So Awesome: ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ gets a singalong salute for its 40th anniversary
Back in the heyday of Saturday mornings, back when cartoon viewing was a scheduled date for 8-year-olds and their cereal bowls, back before Nickelodeon made animation into a 24-hour buffet, there arose a phenomenon that was good and pure and true. It was called “Schoolhouse Rock.”
“I still play the songs in my jazz jobs,” says Bob Dorough, who wrote and voiced much of the original “Schoolhouse” canon. “I used to play very hip songs, but then one of the waiters — who would be 25 or 30 — would say to me, ‘your voice sounds familiar.’ ” Dorough would reveal why. The waiter would get excited. “Oh!” he would say. “Can we have one, please?”
Bob Dorough just turned 89. “Schoolhouse Rock” turns 40 next week: On the morning of Jan. 13, 1973, a three-minute animated video called “My Hero, Zero” materialized on ABC, sandwiched between programs such as “Superfriends” and “Yogi’s Gang” and “The Roadrunner Show.”
“Schoolhouse Rock” wasn’t a show. It was the thing between the shows — two to three insterstitial, educational minutes about math or grammar or science. It was “Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here,” teaching young viewers how to modify verbs in a jaunty, helium-induced ditty (“Slowly, surely, really learn your adverbs here. You’re going to need ’em if you read ’em”). It was “Naughty Number Nine,” accompanied by a bluesy video depicting a feline pool shark. No video was ever longer than a potty break, but somehow “Schoolhouse Rock” became a totem pole around which children of the 1970s have chosen to gather and reminisce.
The rest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/schoolhouse-rock-at-40/2013/01/04/0679e738-5699-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html?hpid=z4
My favorite:
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...little did they know I merely recited a jingle I'd heard. 
I love the example you picked. [img]
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...offensive, but funny.
I was mid-way through earning my Elem. Ed degree when School House Rock was born. I loved it.
(probably because there were black kids in there including one with a J5 fro
)
A "mellow" fave was the 8s
A grammar fave!
(do they even give butt injections to kids anymore?
)
And of course the one that everyone in the M$M needs to view over and over and over because they don't seem to know this process.
Happy Birthday Schoolhouse Rock from the newly-minted 11 year old when it first came out!
Fundraiser a few weeks ago. It was great.
So cool!
Thank you!!
