Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psychedelic Sesame Street Animation, Featuring Grace Slick, Teaches Kids to Count

When asked for their favorite Sesame Street seg­ment, many chil­dren of the 70s and 80s point to Pin­ball Num­ber Count. Psy­che­del­ic ani­ma­tion, the Point­er Sis­ters, odd time signatures—what’s not to love? But for the seri­ous Sesame Street buff, the “Jazz Num­bers” series above deserves the sil­ver medal. It’s got free jazz, Yel­low Sub­ma­rine-style sur­re­al­is­tic ani­ma­tion, and a vocal from Grace Slick of Jef­fer­son Air­plane. How many young par­ents rec­og­nized her dis­tinc­tive voice, I won­der?

Also known as “Jazzy Spies,” this 1969 series of ani­ma­tions was devot­ed to the num­bers 2 through 10 (there was no film for “one” as it is the loneli­est num­ber that you’ll ever do), and was an essen­tial ele­ment in Sesame Street’s first sea­son. High­lights include the dream-like ele­va­tor door sequence of “2,” the Jack­son 5 ref­er­ence in “5,” and the rac­ing fans in “10.”

Slick got involved through her first hus­band, Jer­ry Slick, who pro­duced the seg­ments for San Fran­cis­co-based ani­ma­tion stu­dio Imag­i­na­tion, Inc. Head­ed by ani­ma­tor Jeff Hale, the com­pa­ny also pro­duced the Pin­ball seg­ments, as well as the famous anamor­phic “Type­writer Guy,” the Ring­mas­ter, and the Detec­tive Man. Hale, by the way, has a cameo as Augie “Ben” Dog­gie in the well-loved Lucas par­o­dy Hard­ware Wars.)

The deliri­ous music was com­posed and per­formed by Colum­bia jazz artist Den­ny Zeitlin, who would go on to score the 1979 remake of Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers. Zeitlin plays both piano and clavinet; accom­pa­ny­ing him is Bob­by Natan­son on drums and Mel Graves on bass. Accord­ing to Zeitlin, Grace Slick over­dubbed her vocals lat­er.

This wasn’t Slick’s first encounter with Jim Hen­son. In 1968, she and oth­er mem­bers of Jef­fer­son Air­plane were part of a coun­ter­cul­ture doc­u­men­tary called Youth ’68, the trail­er for which you can groove on here.

Sesame Street, with all its pri­ma­ry col­ors, plas­tic mer­chan­dise, and Elmo infes­ta­tion, may have lost its edge, but these ear­ly works show its rev­o­lu­tion­ary foun­da­tions.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Glass Com­pos­es Music for a Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion (1979)

Itzhak Perl­man Appears on Sesame Street and Poignant­ly Shows Kids How to Play the Vio­lin and Push Through Life’s Lim­its (1981)

Watch the First Episode of Sesame Street and 140 Oth­er Free Episodes

A Young Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets with Socks, Ten­nis Balls & Oth­er House­hold Goods (1969)

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Com­e­dy Rou­tine Becomes a NSFW Ani­mat­ed Film (1968)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.