Notable songs by Jenkins, such as “You’ll Sing A Song and I’ll Sing A Song.” It’s also possible that you sang her songs for your own kids.
At her Chicago home, Jenkins, dubbed “the first lady of children’s music,” passed away on Saturday. She was one hundred years old. John Smith, associate director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, her longstanding record label, announced her death.
Throughout her nearly 70-year career, she released 39 CDs for Folkways, the label said in a statement.
Jenkins was influenced by a variety of sources, including the church, the civil rights movement, and folk tradition.
When it boils down to it, music is simply about sharing what you love, she told NPR in 2013.
“Listen to it, and listen to it often,” she said, “no matter what you come across that you truly feel you really like.”
If you want to try to replicate or mimic, be sure that when you share it, someone else will find it lovely as well.
She used a call-and-response format in several of her songs: “I say something, and you say it back to me.” She got the idea from a somewhat surprising place.
Background
On August 6, 1924, Jenkins was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She later relocated to the South Side of Chicago with her family, where Cab Calloway was one of the most popular performers in the bars at the time.
In his well-known song “Minnie the Moocher,” the line “Hi-dee hi-dee hi-dee hi” is a call-and-response. Ashli Christoval listened to Ella Jenkins as a child.
As Jazzy Ash, she currently performs as a children’s musician. In the face of what she describes as a “daunting history,” Christoval claims that Jenkins inspired and made her feel proud of her background.