, you know, given the COVID, given the isolation, given everything else I was working with in my mind, you know, I went down there looking for salvation. And John said, oh, no, no, no, man. You know, you don't get to use me like that. Were you scared that might be it? No, no, no. I knew I could do it.

I know now at this point I can do it. So I knew I could get it back. I knew I can get it back, you know. And it's only four days. It takes me four days, and then I go down and I go, ah, it sounds like me. What do you think is the obstruction then? It's my mind, but it's also very, because I have left it alone at this point.

I'm old. These muscles are very happy when they're playing because they've been doing that. But I have to just pay my dues. I have to do very strict things. And I'm not practicing music at all. I'm practicing, I'm repairing the instrument. That's what I'm doing.

Trying to get things that are not natural. Setting a metronome at a certain tempo and then making these slow, painful strokes so you can't hear the metronome.

That's really hard because human beings are not machines. But you're striving, which means I then have control. And that's all I want. Morello said, there's no reason to have technical skill

on your instrument, except so the music never meets a blockage. Isn't that beautiful? Hey, Jerry, tell us where we are right now. We're in the concrete box. If you're going to play the drums and you want to play the drums, you always have to find a place where people aren't going to yell at you. And this is a concrete box in the basement.

So the apartment building that you live in, they said to you, Jerry, you've got a room. Yeah, she said, we don't want you to leave the building. And I said, okay. So I just have this space, and the manager shares it. He keeps it neater than I do. And I have the drums, and I can rehearse and come down here and play, face these every day if I want to when I'm home. And this is how I've spent my life, locked up in little rooms. Here they are. These are a beautiful instrument.

Do you know, a friend of mine was playing in a famous rock band, and he was doing really well, but I remember him telling me that his arm was going, one of his arms, and he wouldn't tell anybody in the band, he was just really well. But I remember him telling me that his arm was going, one of his arms. And he wouldn't tell anybody in the band. He was just petrified. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the beauty of Morello's system is that it's yoga. It's all about how this is a membrane. So it's designed without me doing anything.

See how it bounces back? So my job is then to keep tension out of that. Even if I'm playing loud, I'm never creating tension. Because Joe was great. He said, if you're playing properly, the drum is ringing, this is ringing, the stick, because it's hollow, and then your bones are ringing. so the whole thing is set in motion and that's why you make a sound

so maybe my friend who was playing the rock band was not doing that people play with tension they force it i I mean, at this age, you know, just this, that's pretty fast for my age and strength to be able to do. The poet Mary Oliver said that rhythm is one of the most powerful pleasures. And how does it affect you? powerful pleasures and how does it affect you uh i can i can be deeply touched by it and i also at this point in my life can be affected and i can hear that it's not real that people are just doing it it's like somebody just applying mathematics with no with no soul to it no heart to it no humanness to it.

And therefore, it doesn't matter how loud it is. You can hear somebody with 12 amplifiers, and they're banging away, and you don't want to move. You don't necessarily feel that. But you go down, you hear one little guy going, and you suddenly start to move. It connects or reconnects people or helps people to acknowledge the connection. So it affects me. I love it.

I'm always playing time, as we call it, or I call it. It's like I'm playing time. I've learned how to abstract that. So it's like hocus pocus. I'm making you pay attention here while something else is subtly happening over here wow so we we were just talking about miles and i i know that he used to come hear you play when you were in Vince's trio. And his favorite song, which you just recently recorded.

Star Song. Star Song. And take me back to your early 20s, a drumming prodigy playing in the Vince Giraldi trio in San Francisco, and Miles would come into the club and ask for that song. Miles loved the trio, so he would come around whenever he was in San Francisco and the trio was around. And the jazz police, you know,

they kind of resented the fact. They always thought that Vince sold out because that trio was very popular. But it wasn't. It really wasn't. It was... Miles came every night, and he loved Star Song. Miles would always ask for that. What is it about the song, do you think?

It's a beautiful song. It's melodic, and it just catches a moment. It's a beautiful melody. I don't know what makes a great song, but it's sweet. And it just got it, because Miles is a melodic person. Here you were such a young, I mean, yes, you're a prodigy, but still, Miles Davis is coming to hear you play. Yeah. I had been around Miles because he came to the Blackhawk.

Those days, bands came for two weeks. So you got to hear Miles Davis with John Coltrane. That famous, famous band. I got to go there at 18, 19 years old and listen. Guido, who owned it, would let us, young musicians who had some promise maybe, who were out on the scene trying to play. And it was a group of us.

And you could stand back by the bar, at the corner of the bar, this dark room. And I remember it was like he had cloth on the walls, you know. And Miles would come back. He would play a solo. And people gave him a lot of He would play a solo. People gave him a lot of crap for playing a solo and getting off the bandstand. And he would come back and order a drink,

get it there, a little brandy or something. There was a beautiful woman there. Miles was going to be talking to her, you know, real low and everything. So I figured Miles had seen me. He knew who I was. And I just, John Coltrane's playing a solo. So I, all of my courage in the world,

I sum it up and I go, my best jazz hip thing, I go, hey Miles, and he goes, shut up. That was my first conversation. And later I realized what an important teaching that was. Because I watched Miles very carefully after that. He left the bandstand because he knew as long as he was on the bandstand, everybody was watching him. I mean, he was so authentic and charismatic. And they wouldn't listen to John Coltrane. And when I watched him, he would sit there and he'd be talking, had the trumpet on the bar, be talking to this woman, drinking this drink, and you could hear that John Coltrane's solo was

finishing, and he would pick up the trumpet mid-sentence and get up on the bandstand and come in in the right place. My little brain goes, aha. He never leaves the music. He's always in it. Whether you're playing, you're not playing, you're always involved in it it's not you don't go he doesn't go there and become suddenly hip you know

and then it was great it was a wonderful lesson like shut up who are you to be talking while this genius is playing Elvis said that you are either born with rhythm or you aren't. No, that's not true. I would disagree. I think every human being has it. Every human being can make music, and every human being has rhythm. But whether you're trained in expressing it, whether you like the science of it, whether you're fascinated by it, as I am. I'm fascinated because I go outside and I can hear rain.

I put it in my brain, which is not what I teach my students. I can convert it into three against four, so I'll hear tick, tick, tick, raindrops. Wow. I'll organize it. Right. And I've had to learn to unorganize it, to hear cycles, which are bigger, and how the world actually works,

you know, like seasons. But I think you're either fascinating. What do you mean? You can hear seasons? Well, you can hear cycles. When you start to, when you delve into the higher mathematics of what we do right uh you start to realize that nothing's independent everything is connected if you go outside and you can see, if you look properly and you calm

and you sink down into the listening exercise, the way that I teach, you can actually hear the birds going and the squirrel going and the leaf cracking. And they're not opposed to each other. They're not polyrhythmic. If you listen long enough, there is a resolution. It's like the cycle comes together. But you have to really pay attention a long time. To me, that's the way I play.

I try to play from there. How do you know when you're playing improvisational jazz? How do you know when to end? You have to pay attention. Right? Jazz is improvisational, but life is, as I'm always telling people, jazz is just an organized version of life.

We're totally improvising all the time as human beings uh and a good day we have the least amount of habitual patterns so we're completely spontaneous so jazz is really spontaneously composing. In the way that we went, once we went past bebop, not past in a negative sense, but once we evolved, we began to say, why do we need predetermined forms?

What have we learned from playing so many predetermined forms? And we started to start playing, like just you sit down, I sit down, and we start. And every sound is equal. And you watch your mind organize it into a composition. But how do

three or four jazz musicians playing together end something? Because they're all paying attention. And the rule is that you're not listening. Here's the whole thing. Everybody goes, well, I get really mad. They go, well, jazz is a conversation. And I go, no, it's not a conversation.

A conversation is what we're having. I'm speaking, you're listening. You're speaking, I'm listening. It's a dialogue. We're all speaking at once, including silence. I'm speaking, you're listening, you're speaking, I'm listening. It's a dialogue. We're all speaking at once, including silence. And what I'm listening to, what I've trained to listen to, is not I hear what I play, which is mindfulness, back to Buddhism,

and then I hear the whole that's awareness there has to be the art has to have mindfulness and awareness in it at all times so I'm I'm it's a goal too I'm setting out to make a composition the difference is I don't know what the composition is but I'll discover it along the way. So you can be, say, three people playing, say, your trio, and then you don't say it's going to be, you don't say in your head or your feelings that it's six minutes or it's three minutes, or do you? You just... You can, because you're free, but, yeah.

No, we can just walk in, sit down, and play. And the ending will come naturally because of the... It will have an ending, yes. And I have to recognize that. Who determines the ending? The music. Not one individual? Shouldn't be.

One individual can key it by what they play, set it up or play something. But that all goes under the heading of the music. The music, this is a different approach. And it's not because I learned it from these people who went before me. I think they were responsible to the music. The music determines it. The piece, the composition. Vivaldi, that piece, he knew when that piece was done.

He didn't arbitrarily decide, I got to go to dinner. The piece is done. You know, I'm done with this piece. Painting, drawing, you know, when you, you know, you're done. If you go further, you make a mess or you're making another drawing. And it's training yourself to be, it all comes down to training. It's training yourself and dedicating to yourself that. It's like a great conversation. If we're talking, seeking truth, we're not arguing. There's tremendous passion,

but we know when we've found it. That's beyond my little reference point. It makes sense. It's like Miles knew when his solo was over, and if I was playing with him, quote, quote, accompanying him, which I wasn't, I knew too,

because we're both listening to the same thing. And you're listening to a conversation with the world-renowned jazz drummer Jerry Grinelli. Jerry passed away in July 2021, six months after this interview. My name is Graham Isidore. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. And being I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it.

ShortSighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see about hidden disabilities. ShortSighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. View was originally broadcast. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Let's return to Jerry Grinelli speaking in December 2020

to Ideas producer Mary Link at his home in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jerry, you were born in San Francisco at an incredibly, it was a rich musical scene, a gazillion jazz clubs, jazz greats, a rich culture. Take me back 80 years into the world that you were born into in 1940 San Francisco. 1940 San Francisco. Sometimes it comes back as like wooden buildings and colors and that neighborhood. And I was the first generation. I've often felt very bad for my grandfather, you know, who came from Italy.

And I'm the first generation in this country, and a poor guy gets a jazz drummer. So I always really felt bad for him. Yes, and they're this wonderful Italian family. All of them are merchants, butchers, grocery people. And there's this music. They celebrated everything with music, and they all loved music. And my uncle was a drummer and a butcher. My dad was probably to this day, when I think of my dad,

I think of like the toughest person I've ever known. And grew up, won the Golden Gloves twice, met my mother. He was a prize fighter. Yeah, he was a fighter, a boxer. But inside of him was this other part, which was the music. He just, he loved music, he loved the drums, but it was not in his realm. He had to support himself and raise his family. So he meets my mom, and she bought him a set of drums.

She said, I won't marry you if you're going to continue to fight. And he said he loved her. He loved her so much. And she went out and went to Sherman and Clay, this music store in San Francisco, and bought him a set of drums, which was not cheap in the 1940s. And they got married. So I was born and there was an instrument in the house. But San Francisco was alive

because it was a big harbor too during the war. So it was already diverse because of all this. And your uncle and your father would take you to clubs. You saw Count Basie. You saw Louis Armstrong. The big ballrooms. Yeah. Yeah. They would take me out there because they wanted to hear that music. I was just a kid. And my friends were like, well, I'm going to be home tonight. I'd be like, I'm getting dressed up and I'm going to the Edgewater and see Gene Krupa's band. And then I'm going to go up and talk to Gene Krupa and get some drumsticks afterwards. I'm going to talk to these guys.

But you weren't always let in directly into the club, though. You'd have to sit on the edge. Oh, I'd have to sit up. Well, my dad, you know, he would leave me because he would want to go up and play in the jam session. There were jam sessions. So he would leave me with this wonderful, the club was called Tin Pan Alley,

and he would leave me with this wonderful policewoman, about 240 pounds, and then she would put me on a little stool by the side, so I was out of harm's way, but I could see the bandstand. She'd give me a little Shirley Temple, a little straw, and she'd say, all right, sweetie,

and then all of a sudden I'd turn around and she'd be throwing a little Shirley Temple a little straw and she'd say alright sweetie and then all of a sudden I'd turn around and she'd be throwing a sailor out the door I mean and that was the norm it was all there, there was prostitutes pimps, it was the night life the night life that underbelly of the tenderloin

but somehow when I look back on it it was somewhat healthy or something because it wasn't didn't seem perverted to me it just seemed so fascinating and something at that age i remember that first feeling of knowing something or being a part of something that wasn't quote the straight world that there was something else. Now, when I went there, soon they would invite, these musicians would all invite me up to play music.

And you used to go to the black clubs and get kicked out. I'd snuck in. And why were you being kicked? How old were you and who were you? The first one was really like 13. I was 13 years old and there was a club called the cuckoo club on hate street in san francisco and people had told me you had to go to jam sessions it's scary i was terrorized terrorized so i went in you know like i get it all together man i'm looking in your. In your suit? No, I'm dressed for that. You know, I got like a sport coat.

I look hip. I know how to act. I'm not acting dumb, you know. And I'm pretty much, there's a few white faces in there. But there's, at a jam session, it's always a pecking order. But when there's a moment, you can go up and play. You go up and put it on the line. So I go up there and it's like, you know, okay.

I sit down behind the drums and I'm doing okay so far. And they call off some tune like boom, some blues or something, you know. And I start to play in this, to me, he seemed like the largest black man I'd ever seen in my life. And he just turns around, gets up, grabs the drumsticks from my hand and says, get up off of there, you little no-playing white mother... Ofe.

Ofe? Yeah, very insulting. It was a slang word for white people, what black people called white people, very insulting. Yeah, it was a slang word for white people, what black people called white people, you know. You little old fay, you know. And literally threw me off the drum set. So I went outside, and I cried just, I was sobbing. And then that thing came up.

If you don't go back in there, you're done. You'll never go back in there. And I went back in. And I wish I could say I sounded great, but I didn't. And I went back in there, and they wouldn't let me play. But I stayed. I stayed and I listened. And I went back the next week and the next week.

And I listened. And slowly, somebody let me play again. And I would like to say I did better, but I didn't really. I became so familiar that I was kind of the running joke almost, but I became so familiar that I was kind of the running joke almost, but I was a part of it. They didn't kick me out. I didn't quit, and that was going to be the pattern until I had my place. And that was the school. Kids don't get that now.

It was very cruel and very loving at the same time. Tell me about, I don't know how old you were when you saw Charlie Parker. And what was that experience? I must have been 12. Where was that? It was in, Earl Father Hines had a club, famous piano player in San Francisco. My uncle took me. He said, we're going to go hear bebop. Come on, you won't understand. I said, okay, and I went. And it was like the earth opening up, the sky opening up to hear him, to hear that music. I had no idea, but I knew.

I've always felt that we're blessed as human beings, and I felt blessed that I could recognize musical truth. What was the song that you remember that he played then? I didn't even know the name of it I know it was faster and it was more notes than I'd ever heard There appeared to be no rules that I knew of They were all gone And I didn't understand a thing

But I just knew that that was startlingly amazing. Like walking in and seeing a Picasso, and you have no idea, but it takes your breath away, and you know you're staring at the truth. And that's what it was like for me. And then began the journey of learning that, how to be a part of that. So, it was around the age of 20. Yeah, that's 20. When you caught the attention of Vince Giraldi.

People brought me to his attention. People brought me to his attention. People brought you to his attention. Well, that's because you're incredible. What was it about this young Jerry Grinelli that caught his attention? It was pure spirit, man. You know, I'm 22 years old. I've got all the chops in the world. I'm not bragging, but Joe Morello,

that's who I was studying with. One of the greatest drummers. Yeah, technically the greatest. Nobody had more technique on the instrument than him at that time. And me. And I just come in there. I'm red hot, man. I got a job with a trio with a hit record.

We're working every night. I'm looking pretty good. You know, this is it. This is part of the dream. And I come in there to set the forest on fire. And Vince just stops me one night. He goes, hey, man, come here. And I thought, oh, shit, he's going to fire me. And which was always a threat. I thought, oh shit, he's going to fire me, which was always a threat. And he goes, look, and he was so sweet. He said, I don't need all that shit you're bringing me. What I need is that fire that makes you want to play it. Just bring me that. And there's that lesson, early on lesson,

only give the music what it needs. So at the height of the fame with the Vince Guaraldi Trio, you left. When I left, I really left. I went in a completely different direction. You went to free jazz. I followed the music that I knew was mine. I followed the music that I knew was mine. Made great records, made a name, whatever this thing is that I am or reputation.

Open jazz, free jazz, yeah. records, made a name, whatever this thing is that I am or reputation. I made all that. Open jazz, free jazz, yeah. Yeah, it really is spontaneous composition. That's what we perfected. That's what we grew into. And that even went into psychedelic. It just was a wonderful journey in my life. Someone pushed me, and there's 25 or 28 records that I became a leader

in the model of Max Roach, being a composer, a leader. Yes, you're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for psychedelic. Yeah, creating psychedelic music, yeah. Right. So I got to be on all this wonderful stuff. I got to work with all the great Ginsberg's buddy. Yeah, Alan Ginsberg.

I had been through all that. I'd been through the wildest things you can possibly imagine. You know, fun, great things. Oh, give me one example. Well, you know, how about end of 1970, Grateful Dead,

there's a promoter in Europe who decided that he wants to bring the Dead and us, light, sound, dimension band, was playing the light show and everything, to France. So this is a band you were playing in that had a light artist who was doing light. Yeah, we had come up with, we were just playing, making our own electronic instruments. We had our theater.

Psychedelic jazz. Yeah, and with visuals. Right. And the audiences were like Pink Floyd, all these bands who would come to San Francisco would come to hang out. And so you went on tour with the Grateful Dead. Yeah, the dead are like,

he wants you guys to come too. So we're, okay. So we get tickets. We land in Paris. Now, nobody in Paris had seen that many people with that long beards and hair. I mean, totally the amounts of LSD in us and proceeded to go across France like that. You know, every day, one day we don't have a place to stay. The next day we're staying at the funky Chateau. There's tape still out there.

Phil Leach talks about it in his. The next day we're playing for this entire French village for free for the summer solstice. And we're doing this concert overnight, giving everybody in this French town acid. Oh, my Lord. You know, they're just, and everybody's so happy. And I'm, you know, I'm standing at Swiss Air, because I have to go home because my son is going to be born.

My wife called me, Jackie. She said, hey, man, you know. So I, and I'm standing there. And all I've got are these beautiful rocks. I'm trying to convince this woman that she should let me on the plane. You're going to give her rocks? I'm going to give her these really precious rocks. And she does.

Wow. You paid high on LSD. You paid for a plane ticket with rocks. Is that what you're telling me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What did finally getting sober and completely sober and free of drugs in the 80s, 87? Yeah.

What did that do to you as a musician? Scared the hell out of me first. But again, it wasn't about the music, see. What scared the hell out of you? First time I had to play without any substance in me. I hadn't done that since I was a child. Yeah, but I mean, I could, all the records I made, all those things, all those concerts,

you know, we were usually high on something, but it didn't affect the music. It was never about affecting the music. It helped learn it. I would not recommend it. But that was just that part. But when I was sober, that was a whole other... Maybe getting sober had more some fruition

to the Buddhist work that I had done before. It's about being a human being and how you work with others and how you work with others and how you work with your own fears. So I had never been taught to deal with any of that. I was protected from dealing with my own fear. And you lost so many friends who didn't become human. Sure, man.

I mean, you know, so many great talents we lost in this life. Great genius artists that we've lost because they had no human training. They had no way to deal with those things as a human being. And music can give you sort of a natural high. That's what Jimi Hendrix said. You knew Jimi? Yeah. Jimi was, like, trying to deal with the whole thing.

He just wanted to make that music. like trying to deal with the whole thing. He just wanted to make that music. He went through whatever he went through to, you know, to try to deal with money, try to rip you off. He had his own personal pain. He was a sweetie.

Was he? But he wasn't, he didn't have the skills or the help. How did you know him? In the wild days of San Francisco in the Fillmore, you know. All those things that became an industry, well, at first, because we were playing so crazy, we started to play on H Street in the rock clubs, the hippie, quote, hippie club.

I was too old to be a hippie. But because those kids were open to this crazy ass music jazz clubs weren't the psychedelic jazz yeah the free jazz yeah we were playing free we had our own instruments bill graham right had a club called the matrix and just like get get us out of his hair he said come to work at the club. I'll give you guys a gig. But the opening band was Janis Joplin and the Sons of Champlin. Big brother in a holding company. Janis had just joined them.

They could barely play. In the middle was myself, Fred Marshall, and Noel Jukes. We were playing completely out. Free music. Spontaneous music. Yeah, just like sounds people hadn't heard because of these instruments and out. No rules, it seemed. And then the third band was jefferson airplane gracie had just joined them we were all making eight dollars a night bill graham put up with us in the middle so we were it was family it was a community it was kids i mean the dead come in and they'd be like how the hell are you doing that because you know those days those rock and rollers didn't know how to play. They were all artists who got, it was another social thing. But we could play.

We were musicians. I was making, I was supporting myself because those managers would hire me to go teach the Sons of Champlin, the Quicksilver Messenger Service drummers, all those people. I was teaching them how to actually play the drums. all those people I was teaching them how to actually play the drums but it was so wonderful because that scene was so open

we weren't no longer constricted by suits and ties and jazz clubs and those terrible rules all those rules what was Jimmy like to listen to? it was wonderful it was the same as listening to Charlie Parker. He was just,

he was a force of that music. The music represents itself, the spirit of that music, I think it represents itself in different people at different times. I don't necessarily, I'm getting in trouble. I don't necessarily get in trouble. I don't necessarily hear it coming through, quote, quote, jazz right now.

I hear it coming through, what's his name, Kendall? Great rapper, man, DJ. Oh. Lamar Kendall, is it? Oh, Kendrick Lamar, I think so. Yeah, wow. And I heard him and I went... Why?

Just because I was like, man, that's a reincarnation of Duke Ellington. I don't know. We've been hurt, been down before. When our pride was low. Looking at the world like, where do we go? And we hate po-po. When the killer's dead in the street for sure.

I met the preacher's door. My knees getting weak and my gun might blow. But we gonna be alright. It's got the whole thing. Wow. It's crazy. It's magnificent. It's raw. It's got an edge. It breaks your heart and tears you open. There, I hear it there there i hear it somewhere else i uh you hear bits and pieces of it but it doesn't necessarily i don't necessarily go to a

jazz club to listen to it unless it's one of my friends or somebody that i know, you know, and I'm sure I'm probably missing something. And so let's go to, in the terms of not wanting to be the same thing, it was 55 years ago this month. You turned 80 this month, and it's 55 years ago this month that the Charlie Brown Christmas Show first aired. Yeah. And you were on that record, that beloved, iconic record. Yes.

But you didn't return to playing that music until 2013. In fact, even when you and I talked, you were concerned about this not being all about that. Yeah, yeah. Just for those reasons you say there, to be an original. You fought it. What were you fighting for not playing it at all since you were in your 20s? Well, people come up with dumb ideas. And when I left, I really left.

I went in a completely different direction. I followed the music that I knew was mine. So I was busy doing that. And then when Charlie came back around, I began... It annoyed me because I realized I had to grow up. Again, it annoyed me because I realized I had to grow up. I had to actually not let it. I had to actually accept it.

And I had to appreciate the joy that it brought people. I had to get my ego out of it. Because, you know, someday in a long time from now, that when you pass in the New York Times, you'll get an obit. And the first line might say, it was part of the trio that played and created A Charlie Brown's Christmas. That's good. Is that okay? Yeah, that's fine. That's great. I'm honored. This was not a conversation just about A Charlie Brown's Christmas, but it is going to be Christmas in a few days, and then on the 30th you turn 80. But because this is airing just before Christmas on Ideas,

do you mind if we end with a piece of music from A Charlie Brown's Christmas? No. And it's a piece that, you just recently did an album playing Vince's music and Moses's music, but you only took one song of Vince's from Charlie Brown's Christmas.

Jamie wanted to play it. And what song was that? Christmas Time is Here. Christmas Time is Here. Jamie wanted to play it because he grew up on it. Most piano players want to play it. It's a beautiful song.

And it's particularly Vince had a great dream he always wanted to write a great american standard you know to be in a great american song book something that went on like body and soul or one of those and he did man this tune, Christmas Time Is Here. And it's a beautiful song, and we played it just simply because Jamie asked that we play it. Jamie's your piano player up in your trio. Yeah, Jamie, he said, man, we got to play that song.

And it's true, you kind of got to play it. And I mean, pretty much I play it, maybe I play it a little looser, but it can only be played one way. And Jamie was like, oh man, you play it a lot slower than it is. I said, yeah, because we played it every night, but we got so we played it so slow,

it was just so organic. It was like an amoeba moving. And they say that at Charlie Brown's Christmas, the cartoon would not have been iconic without the music and that song because there's a melancholy in it. And Christmas can be melancholic, right? Of course. Because Christmas is, in some ways Christmas is always about a past Christmas as opposed to the current Christmas. It's so much about memory. Why do you think this song is so, touches us so deeply in the core?

Because there's something about it, or maybe it can't be explained, but what is it about this song, do you think? I think you said it. It goes to that core. It goes to that core. It's just, you know, it's like any beautiful ballad. It's not meant to make you sad. It's meant to make you open. It kind of opens you.

And you're touchable. You actually, your human heart is touchable. There's nothing like a beautiful melody and a ballad coming together, that harmony of the world coming together at such a pace that you can hear it. It's not meant to excite you, and you're drawn in. It's a beautiful sadness. It's not even, if that can be an expression, it doesn't. Yes, it's an exquisite sadness because it's not about anybody.

It's about your life. It's about life, and people feel that with Christmas. That record, Charlie Brown's Christmas, Lee Mendelson, the man who produced it, Lee just died last year, and he was my age. And we were sitting out at his house a few years ago and he looks at me a couple old guys sitting by a swimming pool and he goes uh you know if there had been one person different in that room that day this would not have happened it wouldn't have been that thing you know That it turned out being.

And part of the beauty is that at the time you didn't even realize what you had created. Not even. We weren't interested. No, but that's kind of pure. Yes, I think that that piece of work is just innocent. In the sense that it doesn't have ego dripping off of it. It's innocent. And I think that it has no manipulation.

There was no hype. It went on the air against all odds. CBS, like I said. CBS did not want to play it. Not at all. No part of it. They thought it was a joke that Coca-Cola was getting ripped off. Coca-Cola want to play it. Not at all. No part of it. They thought it was a joke. That Coca-Cola was getting ripped off.

Coca-Cola had paid for it. They felt that the cartoon, the drawing wasn't sophisticated enough. No one would want to hear jazz music. Nope. They just said no. And the whole thing just, this little rickety thing snuck in there. And I have seen the postcards that people wrote that night. Half the viewing audience watched it. Half the viewing audience in the States were watching that?

Watched it. And why? That's the great... Because it's... Because it's human. It was ordinary. It was ordinary. It was ordinary. My teacher used to say, ordinary magic.

It was ordinary magic. It was ordinary magic. The Beatles were ordinary magic. They were just busy being the Beatles. Bob Dylan, you know, he was being Bob Dylan. He didn't have a choice. We were just being ourselves. Everybody liked it.

Jerry. Yes. Happy birthday. Thank you, Mary. Merry Christmas. Thank you. What a gift to get to meet you. And what a gift.

Oh, my gosh. How wonderful. You're magical. You're not ordinary magic. You're extraordinary magic. I'm so weird, it's weird. You're so fabulous. And thank you for all the beauty you have given the world. My pleasure.

Truly. Thank you. You were listening to Ordinary Magic, the musical genius of Jerry Grinelli. He was in conversation with Ideas producer Mary Link at his home in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Sadly, Jerry Grinelli passed away on July 20th, 2021, at the age of 80. This is Ideas. To see a video of Grinelli playing on his drums, go to cbc.ca slash ideas. Technical production, Pat Martin. Web producer, Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer, Nikola Lukšić. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayed.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.