Early Sesame Street specialized in melancholy.
Seven years before The Muppet Show even aired, Kermit The Frog’s muted acceptance of “Bein’ Green” appeared in Sesame Street‘s very first season in 1969 and appeared on the show’s first album, The Sesame Street Book & Record.
Jim Henson’s sweet but somber voice also lent itself to Ernie’s wonderful 1978 song about friendship. “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” goes out of its way to have Ernie sing about being with his friends via double-negatives. It’s a song about avoiding long-term loneliness, wistfully yet emphatically letting the world know that Ernie doesn’t want to stay too far from home for very long.
But neither of these come close to capturing the overall sadness and beauty of the original airing of “What’s the Name of that Song?” in 1974, for reasons, in part, that extend far beyond the song itself.
It’s hard to organize all of the reasons this song makes me well up a little bit every time I listen to it with my son, but there are a few easy, obvious ones: the pace of the song, the key, the fact that the song itself is about forgetting, and that it holds out the promise of a title that never comes. (Seriously, what is the name of that song?) The others are all too human.
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I was born in 1974, and the cast here is very much how I remember the cast. Maria’s long hair and youthful confidence, Bob’s not-quite-cool-but-not-quite-old sweaters and presence, the newest (and permanent) Gordon proudly representing the bald head and goatee for the first of many generations of impressionable youth. Unlike Kermit and Ernie who never age, seeing the human cast in their youth one can’t help but compare it to where they are now and where I am now. Visible aging is a powerful force for nostalgia.
And of course, Mr. Hooper’s appearance gives any Sesame Street clip a moment of sadness. His passing in 1982 led to one of the most famous episodes in the show’s run, Episode 1839, where the human cast explain Mr. Hooper’s absence to Big Bird.
But it’s the presence of the song’s lead singer that really pushes it over the top and creates the opening for time and memory and the reality of life to press through the short, simple clip.
Northern Calloway joined the cast in 1970 as David, a law student. He quickly fell for Maria, who worked at the library. Their relationship was self-consciously progressive. Two young role models, one African-American and the other Puerto Rican.
Northern was a graduate of the high school fictionalized in Fame, a part of the troupe at Lincoln Center, and a Broadway actor. He was between stints as The Leading Player in Pippen at the time of this episode.
As with so many of Sesame Street‘s characters, even now, Northern and David in that moment represent the promise of the show for me. The idea of what it means to be “special” in the language of Sesame Street. That we are each unique with promise, and that is just a given. That this multiracial, academically-oriented, warm and caring, talented and vibrant couple in the heart of 1970’s New York was just the way it is. Not, as it has come to mean with Special Snowflake Syndrome, that we are therefore entitled as to anyone else – because others are equally special. Being special does not guarantee getting anything, only that one already has hope, potential, possibility, talents, worth. Just a given. Possibility is just the way things are. Especially for a child.
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But in reality. Things change. Time moves. Possibility passes.
In 1980, Northern was arrested after the fallout from a breakdown: beating an employee of a theater with an iron rod, destroying property, and hiding in a garage wearing only a t-shirt while exclaiming that they were out to get him.
In 1983, with Mr. Hooper’s passing, David inherited the store and ran it on his own, the law apparently no longer in the picture.
In 1987 or 1988, Northern showed up outside the high school of Alison Bartlett – the teenager who played Gina, an employee at Mr. Hooper’s Store – proposing marriage.
While David ran the store, Maria’s library had become a Fix-It Shop, and she had been a business partner of Luis there since 1981. Seemingly out of the blue, she married Luis in 1988 and they had a daughter in 1989.
By 1989, Northern was off the show. By 1990, Northern was dead.
Unlike the farewell for Mr. Hooper, David was simply said to have sold the store. He moved to live on a farm with his grandmother.
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The precise state of Northern’s physical and mental health over his last decade is unclear. He was on lithium throughout the 1980’s. A cardiac arrest was the final cause of his death. Every thing else seems to be rumor.
It’s certainly too easy to make great analogies about the promise of the 70’s versus the reality of the 80’s from Northern’s story and from David’s, but I can’t help it. It’s part of what I hear every time this song plays. The young black law student of the 70’s owns a corner store in the 80’s. The aspiring librarian owns a fix it shop. Words to small business. Neither unworthy goals in life. Just different.
And while there is a positive backdrop as well, in that Sesame Street stuck by Northern when others likely would not have, the parts of the story that we don’t know, the parts truly off-stage, still call to mind how the narrative of the young artist of the 70’s becomes the narrative of how we dealt with mental health in the 80’s.
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In 1992 they redid “What’s the Name of That Song?” It’s a more upbeat version, and it’s the version that you find on recordings.
But even though he has vanished from the show’s history in so many ways, it’s still David’s version that Sesame Street hosts on YouTube. Where he throws out his own nostalgic and melancholy guesses as to the title of the unknown song at the end: “White Christmas?!” “Danny Boy!?”
A great song. The best and saddest song.
Fact checking from muppet.wikia.com; Northern Calloway, on Stage and Sesame Street, New York Times Obituary, January 13, 1990; TN Coverage.
Images from Wikipedia.