Ella Jenkins, a prolific and internationally recognized singer, songwriter and performer, used folk music sing-alongs to teach youngsters about other cultures, in the process becoming known as the “First Lady of Children’s Music.”
She developed the idea of call-and-response singing with children from listening to jazzman Cab Calloway’s performances of “Minnie the Moocher” on the South Side in the 1930s, as well as what she heard from church pastors and parishioners in her neighborhood growing up.
Jenkins, 100, died of natural causes on Saturday, Nov. 9, at her home at the Admiral at the Lake senior living facility in Uptown, said her longtime publicist, Lynn Orman. She previously had lived in Lincoln Park for many years.
Born in St. Louis, Jenkins moved with her recently divorced mother, a domestic worker, to Chicago when she was 4 years old. Her family settled in the South Side Bronzeville neighborhood.
As a child, she told the Tribune in 1994, she was always beating out rhythms, tapping on tabletops and on the tops of baking soda cans and oatmeal boxes and overturned wastebaskets. She also would whistle in an effort to imitate the calls of birds.
“Mother didn’t like it,” Jenkins said. “Women and girls weren’t supposed to whistle.”
After graduating from Du Sable High School in 1942, Jenkins held a clerical job at the University of Chicago before attending Woodrow Wilson Junior College — now Kennedy-King College — where she earned a degree. She then attended Roosevelt University before transferring to what now is San Francisco State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1951.
Inspired by a harmonica-playing uncle, Jenkins felt music’s pull. Upon returning to Chicago, Jenkins was hired as teenage program director of the YWCA’s South Park Way branch. A scout for a recording company suggested that she combine her talents and she became a performer and teacher in 1956. She began lecturing at schools and colleges and appearing on radio and TV, including a weekly gig on WTTW-Ch. 11 that started in the late 1950s.
“I remember in 1956, hearing about the Russians’ five-year plan. So I decided to give myself a five-year plan in music and see what happened,” she told the Tribune in 1990.
Jenkins’ first album, “Call-and-Response: Rhythmic Group Singing,” was released in 1957, and it defined her style of performing. Over time, children’s performers all around adopted that style. After that came album after album — all from her home base of Chicago.
Jenkins rarely performed in nightclubs.
“Whenever I do give a concert, folks bring out the little ones anyway,” she told the Tribune’s Ron Grossman in 1984. “So most of the time, it’s just easier to gear my appearances directly to the kids.”
A typical performance for Jenkins took place at the Des Plaines Public Library in 1997. She played a yodeling song from Switzerland on a Chinese harmonica — complete with audience participation — followed by a Hebrew song and some greetings and counting songs from East Africa, taught in Swahili. Frequently she led her audiences with a baritone ukulele or a harmonica in hand.
“I always tell the children: When I go abroad I take growing up on the South Side of Chicago with me,” she told the Tribune in 1997. “I share that and I grasp what I gain from meeting new friends and bring it to the children. Music makes the world go round.”
While Jenkins was not overtly political in her songs, she did not shy away from singing about real people, including Calloway, and about luminaries like Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan B. Anthony.
Jenkins performed at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park for 40 consecutive years.
In addition to releasing close to 40 recordings on the Smithsonian Folkways label, she performed on TV’s “Sesame Street,” “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Barney & Friends,” and she eventually performed on all seven continents and was awarded a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2004. At that same awards ceremony, a tribute album to her, titled “cELLAbration! A Tribute to Ella Jenkins,” with performances by Tom Chapin, John McCutcheon, Pete Seeger and Michele Valeri, also won a Grammy.
Fred Rogers was a big fan, noting that Jenkins furthered “songs from the ages that might not be passed on if not for her.”
“Everybody looks forward to the times when Ella comes to the ‘Neighborhood,’” Rogers told the Los Angeles Times in 1997. “I can see why children are attracted to her. What she does comes straight from her heart.”
In 2017, Jenkins was chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts to receive a National Heritage Fellowship. She released her final album in 2017, and while she never formally retired from performing, the COVID-19 pandemic put an end to her public performances, Orman said.
Upon her 99th birthday last year, Jenkins appeared at a celebration for her at the Old Town park that has borne her name since 2015, at 333 W. Wisconsin St. The party was organized by the Old Town Triangle Association, the Lincoln Central Association and the Church of the Three Crosses.
“You hear about birthdays. They’re 50 or 70, but 99, oh wow,” she told the Tribune last year. “So many people, young people (celebrating). It’s a good feeling.”
Jenkins was honored yet again at Ella Jenkins Park on her 100th birthday in August.
A documentary about her life, “Ella Jenkins: We’ll Sing a Song Together,” made by Chicago filmmaker Tim Ferrin, is being put together.
Jenkins enjoyed collecting spinning tops from around the world, and she often would twirl a top on a tambourine while leading children in counting songs in other languages.
Despite Jenkins’ wide travels, her many performances and albums and her interest in a diverse array of cultures and music, she acknowledged that music’s draw for her came from a very simple place.
“I didn’t expect to make a career of music, but I have always sung for the joy of singing,” she told the Tribune in 1994. “Music makes me feel good.”
Jenkins left no immediate survivors.
“If you asked Ella, she would say the world is my children,” Orman said.
A private funeral service is scheduled. In August, a public memorial will take place at Ella Jenkins Park.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.