The Ten Commandments of Health

The Ten Commandments of Health
Artist	Sesame Street
Director	Jon Stone
Label	Splotched Animal Music, Inc.
Year	1978
Theme / Concept	Doo-wop / Medical
Video	YouTube

The Ten Commandments of Health

The Ten Commandments of Health is a Sesame Street song performed by Dr. Thad and the Medications, a group of singing doctors. This song is about the top ten things that someone should do to stay healthy. The Fat Blue Anything Muppet patient keeps sitting up and repeating some of Dr. Thad's lines but keeps getting pushed back down into his bed by one of the doctors. The song is a parody of the 1958 song "The Ten Commandments of Love" as recorded by Harvey and the Moonglows. The song was written by Christopher Cerf and Thad Mumford. Variants On Count It Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street, the video has MTV-style captions that refer to as "Medical Records."; lyrics to this song were released on a songbook in the original VHS release. Notes Christopher Cerf, the song's composer, also supplies backing vocals. At the beginning, a voice on the intercom can be heard paging "Dr. Stone." Jerry Nelson provided the voice of the Fat Blue patient, and Frank Oz and Richard Hunt provided additional backing vocals. Thad Mumford previously wrote for The Electric Company, and he later went on to write for M*A*S*H, ALF, A Different World, Maude, Home Improvement, and Good Times. Origins In 2017, Thad Mumford was interviewed about the song by the Archive of American Television, in the interview, he explains he met Christopher Cerf after The Electric Company was canceled, at Joe Raposo's house for a party. And for some reason, Raposo went on a break and didn't come back, so, Cerf and Electric Company writer Jim Thurman start playing rock and roll and Thad starting singing, and Joe came back and he "lost his party," and went to bed angrily. Mumford also explained that they recorded the song at 9:00 with no sleep. Mumford clearly stated that he never worked with Sesame Street, but he did write lyrics for some songs, and he never went on set to perform the puppetry for Dr. Thad.

Videos

Sesame Street - The Ten Commandments of Health

The song with The Count's introduction from Count it Higher

Sesame Street - The ten commandments of health (studio version)

The album version from Born to Add.

Writer Thad Mumford on writing songs for "Sesame Street" - EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG

The video of Thad Mumford explaining the origins of the song.