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".[1] 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.[2]
Sesame Street's songwriters included the show's first music director Joe Raposo, Jeff Moss, and Christopher Cerf, and scriptwriters like Tony Geiss and Norman Stiles. Raposo and his musical team created a huge amount of music for the show, including dozens of unique songs per show. Raposo was inspired by the goals of Sesame Street, especially in the early days of the show's production, and composed hundreds of curriculum-inspired songs. Raposo won three Emmys and four Grammys for his work on the show. The show's theme music, "Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?", which has been called "a "siren song for preschoolers",[3] was written by Raposo, director Jon Stone, and writer Bruce Hart. Raposo also wrote "Bein' Green," "Somebody Come and Play" and "C is for Cookie". "Sing" became a hit for The Carpenters in 1973. Moss wrote "I Love Trash", which was included on the first album of Sesame Street songs, and "Rubber Duckie", which was performed by the 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".
Sesame Street, from its earliest planning and development stages before its debut on PBS in 1969, has used music as a teaching tool. The show's creators recognized that children responded to commercial jingles, so they wanted to use their characteristics, which included repetition, clever visuals, brevity, and clarity, in what they presented to young viewers.[4][5] For the first time in children's television, the show's songs fulfilled a specific purpose and supported its curriculum.[6] The show's creators understood that music and sound effects provided a direct means of teaching children basic skills, and that children learned more effectively when new material was accompanied by a song.[7] Co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney observed in her proposal for the new show, written in 1967, that children had an "affinity for commercial jingles",[5] so many of the show's songs were constructed like television ads. Critic Peter Hellman put it this way: "If [children] could recite 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.[12] Recording albums of the substantial amount of music written for the show, along with publishing books, was the first attempts to generate income and to fund the show and other projects of the 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".[1] In order to attract the best composers and lyricists, CTW allowed songwriters to retain the rights to the songs they wrote. For the first time in children's television, the writers earned lucrative profits, which helped the show sustain public interest.[14]Sesame Street Book & Record, recorded in 1970, the first of dozens of albums made up of Sesame Street songs, was also the show's first cast album.[15] The album went gold and won a 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
The Carpenters, one of the many artists who recorded music from Sesame Street.
Sesame Street's songwriters included the show's first music director Joe Raposo; Jeff Moss, whom Michael Davis called a "gifted poet, composer, and lyricist";[18] and 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".[16] Raposo was inspired by the goals of Sesame Street, especially in the early days of the show's production, and responded by composing, as Davis put it, "a stack" of curriculum-inspired songs.[23] Davis also stated, "In the early days of production, nobody 'got' the gestalt of Sesame Street faster or better than Raposo".[23] The show's researchers reported that they enjoyed working with Raposo, and he enjoyed working with them. They also reported that he would change his songs based upon the researchers' needs and suggestions, and on the goals of the show's curriculum.[24] Raposo won three 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",[27] and Cooney called him "a true music visionary".[27] He wrote "I Love Trash" for Oscar the Grouch, which was included on the first album of Sesame Street songs. One of Moss' best-known compositions for the show was Rubber Duckie; it was performed by Henson for the MuppetErnie and also appeared on the album. The song was performed by the 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]
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 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]
Borgenicht, David (1998). Sesame Street Unpaved. New York: Hyperion Publishing. ISBN0-7868-6460-5
Davis, Michael (2008). Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street. New York: Viking/Penguin. ISBN978-0-670-01996-0
Gikow, Louise A. (2009). Sesame Street: A Celebration— Forty Years of Life on the Street. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. ISBN978-1-57912-638-4.
Lesser, Gerald S. (1974). Children and Television: Lessons From Sesame Street. New York: Vintage/Knopf/Random House Books. ISBN0-394-71448-2
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 US's 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. 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."
This is a list of recordings released by the TV series Sesame Street. Many of the early Columbia and CTW releases have been re-released on the Sony Wonder label, and later by The Orchard and Warner Music Group.
The preschool educational television program Sesame Street was first aired on public television stations on November 10, 1969, and reached its 52nd season in 2021. The history of Sesame Street has reflected changing attitudes to developmental psychology, early childhood education, and cultural diversity. Featuring Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, live shorts, humor and celebrity appearances, it was the first television program of its kind to base its content and production values on laboratory and formative research, and the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes". Initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, and 20 independent international versions had been produced. It has won eleven Grammys and over 150 Emmys in its history—more than any other children's show.
"Rubber Duckie" is a song sung by the Muppet character Ernie on Sesame Street. The song is named after Ernie's toy, a rubber ducky affectionately named Rubber Duckie.
Elmo's World is a segment shown at the end of the American children's television program Sesame Street. It premiered on November 16, 1998, as part of the show's structural change and originally lasted fifteen minutes at the end of each episode until 2009. However it was then rebooted in 2017. The show was designed to appeal to younger viewers and to increase ratings, which had fallen in the past decade. The segment is presented from the perspective of a three-year-old child as represented by its host, the Muppet Elmo, performed by Kevin Clash in the original series and Ryan Dillon in the 2017 reboot.
Joan Ganz Cooney is an American television writer and producer. She is one of the founders of Sesame Workshop, the organization famous for the creation of the children's television show Sesame Street, which was also co-created by her. Cooney grew up in Phoenix and earned a Bachelor of Arts in education from the University of Arizona in 1951. After working for the State Department in Washington, D.C., and as a journalist in Phoenix, she worked as a publicist for television and production companies in New York City. In 1961, she became interested in working for educational television, and became a documentary producer for New York's first educational TV station WNET. Many of the programs she produced won local Emmys.
Joseph Guilherme Raposo, OIH was an American composer, songwriter, pianist, singer and lyricist, best known for his work on the children's television series Sesame Street, for which he wrote the theme song, as well as classic songs such as "Bein' Green", "C Is For Cookie" and "Sing". He also wrote music for television shows such as The Electric Company, Shining Time Station and the sitcoms Three's Company and The Ropers, including their theme songs. In addition to these works, Raposo also composed extensively for three Dr. Seuss TV specials in collaboration with the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises: Halloween Is Grinch Night (1977), Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? (1980), and The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat (1982).
Jeffrey Arnold "Jeff" Moss was an American composer, lyricist, playwright and television writer, best known for his award-winning work on the children's television series Sesame Street.
Sesame Street international co-productions are adaptations of the American educational children's television series Sesame Street but tailored to the countries in which they are produced. Shortly after the debut of Sesame Street in the United States in 1969 in television, television producers, teachers, and officials of several countries approached the show's producers and the executives of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), renamed Sesame Workshop (SW) in 2000, about the possibility of airing international versions of Sesame Street. Creator Joan Ganz Cooney hired former CBS executive Michael Dann to field offers to produce versions of the show in other countries.
"Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce" is an episode of the children's television program Sesame Street. Produced in 1992, it never aired because tests showed several unintended negative effects. Sesame Street has had a history of presenting difficult topics as part of its affective curriculum goals, including death, marriage, childbirth, and disaster. Extensive research was done before these episodes were written and produced, to ascertain their focus, and after they aired, to analyze the effect they had on viewers, and that was the case for "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce". The show's producers had expressed a desire to produce the episode as early as 1989, and they were convinced that it was a topic they should address after the US Census Bureau reported that 40% of American children had experienced divorce.
A wide variety of characters have appeared on the American children's television series Sesame Street. Many of the characters are Muppets, which are puppets made in Jim Henson's distinctive puppet-creation style. Most of the non-Muppet characters are human characters, but there are many characters that are animated.
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.
Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street (1974) is a non-fiction book written by Gerald S. Lesser, in which he describes the production of Sesame Street, and the formation and pedagogical philosophy of the Children's Television Workshop. Lesser was a professor at Harvard University, studying how social class and ethnicity interacted with school achievement and was one of the first academics in the US who researched how watching television affected children and their development. He was initially skeptical about the potential of using television as a teaching tool, but he was eventually named as the advisory board chairman of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the organization created to oversee the production and research of Sesame Street, and was the show's first educational director. Lesser wrote the book early in Sesame Street's history, to evaluate the show's effectiveness, to explain what its writers, researchers, and producers were attempting to do, and to respond to criticism of Sesame Street.
In 1969, the children's television show Sesame Street premiered on the National Educational Television network in the United States. Unlike earlier children's programming, the show's producers used research and over 1,000 studies and experiments to create the show and test its impact on its young viewers' learning. By the end of the program's first season, Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the organization founded to oversee Sesame Street production, had developed what came to be called "the CTW model": a system of planning, production, and evaluation that combined the expertise of researchers and early childhood educators with that of the program's writers, producers, and directors.
Sesame Street is an American children's television program that is known for its use of format and structure to convey educational concepts to its preschool audience, and to help them prepare for school. It utilizes the conventions of television such as music, humor, sustained action, and a strong visual style, and combines Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, short films, humor, and cultural references. The show, which premiered in 1969, was the first to base its contents, format, and production values on laboratory and formative research. According to researchers, it was also the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes".
The children's television show Sesame Street, which premiered on public broadcasting television stations in 1969, was the first show of its kind that utilized a detailed and comprehensive educational curriculum, with specific educational goals, in its content. Its goals were garnered from in-house formative research and independent summative evaluations, and its first curriculum was created in a series of five seminars in 1968.
The children's television program Sesame Street premiered in 1969 to high ratings, positive reviews, and some controversy, which have continued during its history. Even though the show aired on only 67% of American televisions at the time of its premiere, it earned a 3.3 Nielsen rating, or 1.9 million households. By its tenth anniversary in 1979, 9 million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily. Its ratings declined in the 1990s, due to societal changes. A survey conducted in 1996 found that by the age of three, 95% of all American children had watched it. By its fortieth anniversary in 2009, it was ranked the fifteenth most popular children's show.
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