Early Life and Career
Raposo was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the only child of Portuguese immigrant parents Joseph Soares Raposo and Maria da Ascenção Vitorino Raposo. He was a graduate of Harvard College, class of 1958, where he was well known for writing the scores for several Hasty Pudding shows.
Raposo worked in musical theater both before and after his work for The Children's Television Workshop and Sesame Street; musical theater was where he first encountered future collaborator Jim Henson. According to Jonathan Schwartz, during the mid-1960s, before Sesame Street, Raposo performed side music in piano bars in Boston to make ends meet, and also served as pianist and music director for a jazz trio working at Boston's WNAC-TV. Upon hearing Raposo's musical skill, Schwartz claims in his autobiography he urged Raposo to give up piano bar playing in Boston and "take his ass to New York". Raposo's decision to take Schwartz's suggestion and move to New York in 1965 eventually led him to his fated meeting with Henson, to Sesame Street, and towards international fame.
Raposo was the musical supervisor and arranger for the original off-Broadway run of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and contributed additional music to that play. He was also responsible for the memorable theme music for New York City television station WABC-TV's The 4:30 Movie; the piece, called "Moving Pictures," was also used for the station's other movie shows, and subsequently by ABC's other owned-and-operated stations.
Read more about this topic: Joe Raposo
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a mans training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (182595)
“Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable.”
—Emma Goldman (18691940)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my male career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my male pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (18971985)