Ella Jenkins, “First Lady of Children’s Folk Song,” Dies at 100

Ella Jenkins, the prolific musician, educator, and entertainer known as the “First Lady of Children’s Folk Song,” has died. Smithsonian Folkways, the label that released all 39 of Jenkins’ albums during her lifetime, confirmed the news in a statement posted to Instagram, sharing that she died “peacefully” at her longtime Chicago, Illinois, home. She was 100 years old.

Ella Louise Jenkins was born August 6, 1924 in St. Louis, Missouri, though her family moved to Chicago’s south side shortly after. Despite receiving no formal musical training, it was here Jenkins first discovered gospel music, blues, and rhyming children’s songs and games, as well as being introduced the harmonica by her Uncle Flood. In 1951, she graduated from San Francisco State University, where she studied sociology, child psychology, and recreation.

Upon returning to Chicago, Jenkins volunteered at various recreation centers and began writing songs for children. In 1952, she was hired as a teenage program director at the Y.W.C.A., and soon after landed a regular hosting spot on Chicago public access television, which she called This is Rhythm. Jenkins became a full-time musician in 1956, touring school assemblies across the U.S. She met the folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein, who suggested she send a demo tape to Folkways Records founder Moses Asch; the following year, Asch released Jenkins’ debut album Call-And-Response: Rhythmic Group Singing.

Jenkins put out a total of 39 albums with Folkways, including 1995’s Multicultural Children's Songs, which has long been the label’s most popular release. Her oeuvre includes original songs, nursery rhymes, African-American folk, rhythmic chants, and international songs in numerous languages—with a strong emphasis on call-on-response singing that became her signature. She appeared on Barney & Friends, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Sesame Street, and, in 2004, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy.

Jenkins’ song “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2007, and her final album, Camp Songs with Ella Jenkins and Friends, came out in 2017. “She found this way of introducing children to sometimes very difficult topics and material, but with a kind of gentleness,” American studies professor Gayle Wald said in a New York Times story on Jenkins’ centennial. “She never lied to them. She certainly never talked down to them.”