Clifford (Muppet)

Clifford
Muppets character
First appearance	The Jim Henson Hour
Created by	Jim Henson
Voiced by	Kevin Clash
Information
Gender	Male

Clifford is a Muppet character, performed by Kevin Clash. He is a violet-colored creature with multi-colored dreadlocks and big lips. Like many other Muppets, it is never specified what kind of creature he is, but it is speculated that he is in fact a catfish.^[1]

He was created to be the bass guitar player for the Solid Foam band on The Jim Henson Hour. In that series, Clifford usually wore Hawaiian shirts and always wore sunglasses. When The Jim Henson Hour was canceled, Clifford was one of its few characters to reappear. In 1990, he appeared as a member of the Electric Mayhem band in The Muppets at Walt Disney World television special. In that special, Clifford did not play bass guitar; he did, however, play glockenspiel, tambourine and cowbells. Clifford also made appearances on The Arsenio Hall Show and VH1.

In 1996, Clifford became the host of Muppets Tonight, but with a redesigned look.^[1] This new Clifford had eyes and wore a sweater and neck tie instead of a Hawaiian shirt. The puppet's head was also built slightly differently. But when Muppets Tonight ended in 1998, Clifford vanished once again. He had a small part in Muppets from Space, wearing sunglasses again but now wearing a brown leather jacket and striped shirt. While he was treated as a part of the Muppet family in the movie, his screen time was minimal and he was not part of the movie's main plot, a quest to rescue Gonzo. At MuppetFest, a Muppet fan convention held in 2001, Kevin Clash revealed that he disliked the eyes of the Muppets Tonight redesign and was happy to see the revert back to sunglasses . Clifford made a brief cameo in The Muppets' Wizard of Oz as the manager of the nightclub Poppyfields.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Following in the Frog's Footsteps". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE7D61F39F933A25750C0A960958260. Retrieved 2010-12-19.