How do you chronicle the storied life and the rich legacy of a centenarian that includes a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award, visits to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, table tennis championships, on-stage birthday celebrations at Ravinia, activism with Martin Luther King, Jr. and performing at Lollapalooza?
In This is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement, Gayle Wald’s new biography of folk singer and self-proclaimed rhythm specialist Ella Jenkins, readers learn of Jenkins’ humble ascension to the “First Lady of Children’s Music” as a Smithsonian Folkways recording artist.
Growing up in Bronzeville without any formal training, Jenkins forged her own musical path and broke folk music barriers by combining Black diaspora traditions, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and Negro spirituals—musically spanning various cultures and continents. In addition to an induction into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry for the childhood classic, “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” Jenkins released almost 40 albums that shaped young minds, emphasized cultural exchange and championed music as a participatory activity.
Windy City Times: What made you want to write this book?
Gayle Wald: The literal story is that a friend of mine who’s a professional writer pitched an article to The New Yorker about Ella years ago. And they turned him down. He, knowing my interest and background said, “Here’s your next book,” and I ignored that for years.
WCT: [laughs]
GW: I did start, at some point, kind of poking around the archive to find out more about Ella.
Then I went to meet her. And I immediately understood why people used all kinds of superlatives when they talked about her. Her charisma, her warmth, all of that. I also felt from the very beginning that there were quiet elements of Ella’s story that hadn’t been brought to the surface. There were depths. She also just had on its face a kind of extraordinary American life.
WCT: There was a part in the book where you mention it gave you pause to write a book about a Black woman as a white woman. Tell us more about that and what, if anything, you felt was necessary to do her story justice.
GW: My PhD is in English and I’m trained in African American literature. In my 30-year career, I’ve been writing and teaching largely about African American literature and culture, particularly music. In 2007, I published a biography of the gospel musician, Sister Rosetta Tharpe; that’s probably the thing I’m most famous for: Shout, Sister, Shout! I’ve been a scholar for—I like to joke—since the 20th century. So, I knew that I had the knowledge base from my work. But all that to say, as someone who is different from Ella in race, in generation, in geography, religion…you approach the work with as much care as you can.
WCT: What type of research did you do to set the stage for the time in terms of what was going on with African Americans in Chicago?
GW: I did have to learn Chicago and I was guided by an incredible amount of excellent scholarship on the Chicago Renaissance, on Black women’s activism in Chicago, activism around the politics of migration, civil rights in Chicago…
I was comfortable in some ways with the music industry, but I really had to learn a lot about the history of preschool and children’s music. But, a huge amount of research went into elements of Ella’s life that surprised me: Christian Science, which was a huge part of her life; her time in San Francisco and the beginning of the Cold War; her playing table tennis; even thinking about queer life in mid-20th century Chicago and where she fit into what we know about that.
WCT: I believe Ella was in California at the time of the Lavender Scare. Can you talk about how it might have affected Ella coming into her sexual identity?
GW: From the people I spoke to who were around Ella at the time—and even from her scrapbooking, she was a real self-documenter—as a Black woman on her own, away from her mother, it is clear that she had to proceed with great caution when she was in San Francisco. She had a great stamina for going out and seeing great music, but she wasn’t interested in drinking and smoking and hanging out at bars. Although she certainly befriended lesbians and probably had relationships of some sort, she wasn’t going to clubs. That wasn’t her scene.
There’s a lot of [LGBTQ+] documentation around nightlife because nightlife was policed. We know a lot of this stuff because of police records; but less about what happened outside of those places, where prying eyes can’t see.
WCT: Can you talk about Ella’s relationship with Bernadelle? There’s such a tenderness in the way that you describe them.
GW: They met in 1961. Neither of them, by their own accounts, had had a “serious” relationship…whatever they defined that as. They instantly had a connection and chemistry. It was a little bit of opposites attract: Ella’s extroversion was unmatched. Our conversation about their relationship opened up when I asked what language I should use for them to describe their relationship in the book. I didn’t want to presume that my language, a post-Stonewall and post-queer studies framework, made any sense. Ella said, “Call her my ‘dearest friend’.”
WCT: Yes, I noticed that in the book.
GW: I think their relationship was very tender. The way that they met and came together is incredibly sweet. Bernadelle was supportive, gave her confidence, and when it was clear that Ella couldn’t be a performer, a creator and a manager at the same time, Bernadelle began to manage the business and Ella’s schedule.
It’s also fairly remarkable that Ella was able to create not only a sustainable career but a living for herself as a full-time musician/educator/performer. Once she kind of declared herself a rhythm specialist in the ‘50s, she never really had another job outside of that.
I was so interested in her kind of quiet pioneering of Black female entrepreneurship. The idea that she, from the very beginning, was attentive to copywriting her work; understanding that arrangements were also copyrightable. Her savvy as an independent entrepreneur is important to the story.
WCT: What do you hope that readers take away from reading the book?
GW: For people who don’t know about Ella Jenkins, I’m so happy to introduce her. Especially for Chicagoans who know and love Ella Jenkins, I want them to know that behind the charisma, the incredible energy, and warmth, there’s a story of an incredible woman who was self-made. The complexity of her life can sometimes get lost in the ways that she’s charming.
The other thing is, I want people to think about the actual intellectual and political work of children’s music as she did it. Because her work was simple doesn’t mean that it wasn’t also deeply intellectual, creative, and also political.
She used music as a form of activism. Not activism in the kind of ideological way – she was not an ideologue. She was very much a humanist. She was very anti-segregationist in every way.
But I think that she never approached music as an end in itself. She saw music as a way of serving various ends: of helping children go into the world with appreciation for each other, with curiosity rather than fear of other people’s differences. I think this she was really thinking about how to lay the groundwork for the world that she wanted to see come into being.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
This is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement can be purchased through GayleWald.com or The University of Chicago Press.