SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK POLL

Oops, messed up those last two. I guess their vote can be combined.

Anyway, "Verb: That's What's Happening": That's what's happening. "I'm Just a Bill", "Conjunction Junction", and "The Magic Number" are pretty badass, too.

my money was on this being a chaki thread.

i'm voting for the classic "i'm just a bill"

They're almost all classics. I'm torn between Interjection! and No More Kings, at the moment, but it could easily be any of a dozen more.

Very torn between
- Verb! (That's What's Happening)
- Figure Eight
- Little Twelve Toes
- Three is a Magic Number

I wanna vote for "I Got Six" but my family is pressuring me to go for "Sufferin' Until Suffrage." This is gonna go down to the wire.

Desperate showdown between "My Hero Zero" and "Lucky Seven Sampson," with the latter taking it in the end. "I sure do thank you for the huckleberry pie!"

interjection

Verb, no doubt. I get my thang in action!

wots yr function?

that was sweet. I doubt there were 20 pop songs released this year that are better than "Conjunction Junction"

God Bless Jack Sheldon

I'm all about FOUR. I mean, there's a kudu and everything!
Recently I've had to explain Schoolhouse Rock to some of The Kids, and it makes me feel old and sad :(

Unpack Your Adjectives

Huh, I didn't know Jack Sheldon was white!

"Interjections!" for me, altho "No More Kings" still has the narrative power to make me wish I was American nearly 30 yrs later

Very hard to pick just one, but I'm gonna go along with Curtis and vote for UYA, although the rest of the clan might wanna vote for Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here.

Very tough call, but I went for Verb.

THREE IS ALWAYS MAGIC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11N-BD1aBo0

Schoolhouse Rock C/D?

Tough choice, but "Conjunction Junction" I think.

Who all here is old enough to have watched these in their original Sat.-morning-cartoons setting?

yo

not yo

Second run.

Same here, but I was a bit too young for them to be useful for me.

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/7625/eartrumpetgx1.jpg

yo

...nearly 30 years later...

hand held high [or as high as i can with the onset of arthritis].

Oh, and "Rufus x.p" for the win.

er, obviously the lager has gotten to the synapses. Make that "Rufus x. s." for the win.

We had to recite the preamble in seventh grade and everyone had it memorized from Saturday mornings. One kid was basically busted for doing so when he couldn't help reciting it in the same meter as the song. Saying "ah-and" was the dead giveaway.

i bought this for my son a couple years back, so fun remembering lyrics to songs i had not heard in 20+ years. amazing how these ditties really burned into memory cells.

yo, yo

i am guilty and old as charged

god this is hard

How to even vote?

"My Hero, Zero" is the catchiest
"Conjunction Junction" is probably the most educational
"Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla" is a motherfucker of a song

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I didn't vote for it, but "The Tale of Mr. Morton" should be taught in songwriting classes.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Who all here is old enough

I was there.

De La Soul fans, amirite?

i was there too, ca. 76-78. used to go across the road saturday mornings to watch cartoons at eric's house. schoolhouse rock bits came on between speed buggy, fat albert, krofft supershow.

Missed the poll, but I was squarely in the demographic when these first aired. Would have voted for "The Shot Heard 'Round the World," but I always think of "The Great American Melting Pot" when I'm riding on the F train and can see Lovely Lady Liberty off in the distance.

Was robbed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhHpJ45_zwM

This song rocks.

Robbed? Hey! It got three votes!

Yeah, but Three Is A Magic Number got 8 votes.

Thx 4 the subtitles had no idea as a youngin that it was:

"They're generally set apart from a sentence
By an exclamation point
Or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong."

Oops! I forgot! That's my favorite song!

I love the chorus: "So when you're happy (HURRAY!) or sad (AWWW!) . . ."

Genius, kinda.

I didn't vote for it, but "The Tale of Mr. Morton" should be taught in songwriting classes.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, December 25, 2007 8:19 PM (5 years ago)

Written by Lynn Ahrens, who is also the voice on some of her own compositions. Wrote on her "Preamble":

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2013/09/schoolhouse-rock-preamble-1975.html

DJ Quik sampling "Verb: That's What's Happening" in "We Still Party" is one of the dopest samples ever.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E2pX7ezEKIs&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DE2pX7ezEKIs

Bob Dorough does a jazz brunch sometimes or variants thereof, including this weekend at Joe's Pub.

"I'm Just A Bill" wuz robbed.

"I Got Six" kicks so much ass.

i don't see how unpack your adjectives got more votes than classics i'm just a bill and interjection!. fix was in.

DJ Quik sampling "Verb: That's What's Happening" in "We Still Party" is one of the dopest samples ever.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E2pX7ezEKIs&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DE2pX7ezEKIs

― The Reverend, Saturday, September 21, 2013 1:06 PM Bookmark

Me OTM!

Alright I have my tickets for this Sunday's noontime performance.

Will you call out requests?

Think so.

He front-loaded the straight jazz part of the show, including "September Song" and "I'm Hip," then did Schoolhouse Rock material at the end. Afterwards somebody had him autograph the sleeve of a Sorcerer LP. He promised to do "Rufus Xavier Sarsparilla" next weekend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edHPGj43f5U

Thx 4 the subtitles had no idea as a youngin that it was:

"They're generally set apart from a sentence
By an exclamation point
Or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong."

― ♪♫(●̲̲̅̅̅̅=̲̲̅̅̅̅●̲̅̅)♪♫ (Steve Shasta), Monday, November 23, 2009 5:27 PM (5 years ago)

This part kind of reminds me of another song, maybe the chorus(?) of The Crystals' "He's A Rebel":

Just because he's doesn't do what
Everybody else does...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Ty_8Nw-CY

HI DERE,
Thread of missing Bob Dorough. Glad I got to see him live the one time and name a rolling jazz thread or two after his work before the recent curvy Colombian crackdown.

Incredible songwriter obviously, and a very distinctive singer who projected exactly the right pitch of warmth, enthusiasm, and uncondescending knowingness to make this material as compelling as it is.

"Remember Lucky Seven Sampson, that's my natural-born name
If you should ask me again I'd have to tell you the same
When you wake up tomorrow you'll be glad that I came
'Cause you'll be singing one of the songs that *I* sang"

Adore the animation but it was the music that stuck in my head my entire life. I bought the DVD for my kids and the CD box set for me!

weird bit of trivia only interesting to me: Bob Dorough once guested on a Fantastic Plastic Machine LP. on first listen I remember thinking, "this dude sounds a lot like the Schoolhouse Rock guy"; it was a few years before I realized it actually was

Bob Dorough made it to 94 and saw generations of kids love and learn from his music. That's about as good as it gets.

I don't know about you lot but his songs still rattle round my brain at times.

Nice tribute coming up in a few days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU4pyiB-kq0

RIP Jack Sheldon
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/arts/music/jack-sheldon-dead.html

I hope his voice will be echoing round school rooms for centuries...

Man, I love each and every one of the cats associated with this music.

Maybe already known to folks here, but news to me, via a friend's Facebook: in the early 70s, Bob Dorough cut gentle, folky vocal tracks for three Scholastic Records 7"s comprising kid-friendly covers of pretty hip contemporary hits. The bubblegummy headline name was The 44th Street Portable Flower Factory (sometimes just printed as The Portable Flower Factory) and there seem to have been twelve tracks in all, of which I can find five on YouTube. A sampling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoRwZUi_KHc

Runaway Child, Running Wild

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbz7SpyCc8k

Across the Universe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG9csC51qsI

Get Together

Would love to hear "Atlantis," "Country Road," "Who'll Stop the Rain"...

No, had never heard of that, and would like to hear those too. Also found these:

youtube.com/watch?v=ge0zP--KPow
The Letter

youtube.com/watch?v=ge0zP--KPow

Ah, forget it, it's out there, along with Blackbird.

Thanks for posting those, Bob's voice will always be a direct route to my inner child. It's a shame there's no compilation covering Bob's career.

Incidentally:
In 2019, the Schoolhouse Rock! soundtrack was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Hell yeah!

these are great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibPPqlfZocI

RIP, Dave Frishberg.

So what Bob Dorough albums are worth hearing?

Devil May Care!

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/arts/music/essra-mohawk-dead.html

"In the 1970s, Ms. Mohawk sang memorable songs like “Sufferin’ Till Suffrage” and “Interjections!,” for “Schoolhouse Rock!,” the series of animated educational shorts that was a Saturday morning television staple for the children of Generation X."

I doubt the current Congress would even consider that bill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3W1BiUjp0