January 6, 1973: “Schoolhouse Rock!” Premieres

January 6, 1973: Schoolhouse Rock! premieres on ABC. For my generation, between cartoons, they taught us primary English, math, history and science lessons. The name was a takeoff on the Elvis Presley song "Jailhouse Rock."

The series was the idea of David McCall, an advertising executive of McCaffrey and 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 and 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 vice president of ABC (and later the CEO of The Walt Disney Company), and of legendary cartoon director Chuck Jones.

"Three Is a Magic Number" originally debuted during the debut episode of Curiosity Shop on September 2, 1971. The Curiosity Shop version is an extended cut which includes an additional scene and verse 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.

Schoolhouse Rock! debuted as a series in January 1973 with Multiplication Rock, a collection of animated shorts adapting the multiplication tables to songs written by Dorough. Dorough also performed most of the songs, with Grady Tate performing two and Blossom Dearie performing one during this season.

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 ("Timer" was an anthropomorphic egg) and The Bod Squad (which, like Time for Timer, was about health and nutrition). Of the three, Schoolhouse Rock was the longest-running.

Yohe and George Newall were the executive producers and creative directors of every episode, along with Dorough as musical director. This 1st season was followed in short order by a 2nd season, run from 1973 to 1975, entitled Grammar Rock, which included nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech, including conjunctions, leading to one of the more popular episodes, the train-themed "Conjunction Junction." For this second season, the show added the services of singers Jack Sheldon, Lynn Ahrens and Essra Mohawk.

To coincide with the upcoming United States Bicentennial, a 3rd season, America Rock, airing in 1975 and 1976, had episodes covering the structure of the United States government, along with important moments in American history.

There were separate episodes discussing the path from the Mayflower to American independence, "No More Kings"; the Declaration of Independence, "Fireworks"; and the War of the American Revolution, "The Shot Heard Round the World" ("Take your powder, take your gun, report to General Washington!"). Westward expansion was discussed in "Elbow Room," immigration in "The Great American Melting Pot," and inventions in "Mother Necessity."

Included in America Rock was their episode about how a bill becomes a law: "I'm Just a Bill." It became the best-remembered and the most-parodied. Of course, this being the pre-Reagan era, the role of lobbyists was not mentioned. Indeed, with the exception of going to the Moon to close out "Elbow Room," there was little discussion of any historical events after the Revolution. Nothing about the American Civil War or America's role in either World War, Korea, or Vietnam, a war still in progress for another few days after the premiere of Schoolhouse Rock!

A 4th series, titled Science Rock, followed in 1978 and 1979, and included a broad range of science-related topics. The premiere episode 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 an episode), episodes describing physical sciences such as astronomy, meteorology and electricity were also included, as was "The Energy Blues," an environmentalism-themed short.

A fifth follow-up series, titled "Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips," featuring the titular characters (the only episodes 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. As the references and depictions became quickly outdated, due to the rapid advance of technology, these segments stopped airing after 1985, and were not released on home video until the 30th anniversary DVD in 2002.

I have no memory of those segments at all, whereas, looking at a list of the "original" episodes, I can remember 11 of the 12 Multiplication Rock episodes, 6 of the 9 Grammar Rocks, 9 of the 10 America Rocks, and 5 of the 9 Science Rocks, for a total of 31 out of 40, or 77 percent.

The 3-minute episodes continued to air in reruns until 1985, by which point most kids of my generation had outgrown Saturday morning cartoons. There were revivals, with new episodes: Money Rock in 1994, '95 and '96; and Earth Rock, about environmentalism, in 2009.

David McCall died in 1989, killed in a car crash while aiding refugees in Albania. Tom Yohe died in 2000, Chuck Jones in 2002, Blossom Dearie in 2009, Grady Tate and Radford Stone in 2017, Bob Dorough in 2018, Jack Sheldon in 2019. As of January 6, 2022, George Newall, Lynn Ahrens, Essra Mohawk and Michael Eisner are still alive. (UPDATE: Newall died on December 7, 2022.)

*

January 6, 1973 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. The NFL was between its Conference Championship Games and Super Bowl VII. There were 6 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Houston Rockets, 116-106 at Madison Square Garden. Walt Frazier scored 33 points.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 108-93 at the Cleveland Arena. Lenny Wilkens scored 36 points.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Detroit Pistons, 116-111 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. "Pistol" Pete Maravich scored 30 for the Hawks.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Buffalo Braves, 110-96 at the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center Arena (a.k.a. The MECCA). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had 37 points and 16 assists.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, 118-112 at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium. Nate "Tiny" Archibald scored 34 in defeat.

* And the Golden State Warriors beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 111-79 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

There were 3 games in the American Basketball Association:

* The Virginia Squires beat the Kentucky Colonels, 113-109 at The Scope in Norfolk, Virginia. Julius Erving, already known as "Doctor J," scored 34 points.

* The Utah Stars beat the Indiana Pacers, 125-118 at the Indiana State Fair Coliseum (now the Indiana Farmers Coliseum) in Indianapolis. George McGinnis had 38 points and 20 rebounds in defeat.

* And the Carolina Cougars beat the Dallas Chaparrals, 106-104 at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas.

No games were scheduled in the World Hockey Association, but there were 7 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Buffalo Sabres, 4-1 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New York Islanders lost to the Detroit Red Wings, 4-0 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the California Golden Seals, 5-0 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Vancouver Canucks, 4-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Minnesota North Stars, 2-0 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The St. Louis Blues and the Atlanta Flames played to a tie, 2-2 at the St. Louis Arena.

* And the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers were not scheduled.