This year marks the 40th anniversary of Sharon, Lois & Bram’s The Elephant Show. With that, Bram Morrison, Sharon Hampson and Sharon’s daughter, Randi have curated the group’s very first vinyl record. Sharon, Lois & Bram’s Elephant Show Stoppers! is currently available for pre-order here. It will officially be released on September 27, 2024.
As Randi explained, “….We have been discovering content. So, things that were in cassettes, or things that were on video tapes—formats that are different from what we’re accustomed to using now. We didn’t necessarily know what things were, but we found a bunch of wonderful music that was used on The Elephant Show. It had never before been released on a record. We thought that this was the perfect time to share that music with our old audience and hopefully a new audience. For people who are fans of The Elephant Show, the songs that we picked really conjure up visual images of specific episodes that they were in…. So if you hear songs like ‘Little Red Car’ or ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’, you’re going to know exactly what was happening on the television show.”
“The song from ‘Snow White Elephant’ is very special because Jayne Eastwood played The Evil Queen. She and Lois sang, ‘You Must’ve Been a Beautiful Baby’ together in the episode, but before Jayne was cast, Bram and Lois sang the song together. So the version you’re going to hear on the album is that one, which no one’s ever heard before!” Randi continued.
“Sometimes the version of a song that you hear in an episode has extra musical interludes because there’s action happening on the television and everything. Then there are shorter versions that are just for listening purposes.... I think for my mom and Bram, more so, it was just about getting to revisit songs that they had forgotten about because they weren’t in a format that we could have listened to them.”
For Sharon, asking if she has a favourite song on the album is like asking a parent, “Who’s your favourite child?”
“I mean, first of all, we don’t include anything on the album that we don’t really love. They’re all songs that mean something to us, but I have a particular fondness for ‘Love Grows Under the Wild Oak Tree’ because Lois and I sing it together. We sing it in harmony and we take turns. The melody and harmony goes back and forth. It’s just a really pretty sound and it’s simple and I quite love it.”
Randi added, “There weren’t a lot of quiet moments like that with just the two of them. The other favourite, of course, would be ‘Skinnamarink’. The version that everybody knows and loves is not the original version. The original version was just Lois and Sharon together. So that’s one of those other moments where it was just the two of them.”
Randi’s childhood was filled with music. Later, she became an instrumental part of the Sharon, Lois & Bram world that countless other kids grew up in. Over the years, she suggested many of the songs that Sharon, Lois and Bram would go onto record. She also transformed Skinnamarink into a children’s book.
“….It’s been wonderful. I grew up with music in our lives all the time, even before Sharon, Lois & Bram. Lois was very much a part of our lives. When I was growing up, she and my mom worked very closely together. Her son, David is one of my oldest and closest friends, still to this day. To be able to have a place to share songs that I loved and to hear them re-imagined and to know when other people are singing them, that I had a part in bringing it together makes me happy.”
Sharon exclaimed that holding the Skinnamarink book in her hands for the first time was “beyond thrilling!”
“We’ve always loved the song! ….We’ve sung that more than any other song—ever! It never wears thin! We never tire of it. We never feel bored by it. It’s a beautiful song with a simple, lovely message. To be able to convert that into a book—which is what Randi did! She took the song and extended the verses to make it long enough to be a book. The illustrations by Qin Leng are absolutely beautiful and fun! It’s not something that we ever imagined. So, for it to come to life like that was really thrilling.”
During Sharon and Bram’s 40th anniversary tour, Randi discovered that families were learning the new words from the book and singing along.
“A couple of years ago, we were in Guelph at The Hillside Folk Festival in a packed tent! There were hundreds and hundreds of people and when we went to sing Skinnamarink, we said:
‘Here’s a little ditty that we all know and sing,
We share it with our families and let our voices ring,
It also has some actions, they’re really fun to do,
And now we’d like to sing this special song with all of you’
Everyone went crazy! It was like they were listening to those words and just waiting to sing along!”
Sharon added, “Occasionally, there are people in the audience who do not have children and I get such a kick out of that! It’s part of their history! They love the music! They want to be part of it! I remember being in Edmonton and seeing a whole long row of people and I didn’t see a child among them. I said, ‘Are there any people here without children?’ and that whole row of people stood up. I love it! I mean, what do we want? We want people to take music into their hearts and into their lives and then they have it forever. When they are still connecting to us [as adults] it makes me feel like we have succeeded.”
“You know, performers being kind and friendly should not be exceptional. It should be ordinary. It’s fun to meet people and when people recognize me—which they do still! It always surprises me! Sometimes they apologize. They say, ‘Sorry to intrude’, or whatever. I always say, ‘It’s not an intrusion. Without you, there would be no us!’ I appreciate the people who care about what we have been doing all of these years.”
Four decades later, Sharon said that her memories of making The Elephant Show “remain strongly” in her heart.
“I do re-watch episodes of The Elephant Show occasionally with company. The producers of this album, Jacy Dawn Valeras and Kris Stengele are our friends and they’re part of the team. They work with Randi very, very closely. They both live in The United States in different places and when they come, they stay with me at my home. We’re very good friends. Occasionally, they say, ‘Let’s watch an Elephant Show!’ Or maybe I say it, and then we have a debate about which one we’re going to watch! So it’s a kick for me to see it again! We loved making that series!”
Along with Sharon, Lois & Bram, Eric Nagler was also prominently featured. Plus, there were always a number of children on set.
Sharon recalled that “Eric was a lot of fun! He was kind of a kooky guy. It was funny, Randi and I were somewhere recently in San Diego and we were looking to go to the water. I remembered that Eric used to say, ‘If you want to find the water, just walk downhill.’ He was a lot of fun. He was a good musician and to be honest, we haven’t seen him in a long time, but we had happy times together.”
Sharon and Randi shared that “from time to time”, relatives and friends could be spotted on the show and the children who were actors became like family.
According to Randi, “…. In ‘Circle of the Sun’ my mother’s great-niece, Jessica is just a baby… and my grandparents were also in that episode. They were in the audience in the ‘Cinderelephant’ (‘Fairy Tale’) episode as well…. Bram’s granddaughter, Lindsay is in the camp show (on Bram’s lap). Cara Pifko was one of the child actors on The Elephant Show. She is the daughter of my mother’s oldest friend, Esther….”
Sharon remembered that Cara learned the song, “Pussy Willow” while sitting around the Hampson’s kitchen table. She also mentioned that the “feel-good” atmosphere of The Elephant Show carried over behind the scenes: “Everything about it made you feel pretty terrific!”
“The spirit around the children on the show was really quite lovely. They were treated sort of like family. Often their parents would be there, keeping an eye on them. They were making sure that their behaviour was appropriate but they didn’t need to do that because their behaviour was appropriate…. Having kids around added an element of fun and sweetness. You know, you would see one of the little kids on the shoulders of one of the crew members—like one of the grips, or something like that. So it was a very nice environment.”
While Sharon and Bram still make appearances together, Randi also does many performances with her mom. Throughout the pandemic, they found a way to reach families via Zoom:
“So, while we were standing in my living room,” said Randi, “we had a sound system and musicians, which were my children and their girlfriends and my spouse. I had a big TV connected so that we could look on Zoom at all of the people who were watching us."
"One of the things we heard was that it was connecting families to each other as well. One of our friends was watching in Toronto while her son was watching in Australia. We had a mother in Japan with her two daughters watching….We were really lucky because we could still see people singing along and cuddling with their children or their parents. We did a Halloween party where everybody dressed up in costumes, including us. We just found a way to make it work.”
“In addition to that”, said Sharon, “we did what we normally do. We sing songs that people can easily jump into and be part of. That’s the power of the music that we have chosen to use. It’s the notion that it can be yours. You can get into it and do it and be part of it!”
Currently, Randi and Sharon are looking forward to doing an album pre-sale at Fan Expo, among other things. “My mom and I are doing this fun series which is called, ‘Stage Door’ where we talk about behind the scenes of the Sharon, Lois & Bram world. We sing songs and share history. My son, Ethan is joining us. He’ll accompany us. It’s like a fun, interactive ‘talk-and-sing’ for adults.”
For those who are interested in entertaining children, Sharon emphasized that it is important to do it for the passion and not the money: “If you’re going to do it, do it because you love it and because you need to do it. Don’t do it because you think you’re going to get rich or have huge success. It’s a very hard career path. I think it’s harder now than it’s ever been. So do it for the passion! Anyone who gets to follow their passion is lucky!”
As Randi pointed out, releasing music alone does not generate enough of an income and so touring is a big part of the job. However, concert tickets don’t sell like they used to, “except for Taylor Swift”. She also noted that a back-up job is necessary as well as a supportive family.
That being said, Randi Hampson told her mother, “Hopefully you never retire!”
To which Sharon Hampson replied, “I love what I do, and as long as I can keep doing it and loving it, I’m here to stay!”
For more information, please visit www.sharonloisandbram.com .
Photo by Hayley Andoff.
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