Tag: The Muppets

Great Muppets’ Musical Moments No 3: Harry Belafonte

Hi There

Welcome to the third part of our Great Muppets’ Musical Moments series. Today we’ll take a look at Harry Belafonte’s turn as the star guest of The Muppet Show. As well as sharing a drum solo with The Muppets’ Drummer, Animal, he sings one of his biggest hits, The Banana Boat Song with a Muppet ensemble.

For those of you who are not familiar with Harry Belafonte’s music: he was born in New York, but spent part of his childhood at his grandmother’s in Jamaica. As a struggling young singer in New York he became friends with the then also not yet discovered actor Sidney Poitier, and the two were so poor they used to share theatre tickets, switching places during the interval when one would let the other know the state of the play.

Belafonte’s big break cam in 1956 with The Banana Boat Song (Day-O), which introduced the wider world to Calypso music. On the same album as Banana Boat Song was the also highly successful Jamaica Farewell.

Enjoy Belafonte’s lovely voice with the comedy of The Muppets.

Share

Great Muppets' Musical Moments No 2: Feelings (Mi-Mi)

Hi Everyone

Welcome to the second instalment in our Great Muppets’ Musical Moments series.

Today we’ll take a look at Beaker’s great musical moment. For those of you who are not too familiar with all the Muppets characters, Beaker is the assistant to Muppets’ resident scientist, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. Unfortunately for Beaker, Dr Honeydew is not a terribly good scientist, and all his experiments go wrong, which leads poor Beaker to be regularly blown up, or harmed in some other way.

One of the key characteristics of Beaker is that all he can say is “Mi-Mi”, which he usually does at heightened pitch at being the guinea pig for yet another of Dr Honeydew’s experiments.

Yet Beaker gets his one chance of fame, by singing with the Muppets’ house band, and he chooses the song Feelings, a song written by Loulou Gasté and popularised by Morris Albert in 1974/75. Now Beaker can of course only sing “mi”, so the resulting song is absolutely hilarious. You can check out our sheet music for Feelings here.

Enjoy:

Share

Great Muppets' Musical Moments No1: Fever

Hi

With the Muppets currently enjoying a bit of a revival, I thought I’d share some of the great musical moments that I enjoyed growing up when The Muppets were still on tv.

For anyone who never got to watch the original Muppets’ Show, there was always a special guest for each show, and if this guest was a musical star, they would perform with The Muppets. The Muppets did of course have their own in-house band, the most famous member of which was probably Animal, the drummer, who often featured in these great musical moments.

It is generally quite fascinating watching some of these older clips, as some of the so called stars are still going strong today, others I quite frankly struggle to remember, as time has not been quite so kind to their careers.

This first clip features Animal and the Puerto Rican singer Rita Moreno, who shot to fame when she starred in the 1961 film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.

The tune, Fever, is commonly associated with singer Peggy Lee.

Anyway, enjoy this great Muppet Musical Moment:

Share