Jim Hen­son launched his first tele­vised pup­pet pro­gram, Sam and Friends, when he was a fresh­man at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land. The show ran for six years on NBC affil­i­ate WRC-TV in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of Sam and Friends, Hen­son devel­oped the design of his flex­i­ble, foam-rub­ber pup­pets, which moved much more nat­u­ral­ly than wood­en mar­i­onettes. And they became the pro­to­types of the beloved Mup­pets that would make him famous. In the short film above from Sam and Friends, “Visu­al Think­ing,” an ear­ly ver­sion of Ker­mit the Frog has an exchange with a ston­er char­ac­ter called Har­ry the Hip­ster, who intro­duces him to an advanced form of visu­al think­ing that moves from sin­gle notes, to chords, to clas­si­cal pas­sages to jazz.

The sketch rep­re­sents a unique com­bi­na­tion of pup­petry and ani­ma­tion that would come to char­ac­ter­ize some of Henson’s most rec­og­niz­able work, such as Sesame Street. Although it’s in black and white and obvi­ous­ly not pro­duced for chil­dren, it’s very much in the style of the lat­er Hen­son, who main­tained a kind of beat sen­si­bil­i­ty through­out his career, whether work­ing in fan­ta­sy with The Dark Crys­tal or mad­cap pup­pet ensem­bles like The Mup­pet Movie. In the above sketch, Ker­mit and Har­ry work out the intri­ca­cies of jazz phras­ing by visu­al­iz­ing the notes in white squig­gles on the screen, which Har­ry eras­es by scat­ting them back­wards. Even­tu­al­ly, they’re over­whelmed and erased by jazz, in a kind of trib­ute to the form’s com­plex inde­ter­mi­na­cy. The sketch is one of the few ear­ly films to fea­ture Ker­mit, since the character’s rights are owned by Dis­ney. Pro­duced in 1959, the sketch was remade for The Ed Sul­li­van Show in 1966 and again for The Dick Cavett Show in 1971.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Primer

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

I imag­ine there are some pret­ty bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries out there about the fact that John Lennon pre­miered his film for the song “Imag­ine” on Sep­tem­ber 11th, 1971. You won’t find any of them here, but it is an odd coin­ci­dence. Lennon and his oft-maligned wife Yoko Ono made their first appear­ance on The Dick Cavett show on that day (above) to debut their new work. They ban­ter about their hair­cuts (they donat­ed their long hair to be auc­tioned at Sotheby’s—it wasn’t). They dis­cuss Lennon’s chang­ing music career. There’s some strange fun with peo­ple in head-to-toe burqua-like bags. Most­ly they plug: screen­ing some of their films and debut­ing a song from Yoko’s weird (I’d argue weird­ly-bril­liant) dou­ble album Fly.

Cavett looks ner­vous, but most­ly holds his own against Lennon’s quick-wit­ted music hall chat­ter, always unpre­dictably dis­arm­ing. Lennon is the star here, of course; he had just turned thir­ty and only days ear­li­er released the Imag­ine album in the U.S., which would go to num­ber one world­wide. Nev­er­the­less, he does his lev­el best to make this a joint inter­view and to pro­mote his wife’s work as much, if not more, than his own. I imag­ine there’s no short­age of peo­ple who hat­ed this, and still do, but I think it’s gal­lant and sin­cere. But maybe I’m easy on them. Because I can fast for­ward. View­ers of the orig­i­nal broad­cast had to wait till near­ly the end to see the “Imag­ine” film. With the mag­ic of dig­i­tal, all you have to do is skip ahead to 58:05. It’s worth the effort.

John and Yoko returned to Cavett’s show in 1972.  Lennon seems a bit jumpy here—nervous per­haps since both he and Yoko per­form live in this appear­ance; John does his less-than-stel­lar anthem “Woman is the Nig­ger of the World” and elo­quent­ly defends the inflam­ma­to­ry title line; Yoko sings her, well, weird “We are Water,” both with the back­ing band Elephant’s Mem­o­ry.

There’s a humor­ous ref­er­ence to George Harrison’s appear­ance on the show the pre­vi­ous year, but things take a slight­ly more seri­ous turn here than their pre­vi­ous inter­view. The show aired in May, just a few months before the his­toric 1972 elec­tion in which incum­bent Nixon round­ly trounced the recent­ly depart­ed George McGov­ern. Lennon and Ono dis­cuss their pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion that year due to Nixon’s dis­plea­sure at their anti-war activ­i­ties. This nev­er came to pass, but it was a tense time for Lennon since he had made New York his base of oper­a­tions for the past year. I imag­ine someone’s writ­ten an alter­nate his­to­ry in which Lennon was deport­ed, said the hell with it, and nev­er returned to New York. No telling what he’d be up to now, but as these inter­views make clear, he wouldn’t be sell­ing nos­tal­gia or mount­ing Bea­t­les reunion tours.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

The Cana­di­an pianist Glenn Gould was one of the most bril­liant and idio­syn­crat­ic inter­preters of the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. In this 1962 spe­cial for the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, Gould reveals the same bril­liance and idio­syn­crasy in his under­stand­ing of Bach’s place in his­to­ry.

Bach, says Gould, was not so much ahead of his time as out­side it. “For Bach, you see, was music’s great­est non-con­formist, and one of the supreme exam­ples of that inde­pen­dence of the artis­tic con­science that stands quite out­side the col­lec­tive his­tor­i­cal process.”

“Glenn Gould on Bach,” was first broad­cast in Cana­da on April 8, 1962, two years before Gould’s retire­ment from per­form­ing and only two days fol­low­ing his con­tro­ver­sial Carnegie Hall con­cert with the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, in which Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bra­hams D‑minor piano con­cer­to was so eccen­tric that Leonard Bern­stein felt com­pelled to make a dis­claimer to the audi­ence. The cen­ter­piece of the Bach broad­cast is a per­for­mance of the Can­ta­ta BWV 54 fea­tur­ing the Amer­i­can coun­tertenor Rus­sell Ober­lin. “Glenn Gould on Bach” is a fas­ci­nat­ing and enter­tain­ing half hour–essential view­ing for lovers of Baroque and Clas­si­cal music.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Free Bach Music:

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

A Big Bach Down­load: The Com­plete Organ Works for Free