Music of Sesame Street

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Music has been a part of the children's television show

Grammy. As of November 2019, Sesame Workshop has partnered with Warner Music Group's Arts Music division to reform Sesame Street Records to make the music of Sesame Street fully available.[2]

Sesame Street's songwriters included the show's first music director

Boston Pops Orchestra and hit #11 on the US Billboard Hot 100
chart in 1971, "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon" and "People in Your Neighborhood".

Artists like

Grammys
.

Purpose

Budweiser jingles from TV, why not give them a program that would teach the ABCs and simple number concepts?"[8]

Cover art of Sesame Street Book and Record (Columbia/CBS, 1970), the first album of Sesame Street music

The music on Sesame Street consisted of many styles and genres, but it retained its own distinctive sound, which was consistent and recognizable so that it could be reproduced.[9] "There was no other sound like it on television", Jon Stone, the show's first director, said.[10] Music was used to encourage children's dual-attention abilities by allowing them to attend to the show's action even when not actively watching. In order to be effective, however, Gerald S. Lesser, who supervised research for Sesame Street, stated that because music and sound effects naturally evokes physical participation, they need to be carefully integrated with visual movement. As a result, the songwriters avoided pairing music with static visual presentations. Auditory cues in the form of music or sound effects signaled the entrance of a character or the end and beginning of a sequence.[11]

The producers recorded and released its musical content early in the show's history, to reinforce its curriculum lessons for children when they were not watching it, and for entertainment.

Children's Television Workshop (the CTW, later renamed the Sesame Workshop, or the SW), the organization that oversaw the production of Sesame Street.[13]

Many of the songs written for the show have become what writer David Borgenicht called "timeless classics".

Grammy.[16][17] The final track "Rubber Duckie", written by Jeff Moss, was released as a single, appeared on the United States' Billboard Hot 100 chart, and was nominated for a Grammy.[15] The Boston Pops performed with the show's cast in a television special that aired in 1971.[9]

Songs and songwriters

black and white picture of an attractive man and woman in their twenties; the woman on the left is clasping her hands and wearing patterned, short-sleeved dress with a bow, and the man on the right is wearing a striped jacket.
The Carpenters, one of the many artists who recorded music from Sesame Street.

Sesame Street's songwriters included the show's first music director

Christopher Cerf; whom Louise Gikow called "the go-to guy on Sesame Street for classic rock and roll as well as song spoofs".[19] Scriptwriters such as Tony Geiss, who wrote approximately 150 songs for the show, and Norman Stiles often also wrote their own lyrics to accompany their scripts.[6]

Raposo was brought to Sesame Street by producer Tom Whedon, who was his friend and college roommate, and by Stone, who had worked with Raposo on other productions.[20] Stone found Raposo's music brilliant, melodic, and sophisticated, yet simple enough for children to recognize and sing. According to writer Michael Davis, Sesame Street's signature sound grew out of sessions with a seven-piece band consisting of a keyboardist, drummer, electric bass player, guitarist, trumpeter, a winds instrumentalist, and a percussionist.[21] One of these musicians was drummer Danny Epstein, who became the show's music coordinator in 1970 and performed for the show since its inception.[22] Stone reported that a typical recording session with Raposo, which would often last three days,[22] was "an on-the-fly, off-the-cuff experience".[3]

Raposo and his musical team created a huge amount of music in order to accompany 130 episodes a year, which often included dozens of unique songs per show. Raposo, who wrote over 2,000 compositions for Sesame Street, called it a "sausage factory".

Emmys and four Grammys for his work on the show.[25]

Raposo wrote the music to the theme music, which Davis called "jaunty" and "deceptively simple".[10] Stone and writer Bruce Hart were listed as the song's lyricists; Stone considered the song "a musical masterpiece and a lyrical embarrassment".[21] Epstein was responsible for bringing in jazz musician Toots Thielemans to play harmonica for the song.[22] The song's arrangement has changed about six times, but the words have remained the same throughout the years.[26] This became what Davis called a "siren song for preschoolers".[3]

Epstein called Moss "a true gentleman",

Boston Pops Orchestra and hit #11 on the US Billboard charts in 1971, and became a hit in Germany in 1996.[18][28] Moss also wrote "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon" and "People in Your Neighborhood". Epstein called his music "simple" but "not simplistic".[27] Moss co-wrote over 70 songs with Raposo.[27]

Raposo also wrote

Jose Feliciano also recorded Raposo's Sesame Street songs.[25]

By 2019, 180 albums had been produced, and Sesame Street had been honored with 11

Grammys.[31] In 2010, Time Magazine compiled a list of the Top Ten celebrity songs to be featured on the show. The list included older artists such as Smokey Robinson, Johnny Cash and Cab Calloway as well as newer performers like Norah Jones and Feist.[32] In late 2018, SW announced a multi-year agreement with Warner Music Group's Arts Music division to re-launch Sesame Street Records in the U.S. and Canada. For the first time in 20 years, "an extensive catalog of Sesame Street recordings" was made available to the public in a variety of formats, including CD and vinyl compilations, digital streaming, and downloads.[2]

Sesame Street Records

Sesame Street Records
Product typeMusic
OwnerSesame Workshop
Arts Music
Introduced1974
MarketsNorth America

Sesame Street Records is a label of Sesame Workshop, distributed by Arts Music, that was revived in 2019. The label existed previously from 1974 to 1984 as an independent label.

Children's Television Workshop (CTW; now Sesame Workshop) started releasing Sesame Street albums in 1970. Sesame Street Records label started in 1974. The label was discounted in 1984. CTW continued issuing Sesame Street music in partnership with labels including parody-titles like Sesame Road and Born to Add, which spoofed Abbey Road and Born to Run.[33]

Sesame Street Records in the U.S. and Canada was relaunched in November 2019 via a multi-year agreement with Warner Music Group's Arts Music division. The full catalog of Sesame Street recordings would be fully available for the first time in 20 years in various formats.[2] The catalog was released via streaming and download platform at the time of the announcement.[34] The first releases in 2019 were the Letters series on September 21 then All-Time Favorites series followed in November with a new holiday compilation.[35] The label plans to origin cover songs and parodies outside the series and thematic compilations around the show's various topics.[2]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Borgenicht, p. 145
  2. ^ a b c d "Warner Music Group Sesame Workshop Team up to Relaunch Sesame Street Records". Music Business Worldwide. 27 November 2018. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
  3. ^ a b c Davis, p. 161
  4. ^ Davis, p. 73
  5. ^ a b Palmer and Fisch, p. 17
  6. ^ a b Gikow, p. 227
  7. ^ Lesser, pp. 103–104
  8. ISSN 0028-7369
    . Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  9. ^ a b Gikow, p. 223
  10. ^ a b Davis, p. 159
  11. ^ Lesser, p. 106
  12. ISBN 0-7864-0167-2
    .
  13. ISBN 0-8058-3395-1
    .
  14. ^ a b Davis, p. 256
  15. ^ a b "4/-/1970 – Record 1st Sesame Street cast album". henson.com. Jim Henson's Red Book. 6 June 2014. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  16. ^ a b c Gikow, p. 220
  17. ^ Gikow, p. 270
  18. ^ a b Davis, p. 255
  19. ^ Gikow, p. 226
  20. ^ Davis, pp. 158–159
  21. ^ a b Davis, p. 160
  22. ^ a b c Gikow, p. 218
  23. ^ a b Davis, p. 162
  24. ^ Palmer and Fisch, pp. 17–18
  25. ^ a b Gikow, p. 221
  26. ^ Gikow, p. 29
  27. ^ a b c d Gikow, p. 224
  28. ^ Bergenicht, p. 152
  29. ^ Borgenicht, p. 147
  30. ISBN 0-8230-7499-4
    .
  31. ^ Wallace, Debra (6 February 2019). "Big Bird Has 4,000 Feathers: 21 Fun Facts About Sesame Street That Will Blow Your Mind". Parade. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
  32. ^ "Top 10 Celebrity Sesame Street Songs". Time Magazine. 27 September 2010. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
  33. ^ Blistein, Jon (November 27, 2018). "Sesame Street Records Relaunches With New Albums Set for 2019". Rolling Stone. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
  34. ^ Katz, Brigit (November 30, 2018). "Now Streaming: The Entire Catalogue of "Sesame Street" Songs". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
  35. ^ Aswad, Jem (November 27, 2018). "Sesame Street Records to Be Relaunched by Warner Music and Sesame Workshop". Variety. Retrieved April 6, 2020.

Works cited

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