Dave Willat was just 11 years old, wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt on a warm September evening in 1965, when he showed up for what he thought would be a routine choir practice at his church in San Rafael, Calif., a small city about 20 miles north of San Francisco. His voice was on the cusp of changing, and he expected to rehearse the usual Sunday hymns.
Instead, he and his fellow choristers were unexpectedly driven across the Golden Gate Bridge to a San Francisco recording studio. "We walked in and they handed us the lyrics to 'Christmas Time Is Here,'" said Willat, now a retired police officer who volunteers as a docent at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., — the Peanuts creator's home town. "And then they said, 'This is for a Peanuts special.'"
That impromptu recording session produced one of the most enduring songs of the holiday season. Sixty years later, composer Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack remains one of the bestselling holiday and jazz albums of all time.
Inauspicious beginnings
But the path to creating this classic wasn't smooth.
Guaraldi had originally conceived "Christmas Time Is Here" as an instrumental piece. In a 2003 interview with the Television Academy, producer Lee Mendelson talked about his last-minute decision to add lyrics: "I just scribbled some words down on an envelope — 'Christmas time is here, happiness' and so forth, and never thought much about it."
The children didn't nail the downbeat song on the first try. Rehearsal outtakes reveal multiple flubs and false starts, with the producer calling out "Never mind!" and "Take six!" A 2022 edition of the album includes material from seven takes. But Willat says there could have been more. The young singers can be heard collapsing into giggles between attempts.
Willat said he and the other choristers felt comfortable around the musicians — especially Guaraldi. Their choir's director had a longstanding relationship with the jazz pianist and composer. Guaraldi had enlisted the singers' talents on a previous recording project, Vince Guaraldi at Grace Cathedral. "He loved going out skateboarding with the kids during breaks," said Willat of the rehearsal process for the Grace Cathedral project. He taught me how to play pool on the pool table at the church."
After the session, the children were sent back across the Golden Gate Bridge with ice cream in their bellies and $5 in their pockets. But there was a problem: They arrived late to their church, and many of their parents had no idea where they'd been.
"They get there. The church is dark, no kids," Willat says. "Imagine that happening today!"
Some understandably upset parents refused to sign the necessary releases allowing their children's voices to appear on the soundtrack. "That entire first session had to be scratched," Willat said. "And we had two more sessions."
Singing again
Willat, who's now in his 70s, said he hasn't done much singing in public since childhood. "I'm very self-conscious," he said. But a recent reunion with other original choir members at a Schulz Museum event changed his perspective.
"When we all got together again, hadn't seen these people for 50 years, we actually had a lot of fun," Willat said. "I really would like to get back into singing."
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