Chicago is celebrating the 100th birthday of Ella Jenkins, musician and architect of a social movement

A string of events will fete the beloved Chicago children’s musician, who established children’s music as a genre. “It’s all on Ella’s shoulders.”

By Mark Guarino

Aug 1, 2024, 6:00am CST

For most people, the image of a rock star involves leather, steel and a background of smoke, strobe lights and pyrotechnics.

In the world of children’s music, however, the genre’s preeminent rock star is Ella Jenkins, a soft-spoken but wonderfully charming performer and educator who turns 100 next Tuesday. Across her 67-year career, Jenkins firmly established the genre of children’s music as a serious endeavor — not just for artists to pursue but also for the recording industry to embrace and promote.

Her spectacle, Chicago-based children’s music songwriter and performer Justin Roberts said, is simply a radiant presence. Roberts recalled his five-member rock band opening for Jenkins at a book festival.

“And then Ella got onstage just with her baritone ukulele, and you could hear a pin drop,” Roberts said. “I remember thinking, ‘That is pure charisma.’ ”

Her centennial birthday next week is being celebrated Sunday in Old Town’s Jenkins Park, named in her honor, where there will be music, birthday treats and activities for kids. The Old Town School of Folk Music, where she taught for decades, will host a special children’s performance Saturday at its Lincoln Square location. The school will host a similar performance Tuesday morning at Gallagher Way adjacent to Wrigley Field.

Smithsonian Folkways, a nonprofit record label in Washington that served as her home since 1959, is reissuing two of her classics — “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” the bestselling title in the label’s history, and “A Long Time” — on vinyl, and her entire catalog will be made available digitally for this first time on Bandcamp.

Jenkins’ career spans more than 40 albums, an early television show and countless performances, ranging from elementary schools to summer camps to opulent theaters such as Ravinia. Throughout it all, she staged a quiet revolution. Before Jenkins, entertainment for young children was slim. Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Pete Seeger all recorded traditional songs for albums marketed to children, and early television and radio presented largely one-dimension retellings of fairy tales and Disney songs. All of it was considered a step down from adult fare.

“She was the first person to look at children’s music as a calling and not just a side project,” Roberts said.

Tim Ferrin, a Chicago filmmaker who is working on a documentary on Jenkins, said today’s children’s entertainment industry “is all on Ella’s shoulders … She’s peerless in terms of the reach of her influence.”

What shaped Jenkins was the folk revival of the 1950s, when audiences became interested in music beyond the pop charts, whether folk and blues music recorded decades earlier in rural America or music originating from Africa, Latin America or the Middle East. The Old Town School of Folk Music emerged from that resurgence, and Jenkins, who grew up in Hyde Park, became dedicated to the school’s promotion of community singing that was central to what its founders believed would help people of different cultures recognize their shared humanity.

Jenkins took that mission and started conducting workshops that, through call-and-response, encouraged young people to repeat simple musical phrases while accompanied by instruments such as sticks, a tambourine or bongo. Rhythmically, the music — and sometimes the words — gave listeners a stealth taste of other cultures.

“A lot of what Ella brought to the world is this joy of singing together and clapping rhythms together and discovering that magic of music,” Roberts said.

As the workshops spread in popularity, Jenkins branched into media. WTTW gave her a television show. Her association with Folkways was next. The label distributed her records, not just to record stores, but to school systems. The result: Her music became essential listening for preschoolers and elementary schoolchildren over decades. “Every person who stands on the stage and accepts a Grammy Award probably started their music with Ella Jenkins in their preschool classroom,” said Cathy Fink, who with partner Marcy Marxer won a Grammy Award in 2005 for producing a tribute album to Jenkins’ music.

Maureen Loughran, Smithsonian Folkways director and curator, said the label’s original mission to promote “people’s music” was crystallized in Jenkins’ work.

“You can’t tell the story of Folkways without Ella Jenkins,” she said. “We have all this diversity of content and sound in what we do. The beauty of what Ella does is she amplifies those sounds and rhythms with kids, so they have the tools to create something for themselves.”

Her influence fed the musical direction of Sesame Street, Barney and Friends, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and other classics that encouraged interaction through singing and invited children to learn about the wider world. “Her early call and response records makes it easy for everyone to participate,” Fink said.

“What Ella wanted to do was feed kids something nutritious,” Fink added. “Our entire society is pushing kids to grow up faster, to want older things younger. Part of what Ella wanted is for kids to hold onto their childhood as long as possible. Because once you’re an adult, you’re kind of stuck there.”

Jenkins currently lives in a lakeside senior living facility on Chicago’s North Side and, according to Ferrin, “she’s still making rhymes, and her sense of humor is still sharp.” There is also the possibility she may appear at Sunday’s event in Old Town “if she’s up to it.” Ferrin’s film, which he started 10 years ago, is in the post-production phase, which is dependent on new funding. In the meantime, he is helping Jenkins organize her massive archive that documents her century of work.

Spending a decade with Jenkins and delving into every scrap of paper and photo she collected gave him a sharper sense of how she approached her career. Today, he said, performers are required to rely as much on their media savvy as their talent to become successful.

Jenkins shied away from making herself the star, but instead recorded albums that were largely stripped to the essentials: her voice, the voices of children and limited instrumentation. That path wouldn’t make her a Billboard hitmaker, but it would create something longer lasting: “a social movement.”

“I know she always saw it that way. She may not have explained it that way, but she’s fulfilling a social need,” he said.

“Whether audiences are listening to a record or at a program, it’s about participation. She is teaching us how to step up and participate.”

If you go: The Old Town School of Folk Music, 4545 N. Lincoln Ave., is hosting a special “This is Rhythm” workshop for children at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 3 based on her records. From 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 4, the Old Town Triangle Association is hosting a birthday tribute at Jenkins Park, located at Sedgwick and Wisconsin streets, which will feature children’s music and activities. RSVPs are requested here. On Tuesday Aug. 6, the Old Town School is featuring a celebration of Jenkins’ music designed for young children and their parents at Gallagher Way next to Wrigley Field.

12 Essential Ella Jenkins songs

Ella Jenkins recorded more than 40 albums for Smithsonian Folkways over her long career and the majority are now available digitally via Bandcamp. Here is a primer of some of her best over the years. — Mark Guarino

“Tah-Boo ” (1957)

“I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” (1959)

“Wade in the Water” (1960)

“Rhythm” (1961)

“The World is Big, the World is Small” (1964)

“I’m Gonna Ride This Train” (1970)

“My Street Begins at My House” (1971)

“We Are America’s Children” (1976)

“Chicago, It’s the People” (1991)

“You Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song” (1992)

“The Cuckoo” (2011)

“Kumbaya” (2017)