Schoolhouse Rock!

Schoolhouse Rock! is an American interstitial programming series of animated musical educational short films (and later, music videos) which aired during the Saturday morning children's programming block on the US television network ABC. The themes covered included grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics. The series' original run lasted from 1973 to 1985; it was later revived from 1993 to 1996. Additional episodes were produced in 2009 for direct-to-video release.

The series was the idea of David McCall, an advertising executive of McCaffrey & McCall, who noticed his young son was struggling with learning multiplication tables, despite being able to memorize the lyrics of many Rolling Stones songs. McCall hired musician Bob Dorough to write a song that would teach multiplication, which became "Three Is a Magic Number." Tom Yohe, an illustrator at McCaffrey & McCall, heard the song and created visuals to accompany it. Radford Stone, producer and writer at ABC, suggested they pitch it as a television series, which caught the attention of Michael Eisner, then the senior vice president in charge of programming and development at ABC, and cartoon director Chuck Jones. Production was handled by Scholastic Rock, Inc., a subsidiary of McCaffrey & McCall.

The first video of the series, "Three Is a Magic Number," originally premiered during the debut episode of Curiosity Shop on September 2, 1971. The Curiosity Shop version is an extended cut that includes an additional scene/verse of 15 seconds in length that explains the pattern of each set of ten containing three multiples of three, animated in the form of a carnival shooting game. This scene has never been rebroadcast on ABC, nor has it been included in any home media releases; the longer version is, however, available on the soundtrack album, as is an extended version of "My Hero Zero".

Schoolhouse Rock! debuted as a series in January 1973 with Multiplication Rock, a collection of animated music videos adapting the multiplication tables to songs written by Bob Dorough. Dorough also performed most of the songs, with Grady Tate performing two and Blossom Dearie performing one during this season. General Foods was the series' first sponsor; later sponsors of the Schoolhouse Rock! segments also included Nabisco, Kenner Toys, Kellogg's, and McDonald's. During the early 1970s, Schoolhouse Rock was one of several short-form animated educational shorts that aired on ABC's children's lineup; others included Time for Timer and The Bod Squad. Of the three, Schoolhouse Rock was the longest running.

George Newall and Tom Yohe were the executive producers and creative directors of every episode, along with Bob Dorough as musical director. This first season was followed in short order by a second season, run from 1973 to 1975, entitled Grammar Rock, which included nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech (such as conjunctions, explained in "Conjunction Junction"). By this point, the seasons were collectively called Scholastic Rock in news articles. For this second season, the show added the services of Jack Sheldon, a member of The Merv Griffin Show house band, as well as Lynn Ahrens; both of them contributed to the series through the rest of its run. Blossom Dearie returned for a second episode, and Essra Mohawk joined the cast as a recurring singer. In contrast to the series name implying rock and roll, most of the artists and songs were performed by jazz musicians; Sheldon noted the irony of the arrangement and how "everybody loved it" anyway.

By 1974, the name Schoolhouse Rock! was used for the series as a whole. A third season, America Rock, began production at the same time as Grammar Rock. It aired in 1975 and 1976, timed to coincide with the United States Bicentennial, and had music videos covering the structure of the United States government (such as "I'm Just a Bill") along with important moments in American history (examples include "The Preamble" and "Mother Necessity").

A fourth series, titled "Science Rock," followed in 1978 and 1979, and included a broad range of science-related topics. The first video of this season, "A Victim of Gravity," parodied elements of the hit film Grease and featured a rare guest appearance from a pop band, with recently reunited doo-wop group the Tokens providing the vocals. In addition to episodes describing the human body's anatomical systems (the nervous, circulatory, skeletal and digestive systems each received a music video), episodes describing physical sciences such as astronomy, meteorology and electricity were also included, as was "The Energy Blues," an environmentalism-themed video.

A fifth follow-up series, titled "Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips," featuring the titular characters (the only music videos in the series to feature any recurring characters), premiered in the early 1980s and comprised just four segments about home computer technology, then just emerging onto the scene. ABC pulled Schoolhouse Rock! as a whole off the air in August 1985 in favor of fitness show ABC Funfit.