Bath Time for Ernie

For high drama, nothing beats the weekly "singles" meeting at the Manhattan headquarters of Columbia Records. Into a Danish-modern conference room nervously file a dozen or so highly paid executives, who open their attaché cases and go to work deciding what 45-r.p.m. singles to release that week. Musical careers hang on the outcome. So, in the long run, do the financial fortunes of the company itself. One morning this July the conferees were vigorously debating the merits of three songs in a new LP album when President Clive J. Davis took the floor and picked one out in a firm command decision: "That's the song. Cut it as a single today and ship it tomorrow."

What was the song? It goes like this:

Oh, Rubber Duckie, you're the one!

You make bath time lots of fun . . .

Rubber Duckie, I'm awfully fond of

you.

Rubber Duckie, joys of joys,

When I squeeze you, you make noise.

Rubber Duckie is, of course, one of the more memorable moments from noncommercial TV's Sesame Street. Taken from Columbia's "original cast" LP, the song is sung by a puppet named Ernie who, it will be recalled, sounds like Bullwinkle J. Moose and looks—from the neck up—like a flattened casaba melon. After more than a month of heavy sales promotion, the song has already sold 700,000 copies, and has a firm web-hold on Top 40 radio audiences from coast to coast. In Detroit, for example, WXYZ's Dick Purtan plays it regularly during "tubby time" for kids and adults alike, who seem unable to resist its splash-splash counterpoint, quack-quack obbligato, and cheerful pop-style parody of the 1930s Hit Parade.

A far cry from Bob Dylan or the Motown mold. But never mind, music fans. Columbia's executives are smiling. The song is a well-deserved triumph for Puppeteer Jim Henson, who sings for and animates Ernie. And Sesame Street, which needs all the money it can get, stands to earn enough in royalties to produce two more programs in the series.