#1425: Jim Henson (Kermit)

80s Snapshot:

• Number of songs on Hot 100: 1
• Highest peak position: 95
• Cumulative weeks on the Hot 100: 1

One of the most important figures of all time in children’s entertainment, Jim Henson always found ways to incorporate music into his creations. From The Muppets to Fraggle Rock, and from Sesame Street to Labyrinth, Henson not only created but also performed as many of his most iconic characters.

Even though his most famous productions were geared towards a younger audience (and by extension the music from these as well), some of The Muppets’ most indelible songs were commercially released and became hits in their own right. In 1970, a year after Sesame Street debuted, Columbia Records released “Rubber Duckie” as a single. Credited to the Sesame Street character Ernie (voiced by Henson), the song was a surprising hit, peaking at #16 on the Hot 100 (sharing space in the Top 20 with “War” by Edwin Starr and “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago).

The towering success of Sesame Street and the endearing popularity of Henson’s Muppet characters led to not only The Muppet Show in 1976 but also The Muppet Movie in 1979. The 10th-highest grossing movie domestically that year, The Muppet Movie begins with Kermit The Frog (another Henson-voiced character) playing the banjo and singing “Rainbow Connection”, a beautiful song penned by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher. “Rainbow Connection” earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song and was released as a single in tandem with the film’s release.

As the song came to define not only the movie but the Muppets themselves, “Rainbow Connection” became a sleeper hit on the Hot 100, peaking at #25 in November 1979 and finishing 100th in the year-end rankings under my chart research methodology. The reason Henson is ranked so low in these 80s rankings is that “Rainbow Connection” spent the final week of its chart run at #95 on the first Hot 100 of the decade.

While music remained a core component of The Muppets and Henson’s output, nothing else from his prolific output rose to the level of a Hot 100 hit in the rest of his lifetime. Even after his sudden passing in 1990, Henson and his creations continue to leave a lasting mark on popular culture, with the Muppets and Sesame Street enjoying arguably just as much cache today as they did 50 years ago.

Next: Kings Of The Sun
Previous: Colin James Hay