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May 26, 2012

Where are the Schoolhouse Rock singers now?

by Adam Finley, posted Oct 11th 2006 7:58PM

schoolhouse rockI'm just old enough to remember watching Schoolhouse Rock on ABC, and getting all those catchy but educational songs stuck in my head. The series of shorts that popped up between cartoons on Saturday mornings was conceived by Thomas G. Yohe and based on the simple idea that rock lyrics stick in kids' minds easily, so why not make them educational? The series has become one of the defining pop cultural icons of Generation X, and YesButNoButYes has a brief history of the series and the men and women behind it, complete with video clips. The piece mentions Jack Sheldon (the "I'm Just a Bill" guy) lent his voice to an episode of Family Guy, but it forgets to mention he was also the voice of the "Amendment To Be" in an episode of The Simpsons: "There's a lot of flag burners / who have too much freedom / I wanna make it legal for policemen / to beat 'em." It's a great bit of TV history, definitely worth checking out.

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Brendon Carr

That Simpsons parody was right on the money: The lyrics were brilliant and the return of Jack Sheldon's voice made it an instant classic.

October 12 2006 at 9:26 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dwacon_com

Multiplication Rock (the original incarnation) helped me get though math. I'm not sure if my teacher understood why there was so much humming going on during math quizzes...

October 11 2006 at 11:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
erroneous_nick

The idea that educational rock lyrics would stay inside young heads was right on the money. I loved Schoolhouse Rock when I was young and still remember most of them, at least bits of most of them. I, too, bought the DVD set for my children and they fell in love with them.

Why aren't new ones still being made today? It was one hell of an idea for teaching young people about all sorts of subjects they might otherwise never have been interested in. Great ideas like Schoolhouse Rock should continue to flourish.

October 11 2006 at 11:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Danny Edwards

Jack Sheldon also did a great Schoolhouse Rock parody episode of Johnny Bravo.

October 11 2006 at 8:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tammy

Jack Sheldon use to be in the Merv Griffin band on his daily variety/talk show. He also appeared recently on the Ellen show when they did their musical episode. I remember him very well and recognize his voice immediately when I hear it.

I gave our daughter the DVD set for Schoolhouse Rocks when it came out. She was studying to be an elementary school teacher and I thought they would come in handy.

October 11 2006 at 8:25 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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