Jenkins, Ella (1924- )

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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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      How Ella Jenkins Revolutionized Children’s Music

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      Over seven decades, she brought a world of genres and ideas to songs for the young. On her centennial, what she would really like to do is perform again.When Ella Jenkins began recording young people’s music in the 1950s and ’60s, her albums featured tracks that many of that era’s parents and teachers would probably never have dreamed of playing for children: a love chant from North Africa. A Mexican hand-clapping song. A Maori Indian battle chant. And even “Another Man Done Gone,” an American chain-gang lament whose lyrics she changed, turning it into a freedom cry.“She found this way of introducing children to sometimes very difficult topics and material, but with a kind of gentleness,” said Gayle Wald, a professor of American studies at George Washington University and the author of a forthcoming biography of Jenkins. “She never lied to them. She certainly never talked down to them.”Jenkins’s unorthodox approach became a huge success: She is the best-selling individual artist in the history of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, surpassing even such stalwarts of the label as Woody Guthrie and her friend Pete Seeger. A champion of diversity long before the term became popular, Jenkins helped revolutionize music for the young, purposefully encouraging Black children.Jenkins at a Grammy ceremony where she received a special honor.R. Diamond/WireImageIn addition to introducing global material, which she often recorded with children’s choruses, she wrote original, interactive compositions like “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” now part of the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.“Before Ella, very few people actually composed for children,” Wald said in a video interview.You might think that Jenkins, who will celebrate her 100th birthday on Tuesday, would now want to relax and savor her many accolades, among them lifetime achievement awards from both the Grammys and ASCAP, the music licensing agency, as well as a designation as a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow. But in a brief telephone conversation from her home in an assisted-living center in Chicago, she seemed unconcerned with plans for her centenary in the city, which include a Tuesday morning celebration with young students from the Old Town School of Folk Music, and a showcase on Wednesday with performances by children from Kids on the Move Summer Camp.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