Ella Jenkins, celebrated songwriter and ‘First Lady of Children’s Music,’ dies at 100

Ella Jenkins, the prolific, multigenerational musical pioneer who became known as the “First Lady of Children’s Music,” died Saturday. She was 100.

The lifetime achievement Grammy Award winner, who recorded primarily for children, died “peacefully” at her residence in Chicago, according to her longtime record label, Smithsonian Folkways.

“We mourn the passing of Ella Jenkins, one of the most iconic folk musicians of the 20th century, who revolutionized children’s music and inspired generations of listeners around the world,” the label said Sunday in a tweet.

Representatives for Jenkins and Smithsonian Folkways did not immediately comment when reached Monday by The Times.

As a multi-instrumentalist, the “Miss Mary Mack” and “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song” singer became an internationally respected artist with her contributions to early childhood education. Her recordings have been used in classrooms across the country and include songs about colors, shapes, safety, history and travel. Jenkins, who never wed or had children of her own, centered kids in her work, featuring them on her recordings and teaching them her core principles: careful listening, singing and improvisation.

“I find that children don’t think about what color you are, how old you are or what your background is,” she told The Times in 2004 upon being named a Grammy Award honoree. “It’s the musical sharing and a genuine interest in them that matters. You just recognize each one as an individual and respect each child. They can discern very early in life whether you are for real.”

Jenkins played baritone ukulele, harmonica, hummed and used bird calls in her work while pulling influences from Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, Korean, Swahili and other languages. She believed that songs from foreign languages and cultures used interesting rhythmic patterns that children like, and her use of folk melodies and sing-along activity songs aimed to teach children the art of communication through music.

“Children are my favorite people,” Jenkins told The Times in 1997. “When they come to the concerts or the family workshops, they don’t think of me as being an older woman, a Black woman. They just think, ‘Here’s a lady who sings songs we can sing, who plays instruments we can hear.’ It’s a sharing.”

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Jenkins was born on Aug. 6, 1924, in St. Louis. Her family moved frequently when she was younger, settling in the South Side of Chicago, where she said she was “raised with respect” for her elders and teachers, which helped her throughout her life. Her uncle Flood, a blues-loving harmonica player, introduced her to music and she would sit and listen to him play for hours. She didn’t have any formal music training, instead drawing on what was around her growing up: gospel music and call-and-response folk traditions. She started creating songs for children while volunteering at a Chicago recreation center, guided by the belief that music was not an entity in itself, but “a way of helping children learn a bit about themselves and appreciate who they are.”

Her work, which also drew inspiration from church songs, jukebox pop and big band jazz, included the preschool classics “The Hello Song,” “The Hi Dee Ho Man,” “Dulce Dulce” and a popular rendition of “Wade in the Water.”

Jenkins released her first 10-inch vinyl album, “Call and Response,” on Moses Asch’s original Folkways Records in 1957. Her business partner Bernadelle Richter, who originally hired her to perform folk music at an American Youth Hostel folk weekend, handled the business side of her career. She went on to travel throughout the United States and around the world, appearing on preschool TV shows including “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Barney & Friends.”

In 1966, she released her signature composition and Smithsonian Folkways bestseller, “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” with the children’s chorus of Urban Gateways and continued to release dozens of songs and numerous albums after that. The album sustained the label for years.

The Library of Congress, which added “You’ll Sing a Song” to the National Registry in 2007, said the work is important “both for its enduring popularity and as an expression of Jenkins’s hallmark methodology of nurturing children’s musicality through ‘call-and-response rhythmic group singing.’ ”

“When ‘you’ sing a song and ‘I’ follow, we engage in a musical dialogue. When we sing a song together, we affirm the social and cultural value of listening to each other,” the library said at the time.

The song, as well as her 1969 recording “The Wilderness,” were Jenkins’ favorites.

In 2011, she recorded “A Life of Song,” her 32nd album on Smithsonian Folkways and the first children’s album in the African American Legacy Series. To mark her 90th birthday in 2014, Smithsonian Folkways released “More Multicultural Children’s Songs,” Jenkins’ 40th album, which spanned her 57-year career.

Jenkins was nominated for two Grammy Awards for children’s albums: “Ella Jenkins and a Union of Friends Pulling Together” and “Sharing Cultures With Ella Jenkins,” in 2000 and 2005, respectively. Her last appearance in front of a live audience was in 2017, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.