Schoolhouse Rock!

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Schoolhouse Rock!

Schoolhouse Rock.
Format Educational
Created by David McCall
Country of origin Flag of the United States United States
Production
Running time 3 minutes (Approx.)
Broadcast
Original channel ABC
Original run 1973 – 2000s

Schoolhouse Rock! is a U.S. series of fifty-two educational short films featuring songs about schoolhouse topics, including grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and politics. Originally conceived by Thomas G. Yohe in 1972, the shorts were broadcast on the ABC television network in the U.S. between 1973 and 1986. They were then broadcast infrequently during the 1990s and 2000s with new shows created between 1993 and 1996.

For much of its run, Schoolhouse Rock! was played during commercial breaks at the top and bottom of the hour in which The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, a collection of Looney Tunes shorts, aired.

ABC has since dropped Schoolhouse Rock! from their Saturday morning lineup.

An additional short, I'm Gonna Send Your Vote To College, was created for the 30th anniversary video release.

Often viewed with nostalgia by members of both late Baby Boomers and Generation X, Schoolhouse Rock! has become part of American popular culture.

The word "rock" is something of a misnomer, as only a few of the songs are in rock format (e.g., "Elementary, My Dear" and the progressive rock-like "Little Twelvetoes"). The rest are either jazz (e.g., "I'm Just a Bill," "Figure Eight"), blues ("Naughty Number Nine"), or straight pop songs (e.g., "A Noun Is a Person, Place, or Thing," "Interjections!," "No More Kings").

Contents

Schoolhouse Rock! began as a commercial advertising venture by David McCall. The idea came to McCall when he noticed one of his sons, who was having trouble in school remembering the multiplication tables, knew the lyrics to many current rock songs. The first song recorded was "Three Is A Magic Number", by Bob Dorough. It tested well, so a children's record was compiled and released. Tom Yohe Sr. listened to the first song, and began to doodle pictures in relation to the lyrics. He informed McCall that these songs would make good animation.

When a print workbook version fell through, McCall's company decided to produce their own animated versions of the songs, which they then sold to ABC (which already was McCall's company's biggest advertising account) based on a demo animation of the original "Three Is A Magic Number" for its Saturday morning lineup. They pitched their idea to Michael Eisner, who was 27 at the time and vice president of ABC's children's programming division. Eisner brought longtime Warner Bros. cartoonist/director Chuck Jones to the meeting to also listen to the presentation.

The network's children's programming division made producers of its regular 30- and 60-minute programs cut three minutes out of each of their shows, and sold General Foods on the idea of sponsoring the segments. The series stayed on the air for 12 years. Later sponsors of the Schoolhouse Rock segments included Nabisco, Kenner Toys, Kellogg's, and McDonald's.

The last of the original series were four segments about the then-novel personal computer technology. The shorts featured two characters by the name of Scooter Computer and Mister Chips, and so these were the only episodes in the series to feature any recurring characters. These episodes were so disliked by the creative team that they promptly wiped all of the episodes. The first of the four is presumed lost;[citation needed] the other three exist on secondhand media.

A 1987 production of the series for VHS tape featured Cloris Leachman opening the collection and some songs with child dancers and singers.[1][2]

In the 1990s the team reunited to produce Money Rock and two more Grammar Rock segments ("Busy Prepositions" and "The Tale of Mr. Morton"). In 2002, the team once again reunited to produce a new song, "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote To College" for the release of the 30th Anniversary DVD. For the new song, Tom Yohe Jr. took over as lead designer for his father Yohe Sr., who had died in 2000.[2]

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This list may be better presented as a table. Please help improve this list, prune it, or discuss it on the talk page.

Titles (and topic) - (link to external page with lyrics):

  • My Hero, Zero - music, lyrics, & performance by Bob Dorough. lyrics
  • Elementary, My Dear (2) - music, lyrics, & performance by Bob Dorough. lyrics
  • Three Is a Magic Number (3) - music, lyrics, & performance by Bob Dorough. lyrics
  • The Four-Legged Zoo (4) - music, lyrics, & performance by Bob Dorough (and chorus of children). lyrics
  • Ready or Not, Here I Come (5) - music, lyrics, & performance by Bob Dorough. lyrics
  • I Got Six (6) - music & lyrics by Bob Dorough; performed by Grady Tate. lyrics
  • Lucky Seven Sampson (7) - music, lyrics, & performance by Bob Dorough. lyrics
  • Figure Eight (8) - music & lyrics by Bob Dorough; performed by Blossom Dearie. lyrics
  • Naughty Number Nine (9) - music & lyrics by Bob Dorough; performed by Grady Tate. lyrics
  • The Good Eleven (11) - music, lyrics, & performance by Bob Dorough. lyrics
  • Little Twelvetoes (12) - music, lyrics, & performance by Bob Dorough. lyrics
    No shows were produced featuring the numbers 1 or 10 explicitly, though Zero was a lesson in base 10, and thus in a sense was about both numbers.

(made in the 1990s)

(aka Scooter Computer & Mr. Chips)

  • Introduction (computers) - music & lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, Tom Yohe and Bob Dorough; performed by Jaime Aff and Bob Kaliban. lyrics
  • Hardware (computer hardware) - music & lyrics by Dave Frishberg; performed by Jaime Aff and Bob Kaliban. lyrics
  • Software (computer software) - music & lyrics by Lynn Ahrens; performed by Jaime Aff and Bob Kaliban. lyrics
  • Number Cruncher (computerized statistics) - music & lyrics by Dave Frishberg; performed by Jaime Aff and Bob Kaliban. lyrics

In 1996 Hyperion published Schoolhouse Rock! The Official Guide (SBN 0-7868-8170-4). Written by Tom Yohe and George Newall. the book includes synopses, lyrics and production notes about each of the shorts created to date except "The Weather Show," which was the subject of pending litigation and so could not be included.

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • The America Rock series was made in 1976 to coincide with the United States bicentennial.
  • "Three-Ring Government" was made in 1976, but not aired for several years out of concern that some politicians might be offended by the circus analogy.[3]
  • Lauren Yohe, the daughter of Schoolhouse Rock creator Tom Yohe, is the little girl that voiced the classic line "Darn! That's the end" in "Interjections!"
  • The short "The Preamble," set to highly infectious music, has a slightly abridged wording of the Preamble to the United States Constitution. The song starts, "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union...", but the actual document starts, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...."
  • If you watch "The Preamble" carefully, you will notice a bunch of voters dropping their ballots into a ballot box during the year 1787. The last "voter" is a little girl, who is dragged away by an adult before she can drop in her ballot. This was more than just a cute chuckle, as women would not be allowed to vote in the United States until 1920.
  • "Fireworks" contains an error. Grady Tade incorrectly says that Philip Livingston helped write the Declaration of Independence. It was actually Robert Livingston, although Philip Livingston did sign and support the document.
  • Originally called Scholastic Rock, the series name was changed to Schoolhouse Rock when lawyers at Scholastic Corporation, a children's publisher, objected.
  • In "Busy Prepositions", Jack Sheldon lists the "nine or ten" prepositions that "do most all of the work" and correctly states that "for" is a preposition. However, the word "far", which is an adjective or adverb, appears on the screen in its place.
  • "Three Is A Magic Number" has been adopted by both the Irish television station TV3 Ireland and the British television station BBC Three as their theme tunes. In 2006, the Blind Melon version of "Three is a Magic Number" was used by Three in Australia as part of an advertising campaign. The Blind Melon cover was also featured at the end of the movie You, Me and Dupree. Portions of "Three Is A Magic Number" were also sampled and used in a song entitled "The Magic Number" by hip-hop group De La Soul on their album 3 Feet High and Rising. "Three Is A Magic Number" is notable for its musical sophistication and its use of the kalimba.
  • One subtlety of note is that, in many of the episodes, the producers added in staff names in unlikely places. Prime examples: "Tyrannosaurus Debt", where Tom Yohe's name is on the $10 bill; "The Preamble", where the voting booth has Jack Sheldon's and Lynn Ahrens' names on it; and "Ready or Not, Here I Come!", where there is a boy wearing a T-shirt labeled "Camp Yohe".
  • The release of "Sufferin' Till Suffrage" coincided with the height of the 70's women's liberation movement and the push to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.
  • In the mid-1980s, when Schoolhouse Rock left ABC, it was replaced by Puerto Rican teen band Menudo.
  • "The Good Eleven", "Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here", "The Preamble", and "Them Not-So-Dry Bones" were the tunes heard on the closing credits of their respective Rock. These "closing credit" runs were aired only on Sunday mornings at the end of the final episode that morning (around noon).
  • In "Walkin on Wallstreet", Lester mentions that Leroy uses Dollar cost averaging, an investing strategy that has been questionable[citation needed] since 1979, but has been generally accepted by most financial advisors as a safe way to diversify risk for the average investor.[citation needed]
  • When Multiplication Rock first began airing, the opening of each short would begin with a jingle that sang "Multiplication Rock, brought to you by Nabisco, You'll find quality in our corner" with the Zero Hero boy sticking out of the corner of the screen. Another variation, for sponsor General Foods, included the lyrics "brought to you by your very favorite general, General Foods."
  • According to the DVD commentary and her official website, Lynn Ahrens was a copy secretary at McCaffrey and McCall when she first began writing lyrics, music and singing for the show.
  • ABC stopped airing "The Greatest Show On Earth" (aka "The Weather Show") in the 1990s due to a lawsuit brought by Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus, which has trademarked the phrase. An edited version of the short, eliminating the offending phrase, is included on the 30th anniversary DVD set. The segment previously had been included in the first VHS release of the series, issued by Golden Books Home Video in the 1980s, but was left out of a 1990s VHS series issued by Buena Vista Home Video. The Golden Books video series did not include "The Good Eleven," "Little Twelvetoes," and "Three Ring Government."
  • According to the DVD liner notes, "Little Twelvetoes" is dedicated to the Duodecimal Society of America, which changed its name in 1978 to the Dozenal Society of America, an organization which promotes the base-12 number system.
  • Computer Rock characters Scooter Computer & Mr. Chips also appeared in a children's book explaining how computers can calculate numbers. Scooter is trying to earn money to buy building supplies in order to build a clubhouse. He and Mr. Chips meet a kindly shopkeeper who wants to buy an unused business adjacent to his shop in order to sell more goods and give Scooter a job. Mr. Chips calculates how much the shopkeeper will need to sell in order to retire the loan.
  • Schoolhouse Rock! was adapted into a live musical production, performed off-Broadway, called "Schoolhouse Rock Live!". It told the story of a teacher preparing for his first day teaching a class and his many different personalities.
  • "I'm Just A Bill", arguably Schoolhouse Rock!'s most famous episode, has been spoofed several times:
  • The Daily Show aired a Schoolhouse Rock spoof purporting to explain the uselessness of midterm elections.
  • "The Sensitive Male" segment of Johnny Bravo is a tribute to Schoolhouse Rock. Jack Sheldon also provided the voice of a featured character.

Main article: Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks

On August 27, 2002 Buena Vista Home Video released a 2-disc DVD featuring 46 of the 52 episodes (excluding Computer Rock and two others) as well as many special features. The release coincided with the 30th anniversary of the show. An abbreviated VHS, featuring the "top 25" episodes plus "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College," was released at the same time.

Cover Art DVD Name Ep # Release Date Additional Information
Schoolhouse Rock- Special 30th Anniversary Edition 46 August 26, 2002
  • Audio Commentary
  • "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College" Making Of
  • Long Lost Song "The Weather Show"
  • Top Ten Jukebox
  • Top 20 Countdown
  • "Earn Your Diploma" Trivia Game
  • Arrange-a-Song Puzzle
  • 4 Music Videos by Contemporary Artists
  • Emmy Awards Featurette
  • "Three is a Magic Number" Nike Commercial
  • "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College" in DTS 5.1 Surround

  1. ^ video: America Rock, packaged as commercial video, 1987
  2. ^ a b Unofficial history of Schoolhouse Rock!
  3. ^ Schoolhouse Rock! The Official Guide, p. 63

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