"Schoolhouse Rock" Songwriter Dave Frishberg Passes Away at Age of 88

Dave Frishberg, a Grammy-nominated jazz songwriter, singer and pianist, known for writing the Schoolhouse Rock song “I’m Just a Bill,” died Wednesday at the age of 88, according to a post on his Facebook page.

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The passing of Dave Frishberg was reported on by Deadline. His wife April Magnusson said he had been battling an illness for several years.
The songwriter had a long and varied career that stretched from the Greenwich Village jazz scene of the ’50s to work as a studio musician in Los Angeles in the ’70s, to cutting his own Grammy-nominated albums and doing music for films and TV.
Frishberg’s greatest fame came from his involvement with Schoolhouse Rock, a 1973-85 series of Saturday-morning shorts on ABC that used music and rhyme to help kids learn basic facts, with such memorable songs as “Elementary, My Dear” (Multiplication Rock, 1973), “Conjunction Junction” (Grammar Rock, 1973) and “I’m Just a Bill” (America Rock, 1975).
My Dear Departed Past — a memoir of his time on the road, life in the music business and, of course, adventures with Schoolhouse Rock — was published in 2017.

All of the Schoolhouse Rock shorts mentioned above, and many more, are now available to stream on Disney+.