Kermit the Frog, “It’s Not Easy Being Green”
First it was quiet songs. Children’s songs. Ella Jenkins on Folkway Records: “There Are Many Pretty Trees (All Around the World).” Esther would sing it. She’d call out a particular tree –say, “a Eucalyptus tree“– and I’d echo her –“Eucalyptus tree.” Woody Guthrie. Pete Seeger. The Peter, Paul and Mommie album. “We’re goin’ to the zoo, zoo, zoo / We’re going’ to the zoo, zoo, zoo…” (Esther doesn’t remember singing this song but I do.)
Marlo Thomas and company brought out Free to Be You and Me. We’d listen to the whole record, then turn back to Rosie Grier, GIANT football player, singing “It’s All Right to Cry.” The first Sesame Street album was a hit too. Kermit the Frog, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” Years later, when Jeremy was seven, not two, Esther sang that song as part of her act for the Children”s Caravan in Ithaca, NY.
Esther singing in the Children’s Carnival, Ithaca, NY, summer of 1977
The thing about it: it wasn’t just Jeremy who loved this music. We all did and still do.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
Ella Jenkins: “There Are Many Pretty Trees”
Rosie Grier, “It’s All Right to Cry”
MUSIC & ME 