Fever, All Through the Night
Rita Moreno's Emmy-winning performance on "The Muppet Show"
Today’s header is a clip from The Muppet Show starring special guest Rita Moreno. Everyone do the Kermit “yaaaaaaay!”
Moreno is singing the sultry “Fever,” written by Otis Blackwell and Eddie Cooley. The song was first recorded in 1956 by Little Willie John (Blackwell’s pseudonym) and had a distinctive bluesy feel. It has since been covered many times by a variety of artists including James Brown, Michael Bublé, Elvis Prestley, The Kingsmen, Madonna, The Cramps, and Beyoncé, each adding their own particular spin on the classic. Arguably, the most famous remake of “Fever” was done in 1958 by Peggy Lee, who changed some of Blackwell/Cooley’s original lyrics and gave it a sexier “torchy lounge” arrangement, accompanied by only a drum and bass. It is Lee’s seductive version that is most often referenced in subsequent covers.
Moreno, in her slinky Halston dress, certainly leaned into the torchier interpretation of “Fever” for her 1976 appearance on The Muppet Show, but managed to do it in a way completely suitable for a family-oriented show. Moreno and Jim Henson, the creator of The Muppet Show, were already familiar with each other’s work, having met some years earlier during Henson’s time at Sesame Street. Henson was shooting the show in New York City, near where Moreno lived, and they bumped into each other at a local coffee shop where Moreno gushed over her love of Sesame Street and volunteered to do voice work in the show for free. Henson was convinced. Moreno lent her voice to some little girl puppet characters and also sang for the “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” skit.
It was Henson’s idea for Moreno to sing “Fever” on The Muppet Show a few years later. Moreno was invited to appear in what was the fifth episode of the first season (although it was the first show to be aired in most markets when the series premiered). The idea of the “Fever” skit—showcasing an amusing contrast between a singer often typecast as a sultry, hot-blooded Latin and the constantly interrupting impulsive, enthusiastic, outrageous drummer Animal—tickled both of them. The shoot, however, proved a challenging:
“Now, I don’t know how familiar you are with ‘Fever,’ but it has a bass riff. Dum, dum-dum. Dum, dum-dum. Never know how much I love you. But it all sounded the same. So how do you do comedy—going back and forth to the drummer and telling him off—and know when to come in again with your song? And I realized, during rehearsal, that I wouldn’t know what bar was what. You know, the song had to end at a certain time, and the bass is playing the very same riff all the time. Literally for, what, thirty-eight bars? Forty bars? Dum, dum-dum. There was no way to know. So we had somebody make up these big cue cards. The man would stand literally next to the camera and just point to how many bars I had left. I had to memorize where I was. It was just very, very complicated.
[…]
“I don’t remember how many takes we did. But we did a lot. Because here’s something else: if I made a mistake during the filming of the piece, we couldn’t go back, because I didn’t know where I was musically. We always had to do it in one take, each time. So if I would make a mistake, or trip slightly, or not be happy with a movement I made with my hands or arms, we would stop and take it all the way back to the beginning. And you don’t do overtime in England, at least at that time. Once six o’clock came around, you are out of that studio.
That commitment to perfection paid off. Moreno received her first Emmy for the skit in the category “Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in Variety or Music,” making her only the third person at the time to win an Oscar, a Tony, an Emmy and a Grammy (the coveted EGOT). Moreno calls her “Fever” skit with Animal “one of the funniest things I’ve ever done.”
You can watch the whole episode featuring Rita Moreno’s guest appearance on The Muppet Show here:
DailyMotion: The Muppet Show S01E05 Rita Moreno
Sources and More Info:
IMDB: The Muppet Show, S1E5, Rita Moreno
I love Rita Moreno. So brilliant and talented. She was also on The Electric Company which was funny and brilliant and for older kids like me. Sesame Street first came on when I was 9. I watched it sometimes but, ya know, "kids' stuff". I was the old age of eleven when Electric Company came on and Rita was my favorite.
I forgot to say thank you, Martini. This was great!