914. To mark the 50th anniversary of "Schoolhouse Rock," the Saturday morning cartoon that taught millions of children about grammar, math, and more, we have a special multi-interview podcast, including memories from George Newall, one of the creators of the show.
914. To mark the 50th anniversary of "Schoolhouse Rock," the Saturday morning cartoon that taught millions of children about grammar, math, and more, we have a special multi-interview podcast, including memories from George Newall, one of the creators of the show.
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MIGNON
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.
This week, I have an extra special multiple-interview episode for you about the classic children’s cartoon “Schoolhouse Rock.” I actually made this 5 years ago with Holly Hutchings, who is our digital operations specialist at Quick and Dirty Tips now. But then we never released it on the feed because of concerns about the music being copyrighted. But when I heard last week it was the 50th anniversary of the show, I really wanted to release this episode, so we decided to strip out the music to solve the problem, so if any of the transitions sound a tiny bit off to you, that’s why! But I really wanted you to hear it, especially since we have an interview with one of the creators, George Newall, who died back in October.
MIGNON
I'm here today with Holly Hutchings, one of my former students who now works in radio, and she is helping me put together this episode on “Schoolhouse Rock.” Actually, she did most of the work, so when I approached Holly about this episode, she didn't know what “Schoolhouse Rock” was, which made me want to do it even more. Do you love it now, Holly?
HOLLY
I kind of do love it, yes. I feel like I missed out on something really important and awesome, but I get it now in my thirties, so that's cool. Yay.
MIGNON
Yeah, you're just slightly too young to have had it growing up, I think.
HOLLY
Yeah, they said it ran through the early eighties, and I was watching way too much TV in the early eighties, but maybe just not this for some reason.
MIGNON
Maybe not those Saturday morning cartoons. Well, we have an excellent show for you about the history of “Schoolhouse Rock” and the people behind it. So, let's get started.
SHR TESTIMONIAL 1
I remember people talking about them. I remember singing the songs. I remember even educators using them, but I don't have a specific memory of me like watching “I’m a Bill.”
SHR TESTIMONIAL 2
Now my son is 10, and we've gone through our multiplication facts, and we've gone through civics, and grammar is another one. We've gone through all those things. It's afforded us that opportunity to learn in a different way.
SHR TESTIMONIAL 3
I never watched “Schoolhouse Rock” growing up. The only thing I'm familiar with from the show is that “I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill.” I think I just saw that over the years after the fact.
SHR TESTIMONIAL 4
You know, the preamble and had to know it for fifth grade. That was the first thing I went to, was the preamble, “Schoolhouse Rock.”
HOLLY
“Schoolhouse Rock” was a short animated program that taught concepts like math, civics, and of course, grammar. It ran on ABC Saturday mornings during cartoons from 1972 until the early eighties. “Schoolhouse Rock” began when David McCall of the advertising agency in McCaffrey and McCall in New York realized that his child could sing all the rock songs of the day, but was struggling to remember the multiplication tables they were learning in school. McCall tasked fellow man George Newell with the job of finding someone who could put math to music and not be boring about it. Here's George:
GEORGE NEWELL
I did know a fellow named Bob Dorough, and Bob came up to our agency. We had a meeting, and David told him what he wanted to do, and Bob said, ‘Okay, I'll be back in three weeks.’ And in three weeks, he came back with the song “Three is a Magic Number.” And the genius of the song is that instead of just…there used to be when I was a kid, a thing on the radio called “The Singing Lady,” and she just sang these things. But Bob put them in a context. “It takes three legs to make a stool, it takes three of this, three of that.” That last line before he got into the counting was “A man and a woman had a little baby. There were three in the family. Three is a magic number.” We just looked at one another and were astonished.
HOLLY
Newall went right to the art department and found his partner, Tom Yohe, who ran the department at the agency. He asked Yohe to create sketches to match the lyrics of their new tune. The ad agency had the ABC account — actually their biggest account. They knew ABC was looking for some educational programming, so they created a storyboard of what the song could look like as a cartoon. ABC loved the idea and the drawings. They signed on to run the shorts under one condition. Yohe had to illustrate them.
HOLLY
So you said you guys looked at each other after you heard “Three is a Magic Number,” and I imagined magic happening, like this could be a thing!
GEORGE NEWELL
You know, I started to get tears in my eyes. I mean, you've gotta think that this guy Bob was from Arkansas, and he had this incredible southern drawl, and he had a nice, really nice soft voice. And, it was a moment that struck us all. And the rest was history.
HOLLY
The show just saw its 45th anniversary and is known all over, even being referenced by President Obama when asked in an interview how government could work better.
NEWS REPORTER
When they get back in session, do you believe you know the way to get things done for the American people so that we don't have another shutdown of the government, which effectively punishes everybody else except the lawmakers?
PRESIDENT OBAMA
There is a very simple way of doing this, which is … maybe you're not old enough to remember “Schoolhouse Rock,” but..
NEWS REPORTER
No, I remember it.
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Remember how the bill gets passed?
GEORGE NEWELL
The songs are all different. Some of them, the music carries them, and on others it is the, it's the art. It's Tom's cartooning that carries them. And a good example of that is “I'm just a Bill,” and that was written by Dave Frishberg. But it's a very straightforward song. They're no gimmicks to it. It just takes you through the process. But the character that Tom designed was just so memorable that it’s used constantly.
HOLLY
Newell says they weren't aware at the time of making the show that they were creating something that would become so fundamental to so many people. They were just having a good time. Many people contributed to making “Schoolhouse Rock” the success it is. Jazz legends like Lynn Ahrens, Blossom Dearie and Jack Sheldon and others voiced the lyrics, and gifted writers like Dave Frishberg, George Newell, and Bob Dorough developed the memorable lyrics. It was a collaborative environment though, and each person dabbled in different roles. If an animator had an idea, they'd do it. If the singers had a better lyric, it would get changed. Vocalist for the first song and many more, Bob Dorough passed away in April of 2018. His daughter, Aralee Dorough remembers “Schoolhouse Rock” from the beginning.
ARALEE DOROUGH
So, I'm a musician myself and one of the first “Schoolhouse Rock” fans.
HOLLY
She was in grade school when her dad wrote “Three Is a Magic Number.”
ARALEE DOROUGH
Oh, I remember it because I was in the perfect age range for “Multiplication Rock,” which was the beginning of it all. I was learning to multiply in third and fourth grade.
HOLLY
So did your dad try out the songs on you?
ARALEE DOROUGH
Oh yeah. I mean, he definitely tried them out on me, and we always talked about math. I mean, it was just the perfect time to be writing songs about math with a daughter of the age that I was.
HOLLY
Sometimes he not only bounced ideas around at home to try on for size, he also included his family in the music itself.
ARALEE DOROUGH
And then I do remember now, I think it was third grade, but getting out of school early and we went to New York City to a recording studio, and I bet George was there in the recording booth with my dad, and they had “Zero” recorded. I added the voice of the girl. “Zero. How can zero be a hero?”
YOUNG ARALEE DOROUGH
How can zero be a hero?
HOLLY
Years later her dad worked on his other music at jazz clubs and would often have college-aged waiters and waitresses recognize him purely by his undeniable voice.
ARALEE DOROUGH
They'd hear him sing and they'd say, wait a minute, you're that guy, that's you! “Three Is a Magic Number.”
ARALEE DOROUGH
“Conjunction Junction” is a great audience participation song because it even has three part harmony, which daddy would teach the audience to sing all the parts.
HOLLY
Dorough added “Schoolhouse Rock” to his repertoire and then would make the audience join in.
HOLLY
“Schoolhouse Rock” extends beyond the hearts and memories of those who grew up loving it. There is a live show that licenses between 300 and 500 performances every year, for example. However, one of the most enduring ways it continues is through the throngs of teachers who still use the songs in the classroom.
ALICIA TAKAOKA
I'm Alicia Takaoka. I am an instructor at a university in Hawaii. When I teach writing, we talk about fanboys and “Conjunction Junction” for conjunctions. So I sing a little bit of “Conjunction Junction,” and then we talk about, “I'm Just a Bill'' when we talk about the process of how bills become laws when we talk about science policy.
HOLLY
Alicia says only a couple students a year now know her source material, but before long, all the students start singing along and retaining the concepts taught. George Newell and Bob Dorough performed a concert at the Kennedy Center's Millennium stage in 2013. It's said to be the largest audience the venue has hosted to date with over 2,000 attendees according to Newell. Dustin Renwick, a freelance journalist in DC was one of the fans there. He, like me, had missed the “Schoolhouse Rock” train as a kid, but the show took on a special meaning when he hit grad school.
DUSTIN RENWICK
And that's kind of the reason I went to the show was because of a grad school professor. And yeah, in class she used “Schoolhouse Rock.” I mean, you were going through the basic parts of speech, and it was this really catchy way to not only remember them, but learn them.
HOLLY
Dustin wanted to give his professor a piece of the show. After the concert he jumped in line to get his program signed by Bob Dorough to later give her as a gift.
DUSTIN RENWICK
I think you could tell that he recognized that this was not just something for kids, you know, it wasn't a weird thing that there was someone there who was, you know, in his mid-to-late twenties asking for an autograph. Just in the same way that it wasn't weird that he was gonna sign stuff for the five year old behind me, or the person who was 10 years my senior in the back of the line. There was no sense that this was time bound, right. That anybody should and could be able to appreciate this whether it was for the music or for the tune or for the learning lesson that it was something that was accessible and available for all ages.
HOLLY
And time will tell if the show continues on another 40 years. But ready or not, the effects of the show keep coming.
MIGNON
I'm so pleased we were able to get so many people to talk to us about their experiences with “Schoolhouse Rock” and that there are at least some people out there who love it as much as I did. Thanks, Holly Hutchings, for putting this show together.
GROUP SINGING
Lolly Lolly, Lolly. Get your, get your adverbs here. Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly get your adverbs here.
MIGNON
I hope you enjoyed that, and finally today, I have a familect story and a recommendation.
CALLER
"Hi Grammar Girl. This is Brandy van Riper calling from St. Louis with the familect for you. My partner and I have three elderly animals all of whom require medication in the morning and the evening along with their breakfast and dinner, and it got quite cumbersome to ask each other with our varying schedules each day, ‘Have the animals been fed? Have the animals been medicated?’ and so we've combined it into ‘Have you fedicated everybody?’ And so ‘fedicated’ is now our familect, and it caught on right away. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks so much for your podcast and for your website, which I've been following since the aughts. I am a teacher, and I absolutely love your grammar advice. Anyway, take care. Thank you."
MIGNON
Thank you! I love that, and I’m sure a lot of animal lovers will find it useful too.
Next, Lisa called in a while ago with this neat app recommendation when we were looking for my dad’s favorite science fiction book from his childhood.
CALLER
"Hi. My name is Lisa Rubio. Are you familiar with the website called Librivox? L-i-b-r-i-v-o-x. It's called an acoustical liberation of books in the public domain. It's wonderful. It's where amateur narrators read books that are in the public domain, and it's completely free, and you actually can become a reader. I actually have a few sections in here where I read. But also in the Librivox there’s a section called short science fiction collections. There’s probably, I’m going to say, 1,500 stories, not every single one is spoken well. OK, but from that, your dad will probably start that, and he will die. He'll weep with joy if he doesn’t know about this, and then he’ll probably find others that he’ll love, and oh my god it’s just a treasure trove. Love your stuff. All right. Bye bye.”
MIGNON
Thanks for passing that along, Lisa. I downloaded the app, and my dad loves audiobooks too so I’m going to tell him about it just as soon as I finish recording the show tonight! Nobody tell him I’ve been sitting on this for a month.
If you want to share the story of your familect, a family dialect or a word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL, and I might play it on the show. Be sure to tell me the story behind your word and call from a quiet place.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to my audio engineer Nathan Semes and my editor, Adam Cecil, who gets a sticker from every place he visits to put on his luggage. Our marketing and publicity assistant is Davina Tomlin, our digital operations specialist is Holly Hutchings, and our ad operations specialist is Morgan Christianson. Our intern is Kamryn Lacy.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.