Christopher Cerf (musician and television producer)
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Christopher Cerf (born August 19, 1941) is an American author, composer-lyricist, voice actor, and record and television producer. He is known for his musical contributions to Sesame Street, for co-creating and co-producing the award-winning PBS literacy education television program Between the Lions, and for his humorous articles and books.
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. The program is known for its images communicated through the use of Jim Henson's Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. The series premiered on November 10, 1969, to positive reviews, some controversy, and high viewership; it has aired on the U.S.'s national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016.
Between the Lions is an American animated and live action children's television series designed to promote reading. The show was 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 5-10, in Mississippi. The show won seven Daytime Emmy awards between 2001 and 2007. The target audience is children 5–8 years old. It has the same puppet style as Sesame Street and several season 2 episodes, notably in Dance in Smarty Pants, had a few characters from Sesame Street guest appearing. The show ran from April 3, 2000 to November 22, 2010.
His father was co-founder of Random House, publisher, editor and TV panelist Bennett Cerf. His mother was journalist and children's book publisher Phyllis Fraser. His father was Jewish and his mother Roman Catholic. [1] Cerf attended the Deerfield Academy and then graduated from Harvard College.[1] He was married to Geneviève Charbin who is a Catholic of French descent.[1] He married Katherine Vaz in July 2015. After his father's death, his mother remarried ex-New York City mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr.[1]
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. As of 2013, it is part of Penguin Random House, which is jointly owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann and British global education and publishing company Pearson PLC.
Bennett Alfred Cerf was an American publisher, one of the founders of American publishing firm Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What's My Line?
Phyllis Cerf Wagner, also known as Phyllis Fraser, was an American actress, journalist, and children's book publisher, and co-founder of Beginner Books.
Musical compositions
Since its first season in 1970, Cerf has played a significant 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 parody songs as "Born To Add", "Letter B", "Wet Paint", and "Furry Happy Monsters". Cerf also played a pivotal 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.
Hoots the Owl is a fictional character on the children's television program, Sesame Street, performed by Kevin Clash. He was an owl that plays a saxophone. His voice sounds similar to Louis Armstrong. Perhaps his most famous song was "Put Down the Duckie" in 1988, a song inspired to help Ernie not squeak while playing his saxophone.
Sesame Workshop (SW), formerly the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization which 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. Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and foundation executive Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce Sesame Street, a television series which would help children, especially those from low-income families, prepare for school. 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".
Saturday Night Live (SNL) is an American late-night live television variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title NBC's Saturday Night. The show's comedy sketches, which often parody contemporary culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers the opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast as with featured performances by a musical guest. An episode normally begins with a cold open sketch that ends with someone breaking character and proclaiming, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!", properly beginning the show.
The National Lampoon Radio Hour was a comedy radio show which was created, produced and written by staff from National Lampoon magazine.
The Electric Company is an American educational children's television series created by Paul Dooley and directed by Robert Schwarz, Henry Behar (1972–1975), John Tracy (1975–1976); written by Dooley, Christopher Cerf (1971–1973), Jeremy Steven (1972–1974) and John Boni/Amy Ephron (1972–1973); and produced by the Children's Television Workshop for PBS in the United States. PBS broadcast 780 episodes over the course of its six seasons from October 25, 1971, to April 15, 1977. After it ceased production in 1977, the program continued in reruns until October 4, 1985, as the result of a decision made in 1975 to produce two final seasons for perpetual use. The Workshop produced the show at Second Stage, located within the Reeves Teletape Studios (Teletape), in Manhattan, which had been the first home of Sesame Street.
George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was also famous for "participatory journalism" which included competing in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur.
Andy Warhol was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Abbot Howard Hoffman was an American political and social activist, anarchist, and revolutionary who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies").
Collaborations with Marlo Thomas
One of Christopher Cerf's best-known projects was the editing and production of Marlo Thomas & Friends' Free to Be... a Family book, album and TV special. The book reached #1 on The New York Times bestseller list within a week of its publication in 1987, and the show received a prime-time Emmy as the year's outstanding children's special.
Margaret Julia "Marlo" Thomas is an American actress, producer, author, and social activist best known for starring on the sitcom That Girl (1966–1971) and her award-winning children's franchise Free to Be... You and Me. She has received four Emmys, a Golden Globe, and the George Foster Peabody Award for her work in television, and she has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame. She has also received a Grammy award for her children’s album Marlo Thomas and Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony, the highest honor that a civilian can receive.
Free to Be... A Family was a widely discussed television special hosted by Marlo Thomas broadcast on December 14, 1988. It was especially notable as a joint production of ABC and Soviet Russia, then three years from collapse. It was a sequel to the popular 1974 ABC Afterschool Special Free to Be... You and Me, also hosted by Thomas. Among the performers on the 1988 show were The Muppets, Jon Bon Jovi, Penn and Teller, Carly Simon, Lily Tomlin, and Robin Williams.
The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 125 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U.S.
Cerf and Thomas recently 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 2006 Grammy Award, go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, founded by Thomas' father, Danny Thomas, in 1962.
Between the Lions
Currently, Cerf serves 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, in its six seasons on the air, the show has amassed six Emmy Awards. (In 2006, Between the Lions was nominated for three more Emmys, including Outstanding Children's Show.) In two independent studies, conducted by the University of Kansas and Mississippi State University, the program has also demonstrated success in helping kids – including those at the highest risk of literacy failure – to learn how to read.
Lomax, the Hound of Music
Along with Between the Lions, Cerf continues to cement his role in the history of children's educational programming by producing fun educational shows for children. Cerf is currently the co-Creator (with Norman Stiles and Louise Gikow), Executive Producer and Writer of the new PBS Kids show Lomax, the Hound of Music. The show, which debuted in the winter of 2008, is a new 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."
In addition to being fun for the whole family, the show has true 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, Ph.D. Feierabend's curriculum has been extensively researched and shown to increase children's musical ability and intelligence. It includes appearances by music notables such as Larry Campbell and Tom Chapin.
The show is currently in its first season and raising funds to produce a second season as soon as possible.
Humorous writings
Christopher Cerf is perhaps best known to the general public for his work 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.
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.
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! based on America's military presence in Iraq.
Objected to the use of his music to break captive's will
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.[2] The songs used were primarily heavy metal, but also 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.[3]
The Vintage Anthology of Science Fantasy (editor), 1966
The World's Largest Cheese, 1968
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial: The Chicago Conspiracy vs. The Washington Kangaroos / Official Pogrom (editor, with Michael Frith), New York: Domesday Books, 1969
Official National Lampoon Bicentennial Calendar 1976 (with Bill Effros), 1975
Not the New York Times (co-editor, with Larry Durocher, Josh Feigenbaum, Tony Hendra, George Plimpton, and Rusty Unger), 1978
National Lampoon was an American humor magazine which ran from 1970 to 1998. The magazine started out as a spinoff from the Harvard Lampoon. National Lampoon magazine reached its height of popularity and critical acclaim during the 1970s, when it had a far-reaching effect on American humor and comedy. The magazine spawned films, radio, live theatre, various sound recordings, and print products including books. Many members of the creative staff from the magazine subsequently went on to contribute creatively to successful media of all types.
Michael O'Donoghue was an American writer and performer. He was known for his dark and destructive style of comedy and humor, was a major contributor to National Lampoon magazine, and was the first head writer of Saturday Night Live. He was also the first performer to utter a line on that series.
Tony Hendra is an English satirist, actor and writer who has worked mostly in the United States. Educated at St Albans School and at St John's College, Cambridge, he was a member of the Cambridge University Footlights revue in 1962, alongside John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.
Victor Saul Navasky is an American journalist, editor and academic. He is 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.
Sarah Durkee is a singer-songwriter, a television lyricist and screenwriter, and an author and humorist.
Stephen J. Lawrence is an American composer, living and working in New York City. He has composed more than 300 songs and scores for Sesame Street, resulting in three Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition; composed the title song and four others for Marlo Thomas's Free to Be... You and Me, the landmark million-selling record, book and Emmy Award- and Peabody Award-winning ABC television special; composed the million-selling Gold Record You Take My Breath Away; scored the Robert De Niro movie Bang the Drum Slowly and the cult horror classic Alice, Sweet Alice, which won the music award at the Paris International Festival of Fantasy and Science Fiction; composed score for "One Summer Love", 1976, a.k.a. "Dragonfly", composed the songs and score for the 1989 live-action movie musical Red Riding Hood starring Isabella Rossellini and Craig T. Nelson, lyrics by Michael Korie; composed songs for the live-action movie musical The Emperor's New Clothes, starring Sid Caesar and Robert Morse; composed songs and score for "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", an HBO animated musical starring Carol Burnett, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. He has a B.A. in music from Hofstra University. Married Christine Jones 1984. Daughter, Hannah Lawrence, born 1986. Married Cathy Schwartzman, 2002. Music Director, Temple Sinai, Stamford Ct, 2002 to 2012.
Henry Nichols Beard is an American humorist, one of the founders of the magazine National Lampoon and the author of several best-selling books. World renown for his enormous pet snake Nagini
Michael Kingsbury Frith is the former Executive Vice-President and Creative Director for Jim Henson Productions. His contributions to Muppet projects have been extensive and varied.
Michael E. Renzi is an American composer, music director, pianist and jazz musician. He was musical director for Peggy Lee and Mel Torme for over 25 years. He is also friends and partners with jazz singer Cynthia Crane, with whom he has published a Christmas album titled "Our First Christmas". Renzi also has his own jazz group called "The Mike Renzi Trio", which published an album together with tenor sax legend Ben Webster.
National Lampoon: Lemmings, a spinoff of the humor magazine National Lampoon, was a 1973 stage show that helped launch the performing careers of John Belushi, Christopher Guest, and Chevy Chase. The show was co-written and co-directed by a number of people including Sean Kelly. The show opened at The Village Gate on January 25, 1973, and ran for 350 performances.
Lomax, the Hound of Music is a PBS Kids TV series that brings together puppets, humans, live music and animation to promote musical education for children ages 3–7, inspired by John Feierabend's "First Steps in Music" curriculum for music educators. Created by Christopher Cerf, Norman Stiles and Louise Gikow, and produced by Sirius Thinking, Ltd., Eyevox, Inc., and Connecticut Public Television, Lomax first aired in December 2008, and immediately gained a reputation as a show that follows in the tradition of acclaimed educational children's TV series like Sesame Street, and Between the Lions.
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.
Sean Kelly is a Canadian author, writer, humorist, voice actor and teacher originally from Montreal. Kelly was an editor of the National Lampoon magazine from 1971 to 1977. He and Fred Graver served as co-Editors in Chief of National Lampoon under the pseudonym L. Dennis Plunkett. He currently teaches in the Humanities and Media Studies department of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists who made National Lampoon Insanely Great by Rick Meyerowitz, is a 2010 book which was published by Abrams Books of New York. The book consists of a compilation of work by a selection of writers and artists whose work appeared in National Lampoon magazine in the 1970s, as well as introductory commentary on those people and their work, by Meyerowitz and others. The book is hardback, coffee-table sized and is profusely illustrated.
Greatest Hits of the National Lampoon is an American comedy album of songs and spoken word that was first released as a vinyl record in 1978. It was a spin-off of National Lampoon magazine and was a "best-of" compilation that included tracks from Radio Dinner, Lemmings, The Missing White House Tapes, Gold Turkey, Goodbye Pop, and That's Not Funny, That's Sick.
National Lampoon The Best of #4 was an American humor book that was first published in 1972. The book was a "special issue" of National Lampoon magazine, so it was sold on newsstands, however it was put out in addition to the regular issues of the magazine.
"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.
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