ZOOM season 1 (1972) cast: selected song and dance numbers

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selected season 1 numbers:

  • Opening: Come On and Zoom
  • The Cat Came Back – 2 versions
  • Rise and Shine
  • Eddystone Light
  • Down By the Riverside
  • Rock Island Line
  • Las clases del cha cha cha
  • Send it to ZOOM
  • Closing: Come On and ZOOM
  • It Ended in May (bonus)

Zoom cast_season 1 (1972)_1

(above) cast members, counter-clockwise from bottom left: Kenny Pires, Joe Shrand, Tracy Tannebring, Nancy Tates, Jon Reuning, Nina Lillie, Tommy White, of season 1 (1972) of the educational TV show ZOOM, produced by WGBH-TV in Boston and aired on PBS

As mentioned above, ZOOM was an educational TV series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston and aired on PBS. The Wikipedia page on the series, the Season 1 (1972) page at ZOOM Wiki, and a page at the Paley Center for Media, each indicate that the season 1 premiere aired on 9 January 1972. The Paley Center identifies the time and day of the broadcast of the premiere episode as 10 p.m. on Sunday night, which seems to be the correct day but the wrong time. An advertisement for the premiere, reproduced here, indicates that it will be broadcast “Tonight 7PM” on channel 2 (WGBH-TV 2, Boston).

Come On and Zoom (Newton Wayland)

ZOOM intro/theme song, season 1 (1972)

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(below) lower quality, but with longer drum roll intro

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Come On and Zoom (Newton Wayland) season 1 version — lyric transcribed by doc (Jim Radcliff) on 23 January 2017; minor edit on 6 August 2017

Come on and zoom, zoom, zoom-a zoom
You gotta zoom, zoom, zoom-a zoom
Everybody’s doin’ it, everybody’s movin’ it
Everybody’s havin’ a ball, yeah!

So won’t you zoom, zoom, zoom-a zoom?
Come on and zoom-a zoom-a zoom-a zoom

I’m Joe
I’m Nina
I’m Kenny
My name’s Tracy
I’m Tommy
I’m Nancy
I’m Jon

Who are you?
What do you do?
How are you?
Let’s hear from you!
We need you!

We’re gonna zoom, zoom zoom-a zoom
Come on and zoom-a zoom-a zoom-a zoom
Come on, give it a try
We’re gonna show you just why
We’re gonna teach you to fly high!

Come on and zoom!
Come on and zoom zoom!
(Repeat last two lines)

  • See the page ZOOM lyrics for the words to some other ZOOM songs from the original series (1972-1978).

(below) ZOOM season 1 pilot intro, according to the provider

I came across this video featuring an alternate Season 1 (1972) intro in February 2019. The provider says that it’s the pilot intro. The Season 1 (1972) page at ZOOM Wiki, which lists the broadcast dates of each first season episode, says: “The pilot episode [was] taped in 1971 and it aired on WGBH several times in September,” while the first episode listed, Episode 0001, is dated 9 January 1972. This suggests that the pilot was aired months before the premiere.

Parts of this version seem vaguely familiar, so maybe I saw it in September 1971 when the pilot was aired multiple times. Some pairs of lines are sung in reverse order, compared to the series version, in this one. Also, some of the lines spoken during the part where the original ZOOMers introduce themselves are slightly different here than in the later version.

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The Cat Came Back (Harry S. Miller) — published in 1893

links:

ZOOM season 1 (1972) cast — two versions of “The Cat Came Back”

appearing in this order: Jon, Joe, Nancy, Kenny, Tracy, Tommy, Nina; possibly from the 9 January 1972 series premiere

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(below) alternate version, evidently from a later season 1 (1972) episode, featuring “other ways of getting rid of the invincible cat” that had been sent in by Zoom viewers who had seen the above version — cast members appear in this order: Jon, Joe, Tommy, Kenny, Nina, Nancy, Tracy

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Rise and Shine (Give God Your Glory) — aka “Arky, Arky,” “Noah’s Arky, Arky,” “The Arky, Arky Song,” “Noah (Rise and Shine),” “Children of the Lord,” etc.

links:

performed by the full cast, with Nancy portraying Noah

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Eddystone Light — aka “The Keeper of the Eddystone Light”; inspired by the Eddystone Lighthouse

links:

performed by Joe (lead), with Tommy, Kenny, and Jon

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Down By the Riverside

links:

performed by the full cast, appearing in this order: Kenny Pires, Jon Reuning, Tracy Tannebring, Nancy Tates, Joe Shrand, Nina Lillie, Tommy White

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Rock Island Line (Clarence Wilson)

  • SecondHandSongs.com explains that, contrary to long-held belief, the song is not a “traditional prisoner work song or spiritual,” and that it was written in 1929 to be employed as part of a marketing campaign for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, which was familiarly known as the Rock Island Line.
  • Wikipedia calls it a folk song, which seems at odds with their admission that the earliest known version was written in 1929.
  • The Mudcat Café – Origins: Rock Island Line
  • lyrics (Leadbelly versions): The Mudcat Café: (1), (2), Genius.com (1937 version), (1940 version)

From SecondHandSongs.com:

Long thought to be a traditional prisoner work song or spiritual, research by Stephen Wade (published in 2012 in his book “The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience”) revealed that “Rock Island Line” was actually written in 1929 as part of a marketing campaign for the real Rock Island Line (in full, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad). The railroad encouraged its employees to take part in extra-curricular activities such as singing in choirs and writing songs to build brand awareness and loyalty in their communities (“boosting” in contemporary terminology), and to this end the song exhorted listeners to “Buy your tickets over the Rock Island Lines”. The song’s author Clarence Wilson was an engine wiper (cleaner) who worked at the Biddle Street Shops, the railroad’s central freight yard near Little Rock, Arkansas. He was a member of a vocal group, the Rock Island Colored Booster Quartet, that was based at his workplace and this group first performed his song in December 1929.

performed by Kenny Pires (lead), Tommy White, Jon Reuning, and Joe Shrand; appearing in the order Tommy, Jon, Kenny, Joe

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Las clases del cha cha cha (words and music: Sergio Marmolejo, Ramón Márquez) – written and first recorded in 1955

performed by the full cast

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Send it to ZOOM (m. Newton Wayland) – The song is titled “Address Song – Send It To Zoom!” on the 1974 album Come On and ZOOM. I’m going with the simplified title “Send it to ZOOM,” here, and elsewhere on the site. In the versions of this song featured in seasons 1 and 2 of the show, the title phrase appears only once, in line four. However, the version on the 1974 Come On and ZOOM album has an extension added to the address section coda in which all sing “Send it to ZOOM!” This ending was subsequently included in other ZOOM address and SASE songs that feature the same address section coda.

The video provider suggests that the number served as the “ending” of season 1 episodes. My imperfect memory doesn’t recall that this rap only and always appeared at the end of an episode during the first season, but that may have been the case. However, the YouTube channel 70’s Zoomfan 01 has posted a video titled “Zoom Season 1 Closing 1972,” which I’ve included here further below (under the title “ZOOM cast names clapping game”), that doesn’t include this number.

The words, transcribed by me (doc), can be found below the video. Imagine the reaction of parents to hearing a song that encouraged their children to get out of bed “in the middle of the night” to write a letter to a TV show about an idea they’d just dreamed up. At least they weren’t instructed to drop the envelope into the mailbox down the street at 2 A.M. The number was also performed by cast 1 of season 2 (see under Seasons 2-6 intros and closings at the bottom of the page).

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Closing – featuring an abbreviated version of “Come On and Zoom”

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BONUS!

And It Ended in May (Nina Lillie)

performed by Nina Lillie during the ZOOM pilot episode, first broadcast in September 1971

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(below) Nina performs the song again in an episode* of season 1

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ZOOM links: Wikipedia, Zoom Wiki, Zoomers Wiki

series music department:

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* The season 1 premiere episode is numbered 101 in the ZOOM series 1 episode collection at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website. This would suggest that the one containing the second performance of “And It Ended in May,” numbered 118 there, is the 18th episode of the series. The problem with that conclusion is that, according to ZOOM Wiki, season 1 had only 13 episodes, not counting the pilot, and episode 18 (0018 to be precise) is part of season 2. Nevertheless, the episode numbered 118 at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting site is definitely from season 1.

Note that the designation “series 1” refers to the original ZOOM series, which ran for six seasons spanning 1972-1978.

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