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      Ella Jenkins, Musician Who Found an Audience in Children, Dies at 100

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      Performing and recording, she transformed what was seen as a marginal genre in the music industry into a celebration of shared humanity. Ella Jenkins, a self-taught musician who defied her industry’s norms by recording and performing solely for children, and in doing so transformed a marginal and moralistic genre into a celebration of a diverse yet common humanity with songs like “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” died on Saturday in Chicago. She was 100. Her death was confirmed by John Smith, associate director at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.Ms. Jenkins had no formal musical training, but she had an innate sense of rhythm. “I was always humming or singing and la-la, lu-lu or something,” she once said.She absorbed the everyday melodies of her childhood — the playground clapping games, the high school sports chants, the calls of a sidewalk watermelon vendor hawking his produce. As an adult, she paired such singsong rhythms with original compositions and sought not simply to amuse or distract children but to teach them to respect themselves and others.Against the sound of a kazoo, a harmonica, a variety of hand drums or, later, a baritone ukulele, Ms. Jenkins sang subtly instructive lyrics, as in “A Neighborhood Is a Friendly Place,” a song she wrote in 1976:You can say hiTo friends passing byA neighborhood is a friendly place.You can say helloTo people that you knowA neighborhood is a friendly place.Neighbors to learn to shareNeighbors learn to careA neighborhood is a friendly place.Over children’s steady clapping, she recorded the age-old “A Sailor Went to Sea”:A sailor went to sea, sea, seaTo see what he could see, see, seeAnd all that he could see, see, seeWas down in the bottom of the sea, sea, sea.For many parents and classroom teachers, Ms. Jenkins’s renditions of traditional nursery rhymes like “Miss Mary Mack” and “The Muffin Man” are authoritative.Still, from the beginning of her career in the 1950s, Ms. Jenkins pronounced her signature to be call-and-response, in which she asked her charges to participate directly in the music-making, granting them an equal responsibility in a song’s success. She had seen Cab Calloway employ the technique in “Hi-De-Ho,” and for her, the animating idea, veiled in a playful to-and-fro, was that everything good in the world was born of collaboration.In one of her most popular recordings, Ms. Jenkins sings out, “Did you feed my cow?” “Yes, ma’am!” a group of children trumpet back. The song continues:Could you tell me how?Yes, ma’am!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!As Ms. Jenkins repopularized time-honored children’s songs, she also gave the genre global scope. Before Ms. Jenkins, children’s music in the United States consisted primarily of simplified, often cartoonish renditions of classical music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ Gets a Folk-Musical Makeover

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      The decade-spanning story of a man aging in reverse comes to the West End, transformed into a thoughtful fable opening on the English coast.Benjamin Button is born onto the West End stage with a hunch, a walking stick and venerable observations more suitable to a wizened man than a newborn.“You’re only as old as you feel,” Button quips to his parents, who are aghast that their long-awaited baby seems to be a 70-year-old man. “Do you mind if I smoke?”Age aside, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a folk-rock musical adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story opening Wednesday at the Ambassadors Theater in London, explores earnest and existential questions of how and where to live. The broad strokes of the story might be most familiar from David Fincher’s 2008 film of the same name, which starred a backward-aging Brad Pitt and opened in New Orleans.But this onstage Button lives a different life altogether. He’s born in 1918 in a blustering, harbor village in Cornwall, at the southwestern tip of England, as something of a shut-away, before breaking free in search of romance and adventure. A 13-person cast of actor-musicians is onstage nearly the entire time, giving the show the feel of a fable merged with a Mumford & Sons concert.In the show, time moves in quick jumps, but for the creators behind this fairy tale retelling, Jethro Compton and Darren Clark, the project has been a long endeavor. The show, their first to open in the West End, started life about eight years ago as a project that Compton called “Untitled Cornish Musical.”Jethro Compton and Darren Clark, the creators of the musical.Sam Bush for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Part-Time Farmers, Part-Time Rock Stars: A Chinese Band’s Unlikely Rise

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      The band, Varihnaz, has gained fans by offering an alternative to China’s hyper-polished, fast-paced modern life, with songs about pesticides and poultry raising.Before setting out on his band’s first national tour, before recording another album and before appearing on a major television network, Ba Nong had one task: finishing the summer harvest.Standing in a field edged by rolling hills, two days before the first tour date in late September, Ba Nong, the frontman of the Chinese band Varihnaz, looked over the yellowed remnants of the rice stalks he had spent the past few months tending.“The land gets to rest, and I get to go play,” he said.Planning around the harvest may be an unconventional way to manage an ascendant music career, but Varihnaz is an unconventional band.For its members — two farmers and a former bricklayer from rural Guangxi in southwestern China — the land and their music are inseparable. Rather than the usual staples of love and longing, their lyrics dwell on pesticides and poultry rearing.Varihnaz means “fields filled with fragrant rice flowers,” in the language of Guangxi’s Zhuang ethnic minority. To fans, the group offers a refreshing break from China’s hyper-commercialized popular entertainers, with music about a simpler, slower way of life, an alternative to the intense competition of modern Chinese life.Ba Nong hopes his music helps people consider shrugging off mainstream expectations themselves. “The more tolerant and developed a society is, the more diverse its lifestyles should be, too,” said the musician, who is 44.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Barbara Dane, Who Fought Injustice Through Song, Dies at 97

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      She was highly regarded as a folk, blues and jazz singer. She was also ardently left-wing and prioritized social change over commercial success.Barbara Dane, an acclaimed folk, jazz and blues singer whose communist leanings and fierce civil rights and antiwar activism earned her both critical plaudits and a thick Federal Bureau of Investigation file, died on Sunday at her home in Oakland, Calif. She was 97.Her daughter, Nina Menendez, said that after suffering shortness of breath for several years because of heart failure, Ms. Dane chose to terminate her life under California’s End of Life Option Act.Over the course of her long career, Ms. Dane, with her rich, woody contralto, built a reputation in a variety of musical genres.She established her bona fides as a folky of the first order while still in her teens, performing with Pete Seeger. “I knew I was a singer for life,” she recalled in a 2021 interview with The New York Times, “but where I would aim it didn’t come forward until then. I saw, ‘Oh, you can use your voice to move people.’”Ms. Dane wore her convictions proudly, belting out worker anthems like “I Hate the Capitalist System” and “Solidarity Forever.” She performed at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959 with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan would often sit in with her when she was performing at Gerdes Folk City, the Greenwich Village club.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is It Too Late Now to Say Sorry? 8 Songs for the High Holy Days.

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      Apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match.Bob DylanFiona Adams/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,As Lindsay mentioned on Friday, she’s out on book leave for the rest of the month. Starting next week, a series of knowledgeable Times staffers will sub in to provide thoughtfully curated playlists each Tuesday. This week, however, you are stuck with me: a reporter on the Culture desk who has written about Dylan and the Dead, and whose current Spotify rotation includes CoComelon’s “Wheels on the Bus” and the “Encanto” soundtrack (possibly Lin-Manuel Miranda’s finest work).For some of us, this is a week of reflection, repentance and weaning ourselves off caffeine: It’s the Days of Awe, the 10 days between Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which was last Thursday and Friday, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins this Friday night. There are more superficially appealing holidays; Yom Kippur in particular is a fast day and is not supposed to be “fun.” But I earnestly don’t know what I would do without this time of year and the space it provides to pause and take stock. You don’t need to belong to any particular faith to find that a useful exercise.A High Holiday playlist might appear a tricky proposition. Popular music is not typically a space for solemnity and self-denial. On Yom Kippur itself, sex and nonessential drugs, to say nothing of rock ’n’ roll, are prohibited. But apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match. While we cannot skimp on some of the most obvious artists — hello, Barbra; nice to see you, Leonard — we are also including Stevie Wonder and Outkast.I hope you reflect and enjoy. And, if you celebrate, have a sweet new year and a meaningful fast.Gut yontif,MarcListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      10 Unforgettable Kris Kristofferson Covers

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      Many of his songs are better known by other singers’ interpretations, like Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and more.Laura Roberts/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,“You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris,” Bob Dylan once said of Kris Kristofferson, who died on Saturday, “because he changed everything.”That’s high praise coming from Dylan, especially considering that when they first crossed paths in Nashville’s Columbia Recording Studios in 1966, Dylan was recording his opus “Blonde on Blonde” — and Kristofferson was the studio’s janitor, lingering in the halls with his own dreams of songwriting glory. A few years later, he’d finally achieve them, thanks to artists like Ray Price, Roger Miller and Johnny Cash, who all had hits with early Kristofferson compositions. Then came Janis Joplin’s rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee,” which posthumously topped the pop chart and gave Kristofferson, as he once put it, “the biggest shot of fame that I ever got at that time. It was never the same after that.”Though a household name thanks mostly to his acting career, Kristofferson never achieved more than modest success as a solo recording artist. I happen to love that gruff, mumbly Everyman quality of his voice, but I recognize that it’s an acquired taste. That’s probably why so many Kristofferson songs are better known by other singers’ interpretations, whether it’s Joplin’s “Bobby McGee,” Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” or a whole host of other musicians who have tackled his breakthrough breakup ballad “For the Good Times.”Today’s playlist is a compilation of some of the best of those covers, from artists as varied as Al Green, Waylon Jennings and Tom Verlaine. If you’d like to hear Kristofferson’s words in his own ragged drawl, consider this a companion piece to the excellent playlist that Jon Pareles put together, featuring 12 of Kristofferson’s essential songs.Lastly, a quick programming note: I’m going to be taking the next few weeks off from writing The Amplifier so I can get some work done on the book I’ve been trying to write. I have a few great guest playlisters lined up while I’m out, and they’ll be sending you an Amplifier once a week, each Tuesday. Enjoy their eclectic selections, and you’ll hear from me again soon!I ain’t saying I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothing,LindsayWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Billy Edd Wheeler, Songwriter Who Celebrated Rural Life, Dies at 91

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      His plain-spoken songs were recorded by Elvis Presley, Kenny Rogers and many others. The duo of Johnny Cash and June Carter made his “Jackson” a huge country hit.Billy Edd Wheeler, an Appalachian folk singer who wrote vividly about rural life and culture in songs like “Jackson,” a barn-burning duet that was a hit in 1967 for June Carter and Johnny Cash as well as for Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, died on Monday at his home in Swannanoa, N.C., east of Asheville. He was 91.His death was announced on social media by his daughter, Lucy Wheeler.Plain-spoken and colloquial, Mr. Wheeler’s songs have been recorded by some 200 artists, among them Neil Young, Hank Snow, Elvis Presley, and Florence & the Machine. “Jackson” — a series of spirited exchanges between a quarrelsome husband and wife — opens with one of the most evocative couplets in popular music: “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout/We’ve been talkin’ about Jackson, ever since the fire went out.”From there the husband boasts about the carousing he plans to do in Jackson, as his wife scoffs at his hollow braggadocio. “Go on down to Jackson,” she goads him on, emboldened by the song’s neo-rockabilly backbeat. “Go ahead and wreck your health/Go play your hand, you big-talkin’ man, make a big fool of yourself.”Written with the producer and lyricist Jerry Leiber, with whom Mr. Wheeler had apprenticed as a songwriter at the Brill Building in New York, “Jackson” was a Top 10 country hit for Ms. Carter and Mr. Cash and a Top 20 pop hit for Ms. Sinatra and Mr. Hazlewood. The Carter-Cash version won a Grammy Award in 1968 for best country-and-western performance by a duo, trio or group.The 1967 album “Carryin’ On With Johnny Cash & June Carter” included Mr. Wheeler’s song “Jackson,” which would reach the country Top 10 as a single and win a Grammy.ColumbiaMr. Wheeler’s original pass at the song, though, was anything but auspicious. In fact, when Mr. Leiber first heard it, he advised Mr. Wheeler to jettison most of what he had written and to use the line “We got married in a fever” in the song’s opening and closing choruses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 of My Most Anticipated Albums of the Fall

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      A new indie-rock supergroup, a fruitful (if unexpected) partnership, an alt-rock icon going solo and more.Kim Deal has been a one-of-a-kind mainstay in underground rock, first with Pixies and then the Breeders, but she’s never released a full solo album until now.Alex Da CorteDear listeners,Fall is a perennially busy season for new music releases, and the deluge can be a bit overwhelming. Fear not: Today I’m here to help.For the Times’s annual Fall Preview, out in print on Sunday, I listened to a bunch of upcoming releases, and this playlist is a brief collection of my recommendations — five albums that, I can now confirm, are worth getting excited about. Some of these LPs showcase familiar names pushing themselves in new directions (Kim Deal is finally releasing her first solo album!) while others (from the English folk singer Laura Marling and the New York post-hardcore group Drug Church) find artists finally coming into the peaks of their powers, perfecting unique sounds they’ve established across previous albums.We’ve also got a power duo (the R&B auteur Dawn Richard and the experimental composer Spencer Zahn) and a power quartet (a new coalition of indie-rock lifers who have named themselves, fittingly, the Hard Quartet). There’s a little something for everyone on this playlist. Check it out and spring forward into fall.You call it superstitions, I call it traditions,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Kim Deal: “Crystal Breath”Since her earliest days in Pixies and her long-running alt-rock group the Breeders, Kim Deal’s hazy, cotton-candy voice has been a one-of-a-kind mainstay in underground rock, but she’s never released a full solo album until now. At turns abrasive and achingly sweet, “Nobody Loves You More” is pure Deal, whether she’s offering her own off-kilter version of yacht rock on the lead single “Coast” (which I shared in a previous Amplifier) or turning more experimental on the angular, staticky “Crystal Breath.” Even at its most infectious, a misty melancholy hangs over the album; it marks Deal’s last collaboration with her friend and longtime engineer Steve Albini, who died suddenly in May. The lilting, pedal-steel-kissed standout “Are You Mine” sounds like a simple, doo-wop-inspired love song but turns out to be an ode to Deal’s late mother, who struggled with dementia. Even in the midst of all that loss, “Nobody Loves You More” heralds, for the 63-year-old Deal, a fruitful new beginning. (Nov. 22; 4AD)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More