Yes, really! The real-life singers behind Little Jerry and the Monotones, Chrissy and the Alphabeats and How Now Brown and the Moo Wave included the songwriters behind all their songs!
Specifically Christopher Cerf and Jeff Moss.
Jeff Moss never, to my knowledge, sang lead, but he provided the magnificent bass/baritone harmony singing for more than one Sesame Street Rock group, including Little Jerry and the Monotones. You might know them from 'With Every Beat of my Heart', 'Mountain of Love' (not the Johnny Rivers song but the Sesame Street Song that climaxes 'High on a Mountain... Mountain of Looove!!!') and most of all, Christopher Cerf's 'Telephone Rock'. All the rest of their songs were, as far as I know, written by Jeff Moss- certainly 'With Every Beat of my Heart'! Jeff Moss' character in the Monotones is the big blue Muppet with shaggy hair and a huge, magnificently shaggy beard, Big Jeff. (Yeah, we all love big beards.)
Christopher Cerf, the Sesame Street songwriter and Between the Lions songwriter/music director and co-creator, also has one of the best rock voices of all time, such as on his own 'Honk around a Clock'. He's the high harmony singer in Little Jerry and the Monotones. Richard Hunt, who created the characters Scooter and Beaker, sings the middle harmony, and the lead, Little Jerry himself, with his green skin and huge shaggy pompadour of fiery red hair which moves with him as he sings and wildly dances, is sung and puppeteered by Muppet legend Jerry Nelson, who created such different characters as the Count, Kermit's nephew Robin (the only grown man I've ever known to do a believable, naturalistic child's voice!) and Muppet rocker Floyd Pepper of the Electric Mayhem... two brilliant Muppet Rockers!
Jeff Moss (who sings any deep-bass lines as well as fine middle-Tenor harmony) and usually Richard Hunt back up lead singer Christopher Cerf in Chrissy and the Alphabeats, who sang Christopher Cerf's great songs such as 'It's Alive', 'Rock and Roll Readers' and 'Count in Higher', but are best known for Christopher Cerf's wild-man lead singer, Little Chrissy, puppeteered by (I believe) Jim Henson himself. He's the blue Muppet with the wild orange hair and the John Lennon glasses who pounds wildly on his shiny little electric keyboard which sounds just like a Little Richard-style Piano. One of the great Muppet Rocker characters.
Christopher Cerf, backed up by Cheryl Hardwick and Ivy Austin as two Muppet cows, sang lead and wrote both brilliant songs of How Now Brown and the Moo Wave, 'Wet Paint' and 'Danger's No Stranger'. How Now Brown and his bandmates aren't as well known as Little Jerry and Little Chrissy, but are great characters themselves. And the music! Two of my favorite rock performances! Cheryl Hardwick also was one of the Oinker Sisters of 'I've got a New Way to Walk' fame (with Ivy Austin and one other) and wrote great rock songs for both Sesame Street and (so I've heard) early Saturday Night Live, but as far as I know she never sang on any of her songs (?!!).
So there you go... three of the great Muppet Rock groups, all on Sesame Street, wrote their own music! (and I'm guessing co-arranged it, to!)
And played the lead instrument- that's Christopher Cerf on piano!
Who'dve thought?
Have fun!
David S. Annderson