Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Who wrote the Schoolhouse Rock! songs?


Search: school house rock

Why: We listened to "Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks" the other day, and "No More Kings" by Pavement just sounded like a regular Pavement song.

Answer: Most were by Bob Dorough! He is a trained jazz performer - a pianist, vocalist, saxophonist, and clarinetist - and an arranger.
He is known as "the only singer to record with Miles Davis." While this may not be 100% true, he did record two vocals with Davis, in 1962, "Nothing Like You" and "Blue Xmas," both of which he composed.
In 1971, he was asked to "set the multiplication tables to music." For example:
3 x 10 is 30
3 x 9 is 27
3 x
(I am singing it. You can't really tell.)
So anyway. It was popular as heck, and he did this til 1985. (Did you know there are more than 50 of them? 50!)

These days, Dorough mainly plays and records jazz with a trio.
Source: IMDb, BobDorough.com

The More You Know: Dorough also worked with Nellie McKay on her last 2 albums, including Normal as Blueberry Pie - A Tribute to Doris Day. Here is a song that is on neither of those albums:

3 comments:

  1. Actually, the political songs were at least half-written by Lynn Ahrens. Dorough did all the math and grammar and some of the history.

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  2. Er, wait, not all the grammar. Ahrens did Interjections and Nouns...

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  3. Bob Dorough wasn't the only singer to record with Miles Davis. He was the only singer who Miles Davis personally invited to sing on one of his records. The song was "Blue Xmas"

    I've seen Bob perform 3 times and he is absolutely delightful, and he always plays a couple of Schoolhouse Rock songs.

    He sang many of them originally, including 3 is a Magic Number.

    Jeff Pistana
    www.wayjeff.com

    ReplyDelete