You may have grown up hearing one of Ella Jenkins’ signature tunes, like “You’ll Sing A Song and I’ll Sing A Song.” And you may have then played her music for your own children. Jenkins, who was known as “the first lady of children’s music,” died on Saturday at her residence in Chicago. She was 100.
Her death was confirmed by John Smith, associate director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, her longtime record label. She recorded 39 albums for Folkways, according to a statement from the label, over a career that spanned nearly 70 years.
Jenkins was inspired by a lot of things — the folk tradition, the civil rights movement, the church.
In 2013, she told NPR that when it comes down to it, music is just about sharing what you love. “Whatever you happen upon with something that you really feel that you really like,” she said, “I’d say listen to it, and listen to it often. If you want to try to repeat or imitate, do it in a way that when you’re sharing it, someone else is going to think it’s beautiful, too.”
A lot of her songs had a signature style of call and response: “I say something, and you say it back to me.” The idea came to her from a kind of unexpected source.
Jenkins was born in St. Louis, Mo. on Aug. 6, 1924. But she and her family eventually moved to the South Side of Chicago, where one of the hottest acts in the clubs at the time was Cab Calloway. And in his famous song “Minnie the Moocher,” the “Hi-dee hi-dee hi-dee hi” section is a call-and-response.
“Then you’d say it back — ‘ho-dee ho-dee ho-dee ho’,” Jenkins explained to NPR. “So I started doing not only with his songs — I thought I would make up few songs myself. Children can learn very easily by imitating, following the leader and then pretty soon be able to teach it themselves.”
Ashli Christoval grew up listening to Ella Jenkins. She’s now a children’s musician herself — performing as Jazzy Ash. Christoval says that Jenkins made her feel both proud and inspired of her heritage, in the face of what she calls a “daunting history.”
“Across the board,” Christoval says, “African-American music, [the] Black music diaspora, is sort of approached in a really dark place. And granted, Black history has a really dark part of it, but I think that every culture has a right to be celebrated. “
And Ella Jenkins celebrated every culture.
“You can travel around the world with Ella Jenkins through her songs,” says Cathy Fink, a Grammy-winning children’s musician and a friend of Jenkins.
“Ella traveled the world and performed all over the world,” Fink says. “And as she did, she would learn from the people that she was with. She would learn words, or she would learn a song from another country. The first thing she’d say to a taxi driver is, ‘What’s your name and where are you from?’ And then she’ll say, ‘Well, tell me about your country.’ She sees meeting each person as an opportunity to make a friend and learn something.”
And what she learned, she taught to generations of parents, teachers and children.