John Denver And The Muppets – A Christmas Together (1979)

Friends, I amrunning extremely late with today’s article I am afraid to say – long story short, work the other evening threw a massive monkey wrench into my original plans, which was to have the brand new Pop Culture Retrorama podcast uploaded for your listening pleasure. As the subject of the new episode takes places on Christmas Eve… well… it would have been perfect but at least you will get a chance to listen to it on Christmas morning. I want to give a huge thank you to Allison Venezio-Preston for stepping up and publishing her article on Stetson – so you had that to enjoy earlier today. However, once again it was Rockford Jay who contacted me and provided another fantastic idea for an article – in this case the 1979 classic John Denver and The Muppets – A Christmas Together. An absolutely wonderful album filled with 13 tracks of some of the best Holiday music – that was originally released in October of 1979 – it was two months later on December 5th that ABC aired the John Denver and the Muppets – A Christmas Together television special. And while it was re-aired a couple of times over the year… the shocking fact is that this TV special has not been released on any home media format – not VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray. Which is a shame as it really is a remarkable Holiday special – it also marked the first time that Jim Henson and his studio created more realistic puppets for a production. Which he mentioned in an interview with Press Democrat in an article that was published on the day the special aired:

“they were carved from urethane foam, like most of the Muppets, and painted in New York. We had to be careful not to offend anyone by giving the figures comic characteristics. These are the first serious puppets we’ve made.”

For myself I was first introduced to 1979’s John Denver and the Muppets – A Christmas Together courtesy of my grade school. This was in November in music class when we were gearing up for what to perform for the school pageant – our teacher brought along this still fantastic album and did her level best to keep order as we kids naturally lost it with Denver and The Muppets rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.

John Denver and the Muppets is an album I listen to every single Holiday season… or if I am just feeling a little blue. I want to thank Allison Venezio-Preston once again for picking up my slack today and for always crafting a wonderful article. Of course as always I want to thank Rockford Jay for being kind enough to remind me about this 1979 album and planting the seed of writing about it – to say nothing of the fact he took time to take photos of his personal collection of said album!