Ella Jenkins is a pioneer in the world of children’s music.
Her first recording, 1957’s “Call and Response,” defines her style of performing, which encourages children to join in with her. It has now become common practice for children’s performers today.
“There used to be an echo back and forth between the minister and the people in the church,” she recalls of her childhood on the South Side. “And I heard performers like Cab Calloway with his `Hi-De-Ho’ at the old Regal Theatre and I used to go around the world in the listening booths of record stores where I heard African and Indian and Middle Eastern music that had call and response.”
Jenkins has recorded 28 albums and released two videos, but many youngsters have discovered her on television. She has performed on “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Sesame Street” and on “Barney and Friends.” Her next live concert, which is scheduled for Saturday at Ravinia, will mark the 30th year that she has performed there.
She says she still remembers that first concert in 1968. Primarily she recalls being intimidated when she looked out into the huge, empty theater, bigger than any space she had ever performed in. “My manager said that I should think of it as a very large school assembly and then I knew that I could manage,” she says. “I always feel that no matter what the size of the group, if you’re in harmony with them then you will have a very good time together.”
Here are some recollections that other people have of Jenkins and her music.
Jim Hirsch, executive director of the Old Town School of Folk Music: “She was one of the first to really understand the role of a children’s performer and, in fact, I always think of Ella as having invented the genre for a lot of people who have come after her such as Raffi and Tom Chapin. Now when she sings here she will have two or three, sometimes four generations of her fans in the audience.
“Instead of singing down to kids, I think Ella understood very instinctively children’s ability to grasp much more than adults suspected. And although now it’s de rigueur because we know that children start learning before they come out of the womb, Ella included educational elements in children’s performances back when that wasn’t done. She used call and response, which is part of her own African-American cultural background, and she was one of the first performers to teach children about different cultural traditions and make them exciting and interesting.”
Ray Nordstrand, long-time radio host of “The Midnight Special” on WFMT: “She’s made these scores of records and influenced kids all over the world, and yet she does it just playing her ukelele without any fancy instrumentation. She has an amazing sense of how to get kids interested and involved with the most basic things of rhythm and melody, and she does it gently, lovingly and simply, so comfortably and honestly, with humor and style, and yet she’s always been incredibly modest. Ella is very much her own person.”
Susan Salidor, singer/composer of children’s music: “This may sound shallow, but I love Ella Jenkins’ clothes. She wears African prints which you see all over the place now, but they weren’t common when she started wearing them. They are so lively compared to our drab colors.
“There is so much glitz and there are so many special effects and quick editing on TV shows that it’s enough to make your head spin, but when Ella does a concert she pretty much just sits and sings and strums and yet it’s very magical. She’s a great communicator. I know that I can sing a song that Ella Jenkins has done and that everyone in my audience will know it. She’s done so much groundwork. She has created a common repertoire of children’s music. She has an incredible ability to choose wonderful music that’s got a great beat which is always a priority for her.”
Pete Seeger, folksinger: “She knows exactly what she’s doing in presenting rhythms to children. Melody and harmony were thought to be much more important in European music while rhythm held a very low place. It was just bang, bang, bang, while India and Africa developed subtleties of rhythm and Ella made these beautiful syncopations understandable to children and got them to join in. So it was a great step forward.”
Fred Koch, who recorded some of Jenkins’ songs on his album “Did You Feed My Cow?”: “One of the keys to Jenkins’ songs is that they are success-oriented. You don’t have to know the song when you go to a concert because, even if you’ve never heard it before, you can pick it up the first time and you’re doing it with her by the second verse.”
Linda Mensch, past president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Grammys’ governing body:: “Everybody was performing fairly traditionally, but Ella brought back the folk music traditions of the ’60s. She was doing `Miss Mary Mack’ and she was doing her call and response and got everybody in the audience involved, and suddenly we were participants in the event. She got everybody thinking about the origins of folk music and why we love it.”
