Sesame Street 50th Anniversary Telecast

Carpe diem

Well-Known Member
I was watching PBS last night and they had a 50th birthday bash for Sesame Street. At the end of the show, a cast of about 100 people, including The Muppet's broke out into a rousing rendition of Sing. Whoopi Goldberg, Patti LaBelle, Joseph Gordon Levitt, joined the gathering cast of past/present actors/characters of the show. The whole time I was listening to this, I was thinking had Karen lived, she could be out there singing the lead. How great would that be?! I got to admit, it made me a little sad hearing it. Then, I had a thought how much more meaningful this final number would've been if Richard Carpenter would have joined in. Yes, I know, wishful thinking on my part...
 
Meanwhile he said he wished they hadn't recorded "stuff like that" or maybe not that quote but similar. He felt they should have been doing more sophisticated stuff. I remember being 5 and listening to it on an airplane. Such a distinct memory.
 
I always remember thinking it was sad that Karen couldn't make the opening of EPCOT CENTER back on OCT 1st 1982, especially since another sibling duo Donny and Marie attended and obviously the Carpenters had history with the company what with Postman('74), Rescuers ('77), Mickey's 50th ('78) and Disneyland's 25th ('80).

Of course she was hospitalized at this time but it would be interesting to know if she'd been invited.
 
I always remember thinking it was sad that Karen couldn't make the opening of EPCOT CENTER back on OCT 1st 1982, especially since another sibling duo Donny and Marie attended and obviously the Carpenters had history with the company what with Postman('74), Rescuers ('77), Mickey's 50th ('78) and Disneyland's 25th ('80).

Of course she was hospitalized at this time but it would be interesting to know if she'd been invited.

What was Carpenters’ connection to ‘The Rescuers’ again?
 
Yeah, they always would record the songs for an animated feature early in the production process, in the rescuer's case that would be '74/'75. Full animation would have been late '76 onward I think.

Buddy Baker was the staff score composer at Disney during that time yet Rescuers was scored by Artie Butler, his only Disney score, which leads me to the conclusion that the company were looking for a different musical direction with this film. It also makes me believe they wanted Richard to actually score the film and not just arrange (and or compose) the songs.

One of the songs is by Sammy Fain, "Someone's Waiting for You" and is great. The other 3 are so so and by a different writing team. I'm guessing Richard and Bettis would have composed the equivalent 3 and inherited Fain's.

What a shame '75 was so jam-packed for the duo. Karen never sounded better and Richard was arguably at the top of his game. And by the time the film was a smash in late '77 it would have helped their dipping popularity to no end.

Hey ho. . . .back to Sesame Street.
 
Carpenters Fan Club Newsletter #56 November 1977:
"If you read in a recent movie magazine that Karen and Richard are considering doing a Disney movie, sorry to say, the information is incorrect. They have no plans to do a movie in the near future. Richard was asked to write the music for the recently released Disney film,
The Rescuers, but other commitments at that time resulted in a reluctant negative answer."
 
Richard was asked to write the music for the recently released Disney film,
The Rescuers, but other commitments at that time resulted in a reluctant negative answer."

I'm sure Richard would have enjoyed the experience a lot more than recording another TV special.
 
By the way, every indication--every source--I have read, shows that Richard and Karen were
very content--quite happy--to be doing their Weintraub produced 1976-1980 television specials.
I do not see that Richard would have preferred scoring a movie instead.
 
Seemed like Richard short-changed himself on his career. He was a music man to the bone. I brought this up before on other threads, but I believe he lost a lot of his motivation for the business after Karen died.
 
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