The American Masters documentary Good Ol’ Charles Schulz was a surprise to me in a number of ways. I had expected the early years to be of greatest interest, but I feel the core of the program is actually the 10-minute segment about Coffee Lane. Monte Schulz characterizes his family’s time there as “those dear, dead days.”
Thirty seconds of Coffee Lane are on the video player. I took the picture in the preview frame from later in the segment. That’s a great shot, isn’t it?
[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/Schulz/Schulz.flv 400 300]
Thanks again to Monte for contributing a comment to this blog. The audio player has the music that reminds him so much of Coffee Lane in Sebastopol, CA — Henry Mancini’s ‘Moon River’. For myself, the equivalent would be Peter, Paul & Mary records on Adams Lane in Norwalk, CT.
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Nov/MR1.mp3|titles=Moon River by Henry Mancini]Back in St. Paul, one of Charles Schulz’s favorite recording artists was Jo Stafford. I have found no reference to her in the Michaelis book, and I think that’s a serious omission. Below is a song sung by Jo, called ‘No Other Love’.
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Nov/NoOtherLove.mp3|titles=No Other Love by Jo Stafford]This record was popular on the radio in September, 1950 — after Sparky had lost Donna, and before he married Joyce. Keep that in mind, play it again, and listen carefully to the lyrics.
There’s nothing I could possibly add to Monte Schulz’s moving commentary, except to say thank you. The melody is indeed by Chopin. It can be heard by clicking here.
Jo Stafford turns 90 in a couple of days? I’ll post another one of her recordings.
Well, Monte certainly has an excellent ear for classical music. I, on the other hand, being more of a Pop Music fan, had to look it up. The melody for “No Other Love” is in fact adapted from Chopin’s “Etude No. 3 in E Major.” The Chopin piece was most likely adapted by Jo’s future husband, arranger Paul Weston, as he is credited as a co-writer. While researching this, I realized that Jo Stafford will soon turn 90 – on November 12th! Jo Stafford is certainly one of the great vocalists of the 20th Century. Hopefully the mainstream media will make note of her 90th birthday.
Thanks for posting that clip with Moon River. It really does remind me of a life we had that’s long gone now. I can barely hear my mother’s voice in that clip. She doesn’t even sound like that now, but perhaps that is more due to the recording than changes in her voice. In either case, after reading David’s book, she called me up and said that, while the biography suggested our lives were full of turmoil back at Coffee Lane, didn’t we, in fact, have a wonderful life? And I agreed, yes, we did, and nothing can take that away from us. Our memories are our own and only we know how we really lived, what made us happy, what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained all these years since. The true story of our lives has not yet been written. I’d never heard that Jo Stafford song before. The melody is adapted from Chopin, right? It’s beautiful. All of this really does make me miss my dad.