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Ella Jenkins
First Lady of Children's Music By Kelly Burgess
Ella Jenkins never had children, yet she has millions of children. That, she says, is what has kept her so energetic, even at age 80.
In all, Jenkins has released 28 albums since her first, Call-and-Response, was released in 1957. She was the first interactive children's entertainer to promote multiculturalism through music and to recognize that children respond to simple rhythms and call-and-response techniques. She's living proof that the ages can come together not only to produce harmony, but to live in harmony as well.
"My Uncle Flood never studied music formally, but he could play anything on that harmonica," says Jenkins. "I'm just like that; I never had the formal education but loved music and it just seemed to come naturally to me."
As a teenager, Jenkins, like any teen, loved the pop music of her day, but she was also fascinated from an early age with the music and rhythms of other cultures and languages. At that time, record stores allowed customers to listen to records before purchasing them. Jenkins had friends at one store who allowed her to listen as much as she wanted, and she says that ability took her around the world – even while she was very definitely grounded in Chicago's South Side.
"Even then I noticed the call-and-response technique that seemed to be so common in every culture," says Jenkins. "It was a musical thread that seemed to link many religions and types of people."
Jenkins always knew she wanted to work with children, and she noticed how they responded to music and music-based activities. Her first jobs were working with very young children in camp settings, and she went to college with the idea that she would do that as a career. She got her degree in sociology and went to work for the YMCA as the director of teenage programs, but younger children who would come to the Y would be drawn to the bongos and percussion she used in her programs with the teens. Soon, she was giving programs on a local television station and in classrooms and other settings. She released her first record in 1957, and the rest, as they say, is history.
