Schoolhouse Rock!, the classic musical cartoon that taught lessons on history, multiplication and more is being presented in revue form in Palm Springs by musician and historian Skip Heller.
After performing with Bob Dorough, the composer of the Schoolhouse Rock! music, Heller received a blessing from Dorough’s family to present the iconic songs. With the backing of a full band, songs like “Three Is a Magic Number,” “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill” will come to life onstage. You can catch Skip Heller’s School House Rock! on Thursday, Sept. 25, at Agua Caliente Palm Springs.
“I was born in 1965, so I was the target audience when (Schoolhouse Rock!) hit the air,” Heller said during a recent phone interview. “Like everybody else of my generation, that was a part of my Saturday morning cereal. I knew all the songs. They were beautiful little pieces of music and animation. I grew up in Philadelphia, so anything that was history or civics or whatever, I had a special interest in, because all our class trips were to Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and Benjamin Franklin’s house. Plus, my mother was a school librarian, so I was interested in the things that would make you smarter.”
As Heller was cutting his teeth as a performer, he was reintroduced to his childhood soundtrack.
“Cut to 17 years old and making my way as a jazz musician: The guy who I apprenticed with in Philadelphia was Eric Spiegel. He was a singing piano player, and he was great at both things,” Heller said. “He did all the material that all the other singing piano players had done, (from) Tom Waits, David Frishberg and Bob Dorough. … When I went in search of Bob Dorough music, I recognized his voice immediately from “Three Is a Magic Number” and “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here.”
Heller was shocked to find Dorough’s name credited to numerous facets of music, including connections with everyone from Dr. Demento to Scotty Moore, Elvis’ guitar player.
“He lived not far from Philadelphia in the Delaware Water Gap, and I called him up,” Heller said. “He said, ‘Hey, I’m going to be in Philadelphia next week, and I’m being interviewed on some radio show called Fresh Air. Why don’t you come with me?’
“Here I am with the creator of Schoolhouse Rock!, who is also a guy who recorded with Miles Davis. The only group that Miles Davis ever led that had a vocalist in it, Bob Dorough was the vocalist. I got to know Bob over the years, and when he would come to the West Coast, we would hang out. … We recorded an eight-song tribute to Eric Spiegel, because Bob got to know Eric.”
In 2014, Dorough was set to perform a Schoolhouse Rock! concert at an animation festival, but shortly before the performance, vocalist Jack Sheldon, behind songs like “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill,” suffered a stroke.
“Bob called me up and said, ‘Hey, man, I need somebody to have to come here and sing ‘Conjunction Junction’ and ‘I’m Just a Bill’ because of Jack’s health,’” Heller said. “I met him at the hotel where he was staying up on the Sunset Strip. There was a piano in the cocktail lounge, and Bob hands me the sheet music and says, ‘Let’s just go over it here.’ Well, we started doing it, and all of a sudden it was like we were doing this mini-concert, because all of these people from all ages showed up. Everybody knew this music and knew immediately what they were hearing. That night, I got to sing Jack Sheldon’s parts at The Echo in Los Angeles, with Bob Dorough playing piano behind me, which is crazy.”
That was the last time Heller saw Dorough, who died in 2018.
“He talked like he sang, so immediately, you felt like you were in the presence of somebody you had known all your life,” Heller said. “There are certain people I’ve seen in my professional life who I’ve played with who I look at and I go, ‘No wonder they’re successful, because what you see is what you get.’ The person you hear on the records and see onstage is exactly the same guy off stage. If you loved him when you encountered him in a recording, boy, are you going to love him off stage, because he’s just that guy.”
Heller contacted Dorough’s family and spoke to his daughter about performing some of the Schoolhouse Rock! tunes.
“I said, ‘Look, I have the right players and the right singers to do Schoolhouse Rock! as a live thing, and I don’t want to do it like the way the musical (Schoolhouse Rock Live!) is,’” he said. “(I said) ‘I know Bob saved every chart he ever wrote,’ and she said, ‘Oh, yeah, I scanned everything. I have the charts.’ That was 2019 when we started getting it together. There were some things missing, so I had to go back to the videos and transcribe them. … I hired one other person to help with that, because I wanted to have the entire library.”
Soon after, COVID-19 hit, leaving the project in the dark. Now, in 2025, Heller is finally ready to debut his Schoolhouse Rock! concert in Palm Springs.
“I put together exactly the right band for it, with exactly the right instruments, three singers—and several people in the band have classroom teaching experience,” Heller said. “Even though there aren’t going to be children there in a casino … they’re addressing us in a way that would be consistent with the spirit of the thing.”
“You can tell people were not raised with good civics teaching, so there’s every chance in the world we’re going to open the show up with ‘No More Kings.’”
Skip Heller
School House Rock Live! is the latest show from Heller to mix history and music. As a part of the Carousel series at Agua Caliente Palm Springs, Heller has presented in-depth musical presentations of film noir, exotica, klezmer music and the sounds of Chicano music icon Lalo Guerrero.
“Raymond Scott, Henry Mancini, Robert Drasnin, Lalo Guerrero—all these different people whose music I presented, there’s always a third of the audience walking up and going, ‘I had no idea that that stuff was that interesting or that hip or that futuristic,’ and then there’s another part of the audience that goes, ‘I have loved these records all my life, I can’t believe I heard this live the way it was meant to be,’” he said.
At School House Rock Live!, Heller said civics will make up a large portion of the evening’s “lessons.”
“You can tell people were not raised with good civics teaching, so there’s every chance in the world we’re going to open the show up with ‘No More Kings,’” Heller said. “Bob was a 94-year-old hippie when he died. He had a long, great ponytail down to his ass, and the spirit of what he did was: If you teach people the truth about things … you’re going to raise good citizens. I think we need a reminder of what citizenship is. You always see these memes: ‘Schoolhouse Rock! could not have prepared me for this shit; there’s no song about how fucked up this is,’ and I think that’s entirely correct.”
Skip Heller’s School House Rock Live! will take place at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25, at the Cascade Lounge at Agua Caliente Palm Springs, at 401 E. Amado Road. Tickets start at $19.98. You must be 21+ to attend. For tickets and more information, visit eventspalmsprings.com.