Multiplication Rock (1973)
In my musical world, before there was Michael Stipe, Robert Smith, Bono or Lou Reed, there was Bob Dorough. While many Gen Xers gravitate to “Conjunction Junction” or “I’m Just A Bill,” four decades later, I still count by threes and fives fluently by singing songs from this album. The genius of this record is its stylistic variety. Bob Dorough, a noted jazz composer and pianist, didn’t just generate cheesy campfire songs or bland middle-of-the-road rock-turned-teacher. He infused his masterful mathematical lessons with a bit of California rock (“Three Is A Magic Number”), shades of psychedelia (“Little Twelve Toes”), solid soul (“I Got Six”), and, appropriately for that troublesome times table, some smokey blues (“Naughty Number Nine,” sung by the fantastic Grady Tate). When I put on this record (which I still do; in fact, that’s my original copy from childhood in the photo), I’m taken back to the mid-’70s, not sitting in front of the Saturday morning TV but huddled with my brother and our Panasonic cassette player (the kind you’d find in an old school A/V room) in the backseat of our family car counting Noah’s animals off two by two.
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