Written by | Christopher Cerf |
Date | 1979 |
Publisher | Splotched Animal Music Co. |
"Letter B" is a song parody of The Beatles' song "Let It Be," sung on Sesame Street by The Beetles. Richard Hunt provided lead vocals. As the title implies, the song teaches about B words.
Christopher Cerf, who lost his voice at the time, later sung a portion of the song at the Brooklyn Public Library on November 21, 2009.
Notes
- When the Beatles' catalogue was still owned by Northern Songs, the company attempted to sue Children's Television Workshop for $5.5 million. They cited that the song too closely resembled "Let It Be." Before the case came to trial, Michael Jackson purchased the Lennon/McCartney catalogue and the suit was dropped. The Children's Television Workshop was only fined $50, which was paid out of Christopher Cerf's own pocket. Paul McCartney, who was not involved in the lawsuit, wrote to Cerf saying that he liked the song.[1]
- On the Count It Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street home video, the segment has MTV-style captions that refer to "Lemon Records" (a parody of "Apple Records"), and also had an album name that would later be released onto CD five years later (Sesame Road); the lyrics to this song were released in the original release of the video.
Releases
- Audio (album version)
- Born to Add (1983 edition only)
- Sesame Road (1993, with added introduction by Big Bird)
- Sesame Street Best (1997)
- Video
- Count It Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street (1988, intro cut)
- Old School: Volume 3 (2012)
- Online
- The Sesame Street Podcast: The Letter B (edited)
- Other
- Letters (computer game) (released as audio)
Sources
- โ Chris Cerf at a book signing for Street Gang, 1/5/09 [1]