What follows is a lightly edited transcript of a Stitcher Premium bonus podcast.
Grammar Girl: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty. If you're like me, you love “Schoolhouse Rock!” and if you don't know what it is, you're going to love it soon. 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. 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 Hutchings: 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 30s, so that's cool.
GG: Yeah, you're just slightly too young to have had it growing up, I think.
HH: Yeah, they said it ran through the early 80s, and I was watching way too much TV in the early 80s, but maybe just not this for some reason.
GG: Maybe not those Saturday morning cartoons.
HH: Yeah.
GG: Well, we have an excellent show for you about the history of “Schoolhouse Rock!” and the people behind it, so let's get started.
Male Voiceover: I remember people talking about them. I remember people singing the songs. I remember even educators using them, but I don't have a specific memories me watching.
Female Voiceover: 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 afforded us that opportunity to learn in a different way.
MV: I never watched “Schoolhouse Rock!” growing up. The only thing I'm familiar with from the show is the "I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill." I think I just saw that over the years after the fact.
FV: You know, the preamble had a note in fifth grade. That was the first thing I went to—the preamble.
HH: “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 80s. “Schoolhouse Rock!” began when David McCall of the advertising agency, McCaffrey & McCall in New York, realized 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 ad 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: And I did know a fellow named Bob Dorough. And Bob came up to our agency, we have a meeting, and David said, “Tell them what you want to do.” And Bob said, “Okay, I'll be back in 3 weeks,” and in 3 weeks he came back with the song "3 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. And it takes three legs to make a stool. It takes three of this, three of that—
"3 is the Magic Number" plays
GN: …before he got into the counting, there was a man and woman had a little baby. There were three in the family—three is a magic number. And just, you know, we just looked at one another astonished.
"3 is the Magic Number" plays
HH: 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.
HH: So you said you guys looked at each other after you heard "3 is the Magic Number," and I imagined magic happening like, “Huh, this could be a thing.”
GN: It was! Everybody, you know—I'm about to get tears in my eyes. This guy is—Bob is from Arkansas, and he had this incredible southern drawl, and he had a really nice soft voice. It was a moment that struck us all. And the rest is history.
HH: 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.
Male Interviewer: 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 that effectively punishes everybody else except the lawmakers ?
Barack Obama: There is a very, simple way of doing this. Which is, you know, maybe you're not old enough to remember “Schoolhouse Rock!”—
MI: Oh, I remember it.
BO: Remember how the bill gets passed?
"I'm Just a Bill" plays
GN: The songs are all different. Some of them, the music carries them. And in others, it's the art—it's Tom's cartooning that carries it. And a good example of that is "I'm Just a Bill."
"I'm Just a Bill" plays
And that was written by Dave Frishberg. But it's a very straightforward song—there's no gimmicks to it. But the character that Tom designed was just so memorable. It's used constantly.
HH: Newall 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 voice 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.
Music.
HH: 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.
AD: So, I'm a musician myself and one of the first “Schoolhouse Rock!” fans.
HH: She was in grade school when her dad wrote "3 is a Magic Number."
AD: 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.
HH: So did your dad try out the songs on you, or…?
AD: Oh, yeah. I mean, he definitely tried them out on me. And we'd always talk about, you know, math. And it was just the perfect time it be writing songs about math—with a daughter of the age that I was.
HH: Sometimes he not only bounced ideas around at home to try on for size, he’d also included his family in the music itself.
AD: 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, and I added the girl.
"Zero? How can zero be a hero?" plays
HH: Years later, her dad worked on his other music at jazz clubs and would often have college-age waiters and waitresses recognize him purely by his undeniable voice.
AD: They'd hear him sing, and they'd say, wait a minute, you're that guy! That's you in "3 is the Magic Number."
HH: Dorough added “Schoolhouse Rock!” to his repertoire and then would make the audience join in.
AD: "Conjunction Junction" is a great audience participation song because it even has a three-part harmony which daddy would teach the audience to sing all the parts.
"Conjunction Junction" plays
HH: “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: My name is Alicia Takaoka. I am an instructor at a university in Hawaii. When I teach writing, we talk about FANBOYS and conjunctions, the use for conjunctions, so I sing a little bit of "Conjunction Junction." 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.
HH: 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.
HH: George Newell and Bob Dorough performed a concert at the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage in 2013. It was said to be the largest audience the venue hosted to date with over 2,000 attendees, according to Newell. Dustin Renwick, 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,
DR: And that's kind of the reason I went to this show, was because of my grad school professor. And yeah, in class she used “Schoolhouse Rock!” I mean that was—you were going through the basic parts of speech, and it was this really catchy way not only to remember them, but learn them.
HH: 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.
DR: I think you could tell that he recognized that this is not just something for kids. You know, it wasn't a weird thing that there was someone there who was in his mid-to-late twenties asking for an autograph, just in the same way that he was going to sign stuff for the five-year-old behind me or, you know, the person who was ten years my senior in the back of the line. There was no sense that this was time-bound—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.
HH: And time will tell if the show continues on another 40 years. But ready or not, the effects of the show keep coming.
GG: 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 again to Holly, and thank you for listening. You can find the entire back catalogue of Grammar Girl episodes on Stitcher Premium. And if you want to find the articles, essentially transcripts, to go with them, you can find most of those at quickanddirtytips.com.