Joe Raposo
Encyclopedia
Joseph Guilherme Raposo, OIH (February 8, 1937 – February 5, 1989) was a Portuguese
-American
composer
, songwriter
, pianist
, television
writer
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
" and "C is for Cookie
". 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 the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
such as Halloween Is Grinch Night
, Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
and The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat
.
, the only child of Portuguese
immigrant parents Joseph Soares Raposo and Maria da Ascenção Vitorino Raposo. He was a graduate of Harvard College
, class of 1958, where he was well known for writing the scores for several Hasty Pudding shows
.
Raposo worked in musical theater both before and after his work for The Children's Television Workshop
and Sesame Street
; musical theater was where he first encountered future collaborator Jim Henson
. According to Jonathan Schwartz, during the mid-1960s, before Sesame Street, Raposo performed side music in piano
bars in Boston to make ends meet, and also served as pianist and music director
for a jazz
trio
working at WNAC
Channel 7, Boston. Upon hearing Raposo's musical skill, Schwartz claims in his autobiography he urged Raposo to give up piano bar playing in Boston and "take his ass to New York". Raposo's decision to take Schwartz's suggestion and move to New York in 1965 eventually led him to his fated meeting with Henson, to Sesame Street, and towards international fame.
Raposo was the musical supervisor and arranger for the original off-Broadway run of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
, and contributed additional music to that play. He was also responsible for the memorable theme music
for New York City
television station
WABC-TV
's The 4:30 Movie
; the piece, called "Moving Pictures," was also used for the station's other movie shows, and subsequently by ABC
's other owned-and-operated station
s.
" – various versions of which have opened every episode – as well as many of its most popular songs, such as "Bein' Green
", "C is for Cookie
" and "ABC-DEF-GHI". Most of the music used in Sesame Streets film segments was also written – and often sung – by Raposo.
Aside from his musical contributions, Raposo performed several uncredited stock characters on Sesame Street during the early 1970s. According to his son Nicholas in a 2002 telephone conversation, Joe Raposo usually chose to portray anonymous, silly characters in these segments, which were nearly always produced on 16 mm film
. He also did voice-overs for a few animated segments.
The Sesame Street character Don Music
maintained a framed and autograph
ed glamour photograph
of Raposo on the wall of his Muppet atelier.
Raposo was very fond of sweets according to many who knew him. One favorite food of his was cookies. It has been rumored the Wheel-Eating Monster created for commercial advertisers in the Sixties by Jim Henson may have been altered by Henson specifically into a "cookie" monster after Henson observed Raposo's unusual propensity for cookies; this has never been substantiated. Raposo was actually the first puppeteer to operate the Cookie Monster on television for Sesame Street. His widow
Pat Collins-Sarnoff celebrated his life with a milk and cookies reception.
He also did work on the movie Close Encounters Of the Third Kind. The song "The Square Song" was composed by Joe himself.
Raposo performed joke characters for film segments on The Electric Company similar in style to what he had done on Sesame Street. One segment showed him attempting to get dressed in jacket and necktie against a white wall under the word "dressing", until the prefix "un-" appears and attaches itself to the prior word, forcing him to engage in a mock striptease
which ends with him modestly hopping off-screen and tossing the remainder of his clothing into an empty chair left on-screen. In a variation of this film, he is shown packing a suitcase when the "un-" prefix returns and pesters him using the behavior of a meddling fly
until, exasperated, Raposo strikes the word with a hammer, knocking it unconscious into the suitcase, which he then triumphantly slams shut with a smirk.
Raposo enjoyed doing animation voicework. Other forays of his into the craft included both the tenor
singing role of "master pickler" Gil Gickler in DePatie-Freleng's Dr. Seuss cartoon program Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
and Gickler's spoken dialogue
. Raposo also performed at least three other character voices in the cartoon, including a Groogen musician whose "flugel
bugle
" is destroyed by Pontoffel in an attack flyover, as the ancient Senior Fairy above McGillicuddy who oversees the fairy squadron
's worldwide search for the missing Pock and his piano, and as an angry Groogen dairywoman spilt milk upon by a too-close fly-by of Pontoffel's.
The HBO animated adaptation of Madeline
, for which Raposo composed the music and songs (with writer/lyricist Judy Rothman
), aired four months after Raposo's death; the cartoon The Smoggies, for which Raposo wrote the theme song, premiered in Canada.
musical
composer.
In 1962, he set Eric Bentley
's English-language translation of song texts and poems in Bertolt Brecht
's play A Man's a Man at the Loeb Drama Center (in Cambridge, Massachusetts
) and the Masque Theatre (New York City
). Portions of the production were subsequently shown on CBS-TV, and the entire production (dialogue, songs, and all) was recorded and released on the Spoken Arts label as Spoken Arts SA 870 (1974).
In the 1970s, Raposo wrote original music for the animated film Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
; he later teamed with William Gibson
(The Miracle Worker
) to create a stage musical about Raggedy Ann. The musical was the first theatre company production from the United States to perform in the Soviet Union upon resumption of cultural relations between the two countries. It later had a brief run on Broadway in 1986.
Raposo also collaborated with Sheldon Harnick
(Fiddler on the Roof
) on a musical adaptation of the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life
. A Wonderful Life
was first performed at the University of Michigan
in 1986, and had a successful run at Washington, DC's Arena Stage
in 1991. It was performed in concert on Broadway for one night only on December 12, 2005; the production starred Brian Stokes Mitchell
, David Hyde Pierce
, and Judy Kuhn
.
During his career Raposo composed themes for several sitcoms, such as Ivan The Terrible
, Three's Company
and Foot In The Door, and composed for documentaries, most notably Peter Rosen's production America Is for which Raposo not only scored a patriotic, critically well-received title theme but, unusually, served as its on-screen narrator
.
. "The Alligator Song", which Raposo composed for 1970s-era Sesame Street
, was Raposo's sound-effects-laden musical homage
to Jones. Raposo also composed numerous other works influenced by Jones for Sesame Street, many featuring kazoo
and other comical sound-effect objects and instruments like siren whiistles, bulb horns, and tenor banjos. Another Raposo composition, "Doggy Paddle", features Raposo barking like several singing dogs during its instrumental verse, a blatant musical homage to the singing and barking dogs of "Memories Are Made Of This" by Jones and His City Slickers.
Raposo's songwriting tended towards wistful introspections on life and nature
. Primarily celebrated for his bright, uptempo major key compositions, he also showed skill at arranging original blues
and jazz
pieces in minor key, and often took sudden melancholy lyrical detours in the midst of otherwise cheerful songs.
Unlike his children's television scoring contemporaries, Raposo exhibited an uncommonly broad grasp of compositional styles. Raposo was classically trained as a conductor and at the Ecole Normale in Paris
as an arranger. As a student of Nadia Boulanger
in Paris, he extended his facility in piano technique. This classical background gave him the ability to engage different music genres authentically. So diverse were the genres he regularly frequented, that often the only identifying mark of his songs as "Raposo" were common lyric allusions to "sunny days" or "flying", or his signature use of piccolo
and glockenspiel
atop the melodic or contrapuntal
line, as well as the prominent uses of guitar
in the rhythmic line.
Most overtly, however, Joe Raposo's sonic trademark
was his seemingly obsessive, and often exhaustively authentic, live replication of the tonal quality and exact playback cadence
of the 20th-century self-operating player piano
when composing for and performing on a grand, baby grand or upright piano. He appears to have specifically tuned his Children's Television Workshop pianos not only to blatantly mimic the player piano in its antique tonality, but to achieve and then maintain what became a signature ragtime
tack or "saloon" piano sound by them.
Raposo's considerable stylistic ambition during his tenure as music director lent Sesame Street its trademark extreme musical diversity. For The Electric Company, particularly for songs he composed for The Short Circus, he led CTW to "pop record" production values and generally strongly enforced an adult musical sophistication for all content he supervised. Given an unusual creative freedom in the Music Department at 1970s CTW, Raposo toggled from convincing country ballads (e.g. The Ballad of Casey MacPhee, depicting Cookie Monster as a heroic train engineer caught in a mountain avalanche) and authentic hillbilly ("It's A Long Hard Climb, But I'm Gonna Get There" and "The P Song," among others) to blues
elegies of considerable emotional and tonal complexity, like "New Life Coming" and "Bein' Green".
Raposo also evidenced skill as an American
funk
composer, making frequent and arguably credible musical allusions (on 1970-1974 Sesame Street) to the underground black soul
and funk performers of his day. Themes written for muppet Roosevelt Franklin
and the segment H exhibit some of Raposo's most convincing soul and funk composition and arrangement
; the former contains clear allusions to The Philly Four and Lee Dorsey
while the latter attempts coupling a convincing African-American Seventies funk bassline to the cycling musical structure of a Europe
an round
, all while still somehow retaining his signature high end accents along the upper melodic ramparts of the composition. Raposo also made several stylistic allusions to jazz-funk organist Louis Chachere in compositions Fat, Cat, Sat and Some, All, None, and on both selections played the Hammond B-3 like Chachere, but using its leslies as a comedic device as would have Raposo's idol, Spike Jones
.
Vocally, Joe Raposo was a tenor
, possessing an unusually warm, buttery attack and an easily identifiable, very stable, mellow trademark vibrato
.
, Tom Lehrer
, WNYC
radio
personality Jonathan Schwartz
, and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Bert Salzman.
Sinatra recorded four of Raposo's songs on his 1973 album, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back
. Sinatra insisted the album be composed entirely of Raposo's compositions, but the record label balked and prevailed over Sinatra, limiting him to four. Jonathan Schwartz reports that Sinatra idolized and popularized Raposo and his music, frequently attending Raposo's parties at his and first wife Susan's New York
apartment during the 1960s with glamorous friends and several cronies, including Leo Durocher
. Schwartz's memoir adds that Sinatra was infatuated with Raposo's piano-playing skill and commonly referred to him to others, characteristically, as "Raposo at the piano", or "the genius".
Schwartz characterized Raposo as "a Harvard man," "a heavy, round-faced guy with wide-open brown eyes, puffy cheeks and jowls, and appetites more numerous than stars in a desert sky. He was carnivorous, anecdotal, hyperbolic, ambitious. He was Portuguese through and through and ingeniously musical, classically trained. He played the piano in a popular mode as well as anyone I had ever heard. He was simply a wunderkind in his twenties."
of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, just three days shy of his 52nd birthday. He was survived by two sons, Joseph and Nicholas, from his first marriage and son, Andrew, and daughter, Liz, from his marriage to Pat Collins-Sarnoff
.
In 1998, many of his manuscripts were donated by his widow, Pat Collins-Sarnoff, to Georgetown University Library.
His grave is located at Union Cemetery in Chatham, Massachusetts
.
Raposo was eulogized in the April 1990 documentary Sing! Sesame Street Remembers Joe Raposo and His Music, which was hosted and directed by Sesame Street crew member Jon Stone
.
Raposo died exactly one week after the first episode of the final children's series he composed for, Shining Time Station
, aired. When Jim Henson
died, Sing! Sesame Street Remembers Joe Raposo and His Music was re-aired on PBS.
Television - Musical Director and/or Composer/Lyricist/Producer
Theme Songs - Composer or Composer/Lyricist
Lecturer
, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song in 1981, losing to "Arthur's Theme" from the film Arthur.
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
, pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and lyricist
Lyricist
A lyricist is a songwriter who specializes in lyrics. A singer who writes the lyrics to songs is a singer-lyricist. This differentiates from a singer-composer, who composes the song's melody.-Collaboration:...
, best known for his work on the children's television series
Children's television series
Children's television series, are commercial television programs designed for, and marketed to children, normally scheduled for broadcast during the morning and afternoon when children are awake. They can sometimes run in the early evening, for the children that go to school...
Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
, for which he wrote the theme song
Sesame Street Theme
"Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?" is the theme song of the children's television series Sesame Street.-Overview:The Sesame Street theme song was composed by Joe Raposo, a writer and composer of many of television show's songs. In his book on the history of Sesame Street, Michael Davis...
, as well as classic songs such as "Bein' Green
Bein' Green
"Bein' Green" is a popular song written by Joe Raposo in 1970 for the first season of the children's television program Sesame Street. It was originally performed by Kermit the Frog ....
" and "C is for Cookie
C is for Cookie
"C Is For Cookie", by Joe Raposo, is a song performed by Cookie Monster, a muppet character from the television series Sesame Street. It was first performed on the show on March 28, 1972, although it had been released on record a year previously, on The Muppet Alphabet Album...
". He also wrote music for television shows such as The Electric Company, Shining Time Station
Shining Time Station
Shining Time Station is an American children's television series co-created by Britt Allcroft and Rick Siggelkow. The series was produced by The Britt Allcroft Company and Quality Family Entertainment in New York for New York City PBS Station WNET, and was filmed first in New York and then in Toronto...
and the sitcoms Three's Company
Three's Company
Three's Company is an American sitcom that aired from March 15, 1977, to September 18, 1984, on ABC. It is based on the British sitcom, Man About the House....
and The Ropers
The Ropers
The Ropers is an American sitcom that ran from March 13, 1979 to May 22, 1980 on ABC. The series is a spinoff of Three's Company and based on the British sitcom George and Mildred...
, including their theme songs. In addition to these works, Raposo also composed extensively for the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises was a Hollywood-based animation production company, active from 1963 to 1981. They produced theatrical cartoons, animated series, commercials, title sequences and television specials. Notable among these is The Pink Panther film titles and cartoon shorts and the Dr....
such as Halloween Is Grinch Night
Halloween is Grinch Night
Halloween Is Grinch Night is a 1977 25-minute TV special and prequel to How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. It won the 1977 Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. It premiered on ABC on October 29, 1977...
, Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? is an animated musical television special written by Dr. Seuss, directed by Gerard Baldwin, produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and first aired on ABC on May 2, 1980...
and The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat
The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat
The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat is an animated musical television special and crossover starring two of Dr. Seuss' famous characters, The Grinch and The Cat in the Hat. It premiered on May 20, 1982 on ABC and won two Emmys.-Plot:...
.
Early life and career
Raposo was born in Fall River, MassachusettsFall River, Massachusetts
Fall River is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, in the United States. It is located about south of Boston, southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, and west of New Bedford and south of Taunton. The city's population was 88,857 during the 2010 census, making it the tenth largest city in...
, the only child of Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
immigrant parents Joseph Soares Raposo and Maria da Ascenção Vitorino Raposo. He was a graduate of Harvard College
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, class of 1958, where he was well known for writing the scores for several Hasty Pudding shows
Hasty Pudding Theatricals
The Hasty Pudding Theatricals, known informally simply as The Pudding, is a theatrical student society at Harvard University, known for its burlesque musicals and for its status as the oldest collegiate theatrical organization in the United States...
.
Raposo worked in musical theater both before and after his work for The Children's Television Workshop
Sesame Workshop
Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop , is a Worldwide American non-profit organization behind the production of several educational children's programs that have run on public broadcasting around the world...
and Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
; musical theater was where he first encountered future collaborator Jim Henson
Jim Henson
James Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...
. According to Jonathan Schwartz, during the mid-1960s, before Sesame Street, Raposo performed side music in piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
bars in Boston to make ends meet, and also served as pianist and music director
Music director
A music director may be the director of an orchestra, the director of music for a film, the director of music at a radio station, the head of the music department in a school, the co-ordinator of the musical ensembles in a university or college , the head bandmaster of a military band, the head...
for a jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
trio
Trio (music)
Trio is generally used in any of the following ways:* A group of three musicians playing the same or different musical instrument.* The performance of a piece of music by three people.* The contrasting section of a piece in ternary form...
working at WNAC
WHDH-TV
WHDH, digital channel 42 , is an NBC-affiliated television station in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest NBC station not owned by the network. Owned by Sunbeam Television, WHDH is a sister station to CW affiliate WLVI...
Channel 7, Boston. Upon hearing Raposo's musical skill, Schwartz claims in his autobiography he urged Raposo to give up piano bar playing in Boston and "take his ass to New York". Raposo's decision to take Schwartz's suggestion and move to New York in 1965 eventually led him to his fated meeting with Henson, to Sesame Street, and towards international fame.
Raposo was the musical supervisor and arranger for the original off-Broadway run of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a 1967 musical comedy with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz in his comic strip Peanuts...
, and contributed additional music to that play. He was also responsible for the memorable theme music
Theme music
Theme music is a piece that is often written specifically for a radio program, television program, video game or movie, and usually played during the title sequence and/or end credits...
for New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
television station
Television station
A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...
WABC-TV
WABC-TV
WABC-TV, channel 7, is the flagship station of the Disney-owned American Broadcasting Company located in New York City. The station's studios and offices are located on the Upper West Side section of Manhattan, adjacent to ABC's corporate headquarters, and its transmitter is atop the Empire State...
's The 4:30 Movie
The 4:30 Movie
The 4:30 Movie was a television program that aired weekday afternoons on WABC-TV in New York from 1968 to 1981. The program was mainly known for individual theme weeks devoted to theatrical feature films or made-for-TV movies starring a certain actor or actress, or to a particular genre, or to...
; the piece, called "Moving Pictures," was also used for the station's other movie shows, and subsequently by ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's other owned-and-operated station
Owned-and-operated station
In the broadcasting industry , an owned-and-operated station usually refers to a television station or radio station that is owned by the network with which it is associated...
s.
Sesame Street
Raposo is best known for the songs he wrote for Sesame Street from its beginning in 1969 through the mid-1970s, and also for a time in the 1980s. He wrote the "Sesame Street ThemeSesame Street Theme
"Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?" is the theme song of the children's television series Sesame Street.-Overview:The Sesame Street theme song was composed by Joe Raposo, a writer and composer of many of television show's songs. In his book on the history of Sesame Street, Michael Davis...
" – various versions of which have opened every episode – as well as many of its most popular songs, such as "Bein' Green
Bein' Green
"Bein' Green" is a popular song written by Joe Raposo in 1970 for the first season of the children's television program Sesame Street. It was originally performed by Kermit the Frog ....
", "C is for Cookie
C is for Cookie
"C Is For Cookie", by Joe Raposo, is a song performed by Cookie Monster, a muppet character from the television series Sesame Street. It was first performed on the show on March 28, 1972, although it had been released on record a year previously, on The Muppet Alphabet Album...
" and "ABC-DEF-GHI". Most of the music used in Sesame Streets film segments was also written – and often sung – by Raposo.
Aside from his musical contributions, Raposo performed several uncredited stock characters on Sesame Street during the early 1970s. According to his son Nicholas in a 2002 telephone conversation, Joe Raposo usually chose to portray anonymous, silly characters in these segments, which were nearly always produced on 16 mm film
16 mm film
16 mm film refers to a popular, economical gauge of film used for motion pictures and non-theatrical film making. 16 mm refers to the width of the film...
. He also did voice-overs for a few animated segments.
The Sesame Street character Don Music
Don Music
Composer Don Music was a Muppet character on the children's television show Sesame Street. He was performed and voiced by Richard Hunt.The typically amusing sketch would have him become frustrated by his inability to think of the final line to well known songs such as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"...
maintained a framed and autograph
Autograph
An autograph is a document transcribed entirely in the handwriting of its author, as opposed to a typeset document or one written by an amanuensis or a copyist; the meaning overlaps with that of the word holograph.Autograph also refers to a person's artistic signature...
ed glamour photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
of Raposo on the wall of his Muppet atelier.
Raposo was very fond of sweets according to many who knew him. One favorite food of his was cookies. It has been rumored the Wheel-Eating Monster created for commercial advertisers in the Sixties by Jim Henson may have been altered by Henson specifically into a "cookie" monster after Henson observed Raposo's unusual propensity for cookies; this has never been substantiated. Raposo was actually the first puppeteer to operate the Cookie Monster on television for Sesame Street. His widow
Widow
A widow is a woman whose spouse has died, while a widower is a man whose spouse has died. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or occasionally viduity. The adjective form is widowed...
Pat Collins-Sarnoff celebrated his life with a milk and cookies reception.
He also did work on the movie Close Encounters Of the Third Kind. The song "The Square Song" was composed by Joe himself.
Other work in children's television
In 1971, Children's Television Workshop created the show The Electric Company, meant to help teach reading to children who had outgrown Sesame Street. Raposo served as the musical director of the show for its first three seasons, and contributed songs throughout the show's run, until 1977.Raposo performed joke characters for film segments on The Electric Company similar in style to what he had done on Sesame Street. One segment showed him attempting to get dressed in jacket and necktie against a white wall under the word "dressing", until the prefix "un-" appears and attaches itself to the prior word, forcing him to engage in a mock striptease
Striptease
A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...
which ends with him modestly hopping off-screen and tossing the remainder of his clothing into an empty chair left on-screen. In a variation of this film, he is shown packing a suitcase when the "un-" prefix returns and pesters him using the behavior of a meddling fly
Fly
True flies are insects of the order Diptera . They possess a pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax...
until, exasperated, Raposo strikes the word with a hammer, knocking it unconscious into the suitcase, which he then triumphantly slams shut with a smirk.
Raposo enjoyed doing animation voicework. Other forays of his into the craft included both the tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
singing role of "master pickler" Gil Gickler in DePatie-Freleng's Dr. Seuss cartoon program Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? is an animated musical television special written by Dr. Seuss, directed by Gerard Baldwin, produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and first aired on ABC on May 2, 1980...
and Gickler's spoken dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
. Raposo also performed at least three other character voices in the cartoon, including a Groogen musician whose "flugel
Flugelhorn
The flugelhorn is a brass instrument resembling a trumpet but with a wider, conical bore. Some consider it to be a member of the saxhorn family developed by Adolphe Sax ; however, other historians assert that it derives from the valve bugle designed by Michael Saurle , Munich 1832 , thus...
bugle
Bugle (instrument)
The bugle is one of the simplest brass instruments, having no valves or other pitch-altering devices. All pitch control is done by varying the player's embouchure, since the bugle has no other mechanism for controlling pitch. Consequently, the bugle is limited to notes within the harmonic series...
" is destroyed by Pontoffel in an attack flyover, as the ancient Senior Fairy above McGillicuddy who oversees the fairy squadron
Squadron (aviation)
A squadron in air force, army aviation or naval aviation is mainly a unit comprising a number of military aircraft, usually of the same type, typically with 12 to 24 aircraft, sometimes divided into three or four flights, depending on aircraft type and air force...
's worldwide search for the missing Pock and his piano, and as an angry Groogen dairywoman spilt milk upon by a too-close fly-by of Pontoffel's.
The HBO animated adaptation of Madeline
Madeline
Madeline is a children's book series written by Ludwig Bemelmans, an Austrian author. The books have been adapted into numerous formats, spawning telefilms, television series and a live action feature film...
, for which Raposo composed the music and songs (with writer/lyricist Judy Rothman
Judy Rothman
Judith Rothman Rofé is an American screenwriter and lyricist specializing in comedy and literary adaptations for children. She won the 2002 Emmy for Best Animated Program for Madeline , for which she was writer, lyricist, story editor and supervising producer on over 70 episodes...
), aired four months after Raposo's death; the cartoon The Smoggies, for which Raposo wrote the theme song, premiered in Canada.
Film, stage and other television work
Although primarily known for work in live-action and animated children's television, Joe Raposo actually aspired to become a BroadwayBroadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
composer.
In 1962, he set Eric Bentley
Eric Bentley
Eric Bentley is a critic, playwright, singer, editor and translator. He became an American citizen in 1948, and currently lives in New York City...
's English-language translation of song texts and poems in Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's play A Man's a Man at the Loeb Drama Center (in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
) and the Masque Theatre (New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
). Portions of the production were subsequently shown on CBS-TV, and the entire production (dialogue, songs, and all) was recorded and released on the Spoken Arts label as Spoken Arts SA 870 (1974).
In the 1970s, Raposo wrote original music for the animated film Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure is a 1977 American animated film directed by Richard Williams. It was produced by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, and released by 20th Century Fox...
; he later teamed with William Gibson
William Gibson (playwright)
William Gibson was an American playwright and novelist. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1938.He was of Irish, French, German, Dutch and Russian ancestry...
(The Miracle Worker
The Miracle Worker
The Miracle Worker is a cycle of 20th century dramatic works derived from Helen Keller's autobiography The Story of My Life. Each of the various dramas describes the relationship between Keller—a deafblind and initially almost feral child—and Anne Sullivan, the teacher who introduced her to...
) to create a stage musical about Raggedy Ann. The musical was the first theatre company production from the United States to perform in the Soviet Union upon resumption of cultural relations between the two countries. It later had a brief run on Broadway in 1986.
Raposo also collaborated with Sheldon Harnick
Sheldon Harnick
Sheldon Harnick is an American lyricist best known for his collaborations with composer Jerry Bock on hit musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof....
(Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in Tsarist Russia in 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem...
) on a musical adaptation of the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
. A Wonderful Life
A Wonderful Life (musical)
A Wonderful Life is a musical with a book and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and music by Joe Raposo.Based on the classic Frank Capra film starring James Stewart, the story closely follows the original plot, set in 1945, telling the story of a suicidal man whose guardian angel reveals to him how...
was first performed at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in 1986, and had a successful run at Washington, DC's Arena Stage
Arena Stage
Arena Stage is a not-for-profit regional theater based in Southwest Washington, D.C. Its declared mission"is to produce huge plays of all that is passionate, exuberant, profound, deep and dangerous in the American spirit. Arena has broad shoulders and a capacity to produce anything from vast epics...
in 1991. It was performed in concert on Broadway for one night only on December 12, 2005; the production starred Brian Stokes Mitchell
Brian Stokes Mitchell
Brian Stokes Mitchell is an American stage, film and television actor. A powerful baritone, he has been one of the central leading men of the Broadway theatre since the early 1990s...
, David Hyde Pierce
David Hyde Pierce
David Hyde Pierce is an American actor and comedian best known for playing psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier, for which he received many accolades including four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.-Early life:Pierce, the youngest of four siblings,...
, and Judy Kuhn
Judy Kuhn
-Life and career:Kuhn was born in New York City and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C.She entered Oberlin College in 1976. Although she was very interested in singing and theater, she began Oberlin in the College, not the Conservatory. After taking...
.
During his career Raposo composed themes for several sitcoms, such as Ivan The Terrible
Ivan the Terrible (TV series)
Ivan the Terrible was an American sitcom that aired on CBS for five episodes during 1976.The short-lived series parodied American attitudes toward the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War...
, Three's Company
Three's Company
Three's Company is an American sitcom that aired from March 15, 1977, to September 18, 1984, on ABC. It is based on the British sitcom, Man About the House....
and Foot In The Door, and composed for documentaries, most notably Peter Rosen's production America Is for which Raposo not only scored a patriotic, critically well-received title theme but, unusually, served as its on-screen narrator
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
.
Musical style and influences
Raposo was an ardent fan of satirical composer and balladeer Spike JonesSpike Jones
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's "Clink! Clink! Another Drink"...
. "The Alligator Song", which Raposo composed for 1970s-era Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
, was Raposo's sound-effects-laden musical homage
Homage
Homage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....
to Jones. Raposo also composed numerous other works influenced by Jones for Sesame Street, many featuring kazoo
Kazoo
The kazoo is a wind instrument which adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. The kazoo is a type of mirliton, which is a membranophone, a device which modifies the sound of a person's voice by way of a vibrating membrane."Kazoo" was the name given by...
and other comical sound-effect objects and instruments like siren whiistles, bulb horns, and tenor banjos. Another Raposo composition, "Doggy Paddle", features Raposo barking like several singing dogs during its instrumental verse, a blatant musical homage to the singing and barking dogs of "Memories Are Made Of This" by Jones and His City Slickers.
Raposo's songwriting tended towards wistful introspections on life and nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
. Primarily celebrated for his bright, uptempo major key compositions, he also showed skill at arranging original blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
pieces in minor key, and often took sudden melancholy lyrical detours in the midst of otherwise cheerful songs.
Unlike his children's television scoring contemporaries, Raposo exhibited an uncommonly broad grasp of compositional styles. Raposo was classically trained as a conductor and at the Ecole Normale in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
as an arranger. As a student of Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
in Paris, he extended his facility in piano technique. This classical background gave him the ability to engage different music genres authentically. So diverse were the genres he regularly frequented, that often the only identifying mark of his songs as "Raposo" were common lyric allusions to "sunny days" or "flying", or his signature use of piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
and glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
atop the melodic or contrapuntal
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
line, as well as the prominent uses of guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
in the rhythmic line.
Most overtly, however, Joe Raposo's sonic trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
was his seemingly obsessive, and often exhaustively authentic, live replication of the tonal quality and exact playback cadence
Cadence
Cadence may refer to:Music:*Cadence , a melodic configuration the end of a phrase, section, or piece of music*Cadence Magazine, a monthly review of jazz, blues and improvised music...
of the 20th-century self-operating player piano
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
when composing for and performing on a grand, baby grand or upright piano. He appears to have specifically tuned his Children's Television Workshop pianos not only to blatantly mimic the player piano in its antique tonality, but to achieve and then maintain what became a signature ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
tack or "saloon" piano sound by them.
Raposo's considerable stylistic ambition during his tenure as music director lent Sesame Street its trademark extreme musical diversity. For The Electric Company, particularly for songs he composed for The Short Circus, he led CTW to "pop record" production values and generally strongly enforced an adult musical sophistication for all content he supervised. Given an unusual creative freedom in the Music Department at 1970s CTW, Raposo toggled from convincing country ballads (e.g. The Ballad of Casey MacPhee, depicting Cookie Monster as a heroic train engineer caught in a mountain avalanche) and authentic hillbilly ("It's A Long Hard Climb, But I'm Gonna Get There" and "The P Song," among others) to blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
elegies of considerable emotional and tonal complexity, like "New Life Coming" and "Bein' Green".
Raposo also evidenced skill as an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
composer, making frequent and arguably credible musical allusions (on 1970-1974 Sesame Street) to the underground black soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
and funk performers of his day. Themes written for muppet Roosevelt Franklin
Roosevelt Franklin
Roosevelt Franklin was a Muppet featured on the children's television series Sesame Street during the early 1970s. He is purple with shaggy black hair that stands on end. His name is word play on the name of US President Franklin Roosevelt...
and the segment H exhibit some of Raposo's most convincing soul and funk composition and arrangement
Arrangement
The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...
; the former contains clear allusions to The Philly Four and Lee Dorsey
Lee Dorsey
Lee Dorsey was an African American pop/R&B singer during the 1960s. Much of his work was produced by Allen Toussaint with instrumental backing provided by the Meters.-Career:...
while the latter attempts coupling a convincing African-American Seventies funk bassline to the cycling musical structure of a Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an round
Round
Round or rounds can mean:* The shape of a closed curve with no sharp corners, such as an ellipse, circle, rounded rectangle, or sphere* Roundness , the smoothness of clastic particles...
, all while still somehow retaining his signature high end accents along the upper melodic ramparts of the composition. Raposo also made several stylistic allusions to jazz-funk organist Louis Chachere in compositions Fat, Cat, Sat and Some, All, None, and on both selections played the Hammond B-3 like Chachere, but using its leslies as a comedic device as would have Raposo's idol, Spike Jones
Spike Jones
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's "Clink! Clink! Another Drink"...
.
Vocally, Joe Raposo was a tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
, possessing an unusually warm, buttery attack and an easily identifiable, very stable, mellow trademark vibrato
Vibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
.
Famous friends
Raposo was a close friend of Frank SinatraFrank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, mathematician and polymath. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater...
, WNYC
WNYC
WNYC is a set of call letters shared by a pair of co-owned, non-profit, public radio stations located in New York City.WNYC broadcasts on the AM band at 820 kHz, and WNYC-FM is at 93.9 MHz. Both stations are members of National Public Radio and carry distinct, but similar news/talk programs...
radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
personality Jonathan Schwartz
Jonathan Schwartz (radio)
Jonathan Schwartz is an American radio personality, known for his devotion to traditional pop music.Schwartz worked at New York's WNEW-FM from 1967 to 1976, followed by stints at WNEW-AM, WQEW, and currently WNYC-FM...
, and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Bert Salzman.
Sinatra recorded four of Raposo's songs on his 1973 album, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back
Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back
Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back is a 1973 album by the American singer Frank Sinatra.Sinatra returned from his brief retirement with the appropriately titled Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back...
. Sinatra insisted the album be composed entirely of Raposo's compositions, but the record label balked and prevailed over Sinatra, limiting him to four. Jonathan Schwartz reports that Sinatra idolized and popularized Raposo and his music, frequently attending Raposo's parties at his and first wife Susan's New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
apartment during the 1960s with glamorous friends and several cronies, including Leo Durocher
Leo Durocher
Leo Ernest Durocher , nicknamed Leo the Lip, was an American infielder and manager in Major League Baseball. Upon his retirement, he ranked fifth all-time among managers with 2,009 career victories, second only to John McGraw in National League history. Durocher still ranks tenth in career wins by...
. Schwartz's memoir adds that Sinatra was infatuated with Raposo's piano-playing skill and commonly referred to him to others, characteristically, as "Raposo at the piano", or "the genius".
Schwartz characterized Raposo as "a Harvard man," "a heavy, round-faced guy with wide-open brown eyes, puffy cheeks and jowls, and appetites more numerous than stars in a desert sky. He was carnivorous, anecdotal, hyperbolic, ambitious. He was Portuguese through and through and ingeniously musical, classically trained. He played the piano in a popular mode as well as anyone I had ever heard. He was simply a wunderkind in his twenties."
Death and family
At the age of 51, Raposo died in 1989 in Bronxville, New YorkBronxville, New York
Bronxville is an affluent village within the town of Eastchester, New York, in the United States. It is a suburb of New York City, located approximately north of midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County. At the 2010 census, Bronxville had a population of 6,323...
of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, just three days shy of his 52nd birthday. He was survived by two sons, Joseph and Nicholas, from his first marriage and son, Andrew, and daughter, Liz, from his marriage to Pat Collins-Sarnoff
Pat Collins (film critic)
Pat Collins is a film critic and three-time Emmy winner for WWOR-TV. Collins was an entertainment editor and film critic for Good Morning America, The CBS Morning News and from 1972-1977, hosted the Pat Collins Show which she won two Emmys on WCBS-TV....
.
In 1998, many of his manuscripts were donated by his widow, Pat Collins-Sarnoff, to Georgetown University Library.
His grave is located at Union Cemetery in Chatham, Massachusetts
Chatham, Massachusetts
Chatham is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, Barnstable County being coextensive with Cape Cod. The population was 6,625 at the 2000 census...
.
Raposo was eulogized in the April 1990 documentary Sing! Sesame Street Remembers Joe Raposo and His Music, which was hosted and directed by Sesame Street crew member Jon Stone
Jon Stone
Jon Stone is best known for writing and producing Sesame Street, and is credited with helping develop characters such as Big Bird, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch. He is regarded by many as one of the best children's television writers. He started working for children's programs in 1955...
.
Raposo died exactly one week after the first episode of the final children's series he composed for, Shining Time Station
Shining Time Station
Shining Time Station is an American children's television series co-created by Britt Allcroft and Rick Siggelkow. The series was produced by The Britt Allcroft Company and Quality Family Entertainment in New York for New York City PBS Station WNET, and was filmed first in New York and then in Toronto...
, aired. When Jim Henson
Jim Henson
James Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...
died, Sing! Sesame Street Remembers Joe Raposo and His Music was re-aired on PBS.
Credits and lectures
Film Scores - Composer- 1981 The Great Muppet Caper; 1978 Raggedy Ann; 1974 Big Mo; 1973 Savages; 1972 The Possession of Joel Delaney; 1971 The Frog Prince (TV movie); 1966 Steinbeck in Memoriam
Television - Musical Director and/or Composer/Lyricist/Producer
- 1969-1974, 1984-1989 Sesame Street; 1971-1974 The Electric Company; 1974-1979 Visions; 1967-1969 Metromedia Television
Theme Songs - Composer or Composer/Lyricist
- Sesame Street; The Electric Company; Three's Company; We'll Get By; The Ropers; Shining Time Station; Madeline; Steampipe Alley; The Dr. Fad Show; CBS Morning News Television Specials - Music Director/Composer
- America Is (CBS - Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program); Curious George; Pontoffel Pock (Dr. Seuss); Cabbage Patch Christmas Broadway & Off Broadway - Composer/Lyricist and/or Musical Director
- A Wonderful Life, with Sheldon Harnick; Raggedy Ann, with William Gibson; You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, incidental music with Charles Schulz and Clark Gesner; Half a Sixpence, with Tommy Steele; Play It Again, Sam, with Woody Allen; House of Flowers, incidental music with Harold Arlen and Truman Capote; The Mad Show, with David Steinberg and Linda Lavin; The Office, with Jerome Robbins
Lecturer
- MIT; Yale University; Harvard Graduate School of Education; New York University; SMU
Awards and nominations
Along with numerous Grammy and Emmy nods, his song "The First Time It Happens," from The Great Muppet CaperThe Great Muppet Caper
The Great Muppet Caper is a 1981 mystery comedy film directed by Jim Henson. It is the second of a series of live-action musical feature films, starring Jim Henson's Muppets. This film was produced by Henson Associates, ITC Entertainment and Universal Pictures, and premiered on 26 July 1981. The...
, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song in 1981, losing to "Arthur's Theme" from the film Arthur.
External links
- Joe Raposo at the Internet Broadway DatabaseInternet Broadway DatabaseThe Internet Broadway Database is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, a trade association for the North American commercial theatre community....