Having already written about Schoolhouse Rock creators Jack Sheldon and Blossom Dearie, it’s only right that we mark the centennial birthday of contributor even more imported to that educational animated series, Bob Dorough (1923-2018). Dorough wrote and played all of the songs in the Multiplication series, singing most of them personally. He also wrote about half of the ones in the Grammar Rock series, including ones like “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here”, which he performed personally and “Conjunction Junction” sung by Sheldon. He also penned some for America Rock (timed to celebrate the Bicentennial) and a couple for the less memorable Science Rock. I was seven when Schoolhouse Rock launched, foresquare front and center for these tuneful Saturday Morning mini-lessons. To this day I am thoroughly appalled by the unacceptably huge number of people my own age who clearly weren’t paying attenttion to America Rock, based on how the cast their ballots.
An interesting aspect of Schoolhouse Rock, is that while a number of the numbers swung plenty, none of them could be described as “rock”. They mostly drew from pop, folk, classical, and jazz. And Dorough brought a grounding in all those musical styles for his contribution. Born in Arkansas, raised in Texas, Dorough served in army bands during World War Two, playing several instruments and acting as an arranger. He then studied music at North Texas State University and Columbia. He began playing New York nightclubs and cabarets while at school, and then moved out to L.A. The first of his over two dozen record albums was Devil May Care (1956).
Our good friend Kathy Biehl saw him perform live many times. At this time, we hand you over to her. (I’m especially glad she described his voice, which I was struggling with).
“Ineffable cheer” is how I heard David Amram introduce Bob Dorough, and that label is the simplest and most accurate description of the one-of-a-kind composer / performer / producer.
I was lucky enough to see him onstage and off, multiple times in his last decade. My in-person introduction was at Jazzmouth, a Beat-inspired festival of poetry atop jazz improvisations, which ran in Portsmouth, NH for years. His first number, “Moon River,” with his unabashedly weird, wobbly voice, stirred a rarely touched place and I was instantly in tears. His treatise on the dictionary definition of love transported me to ardent, insane, devoted fan status (and if it doesn’t charm you, well, I’m not sure we have much more to talk about).
He had a persistent, horsey grin, a haze of … well, cheer, a balding pate with a long, stringy ponytail, and a vibe of not quite being of this time. Or dimension. His sets veered from reverently performed standards to his idiosyncratic catalog to “Schoolhouse Rock” favorites and backstories (which revealed adeptness with pedagogy, math and the spiritual components of both, as well as reverence for the mysteries of human interaction).
His charm – and cheer – radiated no matter what the venue: a New Hampshire theater stage before an audience of children, parents and hangers-on such as me, where he explained and performed “Schoolhouse Rock” with just a keyboard; a posh Upper East Side sanctuary he filled with songs fit for a late-night bar; a cozy stage with a jazz trio in an old, old hotel at the Delaware Water Gap, near his home.
My abiding memory, though, is one of the earlier ones. Between the big Jazzmouth events, one quiet afternoon he and Amram sat in with a jazz ensemble in a near-empty bar, before an audience of at most a dozen people who’d spied the event in the schedule’s fine print. He and Amram scatted improvised commentary back and forth, until Dorough tossed off, in perfect meter, “I’ve got to get back to my beer,” and made good on his words.
Later, he recognized me each time I showed up at his Poconos hangout and came over to chat between sets. And stunned me by asking whether Jazzmouth might ask him back.
They should have been so lucky.
For more on show biz history, please check out No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.