The Music of the Muppets
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Now you might think that a dog couldn't play the piano. They have paws and not fingers, and they have little tiny dog brains. But you would be wrong about that. One of my favorite bandleaders and pianists is a dog. He actually recorded the piano on this theme song. Welcome to Strong Songs, a podcast about music. I am your host, Kirk Hamilton, and I'm so glad that you've joined me to talk about songs played by Rolf the Dog, songs written by Rolf the Dog, and sometimes songs that were just inspired by Rolf the Dog.

Say Rolf the dog ten times past. This is a listener-supported show. It's just me, and I'm making it for all of you with no one in between to chip in and keep that going. Go to patreon.com slash strong songs or make a one-time donation at the link in the show notes.

On this episode, we're boarding a ship to a totally different musical universe where frogs play banjo, dogs lead bands, and pinball machines count all the way to 12. It's going to be so much fun and I can't wait to get into it. So let's get the band together, drop the curtain, and start the show. There is something special about the relationship that kids have with music.

We forever love the music that we grow up listening to because music connects so powerfully to who we are as kids. We can dance sometimes before we can talk, and even if we don't understand the words that we're hearing or have any sense of the instruments or the types of harmony of a given song, we know if we like it, if it moves us. And in some ways, those first songs that we hear in our first few years stick with us for the rest of our lives.

And while it's true that kids can like simple, repetitive songs, I think it'd be a mistake to assume that every song written for kids needs to be basic or unchallenging or repetitive. The greatest makers of music for children write songs that are equally beloved by adults. Adults whose musical tastes were shaped by the music that they heard when they were young.

There may be no richer tradition in children's music than that of Jim Henson's Muppets and what I've begun to think of as the Muppets' extended universe. These charming little hand puppets that took the world by storm during the second half of the 20th century and whose musical legacy is remarkably strong even today.

And so on this episode, I will be talking about a few of my favorite Muppet and Muppet adjacent pieces of music. Between the countless movies, TV shows, and albums that the Muppets have released, there are way too many great songs for me to analyze or even mention half of them on this episode. So instead of even trying to do that, I'm just going to pick a few that I love and hopefully give you all a sense for just how interesting, sophisticated, and groovy children's music can be.

Let's get right into it and let's start where it started for most of the world. In 1969, when the Children's Television Workshop debuted a new Muppet-centric TV show called Sesame Street. Funny day, sweeping up my way. To where the air tells me how to get, get to Sesame Street.

The Sesame Street theme, like so many of the most famous and beloved songs from the show, was written by Joe Raposo, with additional writing by John Stone and Bruce Hart. And I want to start with it because it's so emblematic of the ethos of Sesame Street and of the Muppets as well. A funky, slightly gritty vibe that feels situated in the real world.

Lots of children's entertainment takes place in a dreamlike realm, a world of total safety and eternal play. And the music for that kind of entertainment can reflect that unreality. And there's nothing wrong with that per se, but I've always appreciated Sesame Street for how clearly it takes place in a world of total safety and eternal play.

in the real world. From the start, the show opened with grainy, handheld footage of city kids playing on urban playgrounds, and these were real kids like you would actually see out in New York City, all ages and skin colors, playing in a natural and real way, and

particularly compared with the more controlled vibe of modern children's TV. I recommend hopping on YouTube and just tracking down some of the opening title sequences from the early seasons of Sesame Street. They're really great. And the music of Sesame Street supports that vibe perfectly, starting with this theme song. It's funky. It's got some jazz in there. There's some stacks or some Motown. This band is really kind of killing it.

And I should say that for most of this analysis, I'm going to be using the version you're currently hearing. It's the version of the theme song off of the Sesame Street Platinum All-Time Favorites album. There are a bunch of different Sesame Street themes that have been recorded, and I'll talk about some of them here on this episode. There have been a bunch of different title sequences for the show for different eras.

I'm going with this version because it's my favorite, it's the funkiest one, and also because it includes the bridge, which most versions that were used for the title sequence didn't have time for. It's a magic carpet ride. Big water. Happy people like you. People like

So let's get right into it. And while I want to talk about some of the musical elements of this song, I really just want to do that to highlight all of the little ways that this song is legit, for lack of a better word. Let's start with the basic chord progression and that basic groove.

We're in the key of C here, and I've pitch corrected the original recording a little bit since like a lot of recordings put to tape in the 60s and 70s, it comes in a shade under tuning in its final state, and I wanted to be able to play along with it on the piano. This basic groove, this chord progression, would be familiar to any rhythm and blues player at the time or now. It sounds like this. ♪

It's a pretty cool ensemble, too. There's a vibraphone over to the left. There's this nice, jazzy electric guitar. The drums and the bass are really tight and dry in that kind of Stax Records style. It sounds like the MGs. This could be a Staple Singers or Otis Redding album. ♪

So that opening little riff, which I think of as the signature chord progression of this song, you're holding a C in the bass. I guess that's technically a pedal. I'd probably just notate it as slash chords. You're going from C to F over C and then up to C again with a B flat in there at the end of the line, which is the flat seven. So you're getting this really strong C7, C dominant seven energy, pure rhythm and blues stuff.

It's always sounded to me like an echo of the buildup on Joe Zabinul's Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, made famous in the 60s by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. You hear it? It's a future strong song for sure, and that gives you a sense of the musical well that Raposo and his co-writers were drawing from. Now let's get into the melody. Let's play, it'll be okay.

How'd you get, how'd you get to Sesame Street?

Now granted, a group of kids yelling more or less in tune is charming, if not the most precise way to track a song's melody, and they would clean the performance up significantly in future versions of this song, though I've always found a lot to like about this earlier, rawer performance. But if we get into the melody on the piano here, it's another straightforward blues thing. The first four bars just go back and forth between 1 and 4, C7 to F7.

And the melody reflects that. The second four start out the same, C7 to F7, and then it begins this cool walk-up, this figure that revolves around the V chord, G7. Listen to that second four bars with the melody.

And then, of course, the melody goes to its highest note, that blue note, an E-flat. It's the highest note in the melody, and because it's that blue note, it feels really good to stretch up for it a little bit. Can you tell me how to get... And right there, it goes into this neat little side move to get back to C. It goes B-flat, F, and then C, which is just a neat little bit of sauce. It fits well under the melody.

So if you were counting, that's three four-bar phrases, which, hey, wait a minute, that adds up to 12 bars, doesn't it? And if you've been listening to Strong Songs for any length of time, you'll know what that means. I have talked a lot about the 12-bar blues form and how blues, and specifically the blues song form, is a bedrock of most American popular music. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a little bit.

And here we are again! This is a somewhat modified blues chord progression, it's its own thing, and of course later there is a bridge, but nowhere is it written that you can't have a blues with a bridge, so I would still call this a blues, just a somewhat non-standard one. Just listen to the rhythm section, they're having so much fun!

So with two times through that blues-based A section, it's time for the bridge. What a beautiful...

So the next time you're writing a song and you're struggling with the bridge, I know that's a common thing. It definitely happens to me. The next time that's happening, just remember, you can just do what they do here. You can do eight measures of one chord, just a different chord. In this case, they're playing A major. Just play eight measures of that and then go right back to the song and it'll work pretty well.

Of course, there is rarely time to hear that bridge in the version that introduces the show since they want to get into the actual show itself. I'm really glad this recording exists, though, just because it's really fun to listen to the entire song.

There have been a number of different versions of the Sesame Street theme recorded for the show over the decades, including another early version with much less rambunctious vocals. It's still plenty groovy, though, a little bit less stacks and more like The Carpenters.

Then there's the 90s version, which looks and feels much more like an intro for a 1990s kids show and adds a nice bit of Calypso flavor to the music. Oh!

But, you know, this is a groovy song and it became famous almost immediately. So there are, of course, plenty of musicians who've played it outside of the context of the show intro. There's one memorable performance by Gladys Knight and the Pips who came on Sesame Street to perform their version, but also recorded a studio version. On my baby head.

It's extremely good. I really like what they do with the bridge. They make it a little bit more complicated than that earlier version that I played for you. It's a magic car to happy people like you. Happy people like me. Happy people on a beautiful day.

Very, very, very good and a great arrangement. I kind of wish the recording quality was better on that. And then last but not least, there's this incredibly indulgent and, in my opinion, enjoyable version of the song recorded by Maynard Ferguson's big band on their early 80s record Storm, which was arranged by their Barry Sax player Dennis de Blasio.

I first heard this when I was in high school. I was at a jazz festival and another high school band played it. And it was the first time I realized, oh, hey, the Sesame Street theme is pretty hip, isn't it? ♪

As it happens, this song's arranger, Dennis de Blasio, was the guest artist at the Bloomington Jazz Festival in Bloomington, Indiana, which my high school hosted every other year. And he's a great guy, a very charismatic and boisterous dude, and a great Berry player and a great arranger. ♪

It's time to move on, but before we do, just a few more quick words about Joe Raposo. Raposo is one of the legends of children's music, and while this is the only one of his songs that I'll be talking about in depth on this episode, I just wanted to briefly mention a tiny handful of the many, many songs that he wrote, including Kermit's self-reflective ballad, Being Green. It's not that easy being green.

Having to spend each day the color of the leaves. Cookie monsters like Zydeco inflected celebration of baked goods, C is for cookie.

Honestly, a pretty great song.

Raposo also wrote all the music and songs for The Great Muppet Caper, the Henson-directed 1981 follow-up to the Muppet movie. And while I don't want to get ahead of our timeline here, I do just want to mention that movie because it's a lot of fun and it has a great showcase for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the Muppet rock band that frequently turned up on the show and in the movies, in the song Happiness Hotel. Still the man that you'd get your full dose A whole dark night to hell A welcome home

The whole song is a lot of fun. It's a real Muppet Fest, kind of the first moment in the movie when all of the Muppets turn up and get their own little spotlights. But this instrumental breakdown in the middle of the song just genuinely rips. Oh,

We'll talk about more Muppet movie music in a little bit. I just wanted to mention the great Muppet caper, since Raposo did such a great job with the music. And then, of course, there's a song simply called Sing, which is one of Raposo's most straightforwardly lovely songs. Sing, ganda, sing.

You know, actually, I mentioned The Carpenters earlier, but a couple of years after Raposo wrote Sing for Sesame Street, The Carpenters covered it, and their version became a Billboard hit in 1973, cementing the song as an essential part of Raposo's musical legacy. Sing for Sesame Street

Man, I gotta talk about the Carpenters on this show, even though sometimes Karen Carpenter's voice is so beautiful that I have an emotionally hard time with it. Sing of the nuts and...

Anyway, this recording is lovely. It's so simply stated and heartfelt. And it's a perfect tribute to Joe Raposo, the songwriter who, through Sesame Street and the Muppets, brought life to the world. Don't worry that it's not good. Anyone else here, just sing. Sing a song.

Sesame Street was co-created by Joan Gantz Cooney and Lloyd Morissette, who together founded the Children's Television Workshop, known today as the Sesame Workshop. Both are now enshrined as television legends, but their creation was made complete by the contributions of a third visionary, Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets. Henson, who is the creator of The Muppets,

Henson had been developing the Muppets since he was in school in the 1950s, and he joined Sesame Street from the start in 1969. In fact, he joined from before the start. On YouTube, you can watch one of the pitch reels that Henson helped make for the show, which features now-famous Muppets Ralph and Kermit talking about how great Sesame Street is going to be. Oh, excuse me. You see, my name is Ralph, and this is my friend Kermit. Hiya!

And in case you're feeling a little weird sitting there listening to a dog, let me explain that I'm not your run-of-the-mill dog. I'm a Muppet dog. And I

And I know a lot about this children's television workshop show because us Muppets are going to be on it every day. Fun fact, at the time, Rolfe, who, like Kermit, was voiced by Jim Henson, only existed in the public consciousness as a mascot for Purina Dog Chow from an ad that he did several years earlier. And he actually wouldn't appear on Sesame Street, though Kermit would.

Rolf wouldn't return to the screen until almost a decade later when he became bandleader for The Muppet Show and also, eventually, my personal favorite Muppet. Evening. Rolf. Rolf the dog. Shocking, I know. Sit yourself down. Kermit. Kermit the bar. Pleased to meet you. I'm no Heifetz, but I get by. That was very nice.

In those early days, though, Rolf, the piano-playing dog from the Muppet movie, who'd go home every night, have a couple beers, take himself for a walk, and go to bed, was nowhere to be found. And in those early days on Sesame Street, there arose from Italy a song that would, at least for me, go on to be forever associated with Henson's Muppets in both their Sesame Street and later Muppet Show incarnations. ♪

It doesn't have many lyrics, but what lyrics there are make a real impression.

Manamana, first performed on Sesame Street by Jim Henson with an assist from legendary puppeteer and actor Frank Oz, is maybe the song I most associate with Muppets, despite the fact that it was not written for them. It wasn't written for The Muppet Show or Sesame Street.

It was actually composed by the Italian musician Piero Umuliani for the film Sweden, Heaven and Hell, which I have not seen, but is apparently all about different aspects of sex and sexuality in Swedish culture.

This is the original, played in C, down a step from where the Muppets would record it, and with a somewhat more sprightly tempo, but the general vibe and arrangement are the same. ♪

The Muppet version was first performed on Sesame Street in 1969 by a fuzzy-haired Muppet named Bip Bipadatta.

And it's a great illustration of just how funny Muppets are. Muppets.

Even when they're just sitting there or, you know, kind of deadpan reacting to something, they're just always funny. In

In all its iterations, Menomina is a basa, and like many basa nova songs, its chord progression is straight out of classic Tin Pan Alley, with a little more of a bebop melody on this one. This spiraling chord progression, it just cycles around and around and around, and it's shared with a thousand other songs from the 1930s and 1940s. It goes two dominant seven, five seven, one major, six minor. ♪

Again and again and again. And then it ends on a little tag. 1 to 4 to 1.

The melody, meanwhile, is more of a bebop thing, like I said, especially the high counterpoint. If you play it on its own, you may start to hear what I'm talking about a little bit more. It's just got this bebop flavor to it. There are a bunch of bebop tunes from the 40s that sound like this, though it always makes me think of Groovin' High by Dizzy Gillespie.

This is Dizzy in 1945 with a band that featured Charlie Parker on alto sax and Slam Stewart on the bass, who you'll know because he sings along with his arco bass solos. This is a famous recording, and do you hear what I'm talking about?

Like I said, there's a lot of bebop music of this era that sounds kind of like Manamana, and I've always enjoyed that about it. It's hip in that way that the Muppets and Sesame Street both were just inarguably hip.

Of course, the big way that the Muppets version differs from the Italian original is what happens when the lead singer attempts to take a scat solo. Muppets.

I laugh every time I hear this. It's one of the funniest musical jokes I can think of. There's just nothing quite like hearing someone decide to cut loose and then lose their nerve partway in.

The further afield he goes, the more that manamana that starts the next verse feels like a concession or a defeat. Manamana. Manamana.

I don't know whose idea this was, but it's a stroke of genius and it really does set the Muppets version apart. And like many great recordings, the Muppets version of Manamana ends with a question unanswered. Manamana?

As the 60s give way to the 70s, Sesame Street has become established as a well-known purveyor of music, learning, and joy for children and adults alike. And while we have some more Muppet music to discuss on this episode, this last Sesame Street song that I want to talk about involves no Muppets at all. But I can't not talk about it because it might be the hippest children's song ever recorded. ♪

I'm talking, of course, about 1976's drop-dead funky pinball number count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Pinball number count has become somewhat famous over the last 10 or 20 years, mostly due to the fact that it is absurdly hip and has some really complex mixed meter counting going on. And a lot of musicians like me have heard it and marveled at how cool it is, even compared to the generally pretty cool music of Sesame Street.

Composed by Walt Kramer and arranged by Ed Bogus, Pinball Number Count debuted on Sesame Street in 1976 as a series focusing on teaching different numbers. It was accompanied by a genuinely wild animation by Jeff Hale and sung famously by the Pointer Sisters. Don't wanna take it anymore.

Kramer recalls budgeting for three sisters, Bonnie, Anita, and Ruth Pointer, but that June, the fourth Pointer sister, came along to the San Francisco recording session, so he got a bonus sister. Not bad. This, of course, another future-strong song. The Pointer sisters' 1980s hit, The Neutron Dance. Neutron Dance! Neutron Dance!

For Pinball Number Count, Kramer and Bogus were basing their arrangement off of animator Hale's initial concept. And I should say, the history of this song is preserved thanks to blogger and photographer Matt Jones, who published a blog post about Pinball Number Count way back in the early 2000s, before it became the well-known musical artifact that it is today.

And after publishing the initial blog post about it, he received a letter from Kramer sharing what he could remember about its creation. Kramer died in 2020 from complications due to COVID. And the blog post is still up, and I am so grateful for it. I'll share it in the show notes, but go give it a read. Six! Five! Six! Five!

About the session, Kramer said, quote, it was Hale's idea that I create basic tracks and then record as wild lines, the pointers shouting various 2 through 11 numbers in different intensities, in different complements of their voices. Then, each time the pinball hit a selected number, this is in the animation, he would drop in these wild lines. So in each B section, you can hear them doing that, like here.

You can kind of tell each number is being spliced in after the fact. 11.

So you've probably gotten a sense of the form just from listening. There's an A section, that's where they sing that melody, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and so on. And then there's a B section, which is an instrumental solo. There's a soprano solo, a guitar solo, there's a steel drum solo, those are played by Andy Narell. The soprano sax solo is Mel Martin. And then there's a B section, which is a instrumental solo, there's a soprano solo, a guitar solo, there's a steel drum solo, those are played by Andy Narell.

And during that solo, that's where the pointer is calling out the different numbers, those wild lines that Kramer talked about. That's where those happen. So I want to break this down, especially all that mixed meter counting during the A section. And I want to get it so that any of you listening will be equipped to count along with pinball number count because it's challenging, but it's pretty fun.

And I actually went ahead and made my own recreation of the whole thing, both so that I could really understand how it worked and also because, unfortunately, Kramer didn't retain a master of the original recording session, so the low-quality TV recording that you've been hearing is the best original that we've got. ♪

This is my recreation, which took quite a bit of work to get right, I just want to say. And if you want to really learn the counting, I'm going to suggest something a little bit out of the ordinary. I want you to go into the show notes for this episode and find where I've written out the pinball number count counting and follow along. Though, if you don't really care, just keep listening. You'll be fine.

So first we've got this intro riff which is laid down by the rhythm section.

I don't have specific crediting for this rhythm section, though on the original I'm hearing an electric piano, likely a Fender Rhodes, a really funky electric bass, a drum set, and percussion in the form of a set of conga drums, a tambourine once the verse comes in, and a pretty prevalent ruro, that scrapey wooden fish instrument that you'll hear often in salsa music. ♪

We're in the key of G, and that initial riff, which begins in G and then goes up a half step to A-flat and then does this really cool octave climbing thing, it reminds me of nothing so much as Red Clay, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's killing 1970s funk tune. You hear it?

This is Hubbard along with Joe Henderson on tenor sax, Ron Carter on the bass, Herbie Hancock on electric piano, and Lenny White on drums, and it should give you a sense of just what was in the air in the 70s and why a group of San Francisco jazz musicians would have been writing riffs like this into whatever they were working on on a given day. ♪

All right, so let's work out how to count this sucker. This song is what's called mixed meter, which is to say there are a number of different meters happening and there's no one consistent way to count it. You could say it goes from 7 to 11 to 15. That sounds really intimidating. It's actually easier to just think of it as groupings of four beats and groupings of three beats arranged in a variety of different patterns. So let's work out how to count this sucker.

This opening section, it goes 4, then 3, then 4, then 3. That's a very common way of counting 7-4, and you could describe this opening as being in 7. It goes 1-2-3-4-1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-1-2-3. Let's count along with my recreation. 1-2-3-4-3-1-2-3.

So now we're onto the verse where the pointers begin singing, and it's very easy to get lost in the counting here. I find it easiest to think of this verse as four smaller groupings of four and three beat clusters. Remember, this is all written out in the show notes, so use that for reference if you want.

So first we go 4, then 4, then 3, then 3. You'll notice that's the same as 4, then 3, then 4, then 3. It's just 4, then 4, then 3, then 3. We're arguably still in 7, it's just the pulse is different. Let's count it. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. So now let's back up and count those two sections together, the intro and then the first part of the verse. Follow along in the show notes.

The next phrase after that, where the pointers go... It's similar to the first phrase, but it's a bit shorter. It goes...

It's a small change removing that final bar of three, but it makes it clear that this song is not interested in doing anything the same way twice, which, well, right here, everything changes. They've been in G to this point, but they move up to C, the four chord, and reprise the melody up on the four, which, hey, going from one to four and singing the same melody up a fourth,

This is another blues, or at least it's another blues-adjacent song on Sesame Street. If you're keeping track, that was the final two sections that we just heard. The first one goes four, then four, then four, then three, which is definitely...

different than the previous sections. And the final one goes four, then four, then four, and then five before leading into the B section. All of that changing, the fact that each section is different, that's just a big LOL as far as I'm concerned. I mean, those four sections go 14 beats, 11 beats, 15 beats, and then 17 beats.

beats, they're really just deliberately making each one different. So let's just count all of that, the intro and then the full verse, counting along with my recreation. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now I don't have the pointer sisters on hand, but I do kind of think this recreation needs a melody. So let's ask the horns what they think. ♪

♪♪♪

So I hope that you've got it in your ear now, even if you aren't counting along with every bar. It's so cool, this mixed meter blues that's completely uninterested in dumbing itself down for its perceived audience. So with the A section out of the way, let's look at the B section.

Which is actually more musically straightforward than it sounds the first time you hear it.

Believe it or not, after all the mixed meter shenanigans of the A section, the B section is just in regular 4 time, 4 beats to a bar. If you take out those pointer vocal drops, which are matched up with the animation and thus are very jumpy and rhythmically hard to predict, if you take those out, the groove becomes much more predictable. So let's actually take out the chords and the percussion in my recreation and just focus on the drums and the bass. ♪

This is a classic James Brown bass line moving between two key centers. C minor to F7 and E flat minor to A flat 7. Back down, then up a minor third. This drum groove also wouldn't be out of place on a James Brown record. Once you get your head around it, Clyde could have played this. Add the percussion and the bass and you're cooking.

Only thing left to add is the chords. Oh, look, there's one last thing to add, and that's a solo, but I'll let Mel Martin take that one. Here we go. 10, 6, 7, 5 10, 6, 5, 5

And that's Pinball Number Count, maybe the hippest song ever written for children. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. Pinball Number Count premiered on Sesame Street in 1976, and that year also happened to be a big year for Jim Henson's Muppets.

That was the year that they spun off and started The Muppet Show, a freewheeling vaudevillian variety show that, over the course of its five-year run, would feature more incredible music than I could talk about on five seasons of Strong Songs. So instead, I'll offer a couple of quick highlights on the way to our final Muppet song.

You're hearing, of course, the Muppet Show theme written by Henson himself along with composer Sam Pottle, which kicked off each episode of the show. And while the Muppet Show would go on to feature all number of new musical Muppets, remember, this was where Ralph first became a household name as he tickled the keys of our hearts, the pilot episode featured a reprise of a familiar song sung by a familiar Muppet. Mono, mono, duplo.

Musically speaking, the Muppet Show version of Manamana doesn't stray too far from the Sesame Street version. Same key, same vibe, same funny scat breaks. Manamana Manamana Manamana Manamana Manamana Manamana Manamana Manamana Manamana

It's a laugh track now, of course, and it's visually very different. And it's interesting to watch the two versions back-to-back and see how far Henson's Muppet designs came over the course of the 70s, but also to see how fully formed a lot of the Muppets' particular visual humor was, even back at the start of Sesame Street in the late 60s. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

It's also just fun to watch and fun to see them flesh out the bit the way that they did on The Muppet Show. Over the course of its run, The Muppet Show became synonymous with popular music, with guests ranging from Elton John to Julie Andrews to Petula Clark, who, fun fact, I actually played saxophone with a couple of times, to Loretta Lynn, Alice Cooper, Harry Belafonte, John Denver,

who've recorded a pretty great Christmas album with the Muppets that we have on vinyl. Arlo Guthrie, Dizzy Gillespie, you gotta see that one, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Johnny Cash, Debbie Harry, the previously mentioned Gladys Knight, and the guest who might be my favorite if only because he's so unlikely, Buddy Rich, the famously abrasive jazz drum titan, came on the show and gamely threw down in a show-stopping drum battle with the Muppet Animal. Say Kermit!

I understand for the show's finale you want me to do some kind of a drum battle. Oh yeah, I just love drum battles. Okay, who do I battle? The other guy. You know, the one that loses. Animal. Animal. That's really his name.

He looks like a sore loser. I first saw this back in the 90s when I was in high school. My friend Andrew, who played drums in our school jazz band, somehow had this segment on video and I'd go over to his house and we'd watch it and crack up just watching Buddy effortlessly win until Animal, indeed a sore loser, threw a drum onto Buddy's head to end the drum battle.

And the thing about this guest spot is that, yeah, it's a bit, but also you get to watch Buddy Rich tear it apart, and it is really fun to watch Buddy Rich play drums. This excerpt, of course, is on YouTube, and I've linked to it in the show notes. It's definitely worth a watch. For all of the wonderful music that arose from the Muppets' late 70s heyday, there is one more song, one song that I want to close on, one song that stands apart from all the others.

It debuted in 1979, arguably the peak of Muppet mania. In fact, it was the centerpiece song from 1979's The Muppet Movie. And even now, almost 50 years later, we're still singing it. Why are there so many songs about rainbows? And what's on the other side?

Rainbows are visions, but only illusions. And rainbows have nothing to hide. What better song to close out our Muppet-themed episode than Paul Williams, Kenneth Asher, and Kermit the Frog's ode to existential longing, Rainbow Connection.

Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.

Sung by Jim Henson as Kermit, with music by Kenneth Asher and lyrics by Paul Williams, The Rainbow Connection was written to be the scene-setting song for the Muppet movie, and it achieved that goal and then some. The movie opens with this song, with a drawn-out helicopter shot pulling in on Kermit's swamp, really taking its time until, at the start of the second verse, we see him sitting on a log with his banjo, playing lefty, because Kermit is a Southpaw,

And it's a low-key, lovely performance of this song. It shifts eventually into a duet between Kermit and his right-handed reflection in the water beneath him. Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection The lover, the dreamer, me Under its belt, we know that it's probably mad

This is such a classic song. I can't think of a better word for it. It follows such a classic chord progression. The melody is so perfectly placed and evocative. Even the key change is textbook. But there's also something unusual about it, something special and lasting that I think arises from the space between the comforting musical elements and the melancholy and somewhat ambiguous lyrics.

I've heard it too many times to ignore it It's something that I'm supposed to do Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection The lovers, the dreamer me

Let's start with those musical elements. Rainbow Connection is in the key of A major, or at least it starts in the key of A major, and it centers around a chord progression that's actually not that far away from the Ma-Na-Ma-Na chord progression, though it's a little less jazzy. It goes from I A major to VI minor, F sharp minor, to IV D, to V E, and then back to I.

Of course, it sounds fine on the piano, but it's a little unspecific. Rainbow Connection really only sounds like Rainbow Connection if you play it on a banjo. Fortunately for my extremely basic banjo chops, it turns out Rainbow Connection is pretty easy to learn on the banjo, and it's worth doing if you have a banjo, since the banjo chord voicings are actually pretty specific, especially on that D, on that IV chord.

This is a waltz, it's in 3/4 time, and this plucking pattern is pretty basic for a waltz. Just 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3. We've got the capo on the second fret, and we're only using the lower four strings on the banjo. Now we've only got four notes in every chord voicing, but each one sounds somewhat specific to the banjo, particularly the D major chord, which is coming right up. Here it comes.

That's a D add 9 over F sharp, which isn't really how you'd think of it if you were just playing the banjo part. You'd press down two fingers and pluck all four strings and be done with it, but that's what you'd be playing and it's a pretty distinct sound. The banjo lends this whole song a certain intimacy, which I've always found draws me in and makes me take the lyrics and the questions that they're asking more seriously.

Rainbow Connection is frequently described as an I want song, similar to Over the Rainbow or Part of Your World, How Far I'll Go, etc. But it's more metatextual than your average I want song since it's being sung by a cynic who at the start of the song can't bring himself to believe in the dreams that those sorts of songs are trying to sell him.

Thinking about it purely rationally, it doesn't make sense to him. Why are there so many songs about rainbows? Why are there so many songs about rainbows? And what's on the other side? Rainbows are visions, but only illusions. And rainbows have nothing to hide.

For a long time, I thought of Rainbow Connection as a pretty, but maybe kind of cheesy or simple song. I'd never really sat down with the lyrics, so I just thought it was a song about, I don't know, being connected to your friends or something. But it's actually a more ambiguous and interesting song than that, at least to me. And I should stress, this is all subjective and open to interpretation. But I thought it was a song that was really interesting.

But in my reading, it's really a song about the longing of the doubter and how even the most cynical among us might still dream of, well, of dreaming. So we've been told and some choose to believe it.

Rainbows are visions, he says. They're only illusions. Rainbows have nothing to hide. So we've been told, and some choose to believe it, I know they're wrong, wait and see. Someday we'll find it, he says, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me. And I find that final, very famous framing to be important. The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

The speaker sets himself apart from the dreamers and from the lovers, even though you can tell he longs to find some sort of connection with them. Who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on the morning star?

That first verse, of course, a riff on that most famous of I Want songs, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg's Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz. The second verse, which you just heard part of, takes on a similarly famous song, Lee Harleen and Ned Washington's When You Wish Upon a Star, or at least that's how I hear it. It's worth mentioning that Over the Rainbow also has a bit about Wishing Upon a Star. But yeah, this sounds like a second reference to me, though it's asking similar questions about the premise.

Who says that every wish must be heard and answered when wished on a morning star? Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it, and look what it's done so far. Even with his doubts, the speaker can't help but acknowledge the power of these kinds of big dreams. What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing? And what do we

Just to call out a couple of nice musical touches here. First of all, this string section sounds like a million dollars. There's just nothing like that tape-saturated 1970s studio string section sound. It's impossible to separate the sound from the nostalgia it makes me feel, but I love it a lot.

Secondly, the melody of this whole song is really strong. It moves logically through the chord progression, leaning mostly on chord tones, but then carrying over suspended notes from previous chords at just the right moments. It moves in a way that seems effortless, even though it's far from effortless to write a melody this good. And then in the third phrase, when the melody changes and begins bouncing back and forth between two notes...

What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing? That feels to me like an intentional Harold Arlen reference. One day I'll wish upon a star.

In a lot of ways, this song is an inversion of Over the Rainbow, and I love how, at that moment, it even inverts the melody. The lovers, the dreamers, me.

So after the second time through, the song undergoes a real all-timer of a key change. Only man

The transition moves through a familiar chord progression that's come up a few times on Strong Songs in the past, what I think of as the Grand Staircase Descent, with the bass moving down the major scale from the I down almost an entire octave. We go from the I chord A to E over G sharp to F sharp minor to A over E to D to

to C sharp minor. So the bass was really just moving down an A major scale there. A, G sharp, F sharp, E, D, C sharp. And from there, we go to an E sus chord and then up a half step to an F chord, resolving to the new key of B flat, which is up a half step from where we started.

And of course, this is a transformative moment not just for the song's key, but also for the singer who finds solidarity at last. He starts singing about us collectively. All of us under its spell. All of us, we know that it's probably magic. And on that word... Oh, that it's probably magic. You've been half asleep and half...

I love the doubling on the vocal there as Kermit sings to his own reflection. I've heard them calling my name. This is the sweet sound that calls the young sailor. The voice might be one and the same.

In this moment, in this new key, the singer decides to accept that something out there awaits him. He's heard it too many times to ignore it. It's time to go and see what it is. And that's where the song leaves him, on an ambiguous but hopeful note. Someday we'll find it, he sings. We haven't found it yet, but someday, maybe, we will. ♪

And that's the beauty of this song, and more broadly, the beauty of so much of the music made by the many singers and songwriters enlisted by Jim Henson and his collaborators to make Muppet music over the years. There was always this certain philosophy behind it all, and a certain sophistication that belied the fact that this music was ostensibly written for children. Or...

Actually, no, that's not it. This music was written for children in an explicit way that acknowledges what sophisticated listeners children can be. They have a capacity for emotional understanding that is in some ways more open and available than we have as adults. And that's why these characters and the songs that they sing enchanted so many of us when we were kids and still cast a spell on us today. ♪

The many, many talented people who brought the Muppets to life understood that no matter how fast asleep we've been, we still hear voices calling our names. They understood that whatever our age, whatever our background, whatever it might be that makes us lonely, that cuts us off or makes us stop believing, we all want to find that connection. And one day, if we keep looking, we will. Lovers and dreamers, every one of us.

I've heard it too many times to ignore it. It's something that I'm supposed to do. Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers. The dreamers.

And that'll do it for Strong Songs' Big Muppet Adventure. I had so much fun making this episode, and I hope that you enjoyed it. I know there's a ton of Muppet and Muppet-adjacent music that I wasn't able to get to, but I also think I cut a pretty good cross-section of that musical world, and I really just had a great time digging into some of these songs.

Thank you all so much for listening to the show. I hope you're enjoying season seven as much as I've been enjoying making it. And a reminder that this whole thing is listener supported, which means that I really do rely on some percentage of you to hop onto the Patreon and pitch in. You get episodes two weeks early if you do so, but the show is and will always remain free for everyone.

That's always been really important to me. And I love that we live in a world where I can make a show like that without compromising and just put it out there for everyone with no ads or sponsors or anything. So yeah, patreon.com slash strong songs, sign up and let's keep this thing going because I at least am having a great time.

Of course, you can leave a review for the show on your podcast app of choice. You can tell a friend about the show. You can make a one-time donation with the link in the show notes. You can visit the Redesign store and order some merch, or you can just keep listening. Honestly, I just appreciate your time and attention.

All right. Strong Songs is recorded at the Caldera in Portland, Oregon, with production and web support from Emily Williams. Our show art is by the great Tom DJ. For a list of all the tools and software I used to make this show, check out the link in the show notes, where you'll also find social media links, my newsletter, the Strong Songs Discord, and a bunch of other good stuff. That'll do it for now. I'll see you in two weeks. Until then, take care and keep listening. ♪

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