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Schoolhouse Rock!

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Schoolhouse Rock! is a series of 46 educational shorts featuring rock songs about "schoolhouse" topics, including grammar, science, economics, history, and politics. Originally conceived by Thomas G. Yohe in 1972, the shorts were broadcast on ABC television affiliates between 1973 and 1986. They were then broadcast on occasion throughout the 1990s and part of the 2000s. 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 Generation X, Schoolhouse Rock! has become part of American popular culture.

Contents

Origins

Schoolhouse Rock was a commercial advertising venture by David McCall. The idea came to David as 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 David 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 (who 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, at the time, the head of ABC's children's programming division. Eisner brought long time Warner Bros cartoonist/director Chuck Jones to the meeting to also listen to the presentation.

The network's children's programming division actually made its cartoon-producers 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.

Not only did the Schoolhouse Rock team make 3 minute segments, they also created 30 second public service announcements to talk to kids about healthy eating. Some of these PSAs were 'Beans and Rice', 'Chew Chew Chew', 'Wrappers', and 'Love Won't Add Weight'.

The last of the original series was the computer segments with Scooter Computer and Mister Chips, which were intended to introduce children to computers, but they were so disliked by the creative team that production copies were not even retained; the first of the four segments is still missing.

In the 1990s the team reunited to produce Money Rock, as well as 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 passed away in 2000.

Episodes

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

Multiplication Rock

Grammar Rock

Science Rock

America Rock

Money Rock

(made in the 1990s)

Computer Rock

(aka Scooter Computer & Mr. Chips)

Trivia

The short "The Preamble," set to highly infectious music, has a slightly abridged wording of the Preamble of 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...."

Along the same lines: a more complete definition of a noun is that it's the name of a person, place, thing, "or idea". Or more completely, that it's the name or title of any object or idea. Love and fear are not things or objects of any kind, but their names are nouns.

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. Portions of Three Is A Magic Number was also sampled and used in a song entitled The Magic Number by Hp-Hop group De La Soul on their album 3 Feet High and Rising.

In the mid-1980's when Schoolhouse Rock left ABC it was replaced by Puerto Rican teen band, Menudo.

The Good Eleven, Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here, The Preamble, & 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).

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.

Parodies and cultural references

It has been parodied on shows such as:

In 1996 Atlantic Records released the album Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks, a collection of popular artists, including The Lemonheads, Blind Melon, and Ween each covering a Schoolhouse Rock! tune (list below).

Elliott Smith recorded a cover of Figure Eight. It was not included in his 2000 album of the same name.

In 2006 [Hitachi] created a parody called [Get Perpendicular!] to explain their new data storage system.

External links

 

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