Words

Sing Me a Song Again, Ella: Celebrating 100 Years of Ella Jenkins

By Tim Ferrin

How fortunate we are to celebrate one hundred years of Ella Jenkins! As long as most of us can recall, Ella has been a tireless advocate for children and those who care for them. Some of us know her as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award–winning First Lady of Children’s Music. To others she’s Mr. Rogers’ neighbor. Or maybe she’s the special visitor at your school assembly who called you to the stage and handed you a tambourine so you could play along. However you know her, or even if you’re just getting acquainted, there’s no time like the present to listen. Her unflappable approach endures as the most fun you can have sharing rhythms, rhymes, songs, and chants with children.

When I was a kid growing up in Chicagoland, Ella was everywhere. By the time I was old enough to be aware of her, she was already one of Mr. Rogers’ favorite neighbors, with many decades of advocacy through music making in the rearview. If you attended family events at school, a community center, a church or synagogue, music festival or children’s event in the Chicago metropolitan area, odds were good that Ella was there. Fred Koch, musician and music teacher, was the first to introduce me to Ella’s music. Like so many music teachers, Fred used Ella’s songs in his classroom and had taken classes and attended workshops with her. When I was a student, Fred released the first-ever tribute album to Ella, Did You Feed My Cow?, on his own independent imprint. Fred even introduced me to Ella herself in Chicago when I was a toothless elementary schooler. Years later, at a chance encounter, Fred once again planted the seed that Ella’s work deserved documentation.

Having worked closely with Ella and her friend and manager, Bernadelle Richter, for some time now on the documentary Ella Jenkins: We’ll Sing a Song Together, I’ve witnessed the impact Ella has made on the lives of so many children, educators, and families. As we celebrate her centennial, it’s important to recall how Ella became the “First Lady of Children’s Music,” and what compelled her to change lives through music.

Ella is always happy to share that she was born at Barnes Hospital on August 6, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri. She likes to say she’s the “St. Louis woman without the diamond ring,” a nod to W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.” It’s a telling reference to a song that first became popular on 78 rpm records during Ella’s early childhood in the 1920s. As a preschooler during the Great Migration, Ella and her family relocated to Chicago, where they lived among the vibrant denizens of Bronzeville. Back then, her brother Tom once reminded me, it was known as the “Black Belt”—a narrow strip of South Side territory which was home to a majority of the racially segregated Black population in Chicago. It’s here that Ella grew up, soaking in the sounds and stories and cultures that her neighborhood had to offer. She and Tom were a team then, always including one another in their adventures and finding the redeeming side when subjected to difficult circumstances. They were inspired by music and art, poetry and movies, and each other.

Ella and her brother Tom, circa 1934. Courtesy of the Tom Jenkins Archive.

Though they were a team, Ella always had a streak of competitiveness when it came to keeping up with her brother and his friends. She was driven to prove that a girl could do anything just as well as her male counterparts. After watching Tom and other boys playing table tennis, she knew she could play just as well as they did, and she became determined to beat them at their own game. She practiced at Washington Park, studied her opponents, and eventually became DuSable High School table tennis champion, and City of Chicago champion a few years later. This is illustrative of what makes Ella, Ella. Whether playing table tennis or sharing songs with children in a new country, she has always forged her own path at every turn.

During these formative times, young Ella further expanded her worldview, forming friendships with Latine classmates and Jewish neighbors who stayed just beyond her segregated neighborhood. These friendships, along with the music and sounds she encountered in 1930s Chicago, began Ella’s lifelong fascination with music and cultures all over the world.

After high school graduation, Ella held a series of dead-end jobs, including sealing packs of K-rations for overseas soldiers during World War II, and a stint delivering classified mail for Manhattan Project scientists at the University of Chicago. It was in part professional injustices that led her to first stand in picket lines and sign petitions. As a young woman finding her way in Chicago, Ella sat-in for civil rights before it was a movement, long before such activity was considered a counterculture rite of passage.

In the late 1940s, Ella found a job that she loved: counseling at Camp Reinberg, outside of Chicago. This was her first stint working closely with children. Despite occasionally getting lost leading groups on nature hikes, Ella began to hone her finer skills in communicating with children. Ella and Tom also shared an affinity for collecting camp songs, which also helped instill in her the necessity for community participation when making music.

Ella, Tom, and a friend at Camp Reinberg in Palatine, IL, circa 1956. Courtesy of the Tom Jenkins Archive.

After World War II, Ella attended Chicago City Colleges and then participated in the new, progressive educational experiment known as Roosevelt College. There she met friends who encouraged her to take a leap of faith and journey to the faraway land of California. Ella once told me that she would never forget crying during the entire train ride that took her all the way to the shores of San Francisco. At the time, it was the furthest she’d ever been from her home, but it would be far from the last or longest journey she would make.

While completing her bachelor’s degree at San Francisco State, Ella offered some table tennis pointers to a group of Bay Area kids and in turn was offered a job with the Albany Recreation Center. Outside of her college classroom, she spent two years as the Rec. Center director, refining her approach with children who came there for friendship and activity. Finally, at her brother’s urging in 1952, fully matriculated with a degree in sociology, Ella returned home to Chicago to re-establish herself.

Once home in Chicago, Ella quickly landed a job as a teenage program director for the YWCA. Here she led activities and doo-wop nights, Latin Club and other programs for kids in and near the Ida B. Wells housing project at 63rd and Cottage Grove. In her spare time, she soaked up Chicago’s rich music scene, catching up with other restless artists, thinkers, and characters at music clubs and places like the College of Complexes, the Gate of Horn, and Michigan’s Circle Pines Center.

Flyer announcing Ella Jenkins and her friend Big Bill Broonzy as headliners for a fundraiser with radio host Studs Terkel, a fundraising benefit for the Circle Pines Center in Delton, MI, in 1955. Courtesy of the Ella Jenkins Archive.

Making music began to take over her thoughts and aspirations. After several years at the YWCA, she decided to make a go of it as a professional musician. She developed a “five-year plan” towards becoming a full-time musician, and soon she toured the Midwest and South as a percussionist with dance troupes, while developing her own solo programs for adults and children. Before she knew it, she had wooed Moe Asch into a record deal with his imprint, Folkways Records.

Soon thereafter, she became one of the first Black women to host her own kids’ TV show in Chicago when a producer for Chicago’s fledgling public television station came across Ella working on some music with a group of kids near 62nd and Cottage Grove. He was impressed enough that he invited her to have a guest slot on the station’s new children’s series, “The Totem Club.” Ella was such a hit with the team that she was given a job hosting her own program, “This Is Rhythm,” every Thursday afternoon.

This Is Rhythm album cover, Ella’s fourth on Folkways Records, originally released in 1961.

Around that time, she also found a meeting place for like-minded friends at the newly opened Old Town School of Folk Music. Ella would go on to entwine her influence in the fabric of American culture: creating music used in Alvin Ailey’s timeless American dance masterpiece, Revelations; meeting and rallying for Dr. King; and helping shape the vibrant Chicago Folk scene. Shortly afterwards, her story begins to be better documented in liner notes and reviews, clippings, and photographs.

In 1961 she met her friend, manager, and greatest champion, Bernadelle Richter. Their teamwork made it possible for Ella’s career to blossom. Bernadelle handled the business and publishing so Ella would be free to follow where the bookings took her. Engagements and recordings multiplied as Ella spread her music and passion for working with children around the world. Ella heeded her calling. Bernadelle helped make sure it was possible.

Ella Jenkins with Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman in July 1963, on the occasion of Ella's first workshop conducted at the Mozarteum at Carl Orff's invitation. Ella would return in 1965 to lead more workshops. Photo by Bernadelle Richter, courtesy of the Ella Jenkins Archive.

Ella performing in a classroom with children in the 1960s. Photo by Bernadelle Richter, courtesy of the Ella Jenkins Archive.

With a library of recorded work spanning 60 years, Ella and her instructive music embody a movement that’s not about plays or clicks or monetizing the product. Ella’s work is about sharing a larger human experience with those who are most open to enrichment. Her work is masterful, thoughtful, intentional, wrapped up to look and sound like fun. And make no mistake, it is fun. But there is a deeper idea, a tacit invitation to open your world and your awareness. And if you want to know how to communicate with children, Ella is your steadfast guide. Like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, or the young upstart she encountered at Harold Bradley’s Folkstudio in Rome, Bob Dylan, she is an American original. She created the paradigm for children’s music. She would likely dismiss the accolade with a light chuckle, but it’s true. There is Ella, and then there are the rest. There is no substitute.

 

On August 6th, we will ring in the culmination of 100 years of the master, Ella Jenkins. After more than 75 years of sharing music with families Ella has insisted that there is understanding when “we learn from one another.” Her music and guidance continue to inspire countless children and those near and dear to them to sing along, to show up, to be counted. So, sing it proudly, as Ella has taught us. And most importantly, sing it together. She and her work will continue to teach us as long as we listen.

Published June, 2024