Joe Raposo - Other Work in Children's Television

Other Work in Children's Television

In 1971, Children's Television Workshop created the show The Electric Company, meant to help teach reading to children who had outgrown Sesame Street. Raposo served as the musical director of the show for its first three seasons, and contributed songs throughout the show's run, until 1977.

Raposo performed joke characters for film segments on The Electric Company similar in style to what he had done on Sesame Street. One segment showed him attempting to get dressed in jacket and necktie against a white wall under the word "dressing", until the prefix "un-" appears and attaches itself to the prior word, forcing him to engage in a mock striptease which ends with him modestly hopping off-screen and tossing the remainder of his clothing into an empty chair left on-screen. In a variation of this film, he is shown packing a suitcase when the "un-" prefix returns and pesters him using the behavior of a meddling fly until, exasperated, Raposo strikes the word with a hammer, knocking it unconscious into the suitcase, which he then triumphantly slams shut with a smirk.

Raposo enjoyed doing animation voicework. Other forays of his into the craft included both the tenor singing role of "master pickler" Gil Gickler in DePatie-Freleng's Dr. Seuss cartoon program Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? and Gickler's spoken dialogue. Raposo also performed at least three other character voices in the cartoon, including a Groogen musician whose "flugel bugle" is destroyed by Pontoffel in an attack flyover, as the ancient Senior Fairy above McGillicuddy who oversees the fairy squadron's worldwide search for the missing Pock and his piano, and as an angry Groogen dairywoman spilt milk upon by a too-close fly-by of Pontoffel's.

The HBO animated adaptation of Madeline, for which Raposo composed the music and songs (with writer/lyricist Judy Rothman), aired four months after Raposo's death; the cartoon The Smoggies, for which Raposo wrote the theme song, premiered in Canada.