Sesame Street "Surprise" Song

[Xerus]

Here it is. That long lost Surprise song I so remember as a kid.

 

[minor muppetz]

That is a great clip, though I can kind of see why it hasn't aired in years (well, besides the fact that it has characters who haven't been on the show in years).

It seems a little weird to have a character dressed as a devil on the show. A few parts seem a little creepy (like Maria, dressed as a devil, coming out of Oscar's trash can with a deep Frank Oz voice, or the talking wall, something about those random monsters also seems odd).

If not for the variety format of the show, I'd call this a big-lipped alligator moment. It seems to be one of the weirdest Muppet/street segments (it seems like most of the weirdest moments from the show are animation segments). It is very wild, and it seems like a lot of effort was put into this. There's many set changes (I wonder how many of those sets were in the same room) as well as a few costume changes (especially with Maria, Gordon, and Bob).

I wonder who performed that one monster who yelled "SURPRISE!" at one point. I'm guessing Frank Oz is the most likely choice, as he is known to have been very active in this and Caroll Spinney is the only other performer, but it seems unlikely they'd have him perform a random character who wasn't Big Bird or Oscar (or maybe that was meant as an inside surprise), but the voice sounds more like a gruff Jim Henson or Jerry Nelson voice, but if it was either of them, I'd expect some of their characters to show up.

I was surprised to see that Tony Geiss wrote this. I was expecting it to have been written by Joseph A. Baily, since he wrote about it in his autobiography.

 

[LittleJerry92]

I wonder who performed that one monster who yelled "SURPRISE!" at one point.

I'm honestly hearing more of Hunt's voice in that voice, but the audio quality isn't that great so it's hard to tell.

Maybe one day we'll get this as a throwback Thursday clip.... Maybe one day.....

 

[LittleJerry92]

You know, random note, but from watching this clip, I couldn't help but wonder if there's more to the beginning than what's currently known to the public, like presumably dialogue from Big Bird before the song starts.

Not that it bothers me, because I am glad this clip saw the light of day, but it is one of those things I ponder out of curiousness.

 

[PumpkinJ]

Hey guys, PumpkinJFriend here... Rohail re-uploaded the Hebrew dub of "Surprise" (w/Hippies from 1970).

He also reuploaded Bahgwan's fan cut of the song that synced the abridged English audio from the album release.

Also, I made an extended version of the song. It's still not complete, though. I added a couple of English audio pieces during the first verse and at the end of the song. Everything else is foreign-dubbed, I used some sources (with the N3 bug) from the 2-hour special "Lange Sesamstraßen Nacht" to splice in some higher-quality video sources, and used the Hebrew sources as well. I spliced in some video sources from Bahgwan's edit, due to the Hebrew video having been saved in bad quality.

 

[gravy]

Hey guys, PumpkinJFriend here... Rohail re-uploaded the Hebrew dub of "Surprise" (w/Hippies from 1970).

He also reuploaded Bahgwan's fan cut of the song that synced the abridged English audio from the album release.

Also, I made an extended version of the song. It's still not complete, though. I added a couple of English audio pieces during the first verse and at the end of the song. Everything else is foreign-dubbed, I used some sources (with the N3 bug) from the 2-hour special "Lange Sesamstraßen Nacht" to splice in some higher-quality video sources, and used the Hebrew sources as well. I spliced in some video sources from Bahgwan's edit, due to the Hebrew video having been saved in bad quality.

You know this thread is about the OTHER Surprise song... Right?

 

[PumpkinJ]

No I didn't.

 

[LittleJerry92]

Gotta do some page skinning before posting, bud.

 

[PumpkinJ]

Personally, I want to see the original version of the proto-Little Jerry Surprise as well, and I've been asking for that for years. The cut up Hebrew dub (that omitted the American human cast members) is long gone. There's the fan cut that tried to sync the album version to that footage, but that's about it.

Pointing out the video @Drtooth mentioned years back:

Well, @LittleJerry92 at first thought it was from the Dutch Sesamstraat dub. Well, now to debunk your theory, the video above actually did come from a Hebrew Rechov Sumsum episode that came back up recently today.

@Drtooth was right right all along.

As the episode resurfaced, the VHS tape quality looks the same, but the digital quality looks different (as I see some frames skipping ahead), seeming it was digitized at a different session.

 

[YellowYahooey]

It's been ages since I've seen this too, but a few little bits stand out:

Gordon is at the supermarket, and finds a monster in his shopping cart. (Surprise!)

Bob tries to sing nursery rhymes- "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water"- and gets a few buckets in the face.

Take Two- "Mary had a little lamb, it's fleece as white as snow-" Bob gets buried under an avalanche of the white stuff. (Surprise!)

In the last scene, Big Bird is sad because it seems everyone forgot his birthday. But he enters Hooper's store, sees a birthday cake, and a surprise party begins.

Somewhere Mr. Hooper holds up a tiny little sweater "I hope this is your size!"

And the pies start flying, and even Grover gets a facefull.

The song ends with a pie being thrown at the camera, so we the viewers can be in on the joke too.

Again, this is another gem I hope to see once more before I die.

Some other Holy Grails to me:

The Boy, The Girl, and The Jellybeans
Muppet version of "Up, Up, and Away"
English Muppet version of "Windy" (once posted on youtube in German)
"Gone With The Wind" (on youtube in Spanish)

Most likely we haven't seen them due to the legal clearance hassles, but just maybe someday...

Aside from the pies being thrown towards the camera, I also recall there being a talking Muppet wall saying "surprise" at some point in the segment.

I find it surprising that "The Boy, The Girl, and the Jellybeans" is not uploaded yet, but I wonder if the official Sesame Street YouTube channel will someday upload these rare gems? I know they've been focusing on current and more recent content, but I am sure they have some room to add a few classic segments per week. At least they uploaded a clean copy of the "Family Food" sketch pretty recently - that is a real treat for sure. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

Another rare gem is a segment where Judy Collins and the cast are on City Island, singing "The Sunshines".