Tag: children’s music

Swingin’ on Sesame Street

by thedailyrecord, posted in Music history

sesamestreet220

As “Sesame Street” celebrates its 40th anniversary this week, The Daily Record examines five of the show’s greatest musical moments.

Johnny Cash – “Nasty Dan”

Twenty years after “Cry Cry Cry” appeared in jukeboxes, Johnny Cash was singing with Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street. “Nasty Dan” appears on the classic 1975 record “The Johnny Cash Children’s Album,” but Oscar is the perfect foil for the number. Cash enjoyed his fifth season spin on the Street so much, he returned to Jim Henson’s world of Muppets. In 1980, Cash hosted an episode of The Muppet Show. Cash was also the inspiration behind the 1990s Sesame Street character Ronnie Trash, who sang about the environment in Cash’s classic boom-chicka style.

The Fugees – “Just Happy To Be Me”

The Fugees immortal sophomore album “The Score” was one of the best-selling albums of the 1990s, but it wasn’t exactly kid-friendly material. Somehow, though, the divisive Elmo took a shine to the group and invited the trio to appear in his 1998 TV special. Although “Ready or Not” could have been adapted to a song about playing hide-and-seek, the Lauryn Hill, Pras Michel and Wyclef Jean opted to cover a newer song in the Sesame Street canon, “Just Happy To Be Me.” Jean has returned to the Street several times since, but Hill and Michel are perpetually M.I.A. This once prompted Snuffleupagus to hollar “Where Fugees at?”

Stevie Wonder – “1,2,3 Sesame Street”

Stevie Wonder between albums and at arguably at the peak of his career when he appeared on the Sesame Street in 1973. In a rare Sesame Street-Soul Train crossover moment, Wonder and his full band performed his recent hit “Superstition.” He then returned with the original number “1,2,3 Sesame Street,” starting a new talk box fad at kindergarteners across the country.

Itzhak Pearlman – Easy and Hard

This isn’t as much a song as a lesson with the greatest classical violinist of his generation. Itzhak Pearlman was no stranger to Sesame Street when he appeared in this 1981 clip. Polio is all but forgotten today, but the message on disabilities and talent still rings true.

Cab Calloway – “Mr. Hi De Ho Man”

Cab Calloway earned the nickname “The Hi De Ho Man” after his signature song, “Minnie the Moocher” became a hit in 1931. Half a century later, Calloway converted his handle to a greeting and performed on Sesame Street with the perpetually contradictive Two-Headed Monster. Calloway’s guest spot occurred during a late career resurgence. After spending almost a decade as a has-been, Calloway was back in the spotlight, thanks to his role in “The Blues Brothers” film. The movie was directed and co-written by John Landis, who was good friends with Muppeteer Frank Oz. Oz, who voiced Grover, Bert and Cookie Monster on Sesame Street and Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Yoda, appears as the guard who returns Joliet Jake’s belongings at the beginning of “The Blues Brothers.”

Ray Charles – “The Alphabet”

This bonus clip is from Ray Charles’ second stop on the Street in 1977. Although he’s just singing the alphabet, there are few artists who could make 26 letters swing so hard.

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Lanois + Raffi = Eno

by thedailyrecord, posted in Music history
(Above: Raffi was a staple of The Daily Record’s early childhood. The oft-spun LP remains in its archives.)

By Joel Francis
The Daily Record

Like many adolescent males in the mid-‘60s, Canadian Dan Lanois pined for a guitar. But he didn’t just want to make music, he wanted to record it, too.

Armed with an instrument and a cheap, tiny cassette recorder, Lanois and his brother Robert started recording anything they could find. They soon found manipulating the results was almost as fun as making and capturing the sounds. The siblings eventually invested in a four-track recorder and set up a small studio in the laundry room of their mother’s Ancaster, Ontario home.

The domestic facility was named MSR Studios, and the brothers advertised that for $60 they would not only record a band’s demo, but arrange, play on and compose the tracks as well. A short time after MSR Studios opened for business in the mid-‘70s, the Lanois brothers’ ad caught the eye of Egyptian immigrant Raffi Cavoukian.

Cavoukian was a veteran of Toronto’s folk circuit, but his 1975 album, “Good Luck Boy” generated little heat. Cavoukian’s mother-in-law encouraged him to write and record some songs for the children at her preschool. Aided by his wife, kindergarten teacher Debi Pike, Cavoukian recorded a tape that was so successful other schools started requesting copies.

MSR Studios was everything Cavoukian was looking for. Cheap, efficient and local it even came with its own musicians. In 1976, Cavoukian borrowed $4,000 from a bank recorded his first children’s album, “Singable Songs for the Very Young,” at the Lanois brother’s small home studio. Dan Lanois also played mandolin, recorded, mixed and engineered the album.

The easygoing, folk-flavored “Singable Songs for the Very Young” was a smash that ranked among top children’s album more than two decades after it was released.  Boosted by sessions with Cavoukian, by now going by simply Raffi, Doug McArthur, another Toronto folkie, and rock band Simply Saucer, the Lanois brothers soon had enough money to move their studio to better quarters. In 1978 they purchased a Hamilton, Ontario house on Grant Avenue, which became, naturally, Grant Avenue Studio.

Raffi was one of the first artists to use Grant Avenue Studio. By now he and Dan Lanois had collaborated on two albums and would go on to record two more together. Their body of work together comprised Raffi’s first four children’s albums. Grant Avenue also boasted sessions by singer/songwriter Ian Tyson and new wave band Martha and the Muffins.

The Muffins had just come off a commercially successful tour opening for Roxy Music, but they lost two members in the process. When the remaining quartet decided to carry on, one of the new musicians they recruited was bass player Jocelyne Lanois, sister of Dan and Robert. The Muffins got permission from Virgin to make an album with Dan Lanois with the stipulation that they operate on a miniscule budget. This was no obstacle for Lanois, and the resulting album “This is the Ice Age” generated a Top 40 Canadian single.

The band and album didn’t do much outside of the Great White North, however, and they were dropped by Virgin. The Muffin’s relationship with Lanois, however, flourished through two more albums. Their 1984 album, “Mystery Walk,” featured guest drummer Yogi Horton. Horton was a veteran of the 1981 experimental album “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” and was recommended by his boss during those sessions, Brian Eno.

Eno, of course, had cemented his legendary reputation with his work in Roxy Music and the solo albums he released in the first half of the 1970s, and his production work with Devo, David Bowie, Talking Heads and the “No New York” No Wave compliation in the second half of the decade. By the mid-‘80s, Eno and Lanois were longtime associates.

Lanois’ tape and recording manipulations first caught Eno’s attention in the late ‘70s. Although embroiled in producing the final chapter in Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy” and on albums with both the Talking Heads and their bandleader David Byrne, Eno and Lanois met at Grant Avenue to experiment with sound and recording. In 1979, Eno recorded “The Plateaux of Mirror,” the second installment in his ambient series, with Harold Budd at Grant Avenue. Although they did not produce the album, “Bob and Danny Lanois” are thanked in the album credits.

In 1982, Lanois co-produced and played some on the fourth installment of Eno’s ambient series, “On Land.” The following year, Lanois received cover billing for his musical and production contributions to the “Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks.” One of the album’s tracks, “Silver Morning,” was essentially a Lanois solo performance.

When U2 asked Eno to produce their fourth album, “The Unforgettable Fire,” in 1984 Eno brought Lanois with him. The next year, Eno recommended Lanois to Peter Gabriel to help with the “Birdy” soundtrack.

Ten years after opening MSR Studios in his mother’s laundry room, Lanois was an A-list producer. He and Gabriel collaborated on several landmark albums, including “So” and “Us.” Eno and Lanois also repeatedly re-teamed with U2 for “The Joshua Tree,” portions of “Rattle and Hum,” “Achtung Baby,” “All that You Can’t Leave Behind” and the Irish quartet’s most recent album, “No Line on the Horizon.” Lanois has also worked with Emmylou Harris, the Neville Brothers, Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Hothouse Flowers, Willie Nelson and released several solo albums.