Music of Sesame Street
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.
[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 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.
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".
Artists like Barbra Streisand, Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Simon, and Jose Feliciano have recorded Raposo's Sesame Street songs.
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.
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?
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.
[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.
[9] 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".
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.
[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.
Davis calls it "Raposo's best-regarded song for Sesame Street",[14] and it has been recorded by several singers, including Frank Sinatra, Van Morrison and Ray Charles.
[30] Barbra Streisand, Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Simon, and Jose Feliciano also recorded Raposo's Sesame Street songs.
The list included older artists such as Smokey Robinson, Johnny Cash and Cab Calloway as well as newer performers like Norah Jones and Feist.
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.
