Discography
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Christopher Cerf | |
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| Born | August 19, 1941 |
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| Alma mater | Harvard University |
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Christopher Cerf (born August 19, 1941) is an American author, composer-lyricist, voice actor, and record and television producer. He has contributed music to Sesame Street, and co-created and co-produced the PBS literacy education television program Between the Lions .
Cerf's father was Random House co-founder, publisher, editor and TV panelist Bennett Cerf. His mother was journalist and children's book publisher Phyllis Fraser. Cerf attended the Deerfield Academy and graduated from Harvard College. He was married to Geneviève Charbin who is a Catholic of French descent. Cerf and Katherine Vaz were married on June 21, 2015. [3] After his father's death, his mother married ex-New York City mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. [4]
In the early 1960s, he was involved as a writer and performer on musical satires released by The Harvard Lampoon . Since its first season in 1969, Cerf has played a role in the creation and production of the Sesame Street television program, most notably as a regular contributor of music and lyrics, and as the producer of many of its music albums. In the process, he has won two Grammy Awards and three Emmy Awards for songwriting and music production. Since writing and performing his first song for Sesame Street, "Count It Higher" (1973) in Season 5, Cerf has written or co-written over 200 songs featured on the program, including "Put Down the Duckie", "The Word Is No", "Dance Myself to Sleep", "Monster in the Mirror", and such parody songs as "Born To Add", "Letter B", "Wet Paint", and "Furry Happy Monsters". Cerf also played a role in the ongoing funding of Sesame Street, founding and serving as the original editor-in-chief of Sesame Workshop's books, records, and toys division.
In addition to his contributions to Sesame Street, Cerf's musical material has appeared on Saturday Night Live , The National Lampoon Radio Hour , The Electric Company , Square One Television , Between the Lions , and in numerous Muppet productions, and his songs have been performed by Paul Simon, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, R.E.M., James Taylor, Tony Bennett, Dixie Chicks, Tracy Chapman, Carol Channing, Randy Travis, The Four Tops, Melissa Etheridge, Smokey Robinson, Bonnie Raitt, Wynton Marsalis, Little Richard, B.B. King, Jimmy Buffett, Bart Simpson, and the Metropolitan Opera's José Carreras. The blond, curly-haired Muppet character from Sesame Street is his namesake and the lead singer of the rock group "Chrissy and the Alphabeats."
Before joining Sesame Street, Cerf spent eight years as a senior editor at Random House (co-founded by his father in 1927), where he worked with authors George Plimpton, Andy Warhol, Abbie Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, Richard Fariña, and Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel). In 1993, Cerf renewed his ties to Random House when he assumed the role of Chairman of the Modern Library's Board of Advisors.[ citation needed ]
Cerf edited and produced the Marlo Thomas & Friends' Free to Be... a Family book, album and TV special. The book reached No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list within a week of its publication in 1989, and the show received a prime-time Emmy as the year's outstanding children's special. [5]
Cerf and Thomas collaborated again, co-editing and co-producing Thanks & Giving: All Year Long , a book and CD about generosity and sharing (and their polar opposites, selfishness and thoughtlessness). Royalties from the project, for which Thomas and Cerf won a 2005 Grammy Award, go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, founded by Thomas' father, Danny Thomas, in 1962. [6]
Cerf served as Executive Producer, and Music and Audio Producer, of Between the Lions , the children's literacy series that his company, Sirius Thinking, Ltd., created for PBS. Between the Lions has twice won the Television Critics' Award as the nation's outstanding children's television program, and won ten Emmy Awards. [7] In two independent studies, conducted by the University of Kansas and Mississippi State University, the program has also demonstrated success in helping children – including those at the highest risk of literacy failure – to learn how to read. [8]
In 2008, Cerf served as co-creator (with Norman Stiles and Louise Gikow), Executive producer and writer of the PBS Kids series Lomax, the Hound of Music. The show, which debuted in the winter of 2008, is a children's series featuring "a good-natured, melody-obsessed puppet pooch named Lomax, his fluffy feline sidekick Delta, and their human companion, Amy, on a tune-filled train ride crisscrossing the musical landscape of America. With the help – and full participation – of real kids on the train, on location, and the viewers at home, Lomax and his friends doggedly pursue their mutual passion: tracking down the wonderful songs that form the heart of our nation's diverse musical heritage." [9]
The show had educational credentials. Aware that many American children do not receive any formal musical education, Cerf, Stiles and Gikow based Lomax on the music education curriculum created by the music educator John Feierabend, PhD, proven to increase children's musical ability and intelligence. It included appearances by Larry Campbell and Tom Chapin. Lomax ran for only one season. [10]
Cerf also worked as an author and satirist. In 1970, he helped launch the National Lampoon , serving as a Contributing Editor from its first issue until the mid-1970s, and in 1978, he co-conceived and co-edited with Tony Hendra, George Plimpton and Rusty Unger the journalistic parody Not The New York Times . [11]
The Experts Speak, the "compendium of authoritative misinformation" that Cerf co-authored with Victor Navasky in 1984, has recently been reissued. In 1986, Cerf collaborated with National Lampoon colleague Henry Beard on The Pentagon Catalog: Ordinary Products at Extraordinary Prices, which offered readers the historic opportunity to obtain a free hex nut—valued at $2,043 by the McDonnell Douglas Corporation—with every copy they purchased. (The book has a die-cut hole in its front cover and first few pages: the book was sold in clear plastic shrink wrap with a steel hex nut inside this hole, slightly less than flush with the cover. The shrink wrap displayed the hex nut and prevented it from falling out before the book was purchased.) The Official Politically Correct Dictionary , also written with Beard, first appeared in 1992.[ citation needed ]
In 2008, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of George W. Bush's victory speech aboard the U. S. S. Lincoln, Cerf again collaborated with Victor Navasky to produce Mission Accomplished!: Or How We Won the War in Iraq based on America's military presence in Iraq. [12]
In December 2008, the Associated Press reported that various musicians were coordinating their objections to the use of their music as a technique for softening up captives. [13] The songs used were primarily heavy metal, but included songs from Sesame Street . The Associated Press reported that Cerf "was horrified to learn songs from the children's TV show were used in interrogations". As a consequence, he researched how music is being used for military purposes and published his findings in the documentary movie Songs of War. [14]
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Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation, and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop and was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. It is known for its images communicated through the use of Jim Henson's Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. It premiered on November 10, 1969, to positive reviews, some controversy, and high viewership. It has aired on the United States national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016, then its sister streaming service (HBO) Max in 2020.
Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce the Sesame Street television series. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade."
Between the Lions is an American animated/live-action/puppet educational children's television series designed to promote reading. The show is a co-production between WGBH in Boston and Sirius Thinking, Ltd., in New York City, in association with Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the distributor from seasons 1–10. The show won nine Daytime Emmy awards between 2001 and 2007. Although it is created by alumni of the fellow PBS children’s show Sesame Street, Between the Lions was not created by Sesame Workshop, nor was it produced with their involvement in any way. The show premiered on PBS Kids on April 3, 2000, taking over the schedule slot held by The Puzzle Place upon its debut, and ended its original run on November 22, 2010. This TV show was a companion piece to Sesame Street aimed at slightly older children.
Michael O'Donoghue was an American writer, actor, editor and comedian.
Thomas Z. Shepard is an American record producer who is best known for his recordings of Broadway musicals, including the works of Stephen Sondheim. Shepard is also a composer, conductor, music arranger and pianist.
Anthony Christopher Hendra was an English satirist and writer who worked mostly in the United States. He was probably best known for being the head writer and co-producer in 1984 of the first six shows of the long-running British satirical television series Spitting Image and for starring in the film This Is Spinal Tap as the band's manager Ian Faith.
The 28th Daytime Emmy Awards were held in 2001 to commemorate excellence in daytime programming from the previous year (2000). As the World Turns tied with General Hospital for the most Daytime Emmys won in a single year, with a total of eight.
Victor Saul Navasky was an American journalist, editor, and academic. He was publisher emeritus of The Nation and George T. Delacorte Professor Emeritus of Professional Practice in Magazine Journalism at Columbia University. He was editor of The Nation from 1978 until 1995 and its publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005. Navasky's book Naming Names (1980) is considered a definitive take on the Hollywood blacklist. For it he won a 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Paul Ross Jacobs is an American composer and musician, most known for his work with Meat Loaf and his band, Neverland Express.
Sarah Durkee is a writer and lyricist, a television lyricist and screenwriter, and an author and humorist.
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Michael Kingsbury Frith is a British artist and television producer. He is the former executive vice-president and creative director of The Jim Henson Company. His contributions to Muppet projects have been extensive and varied.
Lomax, the Hound of Music is a 2008 American children's television series that utilizes a combination of puppets, live actors, live music and animation to promote musical education towards young children.
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street is a non-fiction book chronicling the history of the children's television program Sesame Street. Street Gang is journalist and writer Michael Davis's first book, published by Viking Press in 2008. On bookshelves in time for the show's 40th anniversary in 2009, the book developed out of a TV Guide article Davis wrote to commemorate the show's 35th anniversary in 2004. Davis spent five years researching and writing the book, and conducted hundreds of interviews with the show's creators, cast, and crew.
Music has been a part of the children's television show Sesame Street since its debut on PBS in 1969. For the first time, music was used as a teaching tool on a TV program for children; the songs written and performed on the show fulfilled specific purposes and supported its curriculum. The music on Sesame Street consisted of many styles and genres, but was consistent and recognizable so that it could be reproduced. The producers recorded and released dozens of albums of music; many songs became "timeless classics". In order to attract the best composers and lyricists, CTW allowed songwriters to retain the rights to the songs they wrote, which allowed them to earn lucrative profits. Sesame Street Book & Record, recorded in 1970, went gold and won a 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.
Seán Kelly was a Canadian humorist and writer.
"Monster in the Mirror" is a song performed by Grover, a Muppet character from the PBS television series Sesame Street. Copyrighted in 1989, the song was composed by Christopher Cerf and Norman Stiles.
Not The New York Times was a parody newspaper of The New York Times created by Christopher Cerf, George Plimpton, Freddy Plimpton, Rusty Unger, and Tony Hendra, and published during the 1978 New York City newspaper strike.
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