Soundtracks
The music for the show was provided by a diverse set of musicians, including Mark Mothersbaugh, The Residents, Todd Rundgren, Danny Elfman (who provided the score for both of the Pee-wee movies), Mitchell Froom, Van Dyke Parks, George Clinton and Dweezil Zappa with Scott Thunes (spelled 'Tunis' in the credits).
Mothersbaugh, who later went on to become a fixture in composing music for children's shows like Rugrats, joined the show on hiatus from recording with Devo:
| “ | asked me to do Pee-wee's Playhouse, and I had some time, so I was like, yeah, let's do it.
Pee-wee's Playhouse was really chaotic. They'd send me the tape from New York on Tuesday. I'd watch it Tuesday night; Wednesday I'd write the music. Thursday I'd record the music, it'd go out Thursday night to them, they'd have Friday to cut it into the picture, and then Saturday we'd watch it on TV. And it was like really fast, and instead of writing an album once a year I was writing an album's worth of music once a week, and it was really exciting. It was a new experience and it was a different creative process. |
” |
The opening prelude theme is an interpretation of Les Baxter's "Quiet Village". The theme song, which originally followed the prelude, was performed by Cyndi Lauper (credited as Ellen Shaw) as an imitation of cartoon character Betty Boop.
Read more about this topic: Pee-wee's Playhouse