Creators of Schoolhouse Rock

The original creators of the Schoolhouse Rock television series worked at the McCaffrey & McCall advertising agency in New York City in the late 1960s. It all started when David McCall, the president of the company, took his 11-year-old son on a camping trip, and found the boy had songs to popular rock songs memorized, even though he was having trouble in school with his times tables. McCall came back to the ad agency with the idea of putting the multiplication tables to music. He enlisted the help of people from the agency as well as songwriters on Broadway, but without the desired results. Someone from the agency instead recommended the services of Bob Dorough, a jazz pianist whose credentials were sizable (he had performed alongside Miles Davis on one of his albums). Dorough set all the times tables for the numbers 0-12 with the exception of 1 and 10 to music, and sang all but three of them himself. The songs did not sell in phonograph form, so the ad agency, behind the drawings of the company's art director Tom Yohe, animated the songs and sold them to ABC in three minute segments. Over the years a number of talented creators and voices lent themselves to the making of the series. Jack Sheldon, a longtime voice personality on 1970s network television gave his voice to many SHR episodes, including arguably the two most famous ones, "Conjunction Junction," and "I'm Just a Bill." Lynn Ahrens lent her voice and writing talents to many of the show's more successful episodes, including "Noun is a person place or thing," and "The Preamble." She had initially gotten her start when a couple of the show's creators saw her walking into the ad agency (where she worked as a secretary with her guitar, and invited her to work on the project. Since Schoolhouse Rock, she has gone onto write for Broadway Shows, including "Ragtime."

For more information regarding the series, the creators, and Jack Sheldon in particular: http://www.jacksheldon.com/school.htm http://www.school-house-rock.com/