Spinning the Child : Musical Constructions of Childhood through Records, Radio and Television 9781138571563, 9780203702680

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
List of Recording Artists, Programmes and Films
Permissions
1 Musical Constructions of Childhood: An Introduction
2 Folk Music and Childhood
3 Woody Guthrie’s 400 Songs for Children
4 How Radio Constructs Childhood: The Changing Family Values of the BBC’s Children’s Choice
5 The Musical Pedagogy of Sesame Street
6 How Television Music Constructs Childhood: Bagpuss and the Muppet Show
7 How the 21st- Century Children’s Music Industry Constructs Childhood
8 Conclusion
List of Appendices
Appendices
Index

Citation preview

Spinning the Child

Spinning the Child examines music for children on records, radio and television by assessing how ideals of entertainment, education, ‘the child’ and ‘the family’ have been communicated through folk music, the BBC’s children’s radio broadcasting, the children’s songs of Woody Guthrie, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and Bagpuss, the contemporary children’s music industry and other case studies. The book provides the first sustained critical overview of recorded music for children, its production and dissemination. The music, lyrics and sonics of hundreds of recorded songs are analysed with reference to their specific social, historical and technological contexts. The chapters expose the attitudes, morals and desires that adults have communicated both to and about the child through the music that has been created and compiled for children. The musical representations of age, race, class and gender reveal how recordings have both reflected and shaped transformations in discourses of childhood. This book is recommended for scholars in the sociology of childhood, the sociology of music, ethnomusicology, music education, popular musicology, children’s media and related fields. Spinning the Child’s emphasis on the analysis of musical, lyrical and sonic texts in specific contexts suggests its value as both a teaching and research resource. Dr Liam Maloy is an independent researcher based in Nottingham, UK. He is an ex-member of Britpop band Soda. Since 2008, Liam has written, recorded and performed music for children with his band Johnny and the Raindrops.

Spinning the Child Musical Constructions of Childhood through Records, Radio and Television

Liam Maloy

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LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Liam Maloy The right of Liam Maloy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 9781138571563 (hbk) ISBN: 9780203702680 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

This book is dedicated to my children, Ruby and Luca. ‘Stay awake but keep dreaming. Hope is the fuel that keeps the fire burning’.

Contents

List of figures List of tables Foreword Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations List of recording artists, programmes and films Permissions 1 Musical constructions of childhood: an introduction

ix xi xiii xv xvii xxi xxiii xxvii 1

2 Folk music and childhood

22

3 Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children

36

4 How radio constructs childhood: the changing family values of the BBC’s Children’s Choice 70 5 The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street

96

6 How television music constructs childhood: Bagpuss and The Muppet Show 127 7 How the 21st ­century children’s music industry constructs childhood

166

8 Conclusion

192

List of appendices Appendices Index

198 199 233

Figures

3.1 3.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Yearly distribution of Woody Guthrie’s songs for children Guthrie’s songs that mention his children by their name or nickname Curriculum category distribution on Sesame Street albums 1970–1976 Curriculum category distribution on Sesame Street albums 1977–1984 Genre distribution of songs on Sesame Street albums 1970–1976 Genre distribution of songs on Sesame Street albums 1977–1984 Year of release/publishing by decade of songs in The Muppet Show Season One, 1976 Year of release/publishing by decade of songs in The Muppet Show Season Five, 1981 Genre categories of the 116 songs in The Muppet Show Season One, 1976 Genre categories of the 146 songs in The Muppet Show Season Five, 1981

38 43 112 113 116 117 141 142 143 143

Tables

3.1 5.1

Thematic breakdown of Woody Guthrie’s songs for children Original, additional and special topics in the Sesame Street curriculum 1969–1984

40 109

Foreword

People have no doubt been singing for children for as long as there have been kids. Songs have passed down through the generations, perhaps created around a campfire or while trying to coax a reluctant child to sleep. Once recorded music came about, it was only natural that songs for children would be recorded, marketed and sold like any other commodity. In the US, folk artists like Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger and Ella Jenkins each contributed to the emergence of children’s music as a genre, writing and recording for family audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Pete Seeger spoke of performing for kids when his folk songs and concerts for adults were blacklisted during the McCarthy era because of his politics. As adult venues were closed to him, no one thought twice about allowing him to sing for children. It is ironic to think that by singing for kids in schools and summer camps, Seeger perhaps influenced a whole generation who would grow up and rebel against the conformities of that era. Many folk artists of the early 1960s included songs for children on their albums. Tom Paxton wrote ‘The Marvelous Toy’ and included wonderfully witty and fun songs on just about every folk album he released. Mark Spoelstra wrote some great songs for and about kids. Shel Silverstein penned many more. As the genre developed, record labels and distributors got into the business. More mainstream folk groups like Peter, Paul and Mary took many of those songs and popularized them further, recording an entire album of family songs on a major label in 1969. In more recent years, two distinct threads of music for children have emerged, one more commercial in nature with the backing of larger music companies, and the other, more home-grown, comprised of artists who self-produce their own albums of songs, often selling them through unconventional outlets. Of course, children’s music as a genre has been many things over the years, and the songwriters and artists who create songs for children often get lumped together despite the differences in their songs and approaches. Some artists write and sing songs specifically designed to appeal to toddlers and preschoolers, while others target elementary and early middle school audiences. Indeed, what a two-year-old responds to is vastly different to what appeals to a ten- or eleven-year-old. Lumping all music for kids

xiv Foreword together under one banner may have contributed to some people seeing children’s music as a trivial genre. Similarly, there has always been a division of what children’s music should be. Is it meant to entertain children or teach them? Should a songwriter write songs intended to direct children to think or act a certain way in order to conform to society’s current values? The idea of ‘educating’ children through music has been a consistent theme of much of the mainstream music targeted to kids. What is noteworthy is how the lessons we teach our children have changed. Songs of an earlier time often stressed behavior, teaching kids how to get along and conduct themselves properly. Today, many children’s songwriters see their mission as educating children to bigger issues such as injustice, inequality and the environment. Other songwriters stress the value of encouraging kids to think for themselves. They use their songs to give children a license to question their parents, teachers and other authority figures. Jim Copp and Ed Brown recorded a series of independent albums in the late 1950s and 1960s. Copp understood that most kids ‘are much smarter than their parents think they are’. His work was careful not to talk down to kids or patronize them; however, the songs and wordplays he created were the exception to the standard way people approached music for kids then. Every musical genre is influenced by what came before it, and my own music grew out of the folk and pop traditions that I listened to growing up. At a chance opportunity to perform in front of 500 children at a school, I overheard a teacher yelling at her students. This was the spark that launched my songwriting, performing and recording career in 1975. Ten years later, the American news publication Newsweek did a feature story on children’s music which focussed on the artists Rosenshontz, Raffi and me. They described the time as ‘the glory days of children’s music’ and talked about how a new crop of children’s musicians had emerged ‘just in time to catch the fancy of the baby boom’s own baby boom’ and sold records ‘with little air play and certainly no videos’. My, how times have changed. The children’s music genre has grown considerably since those ‘glory days’ and now includes every kind of music from classical to folk to jazz to rap—and everything in between. Every year, new artists emerge, reinventing the genre and moving music for kids into new areas that didn’t exist ten, twenty, or thirty years before. This book provides an overview of many of those contemporary artists and explores the range of children’s music that existed decades earlier, music that laid the foundations for the artists who would come later. It is great to see a book that examines children’s music and the ways that the genre has changed over the years. The chapters show how children’s music— like all art—is a reflection of the times and attitudes in which it was created. Barry Louis Polisar, 2020.

Preface

Once upon a time, not so long ago, everyone seemed to be singing to me or about me. Records made for children or even by children seemed to be everywhere. On Top of the Pops, Clive Dunn sang about his childhood, or was it his Grandad’s childhood? I couldn’t tell at the time. On Cheggers Plays Pop, Madness performed a song about when they were boys at school. On the BBC’s Saturday morning radio show Children’s Choice, Terry Scott, Allan Sherman and Tommy Cooper sang about their naughty little brothers, dysfunctional summer camps and suicidal fathers as if they were children themselves. On Play School and Play Away, the songs of Julia Donaldson, Toni Arthur and Derek Griffiths encouraged me to pull a funny face and touch my head, shoulders, knees and toes. Every week on the Top 40 children sang to me about how much they loved their grandmas or their mummies and how they didn’t ‘need no education’. The Smurfs, the Wombles, Captain Beaky and even humans like Joe Dolcé made records that even then I could tell had been created especially for my young ears. Some children even had their own television programme and pretended to be the pop stars of the day. Others sang about just saying no to drugs. The creaky, ancient-sounding songs of Bagpuss seared themselves into my memory, while my Muppets album contained strange and poignant songs about saving time in a bottle, sitting halfway down the stairs and a woman covered in tattoos. Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile hosted prime-time Saturday night TV shows that featured music, children and music for children. Musical films such as Half a Sixpence, Oliver and Bugsy Malone and a pile of my dad’s old rock’n’roll singles fleshed out the soundtrack to my childhood. The music I heard seemed to be trying not only to amuse me but to educate me and tell me something about other cultures, other lives and other childhoods, mostly American, Canadian and Australian ones. The songs also told me a little about my parents’ childhoods and, maybe, just maybe, they told me something about my own. Even as a youngster, I realised that the child singers of ‘Long Haired Lover from Liverpool’, ‘Grandma, We Love You’ and ‘Just Say No’ probably did not write what they were singing or even agreed with the sentiment. So, I quickly understood that the music that was being made for me, broadcast on programmes that were targeted at people just like me, my music, probably said more about the adults who made it than it did about children. As I grew up and became nostalgic for the music of my childhood, I had questions about what I had heard and seen. My answers to some of those questions form the chapters of this book.

Acknowledgements

The roots of this book are in my PhD undertaken at the Institute of Popular Music (IPM) at the University of Liverpool. I would like to thank my primary supervisor Freya Jarman for her shared enthusiasm for obscure and archaic recordings of children’s music, her eight years of encouragement and her incisive idiosyncratic suggestions of ways to think seriously about what might be seen by many as a trivial subject. I also want to thank Anahid Kassabian for her warm welcome, support and coaching conversations in the first half of the process and for the ideas in her Ubiquitous Music which have proved useful in the second half. I am also grateful for the friendship and encouragement by others at the IPM, most notably director Sara Cohen, and also Mike Jones, Rob Strachan and Marion Leonard. I am indebted to my external examiner Karen Lury for her interest in my work, her critical comments and her encouragement to move towards a book publication. Thanks also go to those involved in the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) for hosting my presentations on the music of The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Bagpuss and other aspects of music for children. The primary data for the first chapter was collected at the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I wish to thank the BMI/Woody Guthrie Foundation for their financial support to facilitate my visit. I would like to recognise the warm welcome given to me by Deena McCloud, Executive Director and Chief Curator at Woody Guthrie Center. Special thanks go to archivist Kate Blalack for her day-to-day support, coffees and for helping me make sense of Guthrie’s wide-ranging creative output. I would also like to extend thanks to the Bound for Glory Bookshop on Route 66 for inviting me to perform some of Woody’s songs for children. I was overwhelmed by the many miles that audience members had travelled to see me and by the shop’s hospitality. Guthrie scholar and performer Will Kaufman has been instrumental in focussing my ideas about Woody’s music for children. I extend thanks to him for publishing an early version of my third chapter in his journal Woody Guthrie Annual and for casting his keen and expert eye over the chapter included here. Similarly, I wish to acknowledge the help of the staff at the BBC Written Archives in Caversham in assisting me with my research into radio broadcasting for children.

xviii Acknowledgements A number of academics in the fields of children’s music, culture, literature and pedagogy have provided useful critical comments, ideas and inspiration. I would particularly like to thank Lucy Green and Tyler Bickford for their review comments; Kim Reynolds for her encouragement and editorial support to publish in the International Research in Children’s Literature journal; Peter Hollindale for his book and conference talk about childness; Patricia Shehan Campbell for her personal communications about children’s musical culture; Pat Thomson for her support and thoughts about creative pedagogy; and Nicholas Pillai for help with getting my article on jazz music in children’s television into the Jazz Research Journal. This book has been informed by the opinions, knowledge and experiences of those whom I interviewed and conversed with. These include Woody Guthrie’s daughter Nora, Smithsonian-Folkways Records employee, archivist and historian Jeff Place, Bagpuss songwriter, musician and vocalist Sandra Kerr, musician and author Billy Bragg, Play School and Play Away songwriter Julia Donaldson, and Bob the Builder and Noddy theme composer Paul K. Joyce. The final chapter draws on interviews with folks currently working in the children’s music industry. I wish to thank the following children’s music recording artists, songwriters and performers for their time and thoughts and for bearing with me while trying to establish international telecommunication: Kaitlin McGaw and Tommy Shepherd (Alphabet Rockers), Dan Zanes, Ashli Christoval (Jazzy Ash), Andrés Salguero (123 Andrés), Joe Mailander (The Okee Dokee Brothers), The Not-Its!, Barry Louis Polisar, Nick Cope, Bryan Atchison (Koo Koo Kanga Roo), David Gibb and Patricia Shih. I am also indebted to children’s/family radio and podcast presenters and programmers Dave Stevens (Kinderling Kids Radio), Bill Childs (Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child), Stefan Shepherd (Zooglobble), Sagan Thacker (Radio Active Kids), Kathy O’Connell (Kids’ Corner presenter and co-organiser of KindieComm) and to Sugar Mountain PR founder Beth Blenz-Clucas. I have also drawn on the extensive collective knowledge of the Children’s Music Network which informed the chapter on the links between folk music and childhood. Finally, my warm thanks go to children’s book author and all-round inspiration Michael Rosen for his insights into 1970s children’s BBC television production and the Critics Group. I wish to acknowledge the musical inspirations that initially sparked my interest in recorded music for children and the artists I have discovered through my research who have kept me inspired. These include Jonathan Richman, Raffi, Violent Femmes, Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner (Bagpuss), Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Billy Bragg, Dan Zanes, Elizabeth Mitchell, Wally Whyton, Paul Williams, John Sebastian, Belle and Sebastian, and George Martin’s pre-Beatles productions from Children’s Choice. My research into children’s music has taken place alongside writing, recording and performing music for children. Making albums, filming videos

Acknowledgements  xix and performing at hundreds of festivals and events has helped me to put into practice some of the ideas in this book. Special thanks go to my friends and band mates in Johnny & the Raindrops, specifically bass player Darren Fretwell and drummer Matt Cousin. Lastly, I wish to acknowledge the boundless love and support of my family. Thanks go to my mum for having the radio playing constantly during my childhood and for singing along to the records on Junior Choice every Saturday morning, and to my dad for passing on his collection of rock’n’roll 7” singles which introduced me at a young age to the pleasures of the Everly Brothers, the Shadows, Little Richard, Elvis, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Extra special thanks and recognition go to my wife Sarah for her encouragement and support. The research and writing have been a labour of love that has put other areas of my life on the back burner for long periods. I  could not have completed this book without her love. Lastly, I want to acknowledge the inspiration of our children, Ruby and Luca. Finding music for them was the inspiration for my late-in-life study of music for children.

Abbreviations

ABC ATV BBC CBBC CITV CMN CRG CTW EYFS HUAC ITV NET PBS WGA YPR

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Associated Television British Broadcasting Corporation Children’s BBC Children’s ITV Children’s Music Network Children’s Record Guild Children’s Television Workshop Early Years Foundation Stage House of Un-American Activities Committee Independent Television National Educational Television Public Broadcasting Service Woody Guthrie Archives (Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA) Young People’s Records

List of recording artists, programmes and films

Children’s music artists, bands and brands (selected) Alan Mills Canadian folk singer. Nineteen albums on Folkways in the 1950s and 1960s. Allan Sherman American novelty song singer best known for 1963’s ‘Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh’. Almanac Singers, The early 1940s New York-based folk collective whose members included Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax Hawes, Burl Ives, Josh White, Sis Cunningham and Millard Lampell. ‘Aunt’ Molly Jackson Influential politicised folk singer and Folkways recording artist. Bernard Cribbins TV and radio actor who recorded ‘Right Said Fred’ and ‘Hole in the Ground’. Both were produced by George Martin and released in 1962. Bess Lomax Hawes Member of the Almanac Singers. Folklorist sister of Alan Lomax. Billy Cotton BBC radio presenter, big band leader and recording artist. Burl Ives Member of the Almanac Singers. Popularised folk tunes ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ and ‘Blue Tail Fly’. Captain Beaky Novelty animal-themed recitation over orchestral music. Scored a UK Top 5 single in 1980. Christopher Trace Presenter of Children’s Favourites and Blue Peter. Clive Dunn Actor and singer best known for UK number 1 single ‘Grandad’, 1971. David Grisman & Jerry Garcia Released bluegrass/acoustic album Not for Kids Only in 1993. Derek Griffiths Children TV presenter (Play School, Play Away), singer, musician. Derek McCulloch Presenter of Children’s Favourites. BBC’s Head of Children’s Broadcasting (1933–1951). Donovan Scottish folk singer. Released albums for children, For Little Ones/A Gift from a Flower to a Garden (1967) and HMS Donovan (1971). Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart Longest serving presenter of Children’s Choice.

xxiv List of recording artists, programmes and films Ella Jenkins Folk singer and Folkways recording artist. Frankie Howerd Comedian, TV star. Occasional recording artist. The Goons Influential radio comedians. Recorded with George Martin. Popular on Children’s Choice. Jeff Moss Songwriter, composer and musician for Sesame Street. Jimmy Savile British children’s TV and radio presenter. Occasional recording artist. Faced major allegations of sexual abuse and paedophilia both before and after his death in 2011. Joan Ganz Cooney ­Co-founder ​­ of the Children’s Television Workshop. Joe Dolcé Scored a worldwide number 1 single with ‘Shaddap You Face’, 1980–1981. Joe Raposo Songwriter, composer and musician for Sesame Street. John Faulkner Folk musician. Performer, composer and character (Gabriel the Toad) on Bagpuss. John Reith Director General of the BBC from its inception in 1922 until 1938. Jonathan Richman Singer, songwriter, musician. Founder of the band The Modern Lovers. A stated influence on many children’s songwriters. Josh White Politicised singer and guitarist. Julia Donaldson BBC songwriter (Play School). Children’s author (The Gruffalo). Ken Dodd Much loved Liverpudlian comedian and singer. Keith Chegwin Co-presenter of BBC radio’s The Tony Blackburn Show (formerly Children’s Choice). Host of Cheggers Plays Pop (see below). Lead Belly Ex- convict folk singer. First Folkways artist to record an album for children. Leslie Crowther Presenter of Children’s Favourites. Better known as a TV presenter. Madness Popular British pop-ska band, 1979–1986 and beyond. Maggie Philbin Co-presenter of BBC radio’s The Tony Blackburn Show (formerly Children’s Choice). Malvina Reynolds Politicised folk singer. Songs for children include ‘Magic Penny’, ‘Morningtown Ride’ and ‘Little Boxes’. Appeared as Kate on Sesame Street for which she wrote songs. Max Bygraves British Variety performer and recording artist (‘Gilly, Gilly Ossenfeffer’, 1954). Michael Rosen BBC TV producer, children’s author, Children’s Laureate, radio presenter. Morecambe and Wise Much-loved comedy duo and HMV recording artists. Paul Robeson Politicised actor and vocalist. Peter Brough Presenter of Children’s Favourites. Popular 1950s radio ventriloquist. Raffi ­Canadian-Armenian ​­ children’s musician. Rolf Harris Popular Australian recording artist and children’s TV presenter. Convicted for indecent assault of underage girls in 2014.

List of recording artists, programmes and films   xxv Sandra Kerr Folk musician. Performer, composer and character (Madeleine the Rag Doll) on Bagpuss. Sharon, Lois and Bram Canadian children’s folk music trio. Smurfs, The Animated stars of television, film and record. Ted Heath British Big band leader. Popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Terry Scott Comedy actor and recording artist (‘My Brother’, 1962). Tommy Cooper Comic magician and novelty song recording artist (‘Don’t jump off the roof Dad’, 1961). Toni Arthur British folk musician and presenter of Play School and Play Away. Tony Blackburn Final host of Junior Choice (1980–1982). First DJ on BBC Radio 1. Advocate of American soul music.

Programmes (radio and television) and films Blue Peter British magazine television programme for children (1958 to present). Bugsy Malone 1976 musical film with an all- child cast and songs by Paul Williams. Cheggers Plays Pop Music-based TV game show that featured pop music artists, 1978–1986. Children’s Choice BBC radio request programme for children. Later titled Children’s Favourites and Junior Choice, 1952–1982. Half a Sixpence British musical film featuring pop star Tommy Steele, 1967. Oliver British musical film based on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, 1968. Play Away BBC TV variety programme for children, 1971–1984. Play School BBC TV programme for preschool children, 1964–1988. The Wombles Animated British TV programme, 1973–1975. The Wombles band had significant chart success from 1973 to 1976. Top of the Pops The BBC’s weekly UK chart run- down TV programme, 1964–2006.

Permissions

I gratefully acknowledge permission to quote from the following lyrics: “The Princess Suite” © Copyright 1973. Written by Sandra Kerr, John Faulkner and Oliver Postgate. “Pick it up”, “Don’t you Push me Down”, “Dance Around”, “Little Seed”, “Bling-Blang” and “Riding in my Car (The Car song)” © Copyright TRO Essex Music Limited, administered by Kensington Music Limited, London, UK. Written by Woody Guthrie. “Rattle my Rattle”, “Warsh-y Little Tootsy”, “Howdido”, “Hanuka Dance” and “Little Bird” © Copyright TRO Essex Music Limited. Written by Woody Guthrie. “All Work Together” written by Woody Guthrie © Copyright TRO Essex Music Limited, administered by Cromwell Music Limited, London, UK. Written by Woody Guthrie. “The Skin I’m In” © Copyright 1971. Written by Matt Robinson. “The Bird on Nellie’s Hat”. Public domain. “Marching Shoulder to Shoulder” © Copyright 1978 by Barry Louis Polisar, from the recording ‘Naughty Songs for Boys and Girls, published 1978 by Barry Louis Polisar.

1

Musical constructions of childhood An introduction

‘The Princess Suite’ is a story in a song. The story features predatory males and an assertive female and has a central theme of bodily transformation. The narrative concerns a ‘lovely sad princess’ who lives in a pond with the ‘proud, stupid Water Lords’ who aggressively court her. ‘It’s useless to refuse me’, the Lords chant; ‘you know you must marry for that is the rule’. Finger picked on an Appalachian dulcimer, the song drones on a ‘D’ tonic note in a delicate three-four time signature, while the major-key melody carries the tale of how the princess actively refuses the Lords’ forceful advances. During the last of the three sections, the tempo quickens. The time signature changes to a purposeful four-four that drives the narrative upwards and out of the confines of the water. At this point, the powerful yet restrained female vocal reaches its highest note, an expansive octave and a major third above its lowest. These melodic, dynamic and rhythmic shifts coincide with the moment the human Lords break the surface of the water in their vain attempt to catch the princess’ crown, a trinket she has challenged them to chase. In an instant, they transform into dragonflies, ‘hot and bothered’ after their competitive exertions. The music provides a persuasive shadow text; an unspoken musical suggestion of the anticipation of impending bodily transformation, the hormonal rush of impeding puberty perhaps, and an escape from a suffocating and static environment. The melody of ‘The Princess Suite’ provides knowledgeable listeners with an intertextual reference to the 18th- century Norfolk folk song ‘The Furze Field’, a sexual allegory. As the song closes, the princess, through her own volition, turns into a frog, an animal perfectly chosen to devour the dragonflies. ‘The Princess Suite’ contains profound and complex ideas; of change and fluidity, of the possibility of instigating change and of working with others to change. It reveals what might be and what can be. These universal themes combine with practical tips on how to deal with sexual harassment. As a purely aural text, without the puppets, animations and child-focussed television scheduling of Bagpuss, the song might not be recognised as a song created primarily for children. Far from the notions of simplicity, triviality and ephemerality that are often associated with music for children, ‘The Princess Suite’ provides a space in which the child can begin to, or continue to,

2  Musical constructions of childhood examine and challenge subject matter that may fall beyond their current interpretive reach, and move, in stuttering improvised ways, towards the subject positions alluded to in the song. Even the simplest songs for children betray the tension that lies at their heart, one derived from the relationship between the adult creator and the child listener. Through music made for children, songwriters, performers, television producers, publishers and radio programmers project their collective expectations; what they want the child to know, to be, to become, and, perhaps most significantly, what they want to remain hidden from them. As cultural texts with a primary purpose of engaging the child, these recordings of music hold up a mirror to the adults who create them. As such, music for children can communicate a host of complex and often contradictory messages that reveal the naturalised moralities and ingrained ideologies that shape and define childhood. The title of this book requires qualification. Spinning the Child refers to both the rotating records, cassettes and CDs, and to the manipulative ‘spin’ that adults put on childhood. Music for children divulges adult attitudes and facilitates the child’s cultural, social and personal development. It simultaneously constructs and constricts childhood. While children’s music often covers issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, neurodiversity and other categories of identity, it is the evocation of such subjectivities by reference to differences in age that makes them mutually informative. Rather than a separate category that can be employed to examine such issues, childhood is itself inextricably constituted by such manifestations of power and difference. Music for children is this book’s chosen lens through which congregations of representations of age, race, class, gender and other subjectivities can be examined. Rather than constructing childhood in prescriptive and authoritarian ways, recorded music makes a contribution to these discourses. The recordings provide an accessible locus in which the child may adopt or reject, appropriate or subvert the messages that have been created both for them and about them (and occasionally by them). The child is a collaborative agent, one who interprets, reinterprets and responds to the recorded texts. Indeed, after she has resisted the advances of the Water Lords, the Princess seeks help from a frog in order to facilitate her own transformation before deciding to remain in a familiar but now pest-free environment. With the potential to contribute to social discourses that shape the lives of real children, it is perhaps surprising that recorded music for children has until relatively recently resisted serious academic consideration. Historically, musicologists may have been dissuaded by its low cultural status and assumed simplicity. The music’s apparent ubiquity seems to have rendered it invisible to media scholars. Biographers have tended to exclude and sideline the songs that artists have created for children in favour of their ‘adult’ work. Gender stereotypes have played a part; children’s culture is often associated with mothers and female carers (Gubar 2009: 5).

Musical constructions of childhood  3 Admittedly, defining music for children is problematic. Explaining what it is and what it does requires ideas and methods from a range of disciplines. Similarly, the term ‘children’s music’ evokes an array of production and reception activities and also refers to the aural texts and material artefacts that are the primary focus of this book. Ground-breaking studies of children’s music (Marsh 2008; Shehan Campbell 1998) have used ethnography to reveal how children create and perpetuate their own musical culture, often from texts that have adult origins. Others have looked closely at specific children’s record labels and the contextual factors that affect the production of records for children (Bonner 2007) or have compiled comprehensive lists and explanations of historical children’s record releases (Muldavin 2007). Other research has focussed on the therapeutic benefits of music on children with autistic spectrum disorders (Berger 2002; Headlam 2006). Others have studied the prodigious musical abilities of specific autistic children (Young and Nettelbeck 1995). While these studies give a sense of the depth and breadth of music made for, with and by children, more theorised investigations into the text and context of recorded music for children are long overdue. This book addresses three main sets of questions framed sequentially around text, production and reception: •

• •

Firstly, how do recordings of music that are produced primarily for the child contribute to the construction of childhood? More precisely, how do the specific musical, lyrical and sonic textual attributes of recorded music both shape and reflect discourses of childhood? Secondly, how do social, historical, industrial, technological and other contextual factors combine to inform the production and distribution of the recordings? Thirdly, how does recorded music for children prompt reception activity and what responses do the records anticipate? Furthermore, how do recordings of music facilitate the child’s understanding of profound and complex ‘adult’ themes such as sex, violence, death and isolation? How might a ‘family’ reception environment contribute to the child’s interpretation of the texts?

The following seven chapters are designed to illuminate music’s role in shaping the enduring and ephemeral characteristics of a series of socio-historical childhoods. The recordings cover a period from the first decades of the 20th century (often of much older songs) to the present day (2020). The media through which they have been distributed and broadcast are introduced chronologically. The sparsity of directly relevant academic literature and the impermanence of the primary textual objects (mainly song books, records, cassettes, television and film footage) have presented significant challenges. Much of the material offered in this book has been retrieved from archives for the first time. Theories and analytical techniques have been derived from a

4  Musical constructions of childhood range of disciplines. The research has required sensitivity to the relationships of power inherent in music for children and a good deal of reflexivity. My work as a songwriter, performer and recording artist for children has run parallel to my research. The two roles have been mutually informative. As a practitioner, I am acutely aware of the immediate and lasting impact music can have on children, their carers and the adults involved in networks of education and entertainment. As a researcher, I am attentive to the often-subtle ways that relationships of power become normalised and how profound messages can be communicated by even the most seemingly innocuous music. My job here is to identify some of those messages and attempt to understand how and why they have taken shape. By taking a holistic view of both the text and context of children’s music, I examine how recorded music for children contributes to constructions of childhood by communicating adult- driven narratives in particular musical and sonic settings. In this sense, recordings constrict the range and nature of the childhoods on offer. However, the recordings simultaneously open up a cultural space for the child to explore, question and respond to these constructions. The musical, lyrical and sonic attributes of the recorded texts signify their adult origins; at the same time they facilitate the child’s response. The recordings concurrently prompt and script the performance of particular childhoods while providing the child a forum for disruptive, improvised and unpredictable reception activity. This relationship between the childhood in the recording and the child listener outside of it is dynamic and reciprocal. Many everyday issues have the potential to promote or disrupt the process. The child’s life experiences, their mood prior to and at the time of listening, the potentially socialised nature of the listening event and a host of other factors may affect the child’s interpretation of the myriad fluid semiotic signifiers in the music, lyrics and sonics, and in any attendant visuals. However, the child’s performance of the recorded musical text, what they do with it and how they respond to it, tempers the abstraction of a textually derived childhood and renders the child and childhood mutually constructive. The child works both with and within childhood; Gubar’s ‘artful dodger’ (2009) is an apt metaphor for the child’s agentic and resourceful relationship with the representations of childhood that circulate in the recordings of music made for them. In addition, recorded music created for children does not communicate exclusively to the child. The recordings have the potential to appeal to adults and to construct socialised intergenerational reception environments in which the child’s interpretation of complex themes may be cultivated. Specific attributes of the recordings may signify in potentially similar and/or dissimilar ways to adult and child. Attributes or combinations of attributes rise and fall in their ‘pertinence’ in fluid and unpredictable ways, signifying either simultaneously or separately to child and adult listeners (Middleton 1990: 175–177). The success of such strategies is dependent on the listener’s age-independent competence to interpret the text.1 A competent child is not

Musical constructions of childhood  5 only able to understand the overt ‘surface’ messages in the text but will also, to varying degrees, be able to decode ‘hidden’ themes that are merely implied rather than stated (Culler 1975: 131–152; Selden 1989: 126–128). Throughout the book, I show how age-straddling ‘crosswriting’ techniques (Bullen and Nichols 2011) are used by children’s music producers for a variety of ideological, pedagogical and commercial reasons. The broadbrush approach taken by creators of family music (rather than children’s music) blurs the boundaries between the age-specific reception categories that are crucial to the definition, production and distribution of children’s music. However, age-inclusive strategies increase the interpretive potential of the text and allow it to ‘grow’ as the child’s textual competence and their understanding of the world develop. This understanding is facilitated, I argue, by the child’s exposure to the issues raised by recordings of music.

Childhood and the study of children’s music Research in this field generally focusses on two distinct but mutually informative methods. The first centres on how childhood is constructed in the text. Content analysis in this area is derived largely from literary studies and musicology. Its aim is to identify adult- derived textual tropes of ‘childness’ (Hollindale 1997) in order to analyse the power relationships and value systems that the texts communicate. As my primary methodology, I discuss more about textual and content analysis below, and explain how the ‘child in the text’ evokes an implied readership2 that prompts reception activity. Before looking at the second method, ethnography, it is important to understand more about how a variety of discourses of childhood have taken shape. Childhood Rather than being a descriptor of real children, their cognitive and psychological development, and their chronological age, childhood is an evershifting socially constructed framework of ideas, prejudices and ideologies. Childhood is not universal and is always linked to equally fluid concepts of gender, class, race and ethnicity (James and Prout 1990: 4–8). It is more useful perhaps to refer to childhoods in the plural to emphasise the dynamic nature and sociohistorical specificity of particular constructions. While it is now widely accepted that the child is an active participant in these constructions, Philippe Ariès was among the first to highlight the social origins of childhood (1962). The children of the Middle Ages were depicted in paintings, poems and sculptures as miniature adults who shared working lives, styles of clothing, music and celebratory activities such as the drinking of alcohol with adults (Calvert 1998: 72; Lombardo 1997: 3). According to Ariès, childhood developed over the subsequent 400–500 years as the child retreated from the intergenerational sociability of the bourgeois families of

6  Musical constructions of childhood Western Europe to the privacy of the nuclear family (Kline 1998: 98). This view has been challenged on historical and aesthetic grounds; distinctions between child and adult did indeed exist in the 15th and 16th centuries and took forms that are in many ways familiar to us (Pollock 1983) or are unrecognisable through the lens of contemporary childhood (Cunningham 2006: 30). In the late ​­18th and early 19th ​­ centuries, developments in contraception, medicine and the legal status of children in the areas of employment and education began to define modern childhood. However, many working-​­class Western children lived and worked alongside adults well into the 20th century. Religious, philosophical and literary influences have created a series of identifiable and enduring tropes of childhood. Puritan and Calvinist theologies depicted a polluted, depraved and evil child whose soul could only be saved from Hell by strict physical punishment designed to ‘break their will’ (Gittins 2004: 31–32). Frivolity and play were feared. The Puritan child was portrayed as inherently sinful, untamed and primitive, violent and primal. However, contrasting discourses emerged in parallel. The liberalist social philosophies of John Locke and later Jean-​­Jacque Rousseau3 began to recognise the child as a discreet and independent member of society with their own personality and culture (Heath 1997: 16). Romantic and Rousseau-​­ist notions of the ‘child of nature’ and a bucolic, pastoral childhood circulated in the late ​­18th century. Poets such as Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth described a state of innocence and inherent goodness that was often associated with the rural idyll. Protestants adopted Locke’s view that the child was a blank or clean slate (‘tabula rasa’), an innocent naïf who needed to be civilised through education and experience (Postman 1982: 59). ‘Golden Age’ children’s authors of the late 19th and early 20th ​­ centuries often perpetuated these themes of nature and innocence. Childhood scholars have proposed categories of social construction that alternately depict the child as innocent, vulnerable, an animal, an apprentice adult and an autonomous individual (Hendrick 1990: 37–54; Mills 2000: 9–31). However, these lists often reveal more about the subjective and ideological nature of the construction than they do about the historical and textual evidence (Mills 2000: 31). Differing discourses ebb and flow in popularity while contrasting childhoods may co-​­exist. For example, the venerating Victorian ‘cult of the child’ circulated alongside Puritanical and Locke-​­ist views from proponents of child labour, educationist and social reformers. Freud’s theories on the child’s psychosexual development challenged notions of innate childhood innocence (Lombardo 1997: 5). Indeed, the way we understand innocence has changed. Once defined by sensitivity and divinity, innocence is now almost exclusively understood as the child’s lack of sexual awareness (Kincaid 2010: 6). More recent media commentaries continue to uphold constructions of childhood innocence, vulnerability and helplessness while simultaneously denigrating children as inherently evil (Cunningham 2006: 243; Davis and Bourhill 1997: 31, 15–16; Lombardo

Musical constructions of childhood  7 1997: 1). Similar inconsistencies emerge when the end of childhood is defined legally by the ages at which an individual can pay tax, get married, vote or consume age-restricted media texts (Buckingham 2000: 7–8). With adults taking the dominant role in social definitions, childhood is defined predominantly by its difference to adulthood and often, its inferiority to it. Ethnography Ethnomusicologists observe how childhood is performed by children in ‘real life’. Their aim is to document children’s ‘musicking’ activities such as singing, performing, playing, listening, composing and learning music in various social and educational environments. This approach has a long and varied history during which the processes of documentation and interpretation have been refined. Folklorists and anthropologists such as Francis James Child (1860) and Cecil James Sharp (1916) collected songs from a variety of mostly British field sources. However, during the transcription processes, ‘wrong’ notes were corrected and lyrics bowdlerised (Lee 1982: 30). John A. Lomax and his son Alan Lomax made field recordings of American and African- American folk musicians and singers. Their writings on the subject drew suggestions that they ‘othered’ their ‘discoveries’ with projections of authenticity, purity and simplicity. Their work is duly noted in the next chapter along with that of Charles Seeger (1977), Ruth Crawford Seeger (1948), and Iona Opie and Peter Opie (1959).4 In the last three decades, significant contributions to the ethnography of children’s music have been made by Patricia Shehan Campbell (Shehan 1987, 1998, 2000) and Kathryn Marsh (2008). In reaction to the previous ‘antiseptic, dry, and disconnected’ studies into how children perceive and understand music, Shehan Campbell conducted 16 months of observations of active participatory music making sessions with children and supplemented them with conversations with the participants (1998: 9–10). While the resulting Songs in Their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children’s Lives contains transcriptions of children’s songs, the author acknowledges that her focus is on ‘what … children musically do, on their own and unassisted by adults’ and how the child makes sense of their ‘musical worlds’ (ibid.: 8). The study highlights how the oral ‘folk’ tradition of ‘children’s music’ is informed by a combination of recorded music and other mediated sources such as music from the school curriculum and concert hall, as well as music that is ‘passed down from generation to generation or passed sideways from child to child … [or] … spontaneously composed by them’ (Shehan Campbell 2017). In The Musical Playground (2008), Marsh examines children’s musical playground games from around the world. Again, she acknowledges the influence of recorded music, radio and television on the child’s oral transmission of music (ibid.: 5). Marsh stresses the mismatch between the relative simplicity of educational music when compared to children’s musical play (ibid.: 12–15).5 She provides an extensive categorised list of types of

8  Musical constructions of childhood playground songs as well as transcriptions of both music and movement. In Chapter 2, I document a similar if reversed transmission process by which children’s oral music found its way into school song books and the recorded repertoires of influential folk musicians. The work of Marsh, Shehan Campbell and others (Bickford 2013, 2014, 2017; Hopkin 1984; Osborn-Seyffert 1988) highlights the reciprocal relationship between recorded music and children’s musical activity; between the childhood in the text and the living breathing children outside it.

The textual construction of childhood So far, I have discussed how recorded music plays a part in children’s musical lives and helps to construct their musical culture. I have said little, however, about how songs construct childhood and create depictions of the child. In the vast majority of commercially available media texts, the child is an adult creation, ‘a half-forgotten original’ distorted by the lenses of loss and nostalgia (Bernstein 2011: 23). Èmile, the Bible and Peter Pan represent symbolic childhoods, literary constructions of children. Indeed, it is essential to differentiate between ‘the child’ as an imagined, constructed atavistic image and ‘children’ as flesh-and-blood groups. As discussed, symbols of childhood can be called upon to support ideologies and actions that can directly affect children’s lives. Steedman refers to this as ‘the use of the idea of the child’ (1995: 17). Analyses of media texts reveal how these representations construct particular discourses. For example, Walkerdine examined signs of girlhood in comic strips (notably tropes of a feminised working- class childhood and the precociousness of Little Orphan Annie), novels, television, advertising and films (1997). Similarly, Holland showed how advertising, newspapers, photographs and other visual media constructed the child as ‘primitive’, ‘tribal’, ‘a nice kid’ and in other essentialising ways (2004). Kinder looked at how children’s computer games, films and toys rely on the construction of a pleasure-seeking consumerist child (1991: 40); Lurie identified ‘subversive power’ and revolutionary ideas in a range of historical children’s literature (1990); Honeymoon found ‘impossible representations’ of childhood in modern fiction (2005), while Kaiser and Hunn detected tropes of ‘innocence and anxiety’ in their study of children’s clothing (2002). Notably, Jacqueline Rose asserts the ‘impossibility’ of addressing the child outside of the text with an ideological construction of childhood within it. The ‘child in the text’, Rose claims, is assembled with the sole purpose of attracting and engaging the real child (1992: 58). This, she suggests, creates an unbridgeable rupture between the author and the reader of children’s texts, an ‘empty space’ in which only a fictional and thus ‘impossible’ childhood can exist (ibid.: 59). Rose’s idealised text is one that is certain of delivering its moral, didactic and ideological baggage without diversion or compromise

Musical constructions of childhood  9 (ibid.). Such texts ‘fix’ the child reader as ‘knowable’ and ‘dependent’ (ibid.: 64) and fail to acknowledge either the fluidity of childhood or the multifarious variations wrought by class, race, gender, age, interpretive competence and other ‘historical divisions and difficulties of which children … form a part’ (ibid.: 65). Rose uses the term ‘desire’ to refer to a ‘form of investment by the adult in the child’ (ibid.: 60) and the ultimately self-serving process in which adults create idealised childhoods. Similarly, Perry Nodelman acknowledges that written texts for children are based on a series of ‘assumptions’ that fix the child and reveal authors’ beliefs about childhood (1985: 98). However, it is these normalised constructions of childhood rather than the nature of the communicative medium that Nodelman finds problematic. This ‘false view’ merely serves to ‘prevent us from rightly perceiving the rich complicated lives of real children’ (ibid.: 100). Nodelman bemoans the homogeneity of books that regurgitate stereotypical ideas of how childhood innocence is a ‘good thing’ that can lead to adult wisdom. His list of dozens of textual conventions of childhood includes the idea that children need to be taught in ‘simple obvious ways by simple, obvious adults’ and that adult authors encourage children to be both childlike and adultlike (2004: 141–161). The problem, it seems, is in the mismatch between the inaccurate, unrealistic and warped representations of childhood within the text and the diversity of the real children that exist outside of it. Despite this, texts for children have the potential to empower the child with a range of representations and possible readings. Nodelman points to Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are as an example that is ‘rich in irony, in ambiguity, in linguistic subtlety, even in truthful evocations of childhood sexuality’ (1985: 99–100). But clearly, texts also have the power to inhibit potential interpretations by serving up fixed and narrow depictions of the child’s lived experience. Such texts stunt psychological development; the child is restricted from ‘moving forward’ until the text permits them and then only in the ways suggested by the adult in the text. Depictions of innocence, primarily expressions of sexual innocence, are perhaps the over-r iding textual inhibitor of childhood. To Bond Stockton, textual innocence delays the child’s growth and forces them to ‘grow up sideways’ (2009: 6). The homosexual undertones in Peter Pan are concealed: the ‘impossible question’ that they request of the child remains unasked (Rose 1992: 27). Symbolically, Peter ‘flies away because he does not want to grow up’ (ibid.: 26). Simplicity is another powerful textual constraint. In children’s media, the ever-present voice of the author (the ‘hidden adult’; Nodelman 2008: 9) delivers a diminished and less- complex version of the world. This simplification is captured in the concept of ‘childness’ which Peter Hollindale uses to describe the characteristics and distinguishing features of texts for children (1997). For the child, childness is their ‘developing sense of self in interaction with … images of childhood’ (ibid.: 49). For the adult,

10  Musical constructions of childhood these images are a ‘composite, made up of beliefs, values, memories, expectations, approved and disapproved behaviours, observations, hopes and fears’ (ibid.: 76). However, to Nodelman, the images are ‘rarely simple or coherent’ and are ‘full of inconsistencies, strains and unspoken priorities’ (ibid.). Childness is a textually constructed spectrum that highlights the distance between the symbolic and the social child, a sliding scale between representation and reality. The two combine in ‘the reading event’, the moment when the text is transformed into ‘experience’ (ibid.: 86). Rather than compounding the alterity of the child, childness emphasises the complexity of the relationship between text and reader. Analysis of the content of children’s music reveals the varying degrees of childness in specific textual attributes. This method and concept are central to the discussions of the case studies that follow. I conceived the ‘Music Hall formula’ to describe the combination of musical and sonic signifiers with high levels of childness (and all of the textual limitation that the term implies) with lyrics that have low degrees of childness. Such recordings generally combine anthemic sing-along choruses that are limited and ‘simplified’ in their overall melodic and consecutive intervallic ranges with complex wordplay and ‘adult’ lyrical themes. As with many of the songs performed in the original music halls, such texts are sonically attractive and vocally accessible to a mass audience. As shown in the following chapters, songs that employ the ‘Music Hall formula’ proliferated on family-oriented radio and television programmes such as Children’s Choice and The Muppet Show, are a staple of the tween-targeted Kidz Bop albums and are often present whenever performers and recording artists address the family rather than the child. Lyrics are occasionally bowdlerised6 and songs censored, yet by donning an innocuous musical cloak, disruptive and subversive content can slip under the radar of an adult opprobrium often informed by notions of innocence and its protection. A text’s ‘double address’ ignores the child and targets the adult directly, while a ‘dual address’ is aimed at both child and adult simultaneously (Wall 1991: 9, 35–36). As seen in the case studies that frequently adopt such modes of address (Children’s Choice, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show), literary devices such as satire, sarcasm, irony, double entendre and intertextuality, performance gestures such as vocal inflections, nudges and winks, and other non-literary signifiers deliberately place contentious subject matter outside of the interpretive reach of all but the most competent of listeners.7 Clearly, even the most outwardly simple texts, those with high degrees of childness, belie a complexity that is only available to those with the necessary interpretive skills. The reader’s competence bridges the semiotic distance (the degree of childness) between the ‘meanings’ implied by the literary aspects of the text (the words) and the paratextual ‘shadow texts’ (picture book illustrations, the musical and sonic attributes of recorded music). As the child becomes conscious of this distance or ‘gap’, they develop ‘an awareness of innocence’ (Nodelman 2008: 22).

Musical constructions of childhood  11

The relationship between text and reader In a study of children’s music in which ethnography plays only a minor role, the child’s interpretation of the text is conjured through reference to the implied reader (listener, consumer, user). Such a child is constructed ideologically by the text and imagined into being in an idealised form by the author (producer, creator). Without recourse to real children, text-based researchers rely on implication to predict how the child might respond. Implied readership is based on post-structural assumptions that a range of interpretations of the same text is possible, that the interpretations are highly subjective and individualised, and that all responses are equally valid (Beard and Gloag 2005: 122). Implication considers the child audience not as a passive and homogenised mass but as individuals who actively interpret the text at socially prescribed moments. There is, however, an inherent tension between what the child as an agent of interpretation can elicit from a text and the degree to which the text allows them to do so. The diversity of responses depends on how open or closed the text is to interpretation. Focalisation may prompt the reader to take up a particular intersubjective relationship with a character or theme while outwardly promoting a sense of the child’s agency (Nodelman 2016: 272–273). While semiotics and ethnography can assert and evidence the potential for resistive and subversive reactions, the ‘hidden’ assumptions in the text reflect a range of hegemonic power relationships based on age, social status, class, race, sexuality, dis/ability and other subjective identities. This book discusses how individuals and institutions deliberately and inadvertently communicate such ideologies. My examination of the social and historical processes through which power has operated has required recourse to critical theory and its practical application in feminist, queer (Bond Stockton 2009; Spargo 1999;), racial (Bernstein 2011) and dis/ability (Kielian-Gilbert 2006) studies. Such positions stress the transformative potential of culture to move the subject between ever-incomplete identities. The idea of childhood as transformative and an acceptance of music’s contribution to childhood’s possibilities contrasts with the restricted and static images of childhood encountered in vast swaths of music made for children. The othered subject adopts a counterhegemonic listening position, one full of the ‘metamorphic potential’ (ibid.: 223) for ‘children and childhood [to] give body to each other’ (Bernstein 2011: 22). This sense of movement (often sideways into alternative ‘othered’ subjectivities; Bond Stockton 2009), of dynamism and fluidity, of Deleuze and Guatarri’s ‘becoming’ (Kennedy 2013) requires the adult to hear as a child hears rather than predicting how they hear by drawing on fixed and idealised projections of childhood (Kielian-Gilbert 2006: 220). In an apt evocation of the relationship between childhood and the child, Foucault suggested that the complex and dynamic ‘mosaic’ of power simultaneously ‘polices and produces’ (Spargo 1999: 23). Understanding the symbiotic nature of control and construction is essential in order to

12  Musical constructions of childhood critique a post-Enlightenment Western childhood that has been normalised as white, heterosexual and middle class (Bernstein 2011: 36–39; Bond Stockton 2009: 31–32; Ellis 1992: 115). Creators of music for children and scholars in this area have the opportunity to colour the normative whiteness of childhood and to queer hegemonic constructions of innocence. The differentiation of the diversity of real children from the homogeneity of a socially constructed childhood requires empathy, compassion and the ability to imagine the self in the other and the other in the self. These sentiments are expressed by many of the children’s songwriters and artists that I interviewed in Chapter 7, and, in specific mediated ways, by the recordings of music throughout the book. Recordings of music for children Recorded music for children has existed since the earliest days of recording technology. ‘Records’ have been at the forefront of advances in cover art, recording formats and playback devices (Bonner 2007: 56). ‘Recording’ describes the process of capturing and editing instrumental and vocal performances in a recording studio or a make-shift recording environment. ‘Recordings’ are the artefactual and digital carriers of the aural products of the recording process. These include the rotating cylinders, discs or ‘records’ made of shellac, vinyl and other materials, usually produced as 7ʺ ‘singles’, E.P.s (extended-play) and L.P.s (long-playing albums), reels of magnetic tape (usually compact cassettes or ‘tapes’), compact discs (CDs), digital versatile discs (DVDs) and mini- discs as well as digital formats such as mp3 and WAV. The materiality of the playback environment informs subsequent arguments about the influence of the listener’s socialised, domestic and individuated reception of the recordings. As well as being ‘played’ in the home and elsewhere, recordings are broadcast on radio, combined with visuals in television and films, and streamed via cross-platform digital media services, apps and podcasts. I refer to specific technologies to help contextualise the recordings and explain how their material and textual attributes script the child’s response. While the creative work of songwriters and recording artists combines with playback technologies to elicit particular affects, the child’s response is shaped through a spectrum of engagement with the music from active to passive. Furthermore, the recorded text is ‘performed’, either in accordance with the expectations laid out by its creator/s or re8 sisted and re-scripted ​­ in unintended ways by the limited spatial and temporal contexts of playback. While the malleability and unpredictability of the scriptive process highlights the agency of the child to shape their own musical culture, artefacts often prompt reception explicitly. For example, in his album liner notes, Woody Guthrie suggests specific physical activities, dances and movements to accompany his songs. Similarly, the early albums of Sesame Street were accompanied by books, games, masks and stories.

Musical constructions of childhood  13 Literature vs recordings Concepts of semiotics and intertextuality are useful in exploring both the literary and aural attributes of a musical text and predicting what they might mean as a whole or in part in specific reception contexts. Tools to describe the sound, structure and meaning of the words in a book apply equally to song lyrics. Content analysis can likewise identify and describe the use of rhyme, assonance, alliteration, meter, lineation and metaphor in any wordbased text. Devices such as focalisation, symbolism, imagery and characterisation, and other factors such as genre conventions and wider social codes are equally applicable. Benjamin (1936) and Adorno (2002) commented on the cultural value of score-based classical music over mass-produced popular recordings, noting the written score’s similarity to the literary text. Rock critics of the late 1960s and 1970s favoured ‘poetic’ artists who, like themselves, worked in articulate ways with words. However, more recent work has brought the analytical techniques of literature to the study of music performance and the recorded voice (Brackett 2002; Tatit 2002). The words of songs and the interpretation of their meaning are inextricably tied to both the musical and sonic aspects of recordings. Song lyrics are vocalised and heard ‘out loud’ rather than being deciphered ‘on the page’ or ‘in the head’. The recording and editing of a performance captures a specific vocal interpretation of those lyrics. Repeated playback of the recording reveals the same stressed syllables, held vowel sounds, pauses and shifts in dynamics, timbre, melody and harmony all of which effect reception. Interpretation is informed by both the meaning of the words on the page and how they are performed into a microphone before being mixed and mastered by studio engineers. An appreciation of the three-way signification of recorded music is crucial to a full understanding of its effect; the words of the songs on the recordings are expressive in the fact that they convey meaning in a literary sense; the recordings work as narrative in terms of musical performance, and as sound (Frith 1996: 159; Middleton 1990: 228). Unlike reading, a recording reveals itself with a uniform temporality. However, using playback technology, recorded music can be ‘performed’. With gramophones, cassette recorders, CDs and other formats, listeners can alter the timbre and dynamics, skip, rewind and pause the recordings, and manipulate sound in ways that blur the line between producer and consumer (Maloy 2010: 3). Problems and aims Despite the applicability of literary and critical theory, the recorded text of music for children has seldom faced critical examination. This lack of attention is significant. Knowing more about how and why the music is created and exploring exactly what is being produced will benefit a wider understanding of the networks of creativity, performance, recording, promotion,

14  Musical constructions of childhood licensing and distribution that comprise the children’s music industry. A greater appreciation of the production process, the recorded text and the implied reception of recorded music for children will also benefit scholars concerned with the child’s everyday use of music. In general terms, this book examines the relationships of power that circulate in and around music for children. I discuss the inherent problems of targeting age-specified audiences and examine children’s music’s potential to attract ‘accidental’ or unintended audiences. The majority of case studies in this book self-identified as being ‘for children’, either as album titles such as Lead Belly Sings for Children, through specific child-focussed networks of production, or by scheduling on radio and television and other means.

Methodology In order to redress the scarcity of critical studies on recorded music for children, I have selected five main case studies. I employ a structuralist approach to examine the chosen musical and visual texts within specific social, historical, cultural, technological and biographical contexts. The research is inherently interdisciplinary drawing on musicology, literary theory, sociology, education and on studies of childhood, communication and the music and media industries. Diachronic analysis of recordings of music for children reveals the enduring influence of the study’s major themes: didactic and progressive education, entertainment, ‘the child’ and ‘the family’. The chapters ‘listen in’ on childhood through recorded music in order to expose the ‘fossil record’ (Hollindale 1997: 60) of adult desires. I assert the dynamic and complex nature of discourses and map their endurance and ephemerality. Chapters 2 and 3 were informed by my research at the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Guthrie’s letters, notebooks and other writings offer a highly personal glimpse into the familial circumstances of the creation of his 400-plus songs for children. Chapter 4 was compiled through visits to the BBC’s Written Archives. Playlists of recordings broadcast on Children’s Choice over a 30-year period were contextualised with reference to the BBC’s internal communications on children’s radio programming. The chapters also contain interviews with children’s music songwriters, recording artists, radio producers and with those working in the children’s music industry. The research required access to a wide range of recordings of music. Problems of availability underline the important role played by archivists. Frustratingly, the BBC and other networks have kept few recordings of children’s music radio broadcasts. Due to costs, films of music-based children’s television programmes from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and beyond were frequently recorded over. Vast quantities of vinyl records, cassettes, CDs and VHS tapes have been disposed of as digital listening has become the norm. Countless numbers of children’s albums and singles were released through specialist labels in small quantities to often localised audiences. The vast

Musical constructions of childhood  15 majority have not been kept in print. The approximately 10% of existent historical recordings that have been digitised and transferred to streaming sites and online archives are the exception rather than the rule (Linehan 2014). Significant gaps remain.9 The ephemeral nature of physical products for children and the logistical issues of archiving means that source material will always remain fractional. The recorded texts were analysed for a variety of quantitative attributes arranged within three categories: music, lyrics and sonics. ‘Music’ refers to elements of melody and harmony, rhythm and form. I quantified the overall melodic vocal range and the size of consecutive melodic intervals of a selection of well-known nursery rhymes (Appendix 1) and the songs of Bagpuss (Appendix 9). Musical attributes link the textual childhood (the childness of the text) to the performance of childhood in the real world (Bernstein 2011: 11–12). As an example of how music can script behaviour, short melodic ranges, small intervals between consecutive notes and predictable scalewise melodic contours have been shown to increase a song’s sing-ability and memorability (Dockray 2005). ‘Short’ melodic ranges of a fourth, fifth and sixth are common to a range of children’s music samples (Hopkin 1984; Shehan 1987). Similarly, consecutive melodic intervals of major thirds, perfect fourths and fifths are characteristic of songs with high degrees of ‘singability’ (ibid.; Dockray 2005). While comparing different types of sample (playground chants with the music of Sesame Street for example) is clearly problematic, comparisons within closed and similar groupings can indicate how the texts script reception by positioning the child as a vocal and physical participant or as a listener. I consider each of these responses to be an active engagement with the text.10 The category of ‘lyrics’ examines attributes of the words such as rhyme, metric and syllabic repetition, as well as the length and discreetness of phrases. It also refers to literary devices that result in comedy, nonsense, didacticism and morality, the inclusion of visual imagery, as well as focalising strategies such as the use of the first person and a child protagonist. Of particular interest is the inclusion of devices that place particular meanings outside of the interpretive reach of all but the most ‘competent’ child. ‘Sonics’ addresses the sound of the recordings and refers to elements such as instrumentation, voice quality, studio production and the aural impact of the final mix. In addition, I make repeated reference to musical genre as a method of categorisation. Researchers have used the quantitative analysis of children’s music to support a range of arguments. Hopkin (1984: 4–11) and Osborn-Seyffert (1988) studied children’s playground songs and street games. Walker analysed children’s religious music (1994) and Giuffre the music of Australian band The Wiggles (2013). Similarly, Shehan Campbell categorised the melodies, rhythms, forms and lyrics of children’s music from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Britain and the Appalachian Mountains (Shehan 1987). In each case, quantifiable attributes were used to highlight similarities and

16  Musical constructions of childhood differences between groups of texts and to support arguments about the child’s engagement. While reception is the main focus of social anthropologists such as Hopkin and Shehan Campbell,11 my research refers to sociohistorical networks of production in order to explain how particular textual tropes are perpetuated in children’s music ecologies. It is worth noting the cultural specificity of the diatonic 12-​­tone scale, major and minor tonalities and other factors that characterise the European and classical origins of the Western-​­derived system of music notation.12,13 This bias has informed historical discourses of childhood. The majority of the case studies are from the United States and the United Kingdom. A few are from Canada, Australia and elsewhere. The first five chapters contain examples that resonated with me growing up in England in the 1970s. As alluded to in the preface, my access to music was facilitated by BBC radio and television, and to a significant extent by Independent Television (ITV). The chapters are organised in a largely chronological fashion. While the first commercially available recorded music for children was produced on cylinders and discs and played on child-​ s­ ized phonograms in the late 1800s and early 1900s (Tillson 1993: 88–89), the earliest broadcasted recordings in this book date from the 1910s and 1920s. However, I refer to ‘traditional’ folk songs, many of which were collected and published in book anthologies around the same time but date from centuries earlier. I also refer to music hall songs that were written and published in the mid to late 1800s but recorded decades later.

Conclusion Childhood is a social construction in which recorded music made for children plays a part. Recordings of music offer a cultural space for the child to reflect upon and respond to representations of childhood representations that simultaneously control and constrict the range and nature of the childhoods on which the child is able to reflect and respond. Recorded music may attempt to address the child and the adult as discreet groups. My ‘Music Hall formula’ helps to describe and explain such ‘double’ and ‘dual’ addresses, strategies that are used to engage domestic intergenerational social groups and promote ‘family values’. Like ‘childhood’, the concept of ‘the family’ is an ideological and social construct. A ‘family’ reception environment has the potential to promote the child’s understanding of the issues raised by recordings of ‘children’s’ and ‘family’ music. However, ‘the family’ serves as a forum that both informs and protects the child, at times guiding them towards and away from the creator’s preferred and the child’s agentic interpretation. The child responds to the childhood depicted in the aural and material aspects of the texts by adopting, subverting and/or rejecting these scripts. Recordings have the potential to facilitate the fluidity of the child’s subjectivity by being textually open to alternate and ever-​­evolving interpretations. The

Musical constructions of childhood  17 child’s performance of the scripts in the recordings symbiotically constructs both the child and childhood. The following chapters aim to address how particular childhoods are promoted and communicated by recorded music. The next chapter examines one of the most enduring genres of music for children. I show how the bond between folk music and childhood has been cemented historically as much by 18th and 19th century political philosophy, Romantic poetry, Christian teachings and contested notions of authenticity as by commercial networks of production.

Notes 1 The reader’s ‘competence’ defines their ability to move beyond the explicit and obvious ‘surface’ meanings of the text and decipher the potentially more ambiguous meanings that are implied, rather than foregrounded. The term derived from work by Michael Riffaterre and Noam Chomsky (Selden 1989: 126–128). 2 The term ‘implied reader’ was formulated by Wolfgang Iser (1974) and was popularised in children’s cultural studies by Aidan Chambers (1978). 3 Rousseau’s 1762 novel Èmile greatly influenced notions of the child’s innate goodness and of their link with nature, an idea explored in the next chapter on folk music. Child rearing, asserts Rousseau, should be laissez-faire and allow the child to develop at their own pace away from the corrupting influence of adults. His philosophies on birthing, swaddling, weaning, breastfeeding, bathing and diet (children should be largely vegetarian: 118) were extremely influential and led to much social and educational reform. 4 The Opies documented how pop- cultural music and imagery found their way into British children’s playground rhymes and street songs (1959). 5 Ideologically, Orff used the pentatonic scale with children to avoid discord and ensure concordant harmony. Indeed, the influential methods and philosophies of Orff-Schulwerk and Kodály are infused with conceptions of the relative simplicity of children’s musical play. As a result, the simplified and highly structured music educational programmes that have proliferated do not take into account the complexity of the processes and practices of children’s own musical play (Marsh 2008: 12–15). 6 Note the ‘clean-up’ process of the Kidz Bop albums in which producers attempt to remove references to sex, drugs and other ‘inappropriate’ themes from contemporary chart pop songs in order to make them suitable for children (Chapter 7). 7 Indeed, as shown in Chapter 6, a full deciphering of the music hall song ‘Any Old Iron’ from The Muppet Show requires a high level of textual competence derived from a working knowledge of the sartorial symbolism of British urban gay subculture of the late 1800s. 8 Foucault wrote about a ‘reverse discourse’ in which the constructed group (in his case homosexuals) begin to speak on their own behalf (Spargo 1999: 21). 9 As an example of the incomplete nature of textual sources, Seasons 4 and 5 of The Muppet Show have never been released on DVD. Many people outside the United Kingdom may have never seen the segments that were included to fill the shorter advertising breaks. Regional restriction on DVD players and discs highlights that the distribution of children’s audio-visual culture is dependent on commercial incentives. Conversely, many of the archived children’s recordings and lyrics of Woody Guthrie and the original soundtrack recordings of Bagpuss

18  Musical constructions of childhood (2018) have only been recovered and released in the late ​­20th and 21st centuries, largely as a result of family, fans and supporters of the ideologies that the music represents. 10 I qualify this statement with reference to the child’s range of modes of listening, from active to passive, distracted and interrupted dependent as much on the socialised mass or individuated reception context, the child’s mood, any precursors to the listening activity and any other factors that shape reception. 11 While ethnomusicology is largely focussed on how children use, interpret and produce music, Shehan Campbell used the quantitative analysis of children’s musical texts to conclude that ‘the child song may offer the greatest set of similar musical elements within any genre’ (1998: 41). I would suggest that the fluid and contradictory ways that musicians, radio producers, music publishers, awards ceremonies and other areas of the music industry use the term ‘genre’ (Frith 1996; Shuker 2001) render Shehan Campbell’s statement problematic. 12 Chapter 2 describes the issues raised when ethnomusicologists such as Ruth Crawford Seeger transcribed field recordings that contained ‘blue’ notes, micro-​ ­tonal elements and other idiosyncrasies. The process of fitting music of non-­ Western origin to the formalities of the diatonic scale resulted in ‘corrections’ that raise issues of cultural interpretation and structures of power. 13 The chromatic division of the octave into 12 notes tends to emphasise major and minor tonalities. While these have been associated with a range of contested moods and emotions in specific cultural and historical settings, research reveals that children under the age of five years tend to associate high-​­tempo songs with happiness independent of the song’s tonality (Mote 2011).

Bibliography Adorno, T. 2002. Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ariès, P. 1962. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Vintage Books. Beard, D. and Gloag, K. 2005. Musicology: The Key Concepts. New York and London: Routledge. Benjamin, W. 1936. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Reprinted 2008. London: Penguin. Berger, D. 2002. Music Therapy, Sensory Integration and the Autistic Child. London: Routledge. Bernstein, R. 2011. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York and London: New York University Press. Bickford, T. 2013. ‘Tinkering and tethering in the material culture of children’s MP3 players’, in Shehan Campbell, P. and Wiggins, T. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Musical Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 527–542. Bickford, T. 2014. ‘Earbuds are good for sharing: Children’s headphones as social media at a Vermont school’, in Stanyek, J. and Gopinath, S. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 335–355. Bickford, T. 2017. Schooling New Media: Music, Language, and Technology in Children’s Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bond Stockton, K.B. 2009. The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bonner, D. 2007. Revolutionizing Children’s Music: The Young People’s Records and Children’s Record Guild series 1946–1977. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Musical constructions of childhood  19 Brackett, D. 2002. ‘(In search of) Musical meaning: Genres, categories and crossover’, in Hesmondhalgh, D. and Negus, K. eds. Popular Music Studies. New York: Arnold: 65–83. Buckingham, D. 2000. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. London: Polity. Bullen, E. and Nichols, S. 2011. ‘Dual audiences, double pedagogies: Representing family literacy as parental work in picture books’, Children’s Literature in Education, 42(3): 213–225. Calvert, K. 1998. ‘Children in the house: The material culture of early childhood’, in Jenkins, H. ed. The Children’s Culture Reader. New York and London: New York University Press: 67–80. Chambers, A. 1978. ‘The reader in the book: notes from work in progress’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 1978 Proceedings: 1–19. Child, F.J. ed. 1860. English and Scottish Ballads. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Culler, J. 1975. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cunningham, H. 2006. The Invention of Childhood. London: BBC Books. Davis, H. and Bourhill, M. 1997. ‘‘Crisis’: The demonization of children and young people’, in Scraton, P. ed. ‘Childhood’ in ‘Crisis’. London: UCL Press: 28–57. Dockray, R. 2005. Deconstructing the Rock Anthem: Textual Form, Participation and Collectivity. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Liverpool. Ellis, J. 1992. Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video. New York and London: Routledge. Frith, S. 1996. Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Gittins, D. 2004. ‘The historical construction of childhood’, in Kehily, M.J. ed. An Introduction to Childhood Studies. Maidenhead: Open University Press: 35–49. Giuffre, L. 2013. ‘Top of the tots: The Wiggles as Australia’s most successful (and underacknowledged) sound media export’, Media International Australia, 148: 145–154. Gubar, M. 2009. Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Headlam, D. 2006. ‘Learning to hear autistically’, in Lerner, N. and Straus, J. eds. Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music. New York and London: Routledge: 109–120. Heath, S. 1997. ‘Childhood times’, Critical Quarterly, (39)3: 16–27. Hendrick, H. 1990. ‘Constructions and reconstructions of British childhood: An interpretive survey, 1800 to the present’, in James, A. and Prout, A. eds. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. London, New York and Philadelphia, PA: The Falmer Press: 35–59. Holland, P. 2004. Picturing Childhood: The Myth of the Child in Popular Imagery. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Company Limited. Hollindale, P. 1997. Signs of Childness in Children’s Books. Stroud: Thimble Press. Honeymoon, S. 2005. Elusive Childhood: Impossible Representations on Modern Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Hopkin, J.B. 1984. ‘Jamaican children’s songs’, Ethnomusicology, 28(1): 1–36.

20  Musical constructions of childhood Iser, W. 1974. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. James, A. and Prout, A., eds. 1990. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. London, New York and Philadelphia, PA: The Falmer Press. Kaiser, S. and Hunn, K. 2002. ‘Fashioning innocence and anxiety: clothing, gender and symbolic childhood’, in Cook, D. ed. Symbolic Childhood. New York: Peter Lang: 183–208. Kennedy, D.K. 2013. ‘Becoming child, becoming other: Childhood as signifier’, in Muller, A. ed. Childhood in the English Renaissance. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier: 145–153. Kielian- Gilbert, M. 2006. ‘Beyond abnormality: Dis/ability and music’s metamorphic subjectivities’ in Lerner, N. and Straus, J. eds. Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music. New York and London: Routledge: 217–234. Kincaid, J. 2010. ‘Hannah Montana’s bare, unprotected back: Miley Cyrus’s vanity fair outing’, The Velvet Light Trap, 65: 5–6. Kinder, M. 1991. Playing with Power in Movies Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press. Kline, S. 1998. ‘The making of children’s culture’, in Jenkins, H. ed. The Children’s Culture Reader. New York and London: New York University Press: 95–109. Lee, E. 1982. Folksong and Music Hall. London: Routledge. Linehan, A. 2014. Forever Changes: Building a Heritage Collection of Popular Music. International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM UK & Ireland) ‘Worlds of Popular Music’ Conference, University College Cork, 12–14 September 2014. Lombardo, P. 1997. ‘Introduction: The end of childhood?’, Critical Quarterly, 39(3): 1–7. Lurie, A. 1990. Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children’s Literature. Boston, MA, New York, Toronto, London: Black Bay Books. Maloy, L. 2010. ‘”Stayin’ alive in da club”: The illegality and hyperreality of mashups’, International Association for the Study of Popular Music Journal, IASPM@ Journal, 1(2): 1–20. Marsh, K. 2008. The Musical Playground. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Middleton, R. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mills, R. 2000. ‘Perspectives of childhood’, in Mills, J. and Mills, R.W. eds. Childhood Studies: A Reader in Perspectives of Childhood. London: Routledge: 7–38. Mote, J. 2011. ‘The effects of tempo and familiarity on children’s affective interpretation of music’, Emotion, 11(3): 618–622. Muldavin, P. 2007: The Complete Guide to Vintage Children’s Records. Paducah, KT: Collector Books. Nodelman, P. 1985. ‘Editor’s comments: The case of children’s fiction, or, the impossibility of Jacqueline Rose’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 10(3): 98–100. Nodelman, P. 2004. ‘What children are or should be’, CCL/LCJ, 113–114: 140–165. Nodelman, P. 2008. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Nodelman, P. 2016. ‘The hidden child in The Hidden Adult’, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 8(1): 266–277.

Musical constructions of childhood  21 Opie, I. and Opie, P. 1959. The Lore and the Language of Schoolchildren. New York: New York Review Books. Osborn-Seyffert, A. 1988. ‘Analysis and classification of British- Canadian children’s traditional singing games’, MUSICultures, 16: 49–53. Pollock, L.A. 1983. Forgotten Children: Parent- Child Relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Postman, N. 1982. The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Vintage Books. Rose, J. 1992. The Case of Peter Pan, or, The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Rousseau, J.J. 1762. Èmile. Reprinted 1974. London: Everyman’s Library. Seeger, R.C. 1977. Studies in Musicology, 1935–1975. Berkeley: University of California Press. Seeger, R.C. 1948. American Folk songs for Children: In Home, School and Nursery School. New York: Doubleday & Company Inc. Selden, R. 1989. A Reader’s guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. Second edition. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Sharp, C.J. 1916. English Folk Songs: Collected and Arranged with Pianoforte Accompaniment by Cecil J. Sharp. London: Novello. Shehan, P.K. 1987. ‘Finding a national music style: Listen to the children’, Music Educators Journal, 73(9): 38–43. Shehan Campbell, P. 1998. Songs in Their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children’s Lives. Cary, NC: Oxford University Press. Shehan Campbell, P. 2000. ‘What music really means to children’, Music Educators Journal, 86(5): 32–36. Shehan Campbell, P. 2017. Email to Liam Maloy, 6 December. Shuker, R. 2001. Understanding Popular Music. Second edition. New York and London: Routledge. Spargo, T. 1999. Foucault and Queer Theory. London: Icon Books Ltd. Steedman, C. 1995. Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority, 1978–1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tatit, L. 2002. ‘Analysing Popular Songs’, in Hesmondhalgh, D. and Negus, K. eds. Popular Music Studies. London and New York: Arnold: 33–35. Tillson, D.R. 1993. ‘Children’s musical play: The role of the phonograph’, The Ephemera Journal, 6: 86–98. Walker, C. 1994. ‘What should the children sing?’, Pastoral Music, XVIII/5: 33–35. Walkerdine, V. 1997. Daddy’s Girl: Young Girls and Popular Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Wall, B. 1991. The Narrator’s Voice: The Dilemma of Children’s Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Young, R.L. and Nettelbeck, T. 1995. ‘The abilities of a musical savant and his family’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 25(3): 231–248.

Audio sources Kerr, Sandra and Faulkner, John. ‘The Princess Suite’. The Music from Bagpuss. Earth Recordings, 2018.

2

Folk music and childhood

The relationship between Western folk music and childhood is complex and enduring. Its fluid nature is informed in part by political, philosophical, cultural, ideological and aesthetic discourses, industrial networks, and national and international events. This chapter aims to explain why folk continues to be the default genre for many who make and broadcast music for children1 by examining the homological fit between folk and childhood. Shared values of simplicity, authenticity and purity have been drawn from similar yet specious origin myths. Evocations of nature, work, play and growth recur in representations of both the child and of ‘the folk’. As such, I lay the foundations for the case studies and arguments that follow: each subsequent chapter refers to folk music for children. Folk music not only highlights the fluid ways in which a genre can signify childhood but also reveals the residual and prototypical attributes that continue to serve as shorthand for a range of protectionist and progressive ideologies. As well as the pervading conceptions of childhood described in the introduction, I assert here, and throughout, that recorded music for children has been informed by the pragmatism of working relationships, financial considerations, institutional networks and the creative work of individuals. Post-Enlightenment philosophy and a wave of nostalgic romanticism did much to define urban middle- class childhood in the 18th and 19th centuries. Similar artistic, literary and scholarly outpourings circumscribed ‘the folk’ with specious notions of authenticity, innocence and protection. Italian Renaissance painters, political philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, English poets William Blake and William Wordsworth, and liberal Christian scholars all associated the child and folk culture with a bucolic view of nature, the rural idyll, primitivism and tradition (Hall 2003: 141–145). These connotations were arguably perpetuated in some of children’s literature’s ‘Golden Age’2 texts of the early 20th century and, I suggest, in much of the music that has been made for children over the following hundred years or so. Fearing the disappearance of folk culture through industrialisation, 18th and 19th century English, American, and German scholars such as Johan Gottfried von Herder, James Child, Cecil Sharp and Hubert Parry,

Folk music and childhood  23 and organisations such as the Folk-​­lore Society (founded in 1878) and the Folk Song Society (1898) collected, transcribed, published and performed the ‘savage’, ‘primitive’ and ‘barbarian’ songs and dances of the ‘common people’. Rural life, it seemed, offered a purer more stable less complex alternative to the impermanence of modern urban existence. ‘The folk’ (from von Herder’s ‘das Volk’) were intellectualised and categorised, authenticated as simple and uncultivated preservers of various customs and knowledge that contributed to a range of national identities. Defined by similarly imperialist impulses, Western childhood has been constructed as racially white. With reference to texts, performances and artefacts that serve to ‘script’ the child’s reception, Bernstein describes a ‘racial innocence’ in which children surrogate adult gestures and live in tension with the enforced construction of a racialised childhood (2011: 4). This process mirrors the imbuement of ‘the folk’ and folk musicians, especially Black ones such as Lead Belly and Ella Jenkins, with a sense of purity and Otherness by white educated folklorists (Filene 2000: 2–6). Bernstein explains how ‘an endless attempt to find, fashion, and impel’ the child fills the emptiness left by ‘the loss of a half-​­forgotten original’ (2011: 23). Textual and contextual forces combine to define this sense of nostalgia. ‘The folk’ are discovered and defined by similarly specious colonialist efforts to replace a perceived loss of simplicity and tradition; childhood’s defining feature is the loss of innocence. This melancholic longing is restored through the performance of a set of shifting expectations. The authority of these top-​­down manifestations of power by discourses of childhood and folk is negotiated in the process of self-​­identification.3 What follows is an investigation into the networks of recording studios, radio stations, song books, schools, progressive educationalists and summer camps that served to define, create and promote children’s folk music. With a primary focus on post-​­war America, I explain how folk music for the child came to be defined by the values of collectivism, anti-​­consumerism, anti-​­authoritarianism, counter-​­culturalism and amateurism.

The children’s folk music industry Political context In the 1930s, folk music had taken on an explicitly political significance. Its historical and purposive use in the dissemination of national identity and nationalistic values resonated with America’s anti-​­fascist response to the Spanish Civil War and the rise to power of both Hitler and Mussolini (­Gelbart 2007: 80 and 117). As part of the Popular Front,4 folk music, with its perceived simplicity and directness, was considered the most effective art form with which to engender mass participation and communicate communism and socialism, both of which were seen to extol democratic ­A merican values at the time (Lieberman 1989: 49; Lockhart 2017b). Folk

24  Folk music and childhood songs accompanied the labour movement, campaigns for workers’ rights and racial integration, and other left-wing causes. The late 1930s saw both a surge in the interest in folk music and a peak in membership of the Communist Party (Lieberman 1989: 50). Folk songs by Woody Guthrie and others became part of the Communist Party-associated Almanac Singers’ repertoire. These were later promoted in the song sheets, protest rallies, concerts and other activities encompassed by the People’s Songs organisation. The values that defined the American folk revival of the 1930s and 1940s – democracy, community, racial and generational integration, sexual equality, critique of authority, cultural agents as workers, anti- commercialism, internationalism, participation, technological resistance – are evident in the folk songs that Guthrie and his peers wrote for children at the time. The ‘red diaper babies’ of Communist Party members were weaned on folk performances, recordings, radio broadcasts and song books in progressive schools and politicised summer camps. The songs and the values they espoused were perpetuated predominantly by an oral process which went on to influence the next folk boom, folk-rock and the youth- driven counterculture of the 1960s. Folk recordings for children A series of books document the rich history of folk music recordings for children. Peter Muldavin’s encyclopaedic The Complete Guide to Vintage Children’s Records (2007) reveals how, from the 1920s onwards, both major and independent labels released folk songs and stories for children. Making People’s Music (Goldsmith 1998) and Folkways Records (Olmstead 2003) offer comprehensive accounts of Moses (Moe) Asch, the man with whom Guthrie, Jenkins, Pete Seeger and many others would record their songs for children. Starting primarily as a jazz label in the early 1940s, Asch’s DISC Records soon moved to releasing recordings of Yiddish music (ibid.: 23), cowboy and hillbilly songs (28) before capitalising on the burgeoning folk boom by recording Lead Belly in May 1941, Seeger in June 1943 and Guthrie in March 1944 (Goldsmith 1998: 135; Olmstead 2003: 35–38). Asch’s first album for children was Play Parties in Song and Dance, as Sung by Lead Belly (1941). Over 200 children’s albums followed on the renamed Folkways Records5 by Jean Ritchie, the Seeger Sisters, Ruth Rubin, Charity Bailey, Alan Mills and many others.6 Asch paid great attention to his children’s music releases and took great care to update and repackage them through the various changes in recording formats and label identities.7 He was keen to stress their educational purpose and carefully arranged the albums into separate sub- categories of children’s music. Folkways was just one of many record labels responding to the demand for children’s products caused by the post-war baby boom. Majors such as Columbia, Victor/RCA, Disney, Decca and Capitol, independent labels such as Elektra, Young People’s Records and Children’s Record Guild, and

Folk music and childhood  25 publishers specialising in book-record combinations such as Simon and Shuster8 contributed to a ‘golden age’ of ‘Kidisks’ from approximately 1946 until 1956 (Muldavin 2007: 10). Accompanied by artwork, instructional liner notes, lyrics, books and occasionally photographs, the albums were specifically designed to be used in schools,9 summer camps and libraries. Extensive packaging was often the norm for children’s records at the time, a practice that dated back to the earliest days of the phonograph (Muldavin 2007: 9–10; Tillson 1993, 1995). As an example of the links between records and education, Folkways’ Songs to Grow On series (which included Guthrie’s albums for children) tied in with the Young Folksay group who provided singing and dancing sessions for 13- to 18-year-olds (Lieberman 1989: 61) and had links with New York’s Little Red School House (Bonner 2007: 37). David Bonner’s Revolutionizing Children’s Music (2007) documents two child-focussed American record labels, the most prominent being New York’s Young People’s Records (YPR). While folk was just one of its many genres, YPR provided a material link between the musical activities of schools and children’s consumption of phonographic recordings (ibid.: 10–11). Echoing the role of folk as a nation-building cultural form, label founder Horace Grenell suggested that ‘folk songs express the real growth of our land, and through them, children can relive our history deeply and vividly’ (ibid.: 73). YPR’s most prominent and prolific star was Tom Glazer. Like Guthrie, Glazer was influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rogers, hillbilly music, and ‘singing cowboys’ such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey. In contrast to the predominance of lushly orchestrated recordings for children, Glazer sang with just a guitar accompaniment (ibid.: 71). Other YPR artists such as Katherine K. Davis,10 Charity Bailey11 and Edna Buttolph were teachers and performers who led school choirs and wrote songs for their pupils (ibid.: 12). Launched in 1949, Grenell’s subsequent label, the Children’s Record Guild (CRG), focussed specifically on folk music for preschool children. The CRG’s Train to the Zoo (1950) by The Weavers12 was one of the biggest selling children’s recordings of the era (ibid.: 116). Folk music radio for children With limited opportunities for folk singers to appear on television in the mid 1940s, radio made a significant contribution in distributing folk music to children. YPR and Folkways artists such as Tom Glazer, Oscar Brand and Frank Luther presented radio shows for children (Cantwell 1996: 277). Records by Guthrie, Seeger and Lead Belly received regular airplay on the estimated 250 US-based children’s music radio presenters at the time (Bonner 2007: 117). Guthrie himself had a good deal of experience as a radio presenter and on-air performer, in New York and with Lefty Lou in Los Angeles in the late 1930s,13 and in London on the BBC’s Children’s Hour in 1944 (see Chapter 4 for more on Children’s Hour).14 Guthrie also worked on radio

26  Folk music and childhood plays in 1944 and 1945 with prominent song collector, musician, author, folk music entrepreneur and children’s radio presenter Alan Lomax.15 Working initially with his father John in the 1930s and 1940s16 and funded by New Deal schemes designed to cultivate folk music and cultural unity (Polansky and Tick 2001: xxiv–xxv), Alan Lomax collected field recordings of folk songs primarily from America’s Southern states. He wrote about ‘looking for a people’s culture, a culture of the common man’ (Lomax 2003: 86) with an aim ‘to link the people who were voiceless and who had no way to tell their story, with the big mainstream world of culture’ (ibid.: 92). While folk’s association with primitivism and its relationship to popular mass culture were being redefined in the post-​­war era, due in no small part to Alan Lomax, his intellectualised codes tended to fetishise the artists that he promoted17 imbuing them with an alterity that belied their often-​­complex cultural, educational and political backgrounds. Folk music recordings had been used in American schools since the 1910s, a time when major labels dedicated entire departments to educational discs (Cantwell 1996: 277). By the late 1930s, radio broadcasts of educational and popular songs to schools were commonplace. From 1939 to 1941, Lomax produced many educational folk music radio programmes for children and schools. He was involved in the 50 music-​­based episodes of the American School of the Air,18 which featured performances by folk singers Burl Ives, ‘Aunt’ Molly Jackson, Josh White and The Golden Gate Quartet, as well as Guthrie, Lead Belly and Seeger (Ed Cahn in Lomax 2003: 4). Lomax also produced a number19 of Children’s Hour radio programmes in 1944 featuring Glazer, White and others performing lullabies, Black work songs, ballads and play songs. The programmes included themes of death, slavery and race, a progressive move that resonated with the pedagogical ethos of many schools in the American North-East.20 Folk song books for children Song books were perhaps even more significant than radio or records in disseminating folk music to children. These anthologies of lyrics and scores originated from a wide range of historical, geographical and cultural sources. Often illustrated, the books were frequently written by music teachers from the progressive schools, with content derived from everyday music education practices. Ruth Crawford Seeger was undoubtedly the most influential children’s folk song book author.21 Originally a highly regarded avant-​­garde modernist composer, Seeger began transcribing folk songs in 1936 and teaching from her American Folk Songs for Children book (1948) in Maryland schools in 1941 (Gaume 1986: 176).22 The book featured 94 songs indexed by theme and function (lullabies, Christmas, animals, play songs) and contained essays in which the author explained her transcription methods and thoughts about folk music and children. She notes how the various ‘ballads, work songs, love songs, prison songs, dance songs, hollers, chants,

Folk music and childhood  27 spirituals [and] blues’ songs are ‘melodically simple [and] rhythmically vital’ (1948: 13–14), a simplicity that she attributes partly to the limitations of the transcription process. Highlighting the inability of formal notation and the 12-note system to capture the ‘irregularities’ of the songs’ original performances, she astutely accepts that the process strips away rhythmic and tonal subtleties such as slides and blue notes to leave ‘not much more than the skeleton of the original singing’ (ibid.: 10–11). Indeed, she admits that the reader’s knowledge of the idiom is required ‘to put back upon the more or less skeleton notation such “flesh, blood and nerve fibre”’ (ibid.: 11–12). Asserting folk’s role in the construction of national identity, Seeger discusses how American songs for children form an ‘integral part of their cultural heritage … history and custom’ (ibid.: 21). The songs, she explains, are ‘not just children’s music’ but ‘family music’. On the inclusion of a range of potentially contentious ‘real-life’ themes, her progressive views and understanding of the child’s reception of such texts are explicit: Should we try to shield the child from a feeling of sadness, of hurting or being hurt, of killing, dying? Can we shield him? … How much … does the child extract from mention of these concepts in song? … whatever concept it conveys will either be accepted as part of the pattern of living … or passed on like many other mysteries, to be understood later. (Ibid.: 17) Seeger’s subsequent 1950 publication Animal Folk Songs for Children perpetuated the equally enduring link between folk, children and animals. Underlining the interconnectedness of recording, publishing and music education at the time, other teacher-musicians created folk song books that were accompanied by recorded discs. Beatrice Landeck’s books Songs to Grow On (1948) and More Songs to Grow On (1954) tied in with Folkways record releases as did YPR’s Folk Song Book and Activity Song Book (1949). Guthrie’s songs began to appear in these and many other folk song books of the late 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, Guthrie waived his publishing royalties for the use of his songs in schools, a move that arguably contributed to the lasting popularity of Guthrie’s best-known song ‘This Land is Your Land’ (Kaufman 2017: 28).23 Exemplifying his commitment to both recorded and transcribed music for children, Guthrie produced his own song book as part of his multi-media ‘Songs to Grow On’ project. However, the beautifully illustrated book and accompanying album remained unpublished during his lifetime.24 Progressive schools The influence of progressive schools in recognising and harnessing the value of folk music for children cannot be underestimated. Based on the pedagogical philosophies of John Dewey, Carl Orff, Rudolph Steiner,

28  Folk music and childhood Maria Montessori, Friedrich Fröbel, Erik Erikson and other music educators and educational philosophers, the schools favoured a child- centred approach to music learning in which spontaneity, improvisation and the child’s enjoyment were prioritised. Personal expression, feeling and creativity replaced the child’s accurate replication of a written score. In the process, the function of folk songs evolved from their status as valuable documents of a fast- disappearing oral culture to the basis of socially conscious, expressive and communal musical activity. The schools provided a nexus for folk song books, record releases, radio broadcasts and live performers. Many of the aforementioned artists performed and taught in these ‘folk’ schools.25 Like Locke and Rousseau before him, educational philosopher Dewey stressed the importance of social learning and concrete ‘here and now’ experiences. His string of publications in the late 19th and early 20th centuries encouraged the democratisation of the classroom. Teachers were collaborators in the same learning activities as the child. Their job was to facilitate enquiry and stimulate imagination (Tiles 1988: 184). Musical activities tapped into the natural rhythms of the child and of nature (Geiger 1958: 21) through improvisation and the child’s participation. Similarly, composer Carl Orff’s five-volume Das Schulwerk-Music für Kinder (1930–1933) and its focus on German folk songs, traditional tales and singing games had a direct influence on the pedagogical philosophies and practices of the American progressive schools. Again, his methods stressed improvisation and a child- c entred exploratory approach to music making. Influenced by Jaques-Dalcroze’s eurythmics, Orff encouraged a combination of music and movement; clapping, stamping and physical involvement were central to his teachings (Thresher 1964: 44). Orff and Dewey’s pragmatic, socially conscious, community-rooted philosophies, in which the child and adult have equal voices, resonated with wartime American sentiment. They not only formed the basis for The Little Red School House, Bank Street School (both New York), Ruth Seeger’s Silver Spring Nursery School in Maryland and many other progressive educational institutions but were strongly evident in Guthrie’s conceptions of the role of his recordings for children. He wrote about how he wanted children to: play games with them … dance them, act them out. Have lots of fun with them in [your] school, your camp … scrabble them all around … make up a new verse, or … a whole song.26 Guthrie’s awareness of the power of dance and of children’s education was greatly enhanced by his marriage to Marjorie Mazia in 1945. As a key member of the Martha Graham company, she performed and taught modern dance for a living. In the next chapter, I detail how Guthrie’s children’s songs share many musical attributes with Orff’s compositions.

Folk music and childhood  29 Summer camps Folk ideology, as well as its links with music, progressive education and the great outdoors, was being nurtured in the many summer camps attended by the children of the progressive schools. Many of the singers from Folkways and other labels performed at Woodland, Kinderland, Pinewoods, Wo-Chi-Ca (the Workers Children’s Camp) and other camps.27 Founded alternately by Communist Party members, Jewish activists and workers’ unions, the camps combined the study of specific regional folklore28 with singing, dancing (often to records29), socialising, outdoor activities and political (specifically communist and/or socialist) instruction (Lieberman 1989: 62). At a time of racial segregation, the camps were integrated; children were encouraged to discuss issues of race and class. As hotbeds of music, dance, youthful idealism and radical political ideology, the camps provided a safe haven and much-needed employment for the blacklisted communist-linked folk singers of the McCarthyist early 1950s.

The enduring relationship between folk music and childhood30 My conversations with current members of the folk singers and musicians of the Children’s Music Network (CMN) confirmed both the musical and ideological homology of folk and childhood. Folk music often contains ‘sing-able’ melodies that are easy for the child to access (Shih 2017). Folk melodies may be copied or derived from existing and familiar tunes (Warmbrand 2017). In the context of childhood, ‘zipper songs’ in which ‘a verse gets repeated again and again with small changes’ are popular (Calem 2017a). Due to the communal and public nature of their performance and reception, folk songs are often undifferentiated by the age of the audience. Folk singer Nancy Schimmel mentioned how her mother Malvina Reynolds wrote many socialist and union songs such as ‘Magic Penny’ and ‘Little Boxes’ that only came to be associated with childhood years later (2017b). Schimmel echoed the progressive educational strategies described above; in her work, she strives to ‘trust the kids and give them room and inspiration rather than strict, top- down rules’ (2017a). Others agreed that folk songs often help children understand the complexities of life (Calem 2017a) and death (Warmbrand 2017). Kim Wallach pointed to folk’s role in raising issues about slavery, civil rights, violence in relationships and other subjects (2017a). She lamented the loss of an oral culture in which children can learn about such fundamental issues and explained that children often like ‘things that are funny, unexpected, deep, and disgusting’. She questioned that ‘maybe with the growth of popular music, grownups think they [children] are too sophisticated for the more-simple humor of folk songs’ (2017b). I asked the CMN about the appropriateness of ‘adult’ issues for ageinclusive audiences. In recognition of folk’s role as a barometer of societal change, Wallach pointed out that ‘things we used to sing with children in the

30  Folk music and childhood ‘60s and ‘70s are no longer considered appropriate or funny’ (2017a). Joanie Calem agreed suggesting that we are … living in a time where adult sexual behavior is finally being shown for how incredibly warped it is … so though all the old folk singers used to say that it was great that the kids heard these ballads and bad that they aren’t hearing them anymore, I wonder how great it really was? (2017b) Indeed, balancing the need to revisit, revise and explain canonised folk songs that may contain dated, inappropriate and/or parodic representations of race, gender, childhood and sexuality with the impulse to reject and exclude such material is currently a topic of much discussion for the CMN and for many others who perform music for children (see Chapter 7).

Conclusion By the 1940s, long-held top- down conceptions of both folk culture and childhood were being superseded more mundane and progressive understandings that embraced routine, everyday urban and suburban concerns. Individuals and institutions cemented the bond between folk and the child in practical and prosaic ways that relied less on prescribed and colonialist ideologies. Post-war economic expansion, progressive politics, experimental education, advances in developmental psychology, the work of the Opies31 and the ongoing impact of Freud’s theories of infantile sexuality all served to redefine American childhood. In New York, Washington DC and elsewhere, the fetishising tendencies and academic authenticities of early 20th century folklorists were being rapidly replaced by a more democratic urban folk song revival. The new ‘citybilly’ singers were authenticated more by performance and context than by the transcribed and ‘corrected’ melodies of ethnomusicologists (Rosenberg 1993: 15–16).32 The enduring relationship between folk music and the child was shaped by modernist, forward-looking educational strategies. These ideologies flowed through the summer camps, progressive schools, radio broadcasts, recordings of music, dance companies and folk song books of the 1940s. These networks connected oral folk culture with industrial processes, individuals with institutions and creative practices with commercial activity. The next chapter focusses on Woody Guthrie and the 400-plus songs he wrote for children. As an esteemed and charismatic musician and songwriter, Guthrie was a central and agentic figure in redefining folk authenticity. He was also active in the networks of progressive pedagogical politics that forged the emerging children’s folk recording industry in 1940s New York. The adaptation and popularisation of Guthrie’s songs by The Weavers, Ramblin’

Folk music and childhood  31 Jack Elliott and others helped transfer centres of folk from the provinces to the city and situate it in the popular mainstream (Cohen 1980: 13). As products of the baby boom, and of an industry newly focussed on providing entertainment and education for the surge of children that accompanied the return of servicemen like Guthrie after the war, Guthrie’s songs for children exude America’s post-war optimism. His progressive ideas about pedagogy and parenting were informed by the books and articles that he was reading, reviewing and writing at the time. His child- centred collaborative ideals took form in the hundreds of songs that he wrote for, about and with children.

Notes 1 Folk was one of the two main genres of music for children in the second half of the 20th century. Music Hall/Vaudeville was the other (Bickford 2012: 417–418). 2 While ‘Golden Age’ texts such as The Wind in the Willows (1908), The Secret Gar​­ den (1911), Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and Swallows and Amazons (1930–1947) have often been identified as promoting notions of innocence by depicting the child in adult-free secret rural settings, these texts, and others by lesser-k nown female authors, attributed the child with agency and represented them collaborating with adults (Gubar 2009: 6). 3 As an example of this external shaping, Woody Guthrie maintained that he had never heard the word ‘folk’ or been labelled as a folk singer until he arrived in New York in 1940. He asserted that the music he played was hillbilly (Reuss 1970: 290). 4 ‘The American ‘Popular Front’ of the 1930s was a loose coalition of individuals, parties and interest-groups, some of which were staunchly far Left in their philosophies, and others of which were socialists or those cast in the New Deal liberal mould’ (Denning 1998: 5). 5 Asch’s string of labels included Cub, Asch, Disc and from 1948, Folkways. 6 There were 210 children’s albums on the Folkways catalogue when it was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1987 (Olmstead 2003: 73). 7 Asch’s repackaging of his labels’ recordings for children led to a string of catalogue numbers, alternate album titles and varying song combinations which have rendered some of Guthrie’s recordings for children currently out of print (Appendix 2). 8 For example, Simon and Schuster published a string of book-record combinations by school music teacher Margaret Bradford Boni (1947 and 1952). 9 In the 1940s, the use of record players in schools was widespread (Bonner 2007: 62). 10 Katherine K. Davis composed the children’s Christmas song ‘Little Drummer Boy’ in 1951. 11 Charity Bailey, a teacher and director of music at the Little Red School House, released her Music Time with Charity Bailey album in 1952. She was also included on Volume 2 of the Songs to Grow On series with Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Cisco Huston and Adelaide Van Wey (1951). 12 Offering a glimpse into the US government’s attempts to dismantle the post-war folk boom through McCarthyism, Pete Seeger was uncredited (presumably at his own request) on Train to the Zoo, probably due to the impeding HUAC trials. 13 Guthrie’s first experience as a radio presenter-performer was in July 1937 on KFVD’s The Oklahoma and Woody Show. This developed into The Woody and

32  Folk music and childhood Left Lou Show, two daily hour-​­long shows broadcast six days a week (Cray 2004: 110) until June 1938. 14 As a merchant marine, Guthrie’s ship the Sea Porpoise was hit by a mine on its way to the Normandy landings. Towed to Southampton, Guthrie used his connections to negotiate a session with the BBC’s Children’s Hour on 7 July 1944 during which he performed ‘Wabash Cannonball’, ‘900 Miles’, ‘Stagger Lee’ and ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ (Cray 2004: 278–281). The first two songs were broadcast on a section of the show called ‘From America: Songs about Trains’ on 13 July, and the others in the ‘Songs about Outlaws’ section on 24 August (BBC Genome 2019). 15 Guthrie acted and performed alongside Lomax, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Tom Glazer and others on the BBC-​­commissioned radio ballad operas The Martins and the Coys: A Contemporary Folk Tale (1944) and The Chisholm Trail (1945). 16 John A. Lomax was an eminent musicologist who in the 1930s collected the field recordings mostly of rural Southern African-​­American singers and musicians that became the Archive of American Folk Song, highly influential on Guthrie and his contemporaries. 17 Alan Lomax’s romanticising tendencies were perhaps most apparent in his promotion of Lead Belly. Despite Lead Belly’s by-​­then urban status and his preference for suits, Lomax dressed his star in dungarees, the work clothes of poor Southerners, and positioned him on hay bales for promotional photographs and performances (Rosenberg 1993: 13). 18 American School of the Air broadcast for 30 minutes every Tuesday morning to an estimated 150,000 classrooms and eight million children (Sterling, O’Dell and Keith 2010: 46). The show was accompanied by a Teachers’ Manual (Bryson 1943: 19). 19 The Woody Guthrie Archive contains nine of Alan Lomax’s 1944 Children’s Hour radio scripts (WGA. Harold Leventhal Collection B3, F051). Lomax’s Children’s Hour shares a name with the weekly BBC children’s music show that ran from 1952 to 1982 (Chapter 4). 20 In Children’s Hour #3, Lomax sings a song about a boy being killed by a rattle snake, before explaining how ‘Americans have always loved hunting … dear and bear and wolves’. Programmes #6 and #9 feature Josh White (Lomax: ‘we ought to tell you that Josh White is a negro’) singing African-​­American work songs such as ‘No hiding place’ (Lomax: ‘like so many of the negro songs, I’m afraid it’s a sad one’). 21 Previously his student, Ruth Crawford Seeger later married ethnomusicologist and folk collector Charles Seeger. She was the stepmother of Guthrie’s friend and travelling companion Pete Seeger and mother of folk singers Mike and Peggy Seeger. 22 The songs in American Folk Songs for Children were subsequently recorded by Pete Seeger in 1954. Mike and Peggy Seeger released recordings of the full 94 songs in 1977. 23 ‘This Land is Your Land’ is included as the first song on the compiled album Songs to Grow On Vol. 3: American Work Songs (Folkways 1951). Guthrie’s ‘Riding in My Car (Car song)’ appeared in Come for to Sing: An Illustrated Book of Folksongs (Von Schmidt 1963: 8). However, this version was credited as being ‘sung by Jack Elliott’ rather than Guthrie. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was Guthrie’s friend, drinking companion and eventual sound-​­and-look-​­alike artist. He made a significant contribution to the sustained popularity of Guthrie’s children’s songs releasing his own Songs to Grow On by Woody Guthrie album on Folkways in 1961 in which he recreated Guthrie’s original recordings note-​­for-note. The inclusion of ‘Car Song’ in Von Schmidt’s book is testament to Elliott’s hand in

Folk music and childhood  33

24 25 26 27

28 29 30

31 32

formalising the musical arrangements and generally ‘tidying up’ Guthrie’s children’s songs. While neither the ‘Songs to Grow On’ album nor film were ever made, Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs was finally published with Guthrie’s original artwork in 1992. Woody Guthrie and his wife Marjorie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Ella Jenkins, Tom Glazer, Paul Robeson, Burl Ives, the Almanac Singers and many others performed in the progressive ‘folk’ schools. WGA NB S1, #86: 1948–1949. “Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs.” Sept. 1948. In many ways, the American and Canadian summer camps of the 1930s and 1940s were modelled on the Israeli kibbutzim where adults, in the form of camp counselors, rabbis and teachers, and children would participate in work and song ‘for the common good’ (Wallach 2017b). For example, Camp Woodland, founded by Norman Studer, a former student of John Dewey, focussed on the traditions of the Catskill mountains. Attendees to Wo- Chi-Ca such as folk singer Jerry Silverman talk about hearing Woody Guthrie records for the first time (Lieberman 1989: 61). The CMN developed from the People’s Music Network and before that from People’s Songs, the organisation set up by Guthrie, Seeger, Lee Hays, Beth Lomax Hawes, Millard Lampell and others in 1946 as a forum for the collection, publication and performance of folk songs (Lieberman 1989: 68; Schimmel 2017a). Iona and Peter Opie collected children’s playground and street songs in the late 1940s and early 1950s published as The Lore and the Language of Schoolchildren in 1959. Accounts of the American (and occasionally British) folk revival are included in Mitchell (2007), Cantwell (1996), Filene (2000), Cohen and Donaldson (2014), Reuss and Reuss (2000) and others.

Bibliography Bernstein, R. 2011. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York and London: New York University Press. Bickford, T. 2012. ‘The new ‘tween’ music industry: The Disney Channel, Kidz Bop and an emerging childhood counterpublic’, Popular Music, 31(3): 417–436. Boni, M.B. 1947. Fireside Book of Folk Songs. New York: Simon and Schuster. Bonner, D. 2007. Revolutionizing Children’s Music: The Young People’s Records and Children’s Record Guild Series 1946–77. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Boni, M.B. 1952. Fireside book of Favorite American Songs. New York: Simon and Schuster. Bryson, L. 1943. ‘The American school of the air’, Music Educators Journal, 30(1): 19. Calem, J. 2017a. Email to Liam Maloy, 25 November. Calem, J. 2017b. Email to Liam Maloy, 5 December. Cantwell, R. 1996. When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Cohen, E. 1980. ‘Neither hero nor myth: Woody Guthrie’s contribution to folk art’, Folklore, 91(1): 11–14. Cohen, R.D. and Donaldson, R.C., eds. 2014. Roots of the Revival: American & British Folk Music in the 1950s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Crawford Seeger, R. 1948. American Folk Songs for Children: In Home, School and Nursery School. New York: Doubleday & Company Inc.

34  Folk music and childhood Crawford Seeger, R. 1950. Animal Folk Songs for Children. New York: Doubleday & Company Inc. Cray, E. 2004. Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie. New York and London: Norton. Denning, M. 1998. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London: Verso. Filene, B. 2000. Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Gaume, M. 1986. Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music. Metuchen, NJ and London: The Scarecrow Press Inc. Geiger, G.R. 1958. John Dewey in Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Gelbart, M. 2007. The Invention of “Folk Music” and “Art Music”. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Goldsmith, P.D. 1998. Making People’s Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Gubar, M. 2009. Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Literature: New York: Oxford University Press. Hall, C. 2003. ‘Children’s literature’, in Kehily, M.J. and Swann, J. eds. Children’s Cultural Worlds. Maidenhead: Open University Press: 133–182. Kaufman, W. 2017. Woody Guthrie’s Modern World Blues. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Landeck, B. 1948. Songs to Grow On. New York: Marks & Sloane. Landeck, B. 1950. More Songs to Grow On. New York: Marks & Sloane. Lieberman, R. 1989: “My Song Is My Weapon:” People’s Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930–50. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lockhart, B. 2017a. Email to Liam Maloy, 25 November. Lockhart, B. 2017b. Email to Liam Maloy, 27 November. Lomax, A. 2003. Selected Writing: 1934–1997. Edited by Cohen, R.D. New York: Routledge. Mitchell, G. 2007. The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945–1980. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Muldavin, P. 2007: The Complete Guide to Vintage Children’s Records. Paducah, KT: Collector Books. Olmstead, T. 2003. Folkways Records: Moses Asch and His Encyclopedia of Sound. New York: Routledge. Opie, I. and Opie, P. 1959. The Lore and the Language of Schoolchildren. New York: New York Review Books. Polansky, L. and Tick, J. eds. 2001. The Music of American Folk Song and Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Reuss, R.A. 1970. ‘Woody Guthrie and his folk tradition’, The Journal of American Folklore, 83(329): 273–303. Reuss, R. and Reuss, J. C. 2000. American Folk Music and Left Wing Politics, 1927– 1957. American Folk Music Series no. 4. Lanham, MD and Folkstone: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Rosenberg, N.V. ed. 1993. Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Schimmel, N. 2017a. Email to Liam Maloy, 7 December. Schimmel, N. 2017b. Email to Liam Maloy, 8 December. Shih, P. 2017. Email to Liam Maloy, 24 November.

Folk music and childhood  35 Sterling, C.H., O’Dell, C.H. and Keith, M.C. eds. 2010. The Concise Encyclopedia of American Radio. New York: Routledge. Thresher, J.M. 1964. ‘The contributions of Carl Orff to elementary music education’, Music Educators Journal, (50)3: 43–48. Tiles, J.E. 1988. Dewey. London and New York: Routledge. Tillson, D.R. 1993. ‘Children’s musical play: The role of the phonograph’, The Ephemera Journal, 6: 86–98. Tillson, D.R. 1995. ‘The golden age of children’s records’, Antique Phonograph News, March–April, (3–6)12. Von Schmidt, E. 1963. Come for to Sing: An Illustrated Book of Folksongs. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Wallach, K. 2017a. Email to Liam Maloy, 4 December. Wallach, K. 2017b. Email to Liam Maloy, 7 December. Warmbrand, T. 2017. Email to Liam Maloy, 25 November.

Audio sources Bailey, Charity. Music Time with Charity Bailey. Folkways Records, 1952. Courlander, Harold. Ring Games: Line Games and Play Party Songs of Alabama. Folkways Records, 1953. Elliott, Ramblin’ Jack. Songs to Grow On by Woody Guthrie. Folkways Records, 1961. Lead Belly. Play Parties in Song and Dance, as Sung by Lead Belly, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1999. Lomax, Alan, et al. The Ballad Operas: The Martins and the Coys. Rounder, 2000. Schwartz, Tony. 1, 2, 3 and a Zing Zing Zing. Folkways Records, 1953. Seeger, Pete. American Folk Songs for Children. Folkways Records, 1954. Seeger, Mike and Peggy Seeger. American Folk Songs for Children. Rounder, 1977. Various. Songs to Grow On, Vol. 2: School Days. Folkways Records, 1951. Various. Songs to Grow On Vol. 3: American Work Songs. Folkways Records, 1951. Weavers, The. Train to the Zoo. Children’s Record Guild, 1950.

3 Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children

Woody Guthrie may seem an unusual focus for a substantial chapter about recorded music for children. Compared to contemporaries such as Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Burl Ives or Tom Glazer, he recorded relatively little of it and released even less. Only a handful of the songs he wrote for children have achieved widespread appeal even in children’s music circles. Those that have1 are arguably better known through versions by other artists. Furthermore, Guthrie’s songs for children are often viewed as an appendage to his body of songs, rather than central to it. If mentioned at all, biographers, discographers and scholars often fail to acknowledge their sheer volume and frequently neglect to recognise their significance in Guthrie’s life and to his legacy. So why Guthrie? Firstly, Guthrie is the perfect case study through which to explore the durable relationship between folk music and the child. He wrote songs about nature and growth, both literal and metaphorical, and others that exemplify his personal conviction to progressive education, creative pedagogy and the value of games and play. Guthrie’s songs for children document the prosaic routines and everyday detail of family life, and demonstrate his commitment to progressive parenting. As illustrated poems, dizzying displays of word play and creative ideas in progress, they also offer a valuable insight into his thoughts on the value of music, dance, art, creative expression, ­Jewish culture and various strands of left-​­wing politics. Secondly, Guthrie was central to the networks of creative, political and commercial activity that circulated around New York in the 1940s. His records for children appeared at the peak of a major growth in the children’s recording industry. I explain how Guthrie’s songs for children were shaped by institutions, individuals, ideologies, processes and products, and by the impact of World War II. The songs are urban post-​­war America in microcosm. Through their frequent reference to growth and work, Guthrie’s songs for children reflect the progressive and modernist views held by many liberal Northerners at the time.2 Thirdly, Guthrie often included his young children and wife Marjorie in the songwriting process. He had a particularly creative relationship with his

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  37 daughter Cathy Ann. I argue that through creative collaboration with a child and the frequent use of child-​­centred themes and narratives, Guthrie’s songs recognise and celebrate the child’s agency and autonomy (Gubar 2007). Fourthly, I explain how in scale, scope and significance, the songs are a major contributor to a nuanced appreciation of Guthrie’s work, life and legacy. They document the exhilarating highs and tragic lows of a highly eventful time in his life. As products of the manic creativity that characterised the onset of his fast-​­developing Huntington’s disease, the songs for children represent one of Guthrie’s last major creative outputs.

Introducing Guthie’s songs for children Guthrie wrote over 400 songs for children (Appendix 2).3 Only around 10% of these were recorded (Appendix 2).4 Less than half of the recordings were released during his lifetime. The songs appear in Guthrie’s notebooks and diaries. The majority are hand-​­written in his beautiful penmanship. They also appear on expertly typed perfectly punctuated letters, separate lyric sheets and scraps of whatever materials Guthrie had to hand.5 The words are occasionally accompanied by descriptive instructions for the melody,6 short pieces of musical notation, suggestions for the function of the song, the intended age of the listener7 and Guthrie’s own expressive artwork. Some appear in multiple versions; many that were hand-​ w ­ ritten were s­ubsequently retyped and reworked by Guthrie, amended and updated, renewed and ­i mproved. While some cover pages of text and contain dozens of verses, many exist only as tantalising titles in blank pages of notebooks, in Guthrie’s lists of proposed albums or in publisher’s documents. The vast majority of the songs were written between 1946 and 1950 (­Figure 3.1), a period during which Guthrie lived in New York with his second wife Marjorie Mazia and their four children.8 However, the songs span a period from 1939, the time of his first marriage and three children, Gwendolyn, Sue and Bill (William), to 1957 and his eighth child, Lorina. Most touchingly perhaps, the songs reveal in exquisite detail his close creative and domestic relationship with daughter Cathy Ann and, to a degree which has not been previously acknowledged, with his subsequent New York children, Arlo, Joady and Nora. Guthrie wrote songs for children with the same all-​­consuming energy, humour and intelligence that he brought to his more overtly political ‘adult’ material. The songs address the everyday activities of his family and their immediate surroundings in the same unflinching detail with which he documented the lives of the displaced migrants of the Great Depression and others struggling under abuses of power. The majority of the children’s songs were written when Guthrie and his expanding family lived in Coney Island (Figure 3.1). He was extremely prolific during this period;

38  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Figure 3.1  Yearly distribution of Woody Guthrie’s songs for children.

his notebooks evidence half a dozen or more children’s songs, accompanied by drawings, annotations and explanations, written in a single day.9 Around 270 of the songs were written between 1946, Guthrie’s first full post-​­military service year, and 1950 when Nora, his final New York child, was born. A further 30 were written during his breaks from tours of duty between 1943 and 1945. However, his most prolific consecutive two years (1946 and 1947) correspond to the early years of his daughter Cathy Ann (1943–1947). With his wife Marjorie working in Brooklyn and Manhattan as a dance teacher, Guthrie spent much of his time with Cathy, his other children and their friends.

Writing with Cathy From her birth on 4 February 1943, Guthrie was highly attentive to Cathy’s development, utterances and creative activities.10 His notes offer a detailed insight into Cathy’s young life and domestic household routines. For example, one of Cathy’s ‘average’ days in 1943 involved her waking at 7:00 while ‘singing and laughing a talking’, eating breakfast at 7:30 during which she ‘laughed – gooed – kicked feet’, having a bath at 8:00 in which she ‘flipped, flapped & splashed in the water’ and having her diaper changed at 8:30 (‘raised foot over head – sang tenor’).11 Guthrie often writes in the first person from a child’s perspective interspersing his own thoughts and actions with those of Cathy.12 His notebooks capture long passages of Cathy’s verbatim speech13 as well as the rhymes and songs that she would

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  39 spontaneously create around the house and on their trips out. He describes the process: It’s a pretty easy job to just write down the words and the tune of a song after Cathy would give me her main idea of it to start with. She would talk and play about the house and her school and along her streets here, and all I’d do would be to sort of take her own words and thoughts and make them rhyme and give them an easy little tune I’d known all my life.14 In song books and on lyric sheets, Guthrie repeatedly acknowledges Cathy’s authorship and occasionally that of his other children15 and wife. For example, one of his 1945 notebooks contains two brief verses by the then-​ t­wo-year-​­old Cathy: ‘Today you sang: Whoopity ti yi yay … I don’t care what becomes of me’ and ‘You made up this song today: Train is going choo choo choo …’.16 In another, Guthrie attributes the song ‘Bigger’ to his then-​ t­ hree-year-​­old daughter’s ‘jabbertalking’.17 Woody writes about Cathy’s prodigious creativity in ‘Child Sitting’, an essay he submitted to parenting magazines in late 194618: She sang songs … and forced me to take down the words as she sings them. I’ve got several hundred of her songs already written down. I’ve sold two fonograph records of kids songs just by putting little tunes and guitar notes to her songs she sings … I’ve written down a dozen songs today. Referring to reviews of his Songs to Grow On: Nursery Days album, Guthrie noted that: ‘Her songs are rated by all sorts of experts as the top notch best in the Children’s Album field’.19 While it is clear from archival sources that many of Guthrie’s songs for children were written by his daughter and his wife, all of the recording and publishing documents attribute credit to him.20 The omission of a female child and a woman from reaping the cultural and professional rewards associated with the creation and shaping of intellectual property echoes the work of child performers in Victorian and Edwardian Music Halls (Gubar 2007). Despite appearing in large numbers onstage and forming an integral part of plays, dance routines and other performances, children were often unpaid. Their employment lacked legal regulation; the singing, dancing and other artistic pursuits of the professional child were often seen as play rather than work, work being seen as threat to blissful innocence of the romantic child of nature (Knowles 2009). Similarly, much of the children’s literature written by women during the Victorian and Edwardian ‘Golden Age’ has been excluded from the canon. Their stories of school, family and domestic pursuits tended to situate the child in socialised multi-​­generational worlds; male authors preferred adult-​ f­ ree settings (Gubar 2007: 5). However, rather than a sign of his naivety and child-​­like incompetence,21 a charge often levelled at some of the ‘Golden Age’ authors, I suggest that Guthrie’s inclusion of Cathy and Marjorie in the

40  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children Table 3.1 Thematic breakdown of Woody Guthrie’s songs for children Theme Parenting

1. Sub-theme ​­

Domestic routines Family (and friends) Education/Progressive Dance Games and play pedagogy Counting and literacy Music ​­ Pro-social skills Nature Animals The weather Trees, grass, plants The sea Other Transport Work, building, growth, Building and work technology Growth Technology Uncategorised (including nonsense titles and many titles without accompanying lyrics)

2. Number of songs 100 86 (7) 22 20 13 6 6 38 12 12 4 2 16 14 14 16 42

193 57

66

60

42

songwriting process is evidence of his well- conceived and progressive views on childhood and parenting. In almost all of the songs, Guthrie uses a child narrator who addresses the world in the first person, frequently in domestic everyday settings. With Guthrie as a de facto child carer and house husband, and Marjorie as the breadwinner, it is unsurprising that the vast majority of the songs are concerned with mundane household chores and the family (Table 3.1).

Parenting The songs offer a detailed insight into the daily routines of a family with a baby and/or a young child. They depict the child waking up,22 getting dressed,23 eating and drinking,24 getting burped,25 playing games,26 drawing and writing,27 going to the toilet,28 tidying up,29 having a bath30 and going to bed.31 At least eight focus on parts of the body,32 and five on the passing of time and the ticking of the clock.33 However, despite the use of a child narrator, a song such as ‘Pick it Up’ is clearly designed to encourage the child to tidy up: I drop my candy, pick it up, pick it up And throw it away in the garbage … I drop my dolly … lay her back in the cradle I drop my shoe … put it back with my other shoe Guthrie’s daughter Nora confirmed that every routine activity of the Guthrie children’s lives was accompanied by the spontaneous singing of such songs.

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  41 She suggested that this was a fun way to give their family life a semblance of order (2012). She recalls: I remember dancing around the house to these songs when I was real little. My mother would play the piano and we’d act them out in the evenings, just before bedtime, I think they were designed to exhaust kids.34 ‘I Like to Stay Home with Daddy’ (1945)35 … juxtaposes the routineness of his wife Marjorie’s early morning commutes with the unstructured daily activities of Guthrie and his young child. The first-person narrative creates a child’s- eye point-of-view yet the lyrics reveal Guthrie’s self-awareness of his role as a care giver; he is attentive to how his laissez-faire approach might be perceived by his wife and child. ‘Baby Mummy Daddy’ (1948) paints a similarly prosaic picture with its references to cooking, coffee, Marjorie’s working life and feeding a baby.36 In many ways, these two songs are atypical of Guthrie’s songs for children especially those recorded in 1946 and 1947. The relatively long lines of ‘I Like to Stay Home with Daddy’ clearly depict the situation; the metre is regular, and the rhyme patterns, on the whole, are tightly structured. The words have an adult sensibility that contrasts the abstract, impressionistic and nonsensical ‘motherese’ of many of Guthrie’s subsequent songs. ‘Jiggy Jiggy Bum’, ‘Howdido’, ‘Bubble Gum’, ‘Grassy Grassy Grass’, ‘Rattle my Rattle’, ‘Swimmy Swim’ and ‘Warshy Wash’ employ high degrees of alliterative syllabic repetition and playful assonance. Onomatopoeic and invented words abound. The use of nonsense serves to deconstruct normative discourses and distort linear and resolved narratives (Maloy 2016: 10–11). Of these more typical songs, ‘Rattle my Rattle’ features Guthrie’s voice accompanied by hand percussion: Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle my rattle … Skeetle my skeetle tattle ​­ ru-da ​­ ru-da ​­ ru-da ​­ Ru-da Ru- da my riddle uptown downtown, rattle my ray ‘Warshy Little Tootsy’ is one of at least five songs about bath time and contains similar syllabic manipulation and onomatopoeic repetition: Washy washy washy Jingle jangle ding-a-ling, ​­ Pinky panky ponk ‘Howdido’, a song about shaking hands, also contains nonsense rhymes, and exaggerated and playful alliteration and assonance: Howji howji howji howj Doosie doodle doosie doo

42  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children Heejie hijie hojie howji Howjidoo However, rather than spontaneous gobbledegook, successful nonsense must balance the exaggerated manipulation of the formal rules of grammar with poetic and literary devices that are sufficiently recognisable to the reader-listener. This applies especially to young children who may lack the competence to detect and decipher clever wordplay. Guthrie’s extensive use of nonsense is a combination of two- to three-year-old Cathy’s exuberant yet linguistically limited speech patterns and his own exemplary ability to manipulate words,37 a skill necessary to forge Cathy’s utterances into coherent and performable songs. The songs not only document life in the house on Mermaid Avenue but also the family’s walks to Cathy’s nursery school, to shops and restaurants,38 to the beach and the funfair. Guthrie’s close focus on everyday routine is captured in his many songs about dancing,39 the family’s immediate neighbourhood40 and celebrations and festivals such as birthdays, Christmas, Hanukah and Halloween.41 At least 14 of the songs mention the names of the Guthries’ babysitters.42 Lev Vygotsky’s theories were particularly popular in American kindergartens at the time that the Guthrie children would have been attending. Although his ideas have become part of mainstream pedagogy, Vygotsky’s insistence that learning requires social as well as personal experience and is rooted in the child’s interaction with families, friends and communities of teachers and other adults was relatively controversial at the time (Mooney 2000: 82–83). Guthrie embraced social learning and through meticulous observation and reflection showed a keen understanding of children and their development. Through first-person narrative devices and the careful manipulation of rhyme, metre and other songwriting tools, Guthrie shows a sensitivity by positioning of himself as the ‘hidden adult’ in the learning process. By focussing on the prosaic mundanity of childhood and universal human experiences (eating, going to the toilet, having a birthday), Guthrie foregrounds his modernist tendencies and reveals the influence of progressive 1940s New York. This fastidious attention to documenting the everyday comings-and-goings of his life in an effort to ‘reflect reality accurately’ aligns Guthrie with modernist writers such as Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf (Kaufman 2017: 32). It also reflects mid 20th century shifts in definitions of culture, especially folk culture, from ideological top- down conceptions of high and low to a focus on prosaic ‘ordinary’ lives. Philippe Ariès searched for family life in historical texts (1962); Guthrie’s songs document a ‘silent history’ that is ‘too ordinary, too commonplace [and] too far removed from the memorable incident’ (ibid.: 10) for many of his biographers to mention.

The family Around 100 songs depict the family and their domestic routines. A further 71 mention the Guthrie children by name. The majority of the songs on

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  43 Nursery Days and Songs to Grow On derived from Woody’s relationship with Cathy Ann. Their close bond and creative relationship are the focus of the majority of the existing biographical and scholarly writing on Guthrie’s children’s music (Cray 2004: 296–299; Kaufman 2017: 192–200; Maloy 2016; Neimark 2002: 78; Partridge 2002: 153–155; Santelli 2012: 153–154). Unsurprisingly, 13 of Guthrie’s songs mention Cathy by name (‘Little Cathy Annie’, for example) or by one of her many nicknames.43 More notable perhaps is the extent to which Guthrie wrote songs for, with and about his other children. There are a number of songs that mention Gwen, Sue and Bill (William), the children from his first marriage 44 (Figure 3.2). ­ Most interestingly, the songs that namecheck Woody’s second and third New York children, Arlo and Joady45 (born 1947 and 1948, respectively) outnumber those that refer to Cathy (born 1943), while Nora (born 1950), Woody’s final child with Marjorie, is named in 13 songs, the same number as Cathy.46 Guthrie shared his views on parenting in his album liner notes, letters, notebooks and essays. His reflections on the articles and books he read on progressive child raising, children’s education, the position of women in society and the empowerment of his daughters reveal an enlightened world view.47 He wrote about his desire to foster the child’s autonomy and build their confidence in order to challenge authority and critique social norms. This often equated to treating the child as a peer and supporting their development through conversation and cooperative activity, rather than overt didacticism. ‘My songs’, Woody explained, ‘are not to be read like a lesson book nor a text, but to be a key to sort of unlock all of the old bars in you that keep the family apart or the school apart’.48 The six songs on Work Songs to Grow On were not designed to ‘split your family apart [or] to give the kids something to do while you do something else’.49 Addressing his

25 20 15 10 5 0

-•

Gwen

--~ Sue

Bill

- Cathy Ann-

Arlo

- Joady- -

Nora

Lorina

Figure 3.2 Guthrie’s songs that mention his children by their name or nickname.

44  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children adult listener directly, Woody instructs ‘… come and join in with the kids … Get the whole fam damly into the fun’. Elsewhere, Guthrie expands on his liberal views on childhood, family, parenting and education: We raised Cathy in the most progressive ways that we could learn … a bit from books and from pamphlets, from newspaper articles, but by and large … from her own suggestions … she gave us and others a thousand and one ideas for good works which we could never have dreamed up without her voice … she showed us how to draw the whole family together in its singing, dancing, fun having …50 Addressing the reader in his ‘Child Sitting’ essay, he recommends turning ‘yourself, your life, and your home, your school over to the kid to do with exactly and they (he or she) sees fit’ in order not to break the child’s spirit.51 Guthrie writes about inverting the traditional parent- child power dynamic by surrendering control of the daily routines to Cathy and letting her ‘run the works’ and of not trying to teach her any vast nor any deep theories nor feelings about art, books, movies, nor about songs nor music, but that we would try our level best not to block, bar, nor hinder any of these things when they did bubble up in Miss Stacky.52 He repeatedly stresses how much he and other adults could learn from children.53 In ‘Child Sitting’, he expresses his initial frustrations at the amount of time and energy he spent looking after Cathy.54 He tells her that ‘my work is just as important to me as your mama’s work is for her’. However, he soon relinquishes, and focusses on her drawings and other activities, as well as writing down her spontaneous songs. Previously, he had written: My ruling is going to be To let you be my boss To live and work in you To let you be me And for me to be you55 However, later, he acknowledged that: … her sense of right and wrong around this house was always needed and respected … her own vote and her own voice … I got to where I just placed my career and my welfare sort of into Cathy’s hands ….56

Education, games, play Everything was a game. (Marjorie Mazia, in Cray 2004: 296)

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  45 Guthrie’s themes of unlocking and unblocking the social and educational barriers between adult and child echo the philosophies of influential educationists. Either through reading or intuition, Guthrie’s child-focussed creative activity and intergenerational inclusivity channel Fröbel’s thoughts on kindergarten education (Kaufman 2017: 47–49), those of Piaget (Mooney 2000: 61) and Dewey on intergenerational social learning, and the improvised, spontaneous and experimental approach to music making favoured by Orff. However, over 60 of Guthrie’s songs take a didactic instructional approach that is common to many of the children’s recordings on YPR, CRG and Folkways, and prevalent in the curriculum-based songs of Sesame Street (Chapter 5). Guthrie wrote 12 songs about counting (including ‘One to ten’ and ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8’ also known as ‘Hoodoo Voodoo’) and one about learning the alphabet (‘A B C song’). In keeping with Fröbel’s development of kindergarten’s emphasis on free and directed play, there are 20 songs that focus on games and participation. Songs such as ‘Stack my Blocks’, ‘Spin Dreydl Spin’ and ‘Throw my Ball’ highlight how play was central to the Guthries’ family life. Others such as ‘Put your Finger in the Air’, ‘Do Lika Me’ and ‘Funny Face’ encourage children’s participation in ‘copy-me’ ​­ songs. Progressive pre-school pedagogy is designed to develop the child’s skills in sociability. Guthrie’s songs explicitly encourage the child to share (‘My Yellow Crayon’), cooperate (‘All Work Together’), ask for help (‘Do me a Favour’) and delay their gratification (‘Take my Turn’). ‘Don’t you Push me Down’ urges the child to be assertive, perfectly capturing kindergarten’s importance of play in domestic settings: We can skip together down to the Pretzel man … You can use my dishes if you put them away … You can even wash my face … You can play with me. We can build a house You can take my ball and bounce it all around You can take my skates and ride them all around You can even get mad at me but don’t you push me down. As he began to take children’s music more seriously in late 1947 and 1948, Guthrie began to note the function of his songs on the lyric sheets. Indeed, many are better characterised by function than theme. Several follow a strophic and additive form familiar to children’s play rhymes. Songs such as ‘Where Did You Go?’ and ‘The Birthday Cake’ exhort children to participate physically in games and vocally through call-and-response.57 One of Guthrie’s annotations suggests that ‘Ask and See’ is ‘another good game song … If you fail to make up a new verse … forfeit!’58 It is these ‘gamey’ songs that perhaps best illustrate the symbiotic relationship between oral, aural and recorded transmission. The interconnected networks of material items (song books and packaged record albums), transient radio broadcasts

46  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children and performances in summer camps, theatres or even in Guthrie’s house, illustrate the realities of the folk process for children in 1940s New York. Songs of the playground and of the street have been the subject of the majority of academic work on children’s music (Hopkin 1984; Marsh 2008; Osborn-Seyffert 1988; Shehan Campbell 1998). The songs, or derivations of them, may have been passed down through the generations by adults, ‘sideways’ by other children, learned from recordings, television, radio and other media, or, as in the case of Cathy’s songs, spontaneously composed (Shehan Campbell 2017). With her emphasis on oral transmission, Shehan Campbell sees children’s music as ‘what’s left once they discard what’s come to them formally and informally’. It is a culture in which children take ownership, one derived from a wide range of historical and mediated sources (ibid.). The pioneering Play Parties in Song and Dance, as Sung by Lead Belly album (1941) is essentially a collection of children’s street and playground songs. The model was repeated by Folkways in albums of field recordings in New York (Tony Schwartz’s 1, 2, 3 and a Zing Zing Zing; 1953), Alabama (Harold Courlander’s Ring Games: Line Games and Play Party Songs of Alabama; 1953) and elsewhere. Guthrie’s songs for children were written and recorded around the same time that Iona and Peter Opie were collecting their playground and street songs (late 1940s to early 1950s). In the same way that their The Lore and the Language of Schoolchildren (1959) captured rhymes about popular cultural figures such as Mickey Mouse and Davey Crockett and world events (primarily the war), Guthrie’s songs are a snapshot of a largely hidden and socially specific culture.

Music and dance Of the six songs that refer explicitly to music making, ‘Mummy’s Music’ and ‘Mummy’s Piano’ reveal Marjorie’s significant input into the family’s musical activities as a singer, pianist and songwriter. The number of songs about dance suggests that Marjorie’s compositions have been combined (along with those of Cathy and the other children) with Woody’s in notebooks, albums and publishing lists. Some of the 22 dance songs seem to have been created especially for the lessons Marjorie taught for children. Indeed, Mar​­ jorie curated Dance-A-Long, a Folkways album of dance pieces (1950). The verses of ‘Dance Around’ instruct the child to ‘hold up your hands … walk on your toes … march and march … and take big steps’. Accompanied by Woody’s painting of a figure dancing, the words of ‘You Gonna See Me’ encourage the listener to ‘dance around … jump around … jig around … spin around … march around … wave around’. Ballet’s seventh basic position is referred to in the songs ‘Hanuka Dance’ (‘tippy tap toe … on your toes’), ‘I go tippy toe’ and ‘Tipple tipple toe toe’. In the original introduction to Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs book, Marjorie explains how: One of our favorite dances for all groups is, “Race you down the mountain” [her own composition] where we actually do a racy running step

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  47 faster and faster until we fall to the floor. “Riding in my car” is a good action song that can be done just sitting where you are holding the wheel …59 In the introduction, Woody states that the then-two-year-old Cathy is the author of ‘Morning’s Morning’, a song full of dancing and physical actions.60 The extent to which dance was integrated into the Guthrie family’s daily lives and into Woody’s conception of dance as a metaphor for the playful and creative energy that was coursing through him at the time is indicated in a letter he submitted to ‘The Dance Observer’. Cathy is all fed, entertained, sung to, danced to, and has got her face washed, pig tails braided, her overalls on, all ready to sing out onto the sidewalk and dance along to school, when I get back … And I don’t care no more which comes first, the singing, or the dancing. I might not be able to tech [sic] you very much about singing nor about dancing, either one. But, I just hope that I don’t do anything to hurt the song and the dance that’s already in you.61

The effect of Huntington’s disease on Guthrie’s songs for children Just at the moment that the free expression of Marjorie’s modern dance was being integrated into ‘Music and movement’ sessions in kindergartens and progressive New York schools, Guthrie’s music and art were becoming more abstract. From the mid 1940s, he was beginning to exhibit symptoms of Huntington’s disease, an inherited condition from which his mother and two of his daughters died. His manic energy and wildly imaginative creativity can both be attributed to the onset of this progressive neurological and physiological disorder. Guthrie remained active as a children’s songwriter until at least 1955,62 and it is notable how many of his songs for children from the 1950s are concerned with play and games rather than the domestic routines that characterised those from the 1940s. By 1954, he had moved beyond action songs such as ‘Candy Tree’ (‘I climb up my candy tree … swimming in my honey pool … I run down my chocolate hill … I paddle my boat on an icy cream lake …’). As Huntington’s began to take its toll, Guthrie wrote a song about a ‘Chess Horse’; his game of life had moved from exuberant social activity to something more strategic, contemplative and combative. Guthrie’s songs of 1946–1948, the ‘Child Sitting’ essay and his other writings express not only his empathy for Cathy and his other children but also for the universal child. Through Cathy, Guthrie repeatedly expressed his own desires projecting his own enhanced creativity, advanced skills in linguistic communication and impetuous spontaneity onto his young daughter. In doing so, he constructed a childhood in which the adult is far from hidden despite the author’s almost universal use of the first person and obsessive

48  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children attention to the immediate here-and-now. Despite the predominant use of the child’s voice and of ‘real-life’ social situations, Guthrie’s critical adult voice occasionally serves to assert a distance between the author and his subject. One notebook entry finds Guthrie asking a ‘fictional’ two-year-old Cathy and her friend Tammy for advice on writing for children. The children reply: Go ahead. Write it. How do you think I can advance you into the noble state of the child unless you write it? Write … Write down the words. Write down the thought. Write down the feeling. Catch the deepest of the swimming fish. This is your hardest job, sure, I know. But you can’t get to be a young kid if you can’t write your way past this place.63 During this period, Guthrie’s connection with the child, with women as mothers and with the wider world began to move beyond mere empathy. His journals reveal an increasingly spiritual and sensual connection with his family. Addressing his daughter directly he states that he can ‘hear things you only think about’.64 Of Cathy he writes: ‘My mind leaves off where hers begins. My ideas stop where hers start in’.65 He explains how ‘my feelings for her are fatherly or brotherly or soulfully something or other’66 and expresses an all- encompassing identification with his then-pregnant wife: I feel like the baby in me couldn’t hardly be much bigger than a pussy cat … than my hand … all that I’ve got … is just you, little roll of wadding, flopping around here in my belly. I got the woman’s feeling in me somewhere.67 You are me. I am you … Let’s melt and run together68 Although a formal diagnosis was not made until early 1952, Guthrie was aware of the presence of Huntington’s for at least eight years prior. It is through the distorting lens of Huntington’s that the majority of his songs for children must be viewed. Synaesthesia, prolixity, enhanced creativity, empathy and a universal spirituality are just some of its characteristics. As Guthrie’s wanderlust increased in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he moved temporarily out of New York to Topanga, California and to Beluthahatchee, Florida. His songs for children about nature reflect not only the beach, zoos and gardens of Coney Island and wider New York but increasingly Guthrie’s new rural environments.

Nature Guthrie wrote at least 38 songs for children about animals, 12 about the weather, 12 about trees, grass and plants, 4 about the sea and 2 about mountains (Appendix 3). While some employ animals in a literal sense as a theme for an action game (‘One Little Bullfrog’), many document Guthrie’s life. ‘Crab song’, ‘Fishes’, ‘I go beach’ and others depict the Guthries’

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  49 frequent visits to the beach at the back of their house on Mermaid Avenue, Coney Island. His close relationship with the sea, as a father and as a Marine, is reflected in ‘Go Down to the Water’, ‘Roll on Little Ocean’ and ‘Ocean Go’. The song ‘Fastest of Ponies’ continues Marjorie’s ‘Merrygo-round’ theme. Songs about domestic animals (‘Rover Dog Rover’, ‘No Kitty’, ‘Rats and Cats’), zoos (‘Zoo Zoo Song’, ‘Did you ever see a Monkey?’) and Thanksgiving (‘Nine Little Turkeys’) document Guthrie’s family life in the city while a number (‘Old Briar Rabbit’, ‘Fox and the Goose’) are retellings of traditional stories. Others from 1952 and 1953 (‘Baby Buzzard’, ‘Baby Bat’, ‘Piggy Pig Pig’, ‘Say Mister Rabbit’, ‘Wormy song’) date from Guthrie’s time in his shack in Topanga Canyon or in the swamps of Beluthahatchee. Many are metaphorical. The narrator of ‘Bugs and Snakes’ has ‘got bugs in my head’, while ‘Little Bird’ metaphorically illustrates Guthrie’s progressive parenting: Dad said, “You’ve got to fly out on your own, To fly in the storm, and to fly toward the sun. I’ll peck and I’ll pecka you out of this nest – I don’t care a bit if you cry out your eyes.” It was pecky, peck, pecky, and picka pick pick They pecked me, they pushed me right out of our nest. I feel through the sky till I learned how to fly. I caught a big worm, and I never did cry. The words of ‘The Raindrop Song’ have a synesthetic quality; the rain, flowers and trees are evoked through reference to sound, music, taste and other senses.69 The 13-verse ‘Bleederbug’ is dated May 1955, a time when Guthrie was spending extended periods in Brooklyn State Hospital. Among his last for children, the words of the song and the looseness of his once-accurate typing reveal a man seeking consolation with the bugs in his bed. Conceptions of nature are woven through childhood culture. As described in the previous chapter, ideas of innocence and its protection, of purity, simplicity, naivety, vulnerability and the child’s ‘natural’ goodness can be traced back through the last 250 years of Western art and literature. Rousseau’s Èmile (1762) helped to popularise the ‘child of nature’ paradigm. Like Guthrie, Rousseau offers his thoughts on education and of raising the ‘natural man’ through descriptions of the titular boy. His philosophies on the birthing, swaddling, weaning, breastfeeding and bathing of babies, and the sleep patterns, diet (including the progressive claim that children should be largely vegetarian: 118), language and dress were extremely influential, leading to much social reform especially in the area of education. Like Guthrie, Rousseau’s attitude to child rearing is laissez-faire (‘the chief thing

50  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children is to prevent anything being done’: 1762: 9). He promotes an outdoor ‘fend for yourself’ mentality influenced by Robinson Crusoe, the one book Èmile recommends (ibid.: 147). However, to Rousseau, Èmile is ‘a little human animal’ (Boutet de Monvel 1963) whose innate goodness should be protected from the ‘evil’ influences of adulthood and the artificiality of society. Rather than Rousseau’s protectionist impulses, Guthrie, in line with Fröbel and other progressive educationalists, encourages the child’s engagement with the neighbourhood, city, industry, work and other ‘contaminating’ forces of the outside world. However, connecting the child with nature fosters not only notions of innocence and separatism but of primitivism and colonialism, and of an infantilised static culture that, I argue, is very much at odds with the dynamic and progressive impulses of Guthrie’s 1940s New York (Rose 1992: 50). The ‘child of nature’ seemingly sets up a series of binaries in which naivety and intuition oppose knowingness and education. However, placing child protagonists in rural settings, secret gardens and deserted islands does not necessarily preclude them from displaying a precocious knowingness of the adult world nor an ability to negotiate its adult- constructed workings (Gubar 2007: 7). Conversely, a child written into the routines of an adultinhabited urban and contemporary environment may still be depicted as a wide- eyed naïf embodying innocence and the adult- constructed separateness that this implies (ibid.). While Guthrie’s evocation of nature is intrinsically linked to his own life and thoughts on childhood, his songs about trees, flowers, grass and seeds capture the palpable sense of optimism and growth in post-war America. While not strictly a children’s song, 1943’s ‘It’s up to You’ uses the seed as an allegory for the very real fight against fascism in which Guthrie was actively involved.70 In the context of Guthrie’s life, ‘Little Seed’ captures his resolute determination to carry on in the face of the adversity brought on by Huntington’s: The rain it come and it washed my ground I thought my little seed was going to drown I waded and I splashed and I carried my seed I planted it again on some higher ground … The sun got hot and my ground got dry I thought my little seed would burn and die I carried some water from a watering mill, I said, “Little seed, you can drink your fill” Guthrie repeatedly used nature to symbolise growth. While contextual documentation suggests that the impressionistic ‘Grassy Grass Grass (Grow, Grow, Grow)’ and the related ‘Gowann Grass and Grow’ were ‘about’ the lawn seed that Guthrie had sewn in the family’s Mermaid Avenue backyard, the theme of growth is central to his thoughts on parenting and education, a

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  51 sentiment captured concisely in the liner notes of Songs to Grown On: ‘We’ll all grow bigger and bigger together’ (Guthrie 1991).

Growth and work As well as songs about seeds, flowers and trees, growth is a theme that runs through at least 14 of Guthrie’s other songs. Songs about building and work comprise another 14; at least 16 are about forms of transport with yet more about various forms of technology. The original titles of his children’s albums, Song to Grow On and Work Songs to Grow On, evidence Guthrie’s commitment to fusing wider progressive and modernist ideas with childhood. Guthrie’s final return from military service coincided with New Deal expansion and post-war building programmes. This reinvention of America was celebrated by Guthrie and most of his socialist and communist peers. The year 1945 marked the high point of American left-wing optimism (Cohen 2002: 41). The Popular Front, unionism and the labour movement were built on values that, at the time, were considered core to American democracy. As well as ambitious plans for house building and the development of physical infrastructure, New Deal optimism translated into booming budgets for education and progressive schemes for decades to come. New Deal funding and a progressive folk-based pedagogy were crucial to the establishment of the Children’s Television Workshop and to the two years of research that informed the launch of Sesame Street in 1969. Chapter 5 examines how Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds, Brother Kirk, Lena Horne and other previously blacklisted musicians formed part of the show’s progressive pedagogy. As well as tapping into this pervading socio-political confidence and ethos of growth, Guthrie’s songs evidence specific pedagogical approaches. Erikson developed an influential theory of childhood growth through eight stages of psychosocial development to which hope, willpower, purpose and competence are central (Mooney 2000: 38–39). The original six songs on Work Songs to Grow On explicitly capture Guthrie’s sense of communal effort and of personal and societal growth. ‘All Work Together’ (‘There’s all kinds of work that I can do … if we all work together it won’t take very long’) promotes the child’s role in family chores and reflects the need to rebuild families, communities and industrial infrastructure after the war. ‘Needle Sing’ is about knitting and sewing, repairing the very fabric of family life. ‘Bling Blang’ (AKA ‘Build a/my House’) is full of hammers, nails, bricks and blocks, ‘Pretty and Shiny- O’ with brushes and brooms, polish and soap. The song ‘Dobee Brick’ and the novel House of Earth document Guthrie’s fascination with adobe architecture: houses build of bricks, mud and clay. The theme is repeated in ‘Bling Blang’ (I’ll grab some mud and you grab some clay, So when it rains it won’t wash away) and in the song ‘Where Did You Go?’.

52  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children ‘Give me a Nail’ ‘Build me a Boat’, ‘Hammer Ring’, ‘Digger Man’ and ‘Dig a Hole’ offer an insight into Guthrie’s commitment to Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. The mention of tools in the context of childhood reflects the significant influence of Montessori and her insistence that teachers should provide young children with real tools (Mooney 2000: 25). The equipment, she stressed, should be suited to the child’s physical size, while knives, scissors and woodworking tools should be sharp, rather than dull. Guthrie also shared Montessori’s practical and pedagogical urge to build against fascism (ibid.: 23). Piaget developed Montessori’s ideas of the child learning through work. He repeatedly stressed the role of repetitive trial-and-error activity in the learning process and asserted the links between children’s play and work (ibid.: 61–63). Like Erikson, Piaget  also formulated developmental stages through which the child’s cognitive growth could be recognised (ibid.: 64). In her liner notes to Guthrie’s Work Songs to Grow On, educator and writer Beatrice Landeck explains how: Work is a pleasurable and very serious business for most young children. Woody’s songs … will keep alive the pleasures of constructive physical activity … Songs such as Cathy’s ‘Bigger’, ‘One Day Old’ and ‘Wanna see me Grow’ are clearly about the physical growth of a child. Guthrie’s encouragement of personal and communal growth is interspersed in his notebooks and letters. In the aftermath of Cathy’s death, he pronounces: BUT, YOU, YOU KIDS … COME ON AND KEEP GROWING. GROW UP FASTER AND PRETTIER THAN ANY OF THESE WILD FLOWERS I’VE GOT CROSSING MY BACK YARD THAT’S THE WAY YOU’D OUGHT TO GROW. … DON’T BE LITTLE OLD KIDS ALL OF YOUR LIFE TILL YOU GROW BIG71 Later, he addresses adults: … all of us are like our kids on the grow. All of us have got some kind of a hoping radio machine somewhere down in us that makes us feel, see and know just about what we’d ought to try to stretch out and grab onto next.72 While Guthrie’s upbringing in Okemah, Oklahoma was more white than blue collar, Woody, like his friends and peers Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax, and many folk musicians and urban intellectuals on the left, aligned himself

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  53 with working people (Cantwell 1996: 145–146).73 Guthrie internalised and performed union and labour songs, industrial and agricultural ballads and those from the worker’s song books of the mid 1930s (Cohen 2002: 23). His 1944 song ‘Union Baby’ promotes the idea of the child as a worker in the fight against fascism and corruption.74 Guthrie even proposed an album called ‘War Songs are Work Songs’ declaring that ‘This is a war of work and work is the only thing you can sing about these days’.75 His preoccupation with work and growth was matched by his interest in technology. At least 16 songs are themed around methods of transport. More are about items of technology, mostly communication devices such as the telephone, radio and phonograph. Guthrie’s obsession with cars is evidenced in the many ‘adult’ songs he wrote about Cadillacs, roads, traffic and parking (Kaufman 2017: 57–72) and also in those for children. The 13 original verses of ‘Riding in my Car’, perhaps Guthrie’s best-known children’s song, are filled with energetic climbing on the seats and the enthusiastic sounds of the engine and the horn. The song’s narrator is an adult who tells the children: ‘If you promise to be real good and not kick all my paint off …’. The ‘Windshield Wiper’ song uses a part of the car to express Guthrie’s grief for Cathy (‘My windshield wiper moans… you’re not here to hum with me’). Other forms of transport feature in ‘Riding in my Bus’, ‘Bussy Window’, ‘Trucky Song’, ‘Tractor Song’, ‘Choo Choo Train’, ‘Build me a Boat’, ‘Bananny Wagon’ and others. Guthrie’s songs for children encompass air transport in the surreal ‘Jet Plane’ (‘I’ll stop your steam train and let my pomegranate through’) and the child-narrated ‘My Daddy flies that Ship in the Sky’. Finally, ‘My Flying Saucer’ (1950), his self- described ‘supersonic boogie’, illustrates both his commitment to family life (‘fly back for home. You will get lost in the universe alone!’) and his interest in science fiction.76 Guthrie’s modernist and progressive outlook informed his growing interests both in the environment (ibid.: 100–104) and in women’s equality. In a ten-page letter to the then­one-week-old ​­ Cathy, Guthrie writes: Men have enjoyed a sort of artificial sense of superiority over the women for several centuries… I have got to work and fight and do all I can to break the old slavery idea of the woman being ‘chained’ to her ‘house’ … build neighbourhood nurseries to care for children of all ages so every woman can go out to work … She is as free as her husband to go and to come, to rest, spare time, study, to educate herself as high as she desires … equal pay for equal work done, on a scale with men. … to make men and women equal in all things …77 In keeping with his forward-looking mindset, in the late 1940s, Guthrie wrote dozens of songs about atomic energy and nuclear power including the seemingly child-targeted ‘I’m a Little Atom’.78

54  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children

The music of Guthrie’s songs for children So far, the focus has been on the words of Guthrie’s songs. His constructions of childhood have, thus far, been derived from thematic tropes, narrative and literary devices, and the contextual and paratextual information found in notebooks, lyric sheets and letters. The vast majority, around 90%, of Guthrie’s songs for children exist only as written rhymes and verses. It is clear from the sheer volume of his lyrics, notebooks, essays, letters, screenplays, novels and publishing contracts that Guthrie considered himself primarily a writer of words, rather than a composer of music. Occasionally, he included a brief note to indicate the melody, most frequently a reference to a familiar tune. Like most folk singers, Guthrie often recycled and retooled existing melodies. He was immersed in a process of passing on traditional melodies to children and of supplementing them with ideas created by his children, wife and others. Such a process was standard practice in song books of the time and helped singers learn and remember words quickly, desired qualities for mass singing events. For example, Guthrie’s ‘Jiggy Jiggy Bum’, and ‘Bubble Gum’ share both a melodic top line and the tonic, sub- dominant and dominant chord (I, IV, V) changes of his ‘This Land is Your Land’ itself derived from previous sources.79 ‘Dance Around’ has a very similar melody to Songs to Grow On’s ‘Why, Oh Why’. This oral ‘folk’ process is a testament to the agency and autonomy of children and to the largely undetected ways that children’s songs circulate. Research uncovers ‘the archaeology’ of specific children’s oral cultures (Messenger Davies 2010: 113). Analysis of the music of the 15 songs on Nursery Days (1992) shows that, with just three exceptions, the songs have short consecutive melodic intervals of less than a sixth (the average is five-and-a-half semitones), overall melodic ranges of less than an octave (most have a fifth or a sixth) and predictable scale-wise ​­ melodies.80 Harmonically, all of the songs used only the I, IV, V major chords and have perfect cadences. With some differences, these attributes largely tally with those of the folk songs recorded for children by Pete Seeger and Lead Belly.81 They also mirror the model set out in Orff’s Music für Kinder song books from the previous decade. Orff’s atthe-time experimental approach to children’s musical education was popular in New York in the 1930s. His methods promoted I, IV, V harmonic progressions, short oft-repeated scale-w ise melodic motifs and small melodic intervals with no harmonic counterpoint (Helm 1955). Like Guthrie’s music for children, Orff attracted claims of primitivism and a purposive ideologically driven simplicity (ibid.: 293–294). Reviews of Orff’s music contrasted it to the extravagant and ‘expressive’ melodies and harmonies of Romantic and post-Romantic classical composers such as Arnold Schoenberg. Orff was depicted as a ‘Simple Simon’ for pedalling ‘a deliberate and calculated return to simplicity’ and for including ‘inexpressive’ folk melodies that were ‘only one step removed from rhythmic speech’ (ibid.: 293–294

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  55 and 298). Guthrie’s similarities with Orff extend to his modernist worldview and multi-media polymath tendencies. Both men also created syntheses of music, dance, visual art and spoken word. As such, Guthrie’s music and philosophy of children’s music as progressive pedagogy are perfectly in sync not only with the burgeoning folk boom but also with the wider educational, cultural and ideological landscape.82

Guthrie’s recordings for children A phonograph record is a funny thing. You talk at it only once and it talks back at you for several years. Woody Guthrie83 I would like to get inside the music box and sing with you, Daddy Cathy Ann Guthrie84 Guthrie released two albums for children: Songs to Grow On: Nursery Days in 1946 and Songs to Grow On: Work Songs for Nursery Days in 1947.85 The albums were later retitled Songs to Grow On for Mother and Child and Nursery Days, respectively; I use these later titles throughout this chapter. Recorded at Moses (Moe) Asch’s recording studio on West 46th Street, New York in February and March of 1946 (Goldsmith 1998: 181), the 12 songs (6 on each album) were originally released on two sets of three ten-inch discs. The recordings feature Guthrie (and occasionally Marjorie) singing and speaking, accompanied by his own guitar and harmonica. On many of the songs on the second album, Woody and Marjorie play shakers, drums and rattles. The unadorned single-track recordings capture the spontaneous intimacy of the inception of the songs and the intended improvisation of the child’s reception. Guthrie was fascinated by the recording process and with the technology of record production.86 His personal documents reveal his critiques of his own recordings and acknowledge the substantial input of Marjorie into the composition, arrangement and recording of the songs (ibid.: 181).87 Working with children as a dance teacher at the time, Marjorie attended the recording sessions to coach her husband on his delivery to a child audience. Woody reflected that: I liked having Marjorie there to help me. She tells me to sing it slow and plain, to vision Stacky Bones in my mind. … It’s hard for me to sing slow enough. I’ve nearly lost my old knack for singing slow since I’ve come New York where you sing so fast.88 By all accounts, the albums proved an immediate critical success in leftwing circle, being described as ‘some of the most delightful children’s songs ever recorded’ by the communist People’s World (ibid.: 181). However, there is some debate about their commercial success (ibid.: 157 and 277; Santelli

56  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children 2012: 154). Although sales of the two albums were modest when compared to some of YPR’s biggest sellers, they sold well to progressive schools and kindergartens. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they outsold most, if not all, of his ‘adult’ albums at the time of release and continue to do so (Place 2012; Santelli 2012: 154). Unlike the fixedness and regularity of the notations found in song books, Guthrie’s studio recordings capture the looseness and fluidity of his delivery and reveal important differences between the two media. While the bookbased transcriptions are instructions for musicians, vocalists and ensemble leaders, the recordings offer the aurality of his idiosyncratic instrumental and vocal performances. ‘Put your Finger in the Air’ and ‘Riding in my Car’ contain shifting tempos, variations in line and verse length, guitar drop-outs and other features that are often corrected in song book notation. Whereas the books provide a standardised and easily replicable version, the recordings capture the unadorned immediacy and the spontaneous in-the-moment flexibility that, one presumes, Guthrie would have employed in his many recitals for his and other children. Elsewhere, I have argued that the ‘tidying’ of Guthrie’s songs for children in song books and in the many subsequent cover versions has added to their simplicity and to their sense of ‘childness’ (Hollindale 1997: 47; Maloy 2016: 19). These qualities, I suggest, have helped in the transmission of Guthrie’s songs and allowed them to transcend their socio-h istoric roots. However, it is to the exuberant and instinctive original recordings that most commentators refer when describing Guthrie’s songs for children.89

Guthrie’s songs for children after Cathy’s death Cathy died at the family home just days after her fourth birthday in February 1947. Alone in the house, a freak spark from a radio’s electric cable set fire to her clothing. Unsurprisingly, the loss greatly affected both Woody and Marjorie.90 The top half of a sheet of typing paper captures Guthrie’s hopes for the soon-to-be-born Arlo (‘I … felt little Pete roll’), Cathy’s use of the record player (she asks for Sonny Terry’s recording of ‘Lost John’ about ‘two or three times every day’).91 The bottom half reveals not only Guthrie’s stoicism in the face of adversity but also a renewed sense of purpose: This is to test my typewriter after it came through a bath of Cathy’s fire … My typewriter sat about two feet from the big easy padded chair that Cathy was setting [sic] in reading her Two By Six kids magazine for parents… I am going ahead now and finish up this letter … on this same piece of scorched and smoked paper just to show myself that such a thing as a no good wartime radio wire shorting out and burning Little Miss Stackabones to death has not stopped me nor slowed my thinking down, but has made my old bones jump up wider awake to fight against this kind of a greed that sells such dangerous wirings …

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  57 The songs that followed between 1948 and 1950 reveal how Guthrie responded to his bereavement through outpourings of creativity (Figure 3.1). He redoubled his commitments to writing and performing for children. His plans were ambitious and involved a range of recording and broadcast media. As early as January 1943, he had proposed a radio show for children.92 Cheap Cheap Songs was to feature his own material alongside that of others. Like many of his ideas at the time, the project remained unrealised. Guthrie repeatedly articulated plans to make children’s music a more substantial part of his life and career including a 12-month tour with Marjorie of ‘Cathy’s songs’ and ‘Cathy’s dances’.93 He even suggested 56 ‘names for Marjorie and Woody’s Kids Parties’ including Children’s Wild Time, Sweety Swing Time, Woozie Juice Time, Crazy Playtime, See me Grow and Kutie Pie Playtime.94 His notebooks record how he performed for children and adults immediately before and after Cathy’s death: 8 Feb 1947 Booking. 11pm Town Hall, Daytime: Cripple Children’s Camp, Morningside Com. Centre – no pay OK. 9 Feb 1947: Booking Union Electrical Workers, Elizabeth NJ. [the night of Cathy’s fire] 15 Feb Barluzon Plaza – $35. 26 Aug Played the song at a parents meeting at Coney Island Child care centre. ‘Wake up and Dewey right’.95 16 April 1948. ‘Kids Hoot … with Oscar Brand of WNYC at four pm’.96 By 1948, Woody and Marjorie were performing together at children’s parties and other events,97 in part due to financial difficulties (Cray 2004: 326).98 Perhaps Guthrie’s most ambitious children’s music project was a 22-page screenplay that he sent to the film director Irving Lerner that year. Typed entirely in upper case, ‘Songs to Grow On’ contains extensive dialogue, narrated voice- overs and detailed audio and visual directions for an action-packed short film based on the couple’s life as children’s entertainers, to include their one-year-old son Arlo and five of Guthrie’s songs for children. After a descriptive and didactic introduction that details the origins and function of the guitar, the family band perform ‘Put your Finger in the Air’ on the lawn of a boy’s birthday party. Children and adults are seen smearing cake frosting ‘all over themselves’. After the children have strummed Woody’s guitar, the Guthries drive away headed for Canada, their car stacked high with Arlo’s crib and a plethora of musical instruments. On the road, Woody and Marjorie argue about the usefulness of the map (Marjorie: ‘You’re my chauffeur, not my dictator’) and the amount of money they were paid or supposed to be paid for the party. Concerned by the high load, a police car pulls them over. They comply but this blocks the traffic and stalls the engine. Preoccupied under the bonnet, Woody sings to himself: ‘you better run, little Totsy, Totsy99 … you better run, little engine,

58  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children engine …’. The two policemen make increasingly comical efforts to get Guthrie’s attention. Woody, still engrossed, repeatedly thinks they are Marjorie. The hot sun melts his recent do-it-yourself car paint job which inevitably ends up covering the cops who then charge Guthrie with a long string of offences that includes ‘suspicious character, being unemployed, vagrant, a public nuisance [and] … trying to start a riot’. Marjorie takes control telling Woody ‘you always lose your head and let your temper fly away from you’ before convincing the police that the Guthries are in fact entertainers who ‘make up songs for children to sing and to dance’. She asserts that their ‘“Songs to Grow On” are in just about every school and more in the city of New York’. Fate smiles when a yellow school bus full of children bound for a summer camp pulls up. Everyone sings and dances to ‘Take you Riding in my Car’, while the bus tows the Guthries’ car out onto the road starting the engine. The Guthries and the bus drive away. The police give chase but eventually throw the arrest warrants out of the window in comic frustration. As the singing soars (‘I’m gonna pull you home again’) and the police disappear, the school bus full of children and the Guthries’ car enter the summer camp. The camera fades. In many ways, Guthrie’s proposed film was ahead of its time. Designed as a suite of media products to include the film, an illustrated song book100 and a recorded album replete with Guthrie’s artwork, lyrics and extensive liner notes,101 ‘Songs to Grow On’ anticipated the licencing of media products and multi-product brand building that became marketing strategies for children’s media in the following decades.102 Similarly, while car chases and verbal/physical anti-authoritarian humour were staples of the intergenerational cinema shorts of the 1920s and 1930s, ‘Songs to Grow On’ adapts these tropes into a live-action made-for-TV musical road-movie conceived it seems for a family audience. In writing for the small screen, Guthrie was attempting to build on his extensive experience as a radio presenter103 and exploit the rapid growth in television ownership in late 1940s America. Guthrie’s script also anticipates children’s music consumption practices in the 21st century whereby YouTube videos and on- demand visual media have largely replaced physical formats as carriers of music. ‘Songs to Grow On’ is further evidence of Guthrie’s progressive views on childhood. Children are represented as active agents with speaking roles. The references to mundane matters of adulthood (earning a living, having a driving licence, dealing with the law) construct the child as a socialised participant in intergenerational communities. Despite Woody’s upbeat introduction of Marjorie in the script,104 their marriage was coming to an end. The scripted arguments mirror the couple’s by-then turbulent real-life relationship. The script also describes a ‘little girl in a pretty dress’. Cathy died in hospital in what remained of her pink birthday party dress.

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  59 By the early 1950s, Guthrie’s children’s music output was slowing. Guthrie documented his grief for his beloved Cathy in the four-verse song ‘Whistle Birdy’.105 As well as the worsening effects of Huntington’s, Guthrie was shaken by the death of his friend Lead Belly in December 1949. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, progressive left-w ing patriotism had turned into the ‘red scares’. Guthrie’s contemporaries Pete Seeger, Burl Ives and Tom Glazer were forced to testify in court (or invoked the Fifth Amendment) as to their involvement in ‘un-A merican activities’. Senator Joseph McCarthy targeted actors, authors, musicians, teachers and activists and anyone else suspected of having communist links. Many folk artists were hounded and blacklisted preventing them from appearing in colleges, night clubs and theatres. Their supposedly subversive records and performances disappeared from radio and television. This coincided with anti- communist rioting; the Peekskill riots at music concerts in New York State in August 1949 directly affected Seeger and Robeson. In the wake of blacklisting, many folk artists turned to children’s music for much needed income and/or by the invitation of the schools and summer camps106 circulating Guthrie’s songs and recordings to young and receptive communities.

Conclusion Cathy’s works she done in her four short years will echo from iron to brick for some long seasons to come, and maybe always keep on living and growing. (Woody and Marjorie Guthrie)107 Guthrie’s songs for children continued to circulate in the decades that followed his hospitalisation in the 1950s and eventual death in 1967. In the short term, they were covered by artists including Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Cisco Huston and Burl Ives, his son Arlo (1992) and Bob Dylan.108 Many other US and US-based musicians such as Malvina Reynolds, Ella Jenkins and Suni Paz have worked with Folkways and with Guthrie’s material, and have enjoyed decade-spanning carers as children’s music writers, performers and recording artists. Guthrie’s unrecorded songs for children have subsequently found a new life. Since the mid 1990s, Nora Guthrie and others at the Woody Guthrie Foundation, Centre and Archives have worked with a range of artists to compose new music for the unreleased words. Daddy-O-Daddy ​­ (2001) included versions by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Taj Mahal, Cissy Huston, Kim Wilson and others alongside an unreleased recording of Guthrie’s own ‘Howdy Little Newlycome’. Other releases such as Mermaid Avenue Vol. II by Billy Bragg and Wilco (2000), Go Wagaloo by Woody’s granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie (2009) and Little Seed: Songs for

60  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children Children by Woody Guthrie by Elizabeth Mitchell (2013) have continued to bring Guthrie’s songs for children to a wider public. The unrecorded songs continue to be a source of identity and solidarity. In 2006, The Klezmatics won a Grammy award for Wonder Wheel: Lyrics by Woody Guthrie, the first Guthrie-linked Grammy. The band also set a number of Guthrie’s Jewish festival lyrics to music on their Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah album (2006). The Red scares had unforeseen benefits for children’s music in the United Kingdom. Lomax, Elliott and Peggy Seeger and others moved to England in the 1950s largely to evade blacklisting and the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) trials. Lomax worked extensively on children’s folk music television and radio programmes while in London. In the mid 1950s, Lomax, Seeger, Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd formed The Ramblers skiffle group coinciding with a major growth in the genre. The songs of Lead Belly and Guthrie formed the core repertoire of the first do-it-yourself guitar-led popular music (Bragg 2017). The catalytic effect of Guthrie, Lomax, Seeger, Elliott and other Guthrie acolytes on the music of UK children’s radio and television in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond cannot be underestimated (Chapters 4 and 5).109 The next chapter examines the BBC’s radio broadcasting for children in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. It looks at how ideologically charged ‘family values’ were communicated by the BBC through music for children.110

Notes 1 All archival references are from the Woody Guthrie Archives (WGA), Tulsa, Oklahoma. For concision, an abbreviated form of the full reference is used. For example: WGA. Notebooks Series-1, Item- 48. 1946, pp. 3–4. is shortened to: WGA. NB S1, #48, 1946: 3–4. Tallying the number of cover versions and streams on iTunes, Spotify and other sites suggests that ‘Put your Finger in the Air’, ‘Take you Riding in the Car (Car song)’ and ‘Hoodoo Voodoo’ (originally titled ‘1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8’) are currently his most popular. 2 Fired by anti-fascism and obliged by the draft, Guthrie served two eventful tours of duty with the merchant marines in Europe and North Africa and a third as a private in the army. He wrote many of his songs for children on ships, in army bases and at home in Coney Island during his periods of leave. They are often interspersed in his notebooks with war songs and bawdy rhymes. 3 My research in the WGA in July 2018 unearthed 408 songs (Appendix 3.2). 4 Guthrie recorded around 49 songs for children in February and March 1946. Despite extensive research by Guy Logsdon (2012: 143–144) and others, no studio production sheets seem to have been kept by producer Moe Asch. My research revealed three songs not on Logsdon’s list. Equating to approximately 10% of the songs Guthrie wrote for children, the figure mirrors the 300- or-so recordings out of the approximately 3,000 songs that Guthrie wrote overall.

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  61

62  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children I die? I dont [sic] want to die. I want to be alive. I dont [sic] want to be dead. When you die do men shoot you? I don’t want to die. I don’t want to. Why do people die? Why do they? Little kids don’t die do they? Just big people, huh, and not little kids. (WGA. NB S1, #56: 18. 12 June 1947) Guthrie’s notebooks also show that he transcribed the speech of the children from his first family, his drill instructor and other soldiers while in the army (WGA. Corr S1, B2, F1. Letters from WG to Marjorie and Cathy. 28 May 1945: 3–4) and the children on the street of Coney Island (WGA. Corr S1, B1, F45. Letters from WG to Marjorie. 1943. 21 January). He continued the practice with his other children after Cathy’s death. (WGA. NB S2, #2 ‘Book 2: 83). 14 WGA. Corr S2, B5, F6. Letter to Violet Weingarten, from Cathy, Marjorie, Woody and Pete (coming up). 27 Feb 1947. 15 For example, Guthrie notes that the song ‘Down Do’ was ‘Zib’s [Arlo’s] first song made up this date’ (WGA. NB. S2 #7: 83. 22 Apr 1949). ‘Butterfly Fly’ is ‘from an original idea born unto Joady Ben Guthrie’, while ‘Funny Fly’ is from ‘Arlo’s jabbertalk’ (WGA. NB S2, #6: 42), both August 1950. 16 WGA. NB S1, #-39: 24. April 1945. 17 WGA. NB S2 #-3: 86. 1946. 18 WGA. Child Sitting. Manuscripts 9. S1, B4, F33: 6. 14 December 1946. Guthrie also mentions Cathy’s prodigious abilities in letters to Marjorie (Corr S2, B5, F1. 17 February 1947) and Violet Weingarten (Corr S2, B5, F1. 27 February 1947). 19 WGA. Child Sitting: 6. 20 While the most recent Smithsonian Folkways release states that ‘All songs written, composed, and performed by Woody Guthrie’, Guthrie’s liner notes to his Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs 1948 song book explicitly attribute authorship of ‘I’ll Race you Down the Mountain’ and ‘Merry Go “Round”’ (both recorded and released) to ‘Marjorie Mazia Guthrie’ (WGA. NB S1, #86). Biographer Joe Klein was explicit in acknowledging Cathy’s substantial input into her father’s songs: ‘I knew Cathy … she made up the songs, Woody picked them up and put music to them’ (WGA. Joe Klein Interviews. B1. 2000-38.07- 08-Moe Asch). Smithsonian recording archivist Jeff Place also mentioned how Cathy helped her father with songs such as ‘Riding in the Car’ and ‘Clean- O’ (Santelli and Davidson 1999: 64). 21 Despite the onset of Huntington’s, in 1946–1948, Guthrie was still fastidiously documenting every aspect of his life and career through songs, essays, long letters and visual art. This included active engagement in pursuing the infringement of copyright of his songs (Kaufman 2017: 126). In contrast, Moe Asch kept no records of recording dates or session notes and few (if any) that indicate the financial arrangements between the two parties. 22 Waking up songs: ‘Wake up’, ‘Get up early’, Wake up and do right’ and ‘Wake uppy time.’ 23 Get dressed songs: ‘Shoe on wrong’, ‘One two, I need some shoes’, ‘Mummy shoe, Daddy shoe’ and ‘Old shoe.’ 24 The 20-plus songs about food and drink include ‘I want my milk’, ‘Chewed and chewed’, ‘Appeldy juice’, ‘Soda soda’, ‘My pretty little cup’, ‘Pretzel stick’, ‘Blue banana’, ‘Cheese and crackers’, ‘Eggy Eggy’ and ‘Crackerlin’ Bread’ (Appendices 3.1 and 3.2). 25 ‘Make a blobble’ (1948). 26 The 30+ play and games songs include ‘Throw my ball’, ‘Chess horse’, ‘Stack my blocks’, ‘Spin Dreydl Spin’, ‘Skippy skip’, ‘Take my turn’, ‘Put your finger in the air’ and ‘Race you down the mountain.’

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  63

64  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  65

66  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children The depth of his depression is summed up in the letter’s final uncharacteristic line: ‘I’m so low I can’t even write’. (WGA. Corr S-1, B2, F12) 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

Woody Guthrie. WGA. Manuscripts 1, B4, F50. WGA. Corr S1, B1, F45. 1943. WGA. B4, F33. 167. 14 Dec 1946: 6. WGA. NB S2, #11. ‘Book #16’. WGA. NB S1, #55. Diary for 1947. WGA. Corr S1, B3, F18. 16 April 1948. A poster for ‘Saturdays for Children’ shows that ‘Woody & Marge Guthrie’ performed alongside Betty Sanders and Peter Pan the Magic Man on 25 September 1948. The event was hosted by the Childcare Parents Association in the Town Hall, New York. It started at 10.30 am and entry was $1 (Woody Guthrie Centre). 98 The Guthries had recently borrowed $3000 from Marjorie’s parents. 99 Totsy Kopotsky was the name that daughter Cathy gave to the Guthrie’s reallife car (NB S1, #56: 24. 1947). 100 The same month that Guthrie pitched the Songs to Grow On project (November 1948), Viking Press rejected and returned Guthrie’s Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs book (Cray 2004: 326). Despite each page being illustrated by expressive watercolours, the book remained unpublished until 1992. Guthrie assembled the 18 songs in the original copy as a hardback book from typed lyrics, artwork and hand- drawn notation. The book was dedicated to: the memory of Cathy Ann, whose words inspired it, whose playing gave birth to it, whose smile and whose laugh we try to catch parts of to make our hearts laugh, to make our books dance, today and tomorrow. (WGA. NB S1, #86) 101 Guthrie pitched two albums of children’s music to Capitol in the winter of 1948 (Cray 2004: 326). The track list for Songs to Grow On (pitched in November 1948) was ‘Hoodoo Voodoo’, ‘One day old’, ‘Warshy Little Tootsy’, ‘Rattle my rattle’, ‘Drink you down’ and ‘Wild Aminul’. Woody’s Grow Big Songs contained ‘Come See’, ‘My Dolly’, ‘Mailman’, ‘Tip Tap Toe’, ‘Where did you go’ and ‘Sleep eye’. Both albums were rejected (WGA. NB S1, #8a, ‘Woody’s Grow Big songs’; WGA. Harold Leventhal Collection. S4: Business Papers, C. 1940–1992. B2. Letter from Al Brackman to Harold Leventhal. 13 January 1959). 102 While concepts of franchising, licencing and branding have informed children’s media since its inception, deregulation in the 1980s and the conglomeration of media networks in the 2000s have normalised the practice of franchising. 103 By 1948, Guthrie was showing a good deal of interest in becoming a television presenter and actor. In 1946, he pitched a film proposal for Greasy String to Irving Lerner (Kaufman 2017: 315) followed by a 413-page treatment of his gold-hunting ​­ adventure Study Butte/Foolish(e) Gold (WGA. S3: Manuscripts (2003-73.6A) ​­ B1, F18 (letter 6 November 1947 and letter 16 December 1948). 104 The script tells how Marjorie had ‘danced and taught classes for the past twelve years at the studios of Martha Graham dance company … travelled with modern dance companies around over the map’. 105 WGA. NB S2, #3: 25. 24 Oct 1950. 106 Not only did children’s music provide a safe haven for many of the blacklisted male folk artists, but McCarthyism largely avoided the many women who sang, recorded and taught folk music. This further contributed to both folk and children’s music’s ability to flourish under the radar of anti-socialist oppression.

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  67

107 108 109

110

Bonnie Lockhart adds: ‘Not to say schools and teachers were free from that repression, but the cultural restrictions in those spaces were not as severe as in the more powerful and profitable entertainment industry’ (2017a). WGA. Corr S2, B5, F1. Letter to ‘Toddy’ from Cathy, WG and Marge. 27 Feb 1947. Dylan and David Van Ronk performed ‘Riding in my Car’ in New York in 1961 (2014). For example, British skiffle musician and Guthrie aficionado Wally Whyton presented and performed folk music on a series of BBC children’s programmes in the 1960s and early 1970s. Whyton was also the first non-A merican to record an entire album of Guthrie’s children’s songs (1970). Guthrie was seen by the BBC as an ‘ambassador for American folk for English listeners’ during the war (Miller 2018: 3).

Bibliography Ariès, P. 1962. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Vintage Books. Boutet de Monvel, A. 1963. ‘Introduction’, in Rousseau, J.J. ed. Émile. London: Dent. Bragg, B. 2017. Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World. London: Faber & Faber. Cantwell, R. 1996. When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Cohen, R.D. 2002. Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Cohen, R.D. and Donaldson, R.C., eds. 2014. Roots of the Revival: American & British Folk Music in the 1950s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Cray, E. 2004. Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie. New York and London: Norton. Goldsmith, P.D. 1998. Making People’s Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Gubar, M. 2009. Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Literature: New York: Oxford University Press. Guthrie, N. 2012. Conversation with Liam Maloy. 9 September. ‘Woody at 100’ conference, Penn State University. Guthrie, W. 1991. Song to Grow on for Mother and Child [CD liner notes]. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways. Guthrie, W. 1992. ’Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs. New York: HarperCollins. Guthrie, W. 2013. House of Earth. London: Fourth Estate. Helm, E. 1955. ‘Carl Orff’, The Musical Quarterly, (41)3: 285–304. Hollindale, P. 1997. Signs of Childness in Children’s Books. Stroud: Thimble Press. Hopkin, J.B. 1984. ‘Jamaican children’s songs’, Ethnomusicology, 28(1): 1–36. Kaufman, W. 2017. Woody Guthrie’s Modern World Blues. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Klein, J. 1980. Woody Guthrie: A life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Knowles, E.K. 2009. Review of Children and Theatre in Victorian Britain: All Work, No Play by Anne Varty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Theatre Journal, 61(2): 339–340. Landeck, B. 1948. Songs to Grow On. New York: Marks & Sloane. Landeck, B. 1950. More Songs to Grow On. New York: Marks & Sloane.

68  Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children Logsdon, G. 2012. Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection [Album booklet notes: 143–144]. Maloy, L. 2016. ‘“Why couldn’’t the wind blow backwards?” Woody Guthrie’s songs for children’, Woody Guthrie Annual, 2: 18–43. Marsh, K. 2008. The Musical Playground: Global Tradition and Change in Children’s Songs and Games. New York: Oxford University Press. Messenger Davies, M. 2010. Children, Media and Culture. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Miller, C.J. 2018. ‘Woody’s songs go to war on the BBC’, Woody Guthrie Annual, 4: 3–21. Mitchell, G. 2007. The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945–1980. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Mitchell, E. 2012. Liner Notes to ‘Little Seed: Songs for Children by Woody Guthrie’. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways. Mooney, C.G. 2000. Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget & Vygotsky. St Paul, MN: Redleaf Press. Neimark, A.E. 2002. The Life of Woody Guthrie: There Ain’t Nobody that Can Sing Like Me. New York: Simon and Shulster. Olmstead, T. 2003. Folkways Records: Moses Asch and His Encyclopedia of Sound. New York: Routledge. Opie, I. and Opie, P. 1959. The Lore and the Language of Schoolchildren. New York: New York Review Books. Osborn-Seyffert, A. 1988. ‘Analysis and classification of British- Canadian children’s traditional singing games’, MUSICultures, 16: 49–53. Partridge, E. 2002. This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie. New York: Viking Books for Young Readers. Place, J. 2012. Email to Liam Maloy, 31 January. Rose, J. 1992. The Case of Peter Pan, or, The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction’. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Rosenberg, N.V. ed. 1993. Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Rousseau, J.J. 1762. Émile. Reprinted 1974. London: Everyman’s Library. Santelli, R. 2012. This Land Is Your Land: Woody Guthrie and the Journey of an American Folk Song. Philadelphia, PA: Running Press. Santelli, R. and Davidson, E. eds., 1999. Hard Travelin’: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie. Hanover: University Press of New England. Shaw, J. 2013: This Land that I Love: Irvin Berling, Woody Guthrie and the Story of Two Americas. New York: PublicAffairs. Shehan Campbell, P. 1998. Songs in Their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in children’s Lives. New York: Oxford University Press. Shehan Campbell, P. 2017. Email to Liam Maloy, 6 December. Stolder, S. 2012. Editorial Review of Woody Guthrie’s ‘Songs to Grow On for Mother and Child. Amazon.com.

Audio sources Bragg, Billy, and Wilco. Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions. Nonesuch, 2012. Brooke, Jonathan. The Works. Bad Dog Records, 2008. Includes Guthrie’s ‘Little Bird’.

Woody Guthrie’s 400 songs for children  69 Del McCoury Band. Del and Woody. McCoury Music. CD. 2016. Includes Guthrie’s ‘Little Fellow’. Dylan, Bob. Live at The Gaslight, NYC Sept 6th, 1961. Mr. Suit Records, 2014. Elliott, Ramblin’ Jack. Songs to Grow On by Woody Guthrie. Folkways Records, 1961. English, Logan. Woody Guthrie’s Children’s Songs. Folkways, 1974. Guthrie, Sarah Lee. Go Wagaloo! Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2009. Guthrie, Woody. Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2012. Includes previously unreleased recordings of ‘Goodnight Little Cathy’, Guthrie on BBC Children’s Hour 7 July 1944, and ‘My Little Seed’. Guthrie, Woody. Songs to Grow On: Nursery Days. Disc 605. 1946. Guthrie, Woody. Work Songs to Grow On: Nursery Days. Disc 602. 1947. Guthrie, Woody. Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1991. Guthrie. Woody. Nursery Days. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1992. Klezmatics, The. Wonder Wheel: Lyrics by Woody Guthrie. Jewish Music Group, 2006. Includes ‘Heddy down’. Klezmatics, The. Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah. Jewish Music Group, 2006. Klezmatics, The. Honeyky Hanukah. Doubleday Books for Young Readers, 2015. Includes a recording of ‘Honeyky Hanukah’. Mazia, Marjorie. Dance-a-long. ​­ Folkways Records, 1950. Mitchell, Elizabeth. Little Seed: Songs for children by Woody Guthrie. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2012. Lead Belly. Play parties in Song and Dance, as sung by Lead Belly, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1999. Lomax, Alan, et al. The Ballad Operas: The Martins and the Coys. Rounder, 2000. Seeger, Pete. American Folk Songs for children. Folkways Records, 1954. Seeger, Pete. For Kids or just Plain Folks. Sony Wonder, 1997. Various. Songs to Grow On, Vol. 2: School days. Folkways Records, 1951. Various. Songs to Grow On Vol. 3: American work songs. Folkways Records, 1951. Various. Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs. Warner Bros. Records Inc., 1992. Various. Daddy- O -Daddy!: Rare family songs of Woody Guthrie. Rounder, 2001. Includes Guthrie’s 1951 home recording of ‘Howdy Little Newlycome’. Whyton, Wally. Sings Childrens [sic] Songs of Woody Guthrie. Marble Arch Records, 1970.

4

How radio constructs childhood The changing family values of the BBC’s Children’s Choice

The BBC’s popular Saturday morning radio record request programme Children’s Choice was broadcast between 1953 and the early 1980s.1 Later known as Children’s Favourites and Junior Choice, the show attracted a series of high-profile presenters and audiences of up to 17 million listeners at its peak in the 1970s (Radio Rewind 2014). The recordings of music played on the programme document the corporation’s changing conception of not only ‘the child’ but of ‘the family’, a term loaded with normative connotations of gender, sexuality, race and morality. The chapter focusses on a period when the BBC’s ‘family values’ were communicated most explicitly through music for children. Greatly influenced by the ideologies of its first Director General John Reith, the BBC aimed to meld the child into an attentive listener and active citizen while simultaneously engaging parents, especially mothers. On the surface, Reith’s conception of the child had much in common with that of Woody Guthrie. Both promoted the child as a member of a family unit rooted in wider intergenerational communities; both integrated music into family routines, either as prompts for or background to domestic activity. Equally, Reith and Guthrie encouraged family and community cohesion through music that included generation-straddling themes, imagery and language. However, while their aims seem similar, their underlying notions of the child are profoundly different. As discussed in Chapter 3, Guthrie’s idealised child was informed by socialist values and a progressive child- c entred pedagogy, in solidarity with working- class and oppressed people worldwide. While he shared Guthrie’s ethic of work and growth, Reith’s idealised family was explicitly Christian, middle class and white. Roles for mothers and fathers were clearly defined. Guthrie’s small-town Oklahoma auto- didactic childhood was initially one of relative affluence before his mother’s illness (and subsequent death) and the Dust Bowl rendered the family poor in his early teens. Conversely, Reith and other BBC children’s directors and producers had privileged educational and cultural backgrounds. Children’s Choice evidences how these experiences influenced the BBC’s public service agenda to inform, educate and entertain. Guthrie’s 1940s New York buzzed with a modernist sense of growth and with the

How radio constructs childhood  71 progressive ideas of a politicised intellectual avant-garde. It was not until the mid 1950s with the end of rationing (1954), an upward turn in prosperity and the popularity of skiffle that Britain’s post-war optimism began to peak (Booker 1970: 32–33). Despite its assertive expression in internal documents, the BBC’s vision of the idealised child was often contradictory. This resulted in some baffling song selections. I attempt to explain particular paradoxical messages communicated by Children’s Choice in the two main ways. Firstly, I examine the strategies used to construct the child through recordings of music. The main focus is on the broadcasting of 1950s and early 1960s and how the musical, lyrical and sonic factors of the records connoted the ‘family values’ of Children’s Choice’s most frequently broadcast discs. This textual analysis is contextualised by reference to the BBC’s internal memos, letters, meeting minutes, policy documents and audience research findings. Further support is offered by an investigation of the idiosyncrasies of radio as an instructive and entertaining medium. I argue that it was radio, rather than song books, albums or television, that forged a canon of songs and textual characteristics that many in the United Kingdom and beyond would still associate with childhood. I explain how radio relies on hyperbolic aural signification (Crisell 1994: 54) to create its sound images. I highlight how the novelty productions of George Martin were exemplars of such hyperbole and resulted in some of Children’s Choice’s most popular recordings. I chart how Children’s Choice bears the hallmarks of the swift and fundamental changes in British culture, society, broadcasting technology and programming for children in the mid to late 1950s. Secondly, and relatedly, I explain how Children’s Choice attracted and engaged older listeners as part of a deliberate strategy. Analyses of specific recordings, release dates and genres reveal how the BBC conceived of ‘the family’ as the central tenet of its public service ideology. Notably, many of the songs of Children’s Choice contain ‘adult’ themes such as death and sexuality. I discuss how comedy and sonic novelty provided an accessible textual form for the child to engage with such issues. I explain how the BBC’s intended family listening environment both facilitated and constructed the discursive process that informed the child’s understanding of such issues. Again, I discuss how the recordings produced by George Martin, as paradigms of the Music Hall formula, were perfectly suited to the delivery of Reith’s ambitious intergenerational agenda while touching on some of the era’s social concerns: race, class and the post-war erosion of the British Empire. Finally, the chapter examines more recent incarnations of Children’s Choice. The numerous themed album compilations and annual radio programmes contain more tropes of childness than the original broadcasts and reveal the enduring influence on childhood of discourses of innocence, age separateness and nostalgia. This chapter shifts the discussion away from the orality of folk music and the materiality of song books and record albums to the aurality of radio. As

72  How radio constructs childhood a one-way mass communication media, radio was the perfect vehicle to disseminate Reith’s ‘family values’ in the three decades before commercial television hastened the BBC’s expansion to television. As a primarily linguistic medium that relies on words both within and without the music to provide explanatory context for the more abstract musical and representational sounds (Crisell 1994: 54), radio was the ideal affective technology to deliver precise moral and ideological codes. However, radio also requires sound to convey its philological messages. In order to fire the listener’s imagination, radio needs voices, either spoken or sung, musical instruments, mixing and post-production techniques such as compression and limiting. The sound world of children’s radio often relies on imitative and representational sonic effects that anchor not only the sounds but the attendant words to wider socially dictated meanings (ibid.: 47). The exaggerated sonic qualities of many of Children’s Choice most frequently broadcast recordings compensate, or arguably over- compensate, for radio’s non-visual nature. Again, the records made by George Martin are exemplars of the levels of sonic novelty required to attract and sustain full-family listenership. The 1930s, 1940s and 1950s frame a period during which radio listening in the United Kingdom peaked as a group activity. Situated between the era of the tiny, delicate crystal sets of the 1920s that required headphones and constant retuning, and the portable relatively inexpensive transistor radios of the 1960s, the heavy valve- driven pieces of furniture that constituted radiograms in Reith’s heyday promoted group rather than individualised listening. Size and cost would have limited almost all households to just one set. The activities that accompanied Children’s Choice on Saturday mornings in the early 1950s would have been conducted within earshot of such equipment. Domestic family goings-on such as eating, cleaning and playing are more suited to the shared environment and an active engagement with radio than individuated ‘bedroom’ radio consumption. However, changes in broadcasting technology altered the social dynamics of families and in turn their listening habits. Artefacts and technologies script the ways in which the listener-viewer interacts with them. Behaviour is prompted by the medium or object. The materiality of recorded albums, radiograms or the booklets that accompany children’s programming (especially educational broadcasting) influences not only the child’s emotional and corporeal affect but also the attentiveness of the mode of listening. Reith’s imagined listener engaged with radio in a structured and highly attentive manner in many ways akin to the expected audience reception of classical music in recital halls. While emphasising the BBC’s class bias at the time, this mode contrasts with the spectrum of everyday listening practices (Kassabian 2013: 30). The potential for fragmented, inattentive backgrounded modes of listening arguably increased with cheaper, more portable radio sets, a trend that has continued into the digital age. While Reith’s highly attentive child was clearly an ideal, less formal modes of listening may define and divide generations (ibid.: 29). Again, Children’s

How radio constructs childhood  73 Choice charts changes in the BBC’s attempts to divide family listening into age-defined sub-categories through recordings of music. ­ ​­ ­ ​­ The story of the BBC’s broadcasting of music, and indeed, of any of its content for children, began with Children’s Hour. The music on the programme gives a strong sense of how the BBC’s agenda for children was developed during its first two decades. This section introduces John Reith and Derek McCulloch, arguably the two most influential figures on the BBC’s musical construction of childhood during this corporation’s first three decades. As seen later, the first decade of Children’s Choice bears many of the moral, religious and ideological features that had been developed on Children’s Hour.

Children’s Hour: delight for attentive, serious-minded children Children’s Hour was first broadcast on 23 December 1922, four years before the British Broadcasting Company gained its Royal Charter and became a publicly funded corporation. This largely unscripted and informal programme was presented by ‘Aunties and Uncles’ who read stories, recited poetry, acted out plays and performed improvised musical numbers. While the content varied across the regions, music and songs in the form of nursery rhymes, classical music, opera, ‘pianoforte interludes’ and the occasional ‘serious’ gramophone record, generally comprised around a quarter of each hour. The variety format and adult- driven ethos influenced not only Children’s Choice but also other subsequent BBC children’s programmes such as For the Children and Listen with Mother. One of the presenters of Children’s Hour was Derek McCulloch who was appointed Head of Children’s Broadcasting in 1933. It was the job of ‘Uncle Mac’ to translate Reith’s ambitious and authoritarian family values and communicate them to managers, producers and presenters. Initial conceptions of the child were broad; Children’s Hour was aimed at ‘every age, shape and sex’ (Hartley 1983: 24). Despite such hints that content might engage working- class children and their parents, the programme’s target audience was later defined more clearly. Communications from 1927 define a child as ‘the ordinary boy or girl of 10 to 12 living in a good middle- class home and attending a good school’.2 Additionally, the ideal child was an attentive and selective listener. Active listening, it was felt, promoted self- control, compliance and a respectful deference to elders. These qualities made the child not only an excellent family member, pupil, neighbour and citizen but a more enlightened person all round. The BBC’s idealised child listener was filled with ‘a sense of beauty and joy in all things, and in the experience of participating in life as a whole’ (ibid.: 16; Oswell 2002: 25). Indeed, Reith’s vision was far reaching; his aim was to civilise young listeners and develop their imaginative faculties by raising the standard of their culture.3 It was not enough that Children’s Hour provided ‘clean, wholesome humour, some light music and a judicious sprinkling of

74  How radio constructs childhood information’ (Hartley 1983: 16); the programme was designed to inspire ‘the most strenuous mental and physical work’.4 A six-page directive from 1924 sums up the BBC’s philosophy on children’s broadcasting for the next three decades. Radio for children should foster ‘the building of character’ through the appreciation of ‘beauty in form’ because ‘beauty spells happiness, and happiness develops character and character makes a good citizen’.5 Furthermore, Children’s Hour was designed to encourage ‘fair play, pride of country, personal cleanliness, good manners, thrift, “safety first”, sympathy with animals and birds, tidiness in public spaces, respect for the aged, self-restraint, etc.’6 ­ ​­ The BBC responded to initial public fears that children’s radio listening would lead to illiteracy, passivity and noise addiction by setting up clubs for children such as The Radio Circle and The Radio Sunbeams. Printed annuals and regular concerts promoted the child’s commitment to ‘keep cheerful and healthy … bring delight into the lives of other children … be kind to animals … look for beauty in books [and] pictures’ and ‘certainly not throw any rubbish … into the streets about my home’.7 A good deal of Reithian morality took an overtly religious tone. Much of the BBC’s children’s content in the 1930s and 1940s was designed to Christianise the nation. Under McCulloch, and in thrall to Reith’s Scottish Presbyterianism, the religious programme For the Children (launched in 1929) encouraged the love of God and childhood piety through drama, sketches and ‘Joan and Betty’ stories (Parker 2013: 3). Later, in the 1950s and early 1960s, hymns8 and Christian Christmas songs were frequently broadcast on Children’s Choice. Importantly, For the Children made an explicit appeal to the mother as ‘the principal agent in children’s religious formation’ (ibid.). Indeed, this appeal to the wider family audience was promoted by the scheduling of Children’s Hour and other programmes. Broadcast between five and six o’clock every evening, Children’s Hour straddled the traditional British ‘tea time’ when children were home from school and adults from work. Internal directives began to differentiate content by age: initially for younger (from six to ten years) and older (from ten to twelve years) listeners. However, these categories later developed into ‘Tinies’ (under seven years), ‘Middies’ (seven to ten years) and ‘Teens’ (ten to fourteen years).9 Interestingly, producers described half of the items in a typical Children’s Hour’s as being suitable for ‘people of any age’ over ten.10 Notably, in the mid 1920s, it was suggested that no attempt should be made to create bespoke radio content for the under eights as they were deemed inattentive.11 Critics noted that Children’s Hour was London centric and catered to ‘middlebrow’ English rather than British children (Williams 1998: 107). Indeed, class distinctions were embedded in the BBC’s internal communications; directors noted the differences between the mostly working- class ‘Light Programme’ children and the mostly m iddle- class ‘Home Service’ children. Inevitably, Children’s Hour was broadcast on the latter.

How radio constructs childhood  75

The music of Children’s Hour BBC directors communicated the centrality of music to its moral, religious and didactic ideology. It was felt that songs, singing and instrumental music encapsulated the ‘lightness, spontaneity and brevity … high comedy and joy of life’.12 Children’s Hour creator J.C. Stobart suggested that ‘the melodies and the rhythms should be simple, and the contrast well marked’.13 The ‘simple and pointed’ songs of Schubert were deemed perfect as were songs about ‘streams, or fairies, or ghosts or any other imaginary attraction’.14 Every Children’s Hour should contain ‘some good yet tuneful music with an occasional piece of lighter popular and musical comedy music’.15 At least one piece of classical music in each programme was compulsory. This was included at the end so as not to be ‘demeaned’ by popular music (Barnard 1989: 26). Inevitably, this requirement was continued by Children’s Choice. Children’s Hour strove to build the character of its young audience through ­high-quality ​­ and frequently ­high-brow ​­ content (ibid.).16 Directors justified the programme’s intentions to civilise children by saying: A child who early learns the loveliness and purity of a Mozart minuet will not in later years be content with “We have no bananas”. He has learnt the difference between gold and tarnished tinsel.17 For children’s ears, the BBC recommended ‘comic opera’ and ‘opera bouffe’. However, it was suggested that while jazz may have many good tunes, ‘the words are usually drivel, often indecent’.18 From 1935, the BBC began to monitor the vulgarity of musical content (Williams 1998: 104), although the nature of any undesirable items is not recorded in archival documents. Reith expressed ambiguous and often contradictory attitudes towards the value of entertainment for children. Amusement had to be ‘educative in the best sense’ lest ‘dissatisfaction and boredom result’ (ibid.: 102). Unsurprisingly, popular music styles such as jazz, rock’n’roll and even music hall took decades to gain mainstream acceptance on the BBC (Oswell 2002: 29). The BBC’s role as a promoter of high cultural values was severely challenged during the wartime. Forces Radio and Radio Luxembourg both played light and popular music. Up to three million British children had been evacuated during the war. Their transition back from largely rural locations to the now-bombed cities was accompanied by profound changes in the BBC’s broadcasting for children. BBC children’s television started in 1937 (Bignell 2017: 9). Early programmes featured puppets and slow, gentle storylines. Muffin the Mule (from 1947), Andy Pandy (1950), Sooty (1952), The Flowerpot Men (1952) and The Woodentops (1955) offered post-war children the comfort and calm potentially lacking in American children’s television. The music-based Listen with Mother was launched on BBC radio in 1950. Children’s Hour was rebranded as For the Young in 1961 before closing in 1964. While some aspects of tone and content

76  How radio constructs childhood continued to bond the BBC’s output for children, audiences were increasingly differentiated by station identity (Home service, the Light programme and the Third programme) and the assumptions of age and social status that each station represented. While John Reith’s tenure as Director General ended in 1939, Derek McCulloch continued to promote his ‘family values’ during long stints as producer and presenter on Children’s Choice through the 1950s.

Children’s Choice: eclectic musical fun for all the family Children’s Choice was broadcast on Saturday mornings from 09:00 until 09:55.19 Apart from McCulloch, the programme attracted a host of top-flight presenters including Peter Brough, Christopher Trace, Leslie Crowther, Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart and Tony Blackburn. The use of a single presenter and the exclusive use of records rather than live musicians set Children’s Choice apart from the BBC’s previous attempts at broadcasting for children. The request show format offered a semblance of democracy. Listeners’ letters20 were read on air, although producers were clearly at will to select specific song requests. Many of the songs became canonised through weekly repetition over the years. My analysis of Children’s Choice is based on 42 playlists gathered from the ‘Programme as Broadcast’ (‘PasB’) notes stored at the BBC’s Written Archive Centre. Each playlist contained an average of 30 songs. These approximately 1,260 songs were coded and categorised for lyrical themes, musical genres and other attributes (Appendix 4). Quantitative content analysis revealed the emphasis that the BBC placed on specific lyrical themes and musical styles. Fluctuations in themes and music indicate how the BBC’s textual construction of the child and of the family varied over a 30-year period. Musical analysis offers a rationale as to the contemporary and residual popularity of seemingly inappropriate songs on Children’s Choice. In line with the policies developed by the BBC during the previous 30 years, Children’s Choice was designed for intergenerational consumption with the titular child framed within a domestic ‘family’ setting. My repeated use of inverted commas indicates the problematic nature of the term and the normative and hegemonic construction of a nuclear family unit. The archetype of two heterosexual adults of opposite genders living with two or more of their biological children faced a challenge in a post-war era of absent fathers and less traditional employment patterns for women. The aggregated family audience for Children’s Choice was encouraged in three specific ways. Firstly, there was a large amount of crossover of content with other radio programmes. The playlists of Housewives’ Choice, Music for Everyone and Family Favourites were substantially similar. As such, the selection of songs broadcast on Children’s Choice was broad and diverse. A typical 1950s edition featured nursery rhymes, hymns, spirituals, comedy songs and military bands. Cowboy songs mixed with Scottish folk dances; music hall sing-alongs flanked classical symphonies; television themes and cartoon spin-offs sat alongside Alpine yodels and stirring Polkas.

How radio constructs childhood  77 Secondly, Children’s Choice broadcast recordings that had been released in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s in order to attract and sustain an older listenership. Versions of music hall songs that had been popular in the 1800s, such as Charles Penrose’s ‘The Laughing Policeman’, proliferated on the programme. Older listeners were also courted by traditional folk songs and classical music. These often contained ‘adult’ themes such as death, suicide, sex and sexuality. As discussed elsewhere in the context of The Muppet Show (Chapter 6) and other examples of music of ‘family’ television and radio, the BBC’s ‘mixed programming’ format between 1946 and 1967 mediated the child’s reception. This appeal to an intergenerational audience simultaneously facilitated and constricted the child’s reception and understanding of such complex topics.

Crossover of content A closer look at the similarities between Children’s Choice and Housewives’ Choice highlights the nature and implications of such mixed programming. The two programmes not only shared a theme tune21 but appeared interchangeably on Saturday schedules well into 1954. The mother as housewife was central to the BBC’s idealised 1950s nuclear family; women were targeted as gatekeepers of children’s morality and spirituality. This ‘government through the family’ encouraged parents to take responsibility for their children’s listening (Donzelot 1979). Playlists on both programmes featured an eclectic mix of genres and eras, although the light, melodic vocal and orchestral pop of chart stars such as Bing Crosby, Al Martino, Guy Mitchell, Frank Sinatra, Vera Lynn, Max Bygraves and the Stargazers dominated early editions.22 In line with BBC policy, both programmes featured at least one classical or operatic recording (Puccini, Grieg and Handel seemed popular) as well as songs from musicals such as South Pacific and Annie, Get Your Gun. The musical films of Danny Kaye were particularly popular. By modern standards, the audiences of Children’s Choice and Housewives’ Choice were poorly defined by age, gender and other demographic attributes. The advantages of using detailed audience research had barely been considered by the BBC in the mid 1950s. After decades of resistance, the corporation had only recently embraced the practice, preferring to promote a ‘top- down’ class-based agenda well into the 1960s (Kumar 1986: 59; Oswell 2002: 41). Even in 21st century media for children and families, where developmental and educational psychology tailor the product to specific ages, genders and interests, mapping the content to the intended demographic is fraught with the possibility of accidental and unintended listenership.23 Saturdays on the Light Programme featured yet more family-friendly crossover in the form of the afternoon’s Family Favourites24 and the evening’s Music for Everybody (live renditions of operetta, film songs, pop and music hall). The diversity of genres and the repetition of content across the four programmes highlight the BBC’s intentions of broadening the audience’s

78  How radio constructs childhood tastes (especially into ‘­h igh-​­brow’ classical music and opera) while encouraging listening as a ­whole-​­family activity. Highly rhythmic and syncopated styles such as jazz and rhythm and blues were notable by their absence. At a time when teenage consumerism was in its infancy, the playlists of these programmes reveal the intergenerational appeal of artists such as Frankie Laine, Danny Kaye, Paul Robeson, Billy Cotton, Ted Heath, Al Jolson, Les Paul, The Andrews Sisters and Kay Starr. Versions of the hits of the day by the BBC’s ­in-​­house big band also dominated the airwaves. However, more vernacular forms such as music hall, vaudeville, regional folk music and other ‘ethnic’ styles became increasingly popular during the 1950s.

Older recordings Wartime songs, folk and ‘world’ music Children’s Choice attracted older family members by including songs that dated from the earliest days of recording and many that were composed in the 19th century. Wartime songs such as ‘Hey Little Hen’ by Harry Roy and ‘Run Rabbit Run’ by Flanagan and Allen were staples of the programme’s first decade. In fact, recordings that spanned the two wars (1914–1945) were broadcast more frequently on Children’s Choice in the 1950s than those contemporary with the year of broadcast (Appendix 4). The programme was launched only seven years after the end of World War II. Many of the programme’s young listeners would have been conceived and born following the return of the troops. By the ­m id ​­1950s, representations of the war often appeared in films and television. The themes of The Dam Busters (1955), Cockleshell Heroes (1955) and Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)25 proved popular on Children’s Choice. The Band of the Coldstream Guards’ ‘Marching through the Commonwealth’26 and ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’ by the Band of the Royal Marines reminded listeners young and old of Britain’s Imperialist maritime past. Traditional English,27 Scottish28 and Celtic29 folk songs were frequently broadcast as were ‘world’ music recordings from countries such as South America, Jamaica, Spain and Germany.30 A number of ­Italian-​­themed parody recordings such as ‘Don’t Ringa Da Bell’ by Barbara Lyon and Ronnie Harris, ‘Hotta Chocolotta’ by Dave King and the Keynotes, and ‘Poppa Piccolino’ by Petula Clark with Children of Dr Barnardo’s Homes were firm favourites. Lilting folk melodies such as ‘Country Garden’, ‘Molly Malone’ and ‘The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond’ would have been familiar to older listeners. Cowboy music The cowboy craze that swept the United Kingdom in the late 1950s and early 1960s led to a large number of Western (and later Country and Western) songs appearing on what was by now known as Children’s Favourites. At its

How radio constructs childhood  79 peak in around 1961, more than 20% of the programme’s playlists were made up of songs associated with cowboys. Hollywood ‘singing cowboys’ such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were not only popular with Woody Guthrie but were also heavily marketed to a young British audience. Whether the result of long periods of wartime separation or through bereavement, many British children lacked paternal and other familial male role models. With annual cinema visits in the United Kingdom at over one billion through the late 1950s (Harari 2014), cowboy songs from films such as Calamity Jane (1953), Oklahoma (1955), The Man from Laramie (1955) and The Big Country (1958) proved popular with BBC radio audiences. Country songs such as ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ by Mitch Miller and ‘Three wheels on my Wagon’ by the New Christy Minstrels are among the programme’s most frequently broadcast recordings. Published in 1912 and released in 1959, ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’ by David Seville and The Chipmunks is a good example of how a 47-year-old song aimed at an older audience could be redesigned and marketed to children. The folk music recordings of the previous chapters essentially captured a live-in-the-studio performance. In contrast, many of the recordings of Children’s Choice rely on multi-track recording, exotic novelty instrumentation and representational Foley sound effects (in this case, gun shots and horses) for their sonic appeal. In addition, recordings by The Chipmunks, Pinky and Perky, The Smurfs and David Bowie featured tempo-manipulated ­high-pitched ​­ ‘child-animal’ ­ ​­ voice characterisation. These distinctive texts in which adults masquerade as children and animals in first-person lyrics and childlike vocal performances contribute to the child’s awareness of cultural difference and the messages of naivety, innocence and separateness that they often communicate. To Nodelman, the human voicing of animal characters is a projection of the tensions inherent in childhood whereby the child is taught to supress their animalistic behaviour while learning how to behave in the socially acceptable ways that define adult humanity (2008: 76). Other ­child-narrated ​­ Children’s Choice recordings of the 1950s and early 1960s perpetuate such stereotypes. The children in Rolf Harris’ ‘I’ve Lost my Mummy’, Allan Sherman’s ‘Hello Mudder Hello Father’ and Terry Scott’s ‘My Brother’ are, respectively, lost, confused and naughty. The short melodic intervals of ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’ and the dominance of I, IV, V chords are both tropes of children’s folk music. With such high levels of childness, it is unsurprisingly that this recording became a regular favourite on Children’s Choice. However, the song’s third-person lyrics that describe the titular ‘high-faluting, scooting, shooting son of a gun from Arizona’ seem to echo the violence of a war so recent in the public consciousness. Seville’s increasingly exasperated requests for Alvin to stop shooting at things and ‘put that gun down!’ fall on deaf ears. Alvin’s errant and potentially deadly behaviour is part of an escapist male- dominated fantasy that offered an alternative to the female- centred lives of many post-war UK children. While seemingly at odds with the sedate, domesticated m iddle- class

80  How radio constructs childhood morality of Reith’s family values, the novelty production and comedic presentation neuter any sense of anti-authoritarianism. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, violence and other potentially problematic content are negotiated in children’s media by the use of humour, hyperbolic aural and visual gestures and tropes by-then familiar to animated cartoon audiences. The domestic reception environment provides the socialised forum in which such themes can be mitigated. Such breaches in parental authority were rare in the BBC’s children’s broadcasting of the period. ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’ contains lyrics that in a less light-hearted musical context would raise a protective adult eyebrow. Joe is ‘fit as a fiddle and ready for love’. Like many original music hall songs, the song includes sophisticated wordplay (‘As he swings back and forward in the saddle on a horse who is syncopated gaited, and with such a funny meter to the roar of his repeater’). Internal rhyme, four-syllable words and the subtle use of alliteration render ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’ a multi-layered text that makes both ‘double’ and ‘dual’ addresses to both children and adults. Any brief suggestion of childhood anarchy in the lyrics is tempered by conventional and predictable melodic and harmonic backing. Representations of good and evil are often clearly defined in children’s songs. Narratives usually resolve; endings are often happy. As with ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’, there is a clear moral stance in other Children’s Choice cowboy songs such as ‘Three Wheels on my Wagon’ by the New Christie Minstrels. Similarly, Burl Ives’ ‘The Little Engine that Could’ promotes hard work and perseverance, while Danny Kaye’s ‘The Ugly Duckling’ celebrates diversity of physical difference. However, other songs about male folk heroes such as ‘Robin Hood’31 and ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett’32 portray a range of sometimes-ambiguous moralities. Classical music Reith’s aim to civilise the public from the middle- class nuclear family outwards was evident in the inclusion in Children’s Choice playlists of classical music. The BBC saw broadcasting to ‘the poor’ as an integral part of their public service remit (Oswell 2002: 35). Reith envisaged Children’s Choice as a programme that would ‘banish ignorance and misery’ and enable poor children and families to ‘contribute richly … to the sum total of human wellbeing’ (Kumar 1986: 52). To this end, classical music from operas, ballets and symphonies played a large part33 in Children’s Choice until around 1963. In line with the naturalised ideological and philosophical bonds between childhood and nature explored in Chapter 2, classical recordings with rural or animal themes proved especially popular on Children’s Choice. Songs with geographical references were also frequently broadcast.34 One of Children’s Choice’s enduring favourites ‘Sparky’s Magic Piano’ (1948) combined classical music with storytelling. Its success spawned a range of follow-ups such as ‘Sparky’s Music Mix-Up’ (1949) and ‘Sparky’s Magic Baton’ (1954). Similarly, Disney’s Silly Symphonies (1929) and

How radio constructs childhood  81 Fantasia (1940) were mined by Children’s Choice for their classical content. ‘Tubby the Tuba’ by Danny Kaye (Decca 1945) is an excellent example of a classical music recording that combines education with an entertaining story. The comedic voices, animal characters and strong use of prosody add to the song’s childness. Other animal-themed Children’s Choice favourites include ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf’ by Henry Hall, ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’ by Frank Luther and ‘The Bee Song’ by Arthur Askey. Indeed, children’s culture is often animalised. Children are wild, mysterious, unpredictable and in need of taming as opposed to the humanity of adults. Animal characters in songs, animations and television programmes are often ambiguous in terms of gender and age offering the child a range of identity­forming interpretations. American music While classical, military, ‘world’ and folk music proliferated on Children’s Choice, contemporary pop35 accounted for only 5–10% of the playlists through the 1950s. Light and melodic songs of American origin predominated. Smartly dressed, clean- cut ‘family’ entertainers provided unthreatening romantic interest for older audience members, and responsible role models for children. However, to Reith, American mass culture of the 1930s and 1940s presented a threat to British middle- class values. In the 1920s, he noted how such entertainment ‘quickly grows tame’ resulting in ‘dissatisfaction and boredom’ (Oswell 2002: 29–30). While the BBC already had a specific remit for broadcasting in schools, Reith attempted to create educational content that engaged audiences yet did not pander to the overly commercialised ‘pure’ entertainment that he saw in a good deal of American music (ibid.: 32). However, in the 1950s, Director Generals such as Ian Jacob and Hugh Greene were more willing to embrace cultural diversity in an attempt to modernise (Tracey 1998: 71). Despite this, the popularity of American rhythm and blues and rock’n’roll from the mid to late 1950s was barely recognised by Children’s Choice. Records by key artists such as Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino were notably absent from the programme at this time. Despite the racially mixed origins of rock’n’roll, BBC playlists remained overwhelmingly white. Nods to the less threatening end of the genre come in the form of ‘This Ole House’ by Rosemary Clooney, broadcast in April 1956, and ‘See you Later, Alligator’ by Bill Haley and the Comets in February 1958, both broadcast two years after their initial releases. Despite a few exceptions,36 jazz records were not played on the programme in the 1950s. The genre was considered ‘too adult’ by policy makers.37 Children’s Choice was also slow to embrace the relatively ‘safe’ and, by that time, retro British ‘trad jazz’ boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s despite clarinettist Acker Bilk having his own BBC radio programme. Seemingly more acceptable was skiffle, the energetic British take on American folk-blues of which

82  How radio constructs childhood the songs of Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie formed the core repertoire. Records by Lonnie Donegan, Chas McDevit and Don Lang38 were regulars on the programme. Indeed, Saturday Skiffle Club followed Children’s Favourites on the schedule from January 1958. The show rebranded as Saturday Club in October that year and featured live sessions and recordings by contemporary British pop stars including The Beatles and American rock’n’rollers such as Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. Music Hall In pursuit of intergenerational audiences, Children’s Choice frequently broadcast songs from the heyday of music hall in the mid to late 1800s.39 Recordings from the 1920s such as ‘The Laughing Policeman’ by Charles Penrose40 and ‘The Runaway Train’ by Vernon Dalhart (1925) proved popular during the programme’s three decades. Despite being atypical of most children’s music with its use of the minor key, complex meter and an absence of a chorus or refrain, ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ by Henry Hall (1932) was a Children’s Choice staple. Even in the conservative British 1950s, the instrumentation, vocal delivery and lyrics (‘see them gaily gad about’) must have seemed archaic to children on the cusp of an American invasion of television detectives, Coca-Cola and rock’n’roll, yet the song’s nostalgic appeal mirrored Reith’s traditional values. Original music hall songs and decades-old recordings were broadcast alongside more recent pastiche creations. The popularity of ‘(How much is that) Doggie in the Window?’ by Lita Roza41 (1953) and various versions of ‘I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts’ (1949/1950)42 evidence the commercial appeal of nostalgia in the immediate ­post-war ​­ years. ‘Don’t Jump off the Roof Dad’ by Tommy Cooper (1961) exemplifies the Music Hall formula as described in the introductory chapter. The low density of syllables, repetitive chord pattern and uncluttered scale-w ise melody contribute to the high levels of musical childness. Most of the words have either one or two syllables. The tone of Cooper’s delivery is conversational, and his seemingly irrepressible laughter suggests that the song is humorous. However, the narrative in which children encourage their father to perform an alternative method of suicide because jumping from the roof will damage mum’s flower bed and upset her do not sit comfortably with protectionist constructions of childhood. Many aspects of the music and lyrics bear the hallmarks of age inclusivity, while the themes of stressful employment, gardening and suicide primarily address the song’s adult listeners. Similarly, ‘The Hippopotamus Song (Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud)’ by Flanders and Swann (1957) has many features that encourage vocal participation. The melodic and anthemic choruses include perfect rhyme (mud/ blood, follow/hollow/wallow). The well- defined short phrases and words of one or two syllables are delivered in a highly rhythmic dactylic tetrameter. In contrast, the lyrical and musical complexity of the verses positions the

How radio constructs childhood  83 child predominantly as a listener, rather than a vocal participant. Similarly, themes of lusty courtship, ‘garters’ and ‘inamoratas’ delivered in Received Pronunciation (RP), seem designed for a primarily adult reception. Five syllable words such as ‘inamorata’ and ‘Hippopotama’ and a long minor- chord sequence are uncommon in children’s music. The vocal range of the song is an octave and a minor third (15 semitones). A further octave is spanned with the use of falsetto on the second chorus (27 semitones). The largest sequential vocal interval is an octave. By comparison, the children’s songs of Woody Guthrie and a selection of well-known nursery rhymes have an average vocal range of just eleven semitones and a largest sequential interval of only five semitones (Appendix 1). Simplicity and complexity, innocence and knowingness combine in ‘The Hippopotamus Song’, attributes that promote the song’s intergenerational attraction. Similarly, ‘Hole in the Ground’ by Bernard Cribbins (1962) tells the story of a manual worker being repeatedly criticised by a city gentleman (the ‘bloke in a bowler hat’) for the shape, size and location of the hole that he is digging. The recording has many musical tropes of childness such as scalewise melodies, perfect cadences, a high tempo and a major-key tonality. The engaging production features novelty sound effects and h igh-pitched instrumentation. Like many other recordings for children, the vocals are placed high in the mix. The lyrics feature a comedic theme, short and discreet lyrical phrases and the strong use of rhyme. The song’s high levels of musical, lyrical and sonic childness offer some insight into why BBC producers found the recording attractive. However, the radio-friendly textual attractiveness belies the fact that attempts by the song’s narrator to deal with class conflict end with a murder and a burial.

Listener competence As well as the musical, lyrical and sonic attributes of the text, the child’s reception is also informed by their competence, a concept that indicates the listener’s ability to decode the bundle of signifying elements. The lyrical, musical and sonic elements of a musical recording combine and compete, rise and fall in the listener’s hierarchy of pertinence (Middleton 1990: 175–177). Although competence relies less on chronological age than on experience, knowledge and interpretive skills, children and adults may find different aspects of the recordings pertinent. Adults might consider particular words and themes inappropriate for the child who in turn might lack the competence to decode the metaphors and other coded linguistic symbolism. Using ‘Hole in the Ground’ as an example, adults may (or may not) be more sensitive than the child as to why the manual worker vented his murderous anger on the man in the bowler hat. Additionally, the child may find the nonliterary musical and sonic aspects of the recording more pertinent. While theorists differ on the ways in which readers interpret texts, most agree that the factors that influence reception include the attributes of the text, the

84  How radio constructs childhood text’s relationship to existing texts and the reader’s wider life experiences (Jauss 1974). Other influential factors include the context of the industry that produces, distributes and markets the text, the nature of the transmitting medium and the socio-historical framework of production and reception. Another Children’s Choice favourite, ‘Two Little Boys’ by Rolf Harris (1969), repeats the Music Hall formula. Simple, rhyme-heavy lyrics about children, family, horses and toys are accompanied by music of similar childness. The child protagonist recites a nostalgic morality tale complemented by a sentimental instrumental arrangement. Harris delivers an emotive vocal which includes the use of ritardando as his voice breaks on the pay-off line: ‘Do you think I would leave you dying’. Similarly, ‘In the Middle of the House’ by British singer Alma Cogan (1956) concerns a family who live in a house with a railroad running through the middle ‘where the parlor used to be’. Again, the music and production have high levels of childness. These contrast with the lyrics in which the first-person child narrator boasts of how she and her family murder the bill collector and an annoying relative by seating them ‘in the middle of the house’. Most dramatically, the narrator appears to commit suicide at the song’s finale. As such, Cogan’s character is singing from beyond the grave.

George Martin and the Music Hall formula Many of the recordings on Children’s Choice that use the Music Hall formula were produced by George Martin, the third key white middle- class male in this chapter. Martin’s extensive recording credits43 include such Children’s Choice favourites as ‘Nellie the Elephant’, ‘Pickin’ a Chicken’, ‘Robin Hood’, ‘Hole in the Ground’ and ‘The Hippopotamus Song’. He specialised in writing and recording humorous songs for actors, comedians, variety performers, television presenters and ‘family’ entertainers such as Morecambe and Wise, Max Bygraves, Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howerd, Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile. Like many of Martin’s Abbey Road pre-Beatles productions, ‘Right Said Fred’ by Bernard Cribbins (1962) makes frequent use of representational sound effects and a clear lead vocal prominent in the mix. The tempo is high; six frenetic verses and two quick middle-eights are packed into the song’s brief 2 minutes and 21 seconds. The tone-up modulation towards the end adds aural interest. However, the song has no chorus. The title line and ‘so we had a cup of tea’ are the only repeated phrases in the song. The complex meter, large vocal range of 17 semitones, flurry of syllables and occasional use of a six-four bar in a four-four song add to the complexity. Moving large pieces of furniture is hardly a concern for children, yet the destruction that ensues, and the potentially fatal accident involving Charlie (‘half a ton of rubble landed on the top of his dome’) accompanied by explosive representational sound effects, conveys some of the coded naughtiness of music hall. As in the cartoons of Chapter 6, the violence is stylised, its impact on the child mediated

How radio constructs childhood  85 by the established conventions of the animated format. With their exaggerated sound effects and hyperbolic aurality, Martin’s record productions are in many ways the sonic equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons in which violence is portrayed in a range of humorous and often inconsequential ways. Equally hyperbolic and cartoon-like is ‘My Brother’ by Terry Scott in which intergenerational disharmony abounds. Scott sings in an exaggerated child’s voice and takes the first-person narrative position. The references to scatological matters and increasingly mischievous attacks on older family members are accompanied by imitative sound effects and a novelty production. However, Martin’s comedic and pantomimic sonic treatment neuters the sense of generation- dividing irreverence in the subject matter.

Changes in the late 1950s and 1960s In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a string of younger, more innovative managers and producers began to redefine Reith’s long-standing vision. Hugh Greene, Director General from 1960, openly embraced the diversity of the BBC’s audience in terms of region and class. He also felt that the BBC should ‘not stand outside and apart from society’ but represent ‘the likes and dislikes or ordinary people’ (Tracey 1998: 88 and 91). Rather than trying to educate the masses, Greene’s aim of reflecting the variety of British life is evident, in part, in the increasingly widespread use of regional accents in presenters and recordings. RP was a development of the United Kingdom’s ­fee-paying ​­ ­public-school ​­ system and was the de facto delivery style of the majority of the BBC’s presenters up to that point. Children’s Hour and Children’s Choice stalwart Derek McCulloch and other presenters exemplified the use of RP in children’s broadcasting. Indeed, its use was so hegemonic at the BBC in the 1950s that it was considered by some to be a neutral nonaccent (Abercrombie 2006: 221). Seen through the distorting lens of the class backgrounds of Reith, McCulloch and Martin, the Cockney and other regional and working- class accents adopted by Terry Scott (‘My Brother’), Bernard Cribbins (‘Right said Fred’) and others become ideologically charged. Of particular note are recordings in which vocalists cross barriers of race and/or religion for comedic purposes. Such aural minstrelsy raises questions of racism and cultural appropriation in the ‘enlightened’ 21st century. However, Children’s Choice regulars such as ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ by Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren44 (1960), ‘Jake the Peg’ by Rolf Harris45 (1965), ‘Thank Heavens for Little Girls’ by Maurice Chevalier46 (1957) or the calypsos and Jamaican songs voiced and composed by Lance Percival highlight an era during which such matters were apparently unquestioned by public service broadcasters. The rapid rise in the popularity of television through the 1950s led to an equally dramatic fall in the BBC’s radio listenership.47 The resulting budgetary restrictions caused the corporation to gradually replace large and expensive live bands with gramophone records. As spending by teenagers began to

86  How radio constructs childhood increase on innovations such as the 7” single, new outlets for advertising were required. With the emergence of Independent Television (ITV) in 1955 and the rise in popularity of British-owned Radio Luxembourg,48 the BBC’s status as a public service broadcaster came under severe scrutiny. Despite these changes, the BBC was producing some of its most endearing family-friendly radio programmes. For example, in 1959, Hancock’s Half Hour was more popular with children aged 12–14 than with adults.49 Many of the songs most closely associated with Children’s Choice were created and broadcast around this time. The Goons were among a host of British radio and television stars making novelty and comedy records. Their ‘childlike anarchy … overlaid with the whiff of something less innocent’ exemplifies the Music Hall formula (Black 1972: 70). By the early 1960s, classical, military, religious and ‘world’ music appeared less frequently. The light and melodic pop favoured in the 1950s was rapidly replaced by the contemporary sounds of g uitar-fronted beat groups and a mix of American and American-influenced pop vocalists. Pop Goes the Beatles started on the Light Programme on 4 June 1963. The teen-focused Non Stop Pop arrived shortly after on 5 July 1963.50 By 1963, popular music accounted for approximately 45% of the typical Children’s Favourites playlist. This shift towards popular styles and the deliberate courting of a teen and pre-teen audience is noteworthy. Recent themed album compilations and the BBC’s now-annual Christmas broadcasts of Junior Choice represent a much ‘older’ version of the original programmes. In March 1964, The Tommy Steele Show replaced The Billy Cotton Band Show, and by 1965, Derek McCulloch/Uncle Mac had broadcast his final Children’s Favourites. The links to the old guard and their by-then outdated ‘family’ values rapidly faded. After 42 years on the air, Children’s Hour’s ended on 17 January 1964. By 1960, Assistant Director R. D’A. Marriott conceded that the programme was designed to appeal to the small minority of children who were ‘most carefully brought up, in the best homes … those of the highest educational potential … the attentive and serious minded’ (Oswell 2002: 43–44). By the end of its run, more adults than children tuned in to Children’s Hour (ibid.: 24). The same reason was given for the demise of BBC radio’s Go4it in 2009.34 Additionally, Children’s Hour’s audience had shrunk to less than 1% of other BBC radio programmes aimed at children and young people, such as Children’s Favourites, Saturday Club, The Billy Cotton Band Show and Playtime.51 The gap in scheduling was filled in part by Home This Afternoon which targeted older children. The same year, the separate departments for Children’s and Women’s Programming were merged to form one for Families52 at which point a fundamental review took place of children’s programming on both radio and television.53

1967–1983: extra channels and new presenters The rise in commercial television from 1955 and the popularity of hip commercial radio stations such as Luxembourg and the offshore pirates led to

How radio constructs childhood  87 a less formal presentation style on what was by the late 1960s called Junior Choice. Ex-pirate disc jockey Ed Stewart (‘hardly ever patronizing or condescending … always friendly and cheerful’)54 became the programme’s longest-r unning presenter and broadcast to the largest audiences. In 1967, the BBC reformatted their radio channels. Many of the programmes on the existing Light Programme were transferred to the new Radio 2. Pop and rock designed to appeal to younger listeners were mainly broadcast on the new Radio 1. The new station employed many ex-pirate DJs. Initially, the number of recordings that the BBC could broadcast on the new stations was limited. Due to campaigns by the Musicians’ Union, they received only two extra hours of ‘needletime’. The BBC negotiated this situation by increasing the ‘session’ recordings of live bands and broadcasting a number of programmes across both stations simultaneously. Junior Choice was one of them, leading to a swift rise in the percentage of contemporary pop hits played. Despite the changes, many of the old favourites remained popular. A listener survey from 1967 indicates that Light Music, military and dance music, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s comprised 70% of the genres that were ‘particularly liked’ by respondents.55 Pop tallied only 14%. The BBC’s categorisation of musical genres became more sophisticated; surveys began to differentiate between ‘the latest pop tunes’ and ‘the more tuneful pop of recent years.’56 By the mid 1970s, less than 1% of 5- to 14-year-olds were listening to the radio on a regular basis. This compared to 27% for television.57 While BBC radio’s overall listening figures continued to fall, Junior Choice retained a regular audience of between four and five million. In the late 1970s, it was the United Kingdoms’ most popular morning programme and second only to Sunday evening’s Top 40 chart run-down in terms of audience numbers.58 By that time, 76% of the BBC’s radio listenership were identified as working class, a stark contrast to Reith’s idealised middle-class audiences of an earlier era. The BBC’s archive of policy documents on children’s radio rapidly decreases in the 1960s. The reams of discussion on what constituted a child and to what content they should listen dries up. While much children’s programming was rapidly transferred to television, decisions on children’s radio seem increasingly informed by commercial constraints. Calls for the more ‘pop’-oriented stations (mostly Radio 1) to be funded by advertisements date back to the 1960s.59 By the late 1970s, Tony Blackburn replaced Ed Stewart as the presenter of Junior Choice. Despite the inclusion of the occasional film theme or novelty record, the 1980s version of the programme was comprised mostly of contemporary Top 40 pop music, potentially excluding many older family listeners. Like Children’s Hour in the 1920s, the newly rebranded The Tony Blackburn Show reverted to co-presenters including Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin. Similarly, the programme also included a ‘Children in the News’ feature and other sections about (as well as for) children such as an interview with Drew Barrymore, the then-seven-year-old star of the hit movie E.T. in January 1983.

88  How radio constructs childhood Resurrecting Junior Choice: the commercialisation of nostalgia Twenty-five years after its final broadcast, the BBC resurrected Junior Choice. Ed Stewart returned to host a two-hour-long version on Radio 2 in 2007. Annual Christmas day versions have followed. After Stewart’s death in 2016, the programme has been hosted by Anneka Rice. In the preceding decades, a large number of Children’s Choice/Children’s Favourites/Junior ­Choice-themed compilations have been released. However, my analysis shows that the selection of recordings most frequently included on these compilations and radio programmes is not representative of those played on the original programmes (Appendix 5).60 Considering the tens of thousands of recordings broadcast across the original programme’s 30 years and the myriad musical genres they represent, the selection of songs compiled on albums such as Children’s Favourites (Platinum 2003), Hello Children Everywhere (Hallmark 2011) and Childhood Days (Telstar 2003) is strikingly similar. A narrow homogeneity has replaced the original’s broad diversity. The ways in which the recent compilations misrepresent the original programme are important. Far from revealing the most frequently broadcast songs on the original programme, the new versions create a sentimentalised representation in which the distorting effects of nostalgia and canonisation are evident. The programme has been recast as more child-focused: age- exclusive rather than inclusive. Recordings with high levels of musical, lyrical and sonic childness have come to dominate Children’s Choice as reimagined by 21st century compilers. The popularity of the Music Hall formula is still evident. ‘In the Middle of the House’, ‘Right said Fred’, ‘The Hippopotamus Song’ and Bennie Hill’s ‘Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)’ (1971) are among the top 20 most-included recordings on the compilations. However, recordings with high levels of sonic and lyrical childness such as ‘Nellie the Elephant’ (the most complied song), ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ and ‘Buckingham Palace’ dominate the upper reaches of the compiled chart. Sonic tropes of these most compiled recordings include highly enunciated female and/or ­ ​­ ­ ​­ child vocalists and high-pitched, high-tessitura, orchestrated instruments such as flutes, xylophones and glockenspiels. Musical tropes such as short melodic ranges and consecutive intervals, predictable scale-wise melodies, a reliance on tonic, subdominant and dominant chords, and the use of the major key are also prevalent. At least half of the top ten most compiled recordings (Appendix 5) use the Music Hall formula. Four of them are actually in the genre of music hall. These include the aforementioned ‘In the Middle of the House’61 in which murder and suicide are set to a jaunty swing beat. The list also includes ‘I Taught I Taw a Puddy Tat’ in which music and lyrics with high levels of childness combine with a comedy theme and extravagant voice characterisation. The song positions the child listener in empathy with the bird Tweety Pie (small, innocent, in need of protection in the form of a cage and a human

How radio constructs childhood  89 adult), who in classic folk tale style (c.f. the spider Anansi, Br’er Rabbit, the mouse in The Gruffalo, etc.) always outwits the loud and large (adult) cat Sylvester. Interestingly, one of the songs in the top ten is ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. Its complex structure and intricate meter, ­two-​­octave melodic range, minor key verses and ­fifth-​­up modulation suggest that nostalgia rather than musical childness contributes to the song’s enduring popularity. Major tonality tends to connote optimism, happiness and a carefree blissfulness in Western diatonic music, while minor keys code as melancholic. The use of minor keys in the verses of ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ and ‘Nellie the Elephant’ adds a sense of tension (‘If you go down in the woods today …’), mystery and caution (‘One dark night …’). Not only is the compiled version of Children’s Choice more ­child-​­c entric, on average the selection of recordings hails from a much earlier time period than those in the original broadcasts. The release dates of the original recordings on the compilations range from 1922 (‘The Laughing Policeman’) to 1980 (‘Captain Beaky and his Band’).62 However, the most popular songs (the 47 that appear on four or more compilations) have an average release date of May 1953, just five months after the original Children’s Choice began. This is much earlier than the programme ‘as broadcast’ which, due to the large amount of contemporary pop included in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, would, at a guess, be somewhere in the late 1960s or early 1970s. The average date of release of the top ten most frequently compiled songs is August 1943. This is a full nine years before Children’s Choice began and nearly ten years before the average of the top 47 compiled songs. It is also around 30 years before the estimated average of the songs on the original broadcasts. Through the distorting lens of nostalgia, Children’s Choice appears artificially old fashioned. It could be argued that the recent compilations deliberately focus on the Reithian 1950s in order to engage the consumers who heard the original programmes as children and are now in their 60s or older. However, the inclusion of recordings such as ‘There’s No One quite like Grandma’ by St. Winifred’s School Choir (1980) and ‘The Smurf Song’ by Father Abraham and the Smurfs (1978) indicates that certain songs from the programme’s later years have proved attractive to ­modern-​­day compilers and radio producers. Both of these more recent songs have high levels of musical, lyrical and sonic childness. This suggests that their inclusion supports compilers’ intentions of presenting a more c­ hild-​­focussed selection than the original radio programme. There is also a sense that ‘There’s No One quite like Grandma’ (intergenerational respect) and ‘Captain Beaky and his Band’ (animals as family) have been selected for their strong sense of Reithian family values. The consumption of children’s products by adults has grown symbiotically with children’s participation as consumers. The rehashing of the ­youth-​­oriented products of yesteryear is central to the creation and expansion of an intergenerational market. Nostalgia is now the ‘incurable modern

90  How radio constructs childhood condition’ (Boym 2002: xiv) in which individuals yearn for elusive stability in a chaotic world, reimagining their childhood as ‘a time of supposed tranquillity and assurance’ (Jing 2006: 360). The faster the pace of technological and social change, the greater society’s longing for stability. This nostalgic yearning for familiarity coupled with the commercial incentives of nostalgia is evident in the host of BBC television programmes (Bill and Ben, Noddy, The Clangers, Sooty, etc.) that have been rebranded and updated for new audiences. The BBC’s decision to move all of their children’s programming onto specialist channels CBBC and CBeebies in the 21st century appears to spell a return to a childhood defined by age separation. Yet the corporation’s extensive use of interactive websites and social media blurs binary definitions of children’s consumption and production. In addition, the current popularity of Strictly Come Dancing, The Great British Bake Off and Doctor Who points to the resurgence of intergenerational ‘family’ programming.

Conclusion This chapter highlighted how the BBC constructed conflicting childhoods through the radio broadcasting of recorded music. The slow economic recovery of the United Kingdom after World War II, the emergence of transistor radios and television, and the vision and power of specific individuals all affected how the BBC’s childhoods manifested musically. Reith’s grand vision of educating the masses in order to forge closer families and build stronger communities faded under commercial and societal pressures during the 1960s and beyond. Reith, McCulloch and Martin attempted to balance a discourse of childhood innocence, protection and age separation with one that framed the child as a family member and an active citizen, one who was in many ways akin to the ‘little adult’ of Ariès’ Middle Ages. This discursive conflict was being played out against a radically altered and rapidly changing post-war backdrop of rationing, one-parent families, increasing consumerism and access to ideas and information via radio and television that did much to change the status of the child, women and the working classes. In many ways, the emergence of the teenager in the m id 1950s liberated British children. The exotic American and Italian cultures that defined the music, clothes and coffee bars of the time offered an escape from traditional school-work-marriage expectations and established an alternative to an allencompassing parent culture. A similar discourse of innocence and naivety is also detectable in the playlists of Housewives’ Choice and Family Favourites. Both programmes shared sentimental recordings by smooth-voiced vocalists many of which included the novelty sound effects, humour and high degrees of musical childness favoured by Children’s Choice. It could be argued that such programmes infantilised women as young mothers, carers and housewives. However, these soothing, unchallenging, familiar songs with high levels of childness were perhaps a response to the trauma of losing husbands, fathers and other loved one in the war.

How radio constructs childhood  91 The Music Hall formula and a socialised, age-shared domestic listening experience mediated the child’s interpretation of potentially confusing lyrical themes. Heavy radiograms, mixed programming and George Martin’s hyperbolic ear- catching novelty productions all helped to maximise the family listening experience and allow the child to talk through, or listen to adults talking through, the themes of mortality, sexuality and other issues that were raised by the recordings of Children’s Choice. However, the child’s interpretation of the issues in the recording was simultaneously constricted by both the text and the context of the reception. Musical, lyrical and sonic devices in the recordings combined with the BBC’s idealised family listening environment to shape the child’s fluid and potentially contradictory understanding of the complex issues that comprised the BBC’s ever- changing ‘family values’. As discussed, nostalgia has shaped the musical texts available to subsequent generations of children. However, the formation of cultural canons is a complex, fluid and often-unpredictable process. ‘Once established’, Regev suggests, ‘canons exert cultural power by influencing memory… [They] influence the narration of the past, and they inspire the radius of creativity for the future’ (2006: 2). The recent trials and convictions of some of the BBC’s best-loved presenters, some of whom made recordings that are among Children’s Choice’s most frequently broadcast, will undoubtedly influence the status of the recordings selected and rejected by children’s music gatekeepers in the future. The subject of the next chapter covers the similar delicate balance between entertainment and education, public service and commerce. With a focus on the 80 albums released on Sesame Street Records and their links to a self-i mposed curriculum, I examine the musical, visual, material and pedagogic construction of a primarily American childhood from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

Notes 1 For ease and clarity, I have mostly used the original name Children’s Choice to refer to the programme through the 1950s until its second rebrand as Junior Choice in 1967. Between January 1953 (Hartley 1983: 66) and 1967, the programme was known as Children’s Favourites. I refer to material gathered from the BBC Written Archives in Caversham (WAC). I have used the Archive’s file index notation. The main sources are: R9: Audience research 1937–1997 R11: Children’s Hour 1926–1964 R34: Policy up to c1966 PAB: Programme as broadcast notes 2 WAC R11/27/2. 3 WAC R11/27/2. 4 Artistic director, Major A. Corbett-Smith. WAC R11/27/1. 5 ­Corbett-Smith. ​­ WAC R11/58.

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How radio constructs childhood  95 Kassabian, A. 2013. Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention and Distributed Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kumar, K. 1986. ‘Public service broadcasting and the public interest’, in McCabe, C. and Stewart, O. eds. The BBC and Public Service Broadcasting. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 46–61. Middleton, R. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Mzimba, L. 2012. ‘Children’s programming comes to an end on BBC One’. BBC News, 21 December [Online]. Nodelman, P. 2008. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore, MA: Hopkins University Press. Oswell, D. 2002. Television, Childhood and the Home. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Parker, S. 2013. John G. Williams, School Worship and the Idea of Childhood Piety at the BBC. XXV IAMHIST Conference: Childhood and the Media, University of Leicester, 17–20 July. Radio Rewind. 2014. People: Ed Stewart [Online]. Regev, M. 2006. ‘Introduction to “Special Issue on canonisation”’, Popular Music, 25(1): 1–2. Thomas, L. 2009. ‘After 87 years, BBC axes last children’s radio show … after discovering average age of listener is over-50’. Daily Mail, 18 March. Tracey, M. 1998. The Decline and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, K. 1998. Get Me a Murder a Day!: A History of Mass Communication in Britain. London: Arnold.

Audio sources Blanc, Mel. ‘I taut I taw a Puddy Tat’. Capitol, 1950. Cribbins, Bernard. ‘Hole in the ground’. Parlophone, 1962. Cribbins, Bernard. ‘Right said Fred’. Parlophone, 1962.Cogan, Alma. ‘In the Middle of the House’. HMV, 1956. Cooper, Tommy. ‘Don’t Jump off the Roof Dad’. Palette, 1961. Flanders and Swann. ‘The Hippopotamus Song (Mud. Mud. Glorious Mud)’. Parlophone, 1957. Hall, Henry. ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. EMI, 1932. Harris, Rolf. ‘Two Little Boys’. Columbia, 1969. James, Dick. ‘Robin Hood’. Parlophone, 1956. Miller, Mandy. ‘Nellie the Elephant’. Parlophone, 1956. New Christie Minstrels ‘Three Wheels on my Wagon’. Columbia, 1965. Seville, David and The Chipmunks. ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’. London, 1959.

5

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street

From the late 1960s onwards, Sesame Street combined dynamic, colourful, sometimes-animated visuals with a wide variety of musical genres as part of a strategy to target older family members and teach children a range of instructional, social and cultural lessons. As discussed previously, in an era before mass television ownership, the hyperbolic aurality of George Martin’s pre-Beatles productions and the abundant use of the Music Hall formula served to cultivate the intergenerational radio audience that was central to the BBC’s ‘family values’ in the 1950s and 1960s. However, while Children’s Choice promoted a communityfocussed paternalistic altruism through the broadcast of previouslyreleased recordings, almost all of the music of Sesame Street was written in house. The albums of Sesame Street tell the story of the challenges faced by the CTW in their pursuit of entertaining and educating children from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. They document the development of a self-produced and annually evolving internal pedagogy that was designed to meet specific didactic and prosocial targets. As aural texts, the recordings reveal the influence of key musical personnel and evidence the CTW’s occasionally precarious financial state. As historical documents, they signal changes in societal attitudes to race, gender, poverty and the environment. Most importantly perhaps for this study, the albums reveal how the child consumer was constructed by the adults in the production process. At their best, the albums exemplify music’s power to communicate facts, ideas, emotions and matters of cultural significance while engaging the child with accessible and memorable songs. At their worst, they document the difficulties of expressing educational ideas through music. They occasionally expose the vanities and workloads of label heads, songwriters and cast members and stand testament to the financial pressures under which the CTW sometimes operated. Before Sesame Street began releasing video cassettes, DVDs, CD-ROMs and online content, the albums served as convenient on- demand resources for children, parents and teachers. While the television programmes provided audiences with multiple opportunities to hear the songs, viewing times were prescribed by broadcasters.1 The albums

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  97 performed a unique function as both supplemental and stand-alone educational resources. I explain how specific musical genres were used to deliver the CTW’s didactic and prosocial goals. While the teaching of numbers and the alphabet formed the bulk of the show’s early years, the CTW extended its remit through the 1970s to include goals around personal, social and emotional development. I discuss how Sesame Street used soul, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, funk and other genres to establish an ethos of racial and ethnic inclusion in order to address specific curriculum topic areas (Figures 5.3 and 5.4).2 I illuminate the stability and fluctuation of particular genres and reveal how Sesame Street responded to wider trends in popular music. I begin with a brief overview of the development of Sesame Street’s on­ ​ screen format and pedagogical underpinnings before discussing the role of the albums as educational resources. I argue that the records were just as much a part of the CTW’s education-through-entertainment strategy as the television programmes. Analysis of the albums rather than the songs on the television broadcasts provides a unique and complementary addition to previous studies.

The development of Sesame Street’s pedagogy Following 18 months of research and just over eight million dollars of funding from both government and private sources,3 Sesame Street was launched on 10 November 1969 on National Educational Television.4 With content informed by professionals in children’s education, development, psychology, sociology, psychiatry and literature (Lesser and Schneider 2000: 27), the CTW’s original proposal sought to improve the ‘schoolreadiness’ of the 12 million American children between three and five years old. While CTW co-founder and producer Joan Ganz Cooney initially aimed to target ‘disadvantaged pre-schoolers’ from urban centres in the USA, this goal was dropped after the first season as it was felt that the government’s Head Start programme was already providing such ‘compensatory’ programming (Cook et al. 1975: 7; Palmer and Fisch 2000: 5). As such, Sesame Street was aimed at a wide audience through a universal approach to content. Cycles of audience surveys and evaluation conducted on behalf of the newly formed Children’s Television Workshop by the established Education Testing Service (ETS) helped Cooney and her team refine the content to best deliver their ambitious goals. Rather than adopting the gentle pace and delivery of other educational television shows such as Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, Play School or other locally produced equivalents, Sesame Street was informed by animated cartoons, the pop-art series Batman, comedy sketch shows such as Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In ­ ​­ and the attention-grabbing, ­ ​­ fast-paced techniques used in television advertisements. Cooney found that children could easily remember the words of advertising jingles and

98  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street endeavoured to translate their main features of ‘frequent repetition, clever visual representation, brevity and clarity’ to the new show (Davis 2008: 73). In addition, Sesame Street’s broad curriculum was informed by the inclusive values of the civil rights movement, a socialist ethos, the philosophies of educationalist John Dewey, as practiced in his Laboratory School in Chicago, and the work of New York’s progressive education centres, such as the Little Red School House and the Bank Street School. Particularly relevant for the realisation of the CTW’s pedagogy was Dewey’s assertion that ‘true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situation in which he finds himself’ (1897: 291). The CTW understood the benefits of social interaction to learning. Specific genres of music, guest stars and intertextual references were included on Sesame Street in order to foster age-inclusive ‘co-viewing’. Indeed, Dewey talked about ‘school as a form of community life’ and as a ‘social institution’ that ‘should grow gradually out of the home life’. These sentiments informed the CTW’s aim to address preschool children in ‘real life’ environments through the depiction of an idealised multicultural community, similar in many ways to Dewey’s notion of school as ‘simplified social life’ (ibid.: 292–293). The CTW’s extensive research and development was made possible by substantial and sustained government investment in education as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Significant growth in public service budgets over the previous 20 years also facilitated the social and technological infrastructure required to deliver mass instructional television. However, effective education requires more than just a well- conceived curriculum and a well-placed morality. Successful pedagogy involves a holistic approach that requires ‘the animation of texts and events so they become living practices’ (Thomson and Kamler 2016: 7). In order to bring their curriculum goals to life, the CTW aimed to replicate the production values of mainstream television. To this end, experienced television producers, filmmakers, set designers, advertisers and a host of seasoned songwriters, composers, arrangers, musical directors and musicians were employed. Music and education Music has a long and varied history as a vehicle for education. Sesame Street was groundbreaking in the scope of its pedagogical ambitions and in the extent to which research and evaluation informed revisions of curriculum and subsequent content. The show was pioneering in its mission to deliver curriculum-based goals through a television variety show format, the aesthetics of advertising and the substantial inclusion of popular music. However, while music, singing, dancing, poetry, storytelling, jokes and visual humour were prominent on-screen devices, music is not mentioned in the CTW’s original curriculum for Season One (Bogatz and Ball 1971: 217–219). Furthermore, while the CTW exploited music’s power to entertain viewers,

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  99 they were less than explicit in their understanding of how the songs of Sesame Street contributed to learning goals (Ostrofsky 2015: 23). Additionally, while reports on the CTW’s audience research mention the licensed magazines, books, videos, computer games, interactive technologies and other spin-off products, they fail to mention the near-200 Sesame Street albums released since 1970 (Cook et al. 1975; Fisch and Truglio 2000).

The albums of Sesame Street Clearly, music was central to the CTW’s mission. Over 70% of the sections that comprised each hour-long episode featured songs, singing and instrumental music.5 Echoing Dewey’s belief that ‘school must represent present life… real and vital to the child’ (1897: 293), Cooney insisted that the new show should ‘sound like 1969’ (Borgenicht 1998: 14). In keeping with trends in the packaging of 12-inch long-playing vinyl records in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many early Sesame Street albums were packaged with extensive extras including booklets, posters, fold-out covers and even a set of seven Muppet masks for the three-album set Muppet Masquerade (1978). Such materiality provided a unique multi-media experience unattainable by television viewing alone. As artefacts, the records, masks, games and other items served as prompts for the child’s behaviour and scripted how they interacted with them. While the child’s actions and reactions are determined in part by the materiality of the object, the child may be a resistant performer acting in opposition to the intended use of the ‘scriptive’ thing (Bernstein 2011: 79). Sesame Street’s ­read-as-you-listen books and other ar​­ ­ ​­ tefacts scripted how the child translated the music, sounds and voices on the recordings into real-world behaviour. In the absence of evidence about how the child integrated the material culture of the Sesame Street albums into their everyday lives, the texts and artefacts themselves form the focus of this study. While the extravagant packaging translated into high retail costs for consumers, subsequent rereleases came in conventional and cost- effective packaging, which made the albums more affordable for low-income families.6 Equally, many of the early albums were released simultaneously as boxes of seven-inch singles with books and as pocket money-priced individual singles. The tracks on the albums were often linked with skits and spoken introductions. Producers occasionally made reference to the two-sided album format. For example, the final song on side one of Big Bird Leads the Band is called ‘Turn over the record’. For most of the 1970s, the CTW almost always rerecorded the songs and vocal performances in a recording studio rather than lifting the audio directly from the television broadcasts. It was only in the late 1970s that the practice of using television audio became more common. The release of compiled albums of on-screen songs by guest stars, such as The Stars Come Out on Sesame Street (1979) and In Harmony: A Sesame Street Record (1981) are examples of this trend.

100  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street Methodology Using content analysis of individual recordings, the 570 songs on the 55 discreet Sesame Street albums released between 1970 and 1984 were arranged into curriculum categories (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). Song themes and musical intent were mapped to the show’s learning goals from Season One (1969–1970; Lesser and Schneider 2000: 29) and to the expanded and revised ‘experimental’ Season Two.7 Additionally, Appendix 6 shows how the songs were categorised to the most-recently published curriculum of Sesame Workshop (Sesame Workshop Education and Research Department 2014) and to the current national preschool curriculum in the UK, the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (Department for Education 2017). The latter curriculum was included in order to compare the CTW’s curriculum with a contemporary, standardised, nationally accepted and independent set of pedagogical goals. Analysis of musical factors, lyrical themes, genres and the use of specific guest stars is contextualised by reference to sociohistorical and financial-industrial factors, to the CTW’s wider non- didactic aims and to their early preference for adult co-viewing. While the show’s advertising-influenced format ensured the frequent repetition of ‘classic’ songs from Season One onwards, on- demand video streaming sites such as YouTube have opened up new opportunities for the in- class and domestic use of Sesame Street’s songs. Mapping to the current UK Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and the most-recent Sesame Workshop learning goals allows for the assessment of the continued relevance of the album songs as curriculum- enhancing media. The research also highlighted many songs, and indeed whole albums, that did not explicitly meet any learning goals but contributed to Sesame Street’s aims of providing entertainment. Over 200 Sesame Street albums were released between 1970 and 2015, 80 of these on Sesame Street/Children’s Television Workshop Records.8 The sheer volume of recorded product is an indicator of Sesame Street’s popularity and suggests that the records were just as much a part of the CTW’s education-through-entertainment strategy as the television programmes. The analysis covers the original six major-label releases and every discreet album released on Sesame Street Records between 1970 and 1984. Over a third of these are rereleases, rebranded packages or compilations of earlier releases and were excluded from the study. The same songs are repeated on a number of the remaining 55 albums (Appendix 7). These were omitted unless the revisited version/s covered a new curriculum area.9 Where a song carried two or more curriculum-based themes (counting and job roles, or counting and bats), only the main intended theme was tallied. Medleys were counted as one song; the lyrical theme was usually consistent throughout the medley. While there exists a significant body of literature on children’s engagement with television and educative programming10 and the pedagogical role

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  101 11

of music, few studies address music on television with an educational purpose. A significant exception is the work of social historian Kathryn Ostrofsky (2012, 2015, 2017), who places the sounds, songs and music of Sesame Street in a lineage of left-w ing social activism and in discourses of media and education. A detailed analysis of the music of Sesame Street was conducted by Wolfe and Stambaugh in the context of music therapy for children (1993).12 While this study was unconcerned with the CTW’s curriculum and formulated a problematic list of genres in which vaudeville13 and Tin Pan Alley are not mentioned (ibid.: 231), the findings provide a useful comparison. Books that cover the history of the show include Sesame Street and the Reform of Children’s Television (Morrow 2008) and Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street (Davis 2008). The essays in G Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street (Fisch and Truglio 2000) offer an insider’s perspective on the development and assessment of the curriculum. However, these texts rarely mention the music and offer only surface-level readings of the songs. I now turn to the albums released during Season One, the CTW’s first year of testing their novel format. This is followed by a look at the albums of subsequent seasons during which the curriculum and in turn the music were radically overhauled.

Season One (1969–1970) By the time of Sesame Street’s launch, senior vice president for curriculum and content Dr Rosemarie Truglio and her team had arranged the CTW’s goals into four main curriculum categories with topics, sub-goals and outcomes: • • • •

Symbolic representation: recognise and perform rudimentary operations with letters, numbers and geometric forms Cognitive processes: perceptual discrimination, relational concepts, classification, ordering, reasoning and problem solving The physical environment: concepts of near and distant, natural and ­man-made ​­ environments The social environment: social units: self, social roles, social groups and institutions; social interactions: differences in perspectives, cooperation, rules for justice and fair play14

Producers decided that even in the 2,400 segments of the first season’s 130 hour-long episodes, there were too many learning goals to cover. As a result, each season focussed on specific areas with choices dictated partly by which could best be delivered through the medium of television (White 1980: 217). In accordance with the CTW’s appeal to mass audiences, debut album The Sesame Street Book & Record (1970) excelled as a commercial product selling half-a-million copies. The album contains ‘Rubber Duckie’, ‘People in

102  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street your Neighborhood’, ‘I Love Trash’ and ‘Bein’ Green’, songs that are among those most closely associated with the show to this day. Joe Raposo was the CTW’s first musical director. As a classically trained jazz pianist with an affection for the styles of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime and vaudeville, Raposo developed the show’s signature sound. The seasoned instrumentalists that comprised the in-house band worked at a fast pace and were able to interpret Raposo’s sometimes-less-than- clear musical requests. The band could also respond to the challenges of creating credible takes on soul, funk, blues, jazz, rock’n’roll, rhythm and blues, blues, disco, vaudeville, musical theatre, Tin Pan Alley and a host of other styles that emerged as contemporary pop and rock in the 1970s and 1980s.15 Perhaps more than any of Sesame Street’s first wave of songwriters and composers, Raposo embraced the show’s extensive audience feedback. He used the evaluations to help strengthen his melodies, emphasise rhymes and manipulate tempo, metre and other compositional aspects of his songs in order to increase their memorability and assist audience vocal participation in pursuit of didactic educational goals (Ostrofsky 2015: 179–180). While a third of Season One’s on-screen content was allocated to goals around letters, numbers and shapes (White 1980: 215), the accompanying album suggests that the four main categories were addressed in a near- equal way (Appendix 6).16 The opening song on this and a number of subsequent Sesame Street albums is Raposo’s theme tune. Despite his misgivings about Bruce Hart’s lyrics, producer and sometime-lyricist Jon Stone commented that Raposo’s music was ‘melodic and simple enough for a child to recognize and even sing along to, but still had a musical sophistication’ (Davis 2008: 159). The words focus on optimism, healthy living (‘the air is sweet’), inclusion (‘come and play’) and community (‘that’s where we meet’). They combine repeated perfect rhymes (day/away/way/OK, sweet/street/meet) with digestible, memorable phrases of mostly three or four syllables. The ​­ instrumental up-tempo, major key music, child singers17 and ­high-pitched backing further contribute to the song’s high levels of childness. The use of ‘blue’ notes from the minor pentatonic scale root this song in vernacular popular music, while the mediant (three semitone) downwards key change into the middle- eight wistfully introduces fantastic imagery (‘magic carpet ride’) and the possibilities that lie behind the doors that gave the programme its name. Jeff Moss composed the vaudeville- esque ‘Rubber Duckie’ in response to the ‘self’ goal of cleanliness. Sung by Jim Henson as Ernie, the song became Sesame Street’s biggest chart hit to date selling over one million copies and reaching number 16 on the American Billboard Hot 100 in 1970. Moss’ prosocial ‘People in your Neighborhood’ exemplifies Sesame Street’s signature style. The musical and lyrical repetition, strong use of perfect rhyme and major key tonic- dominant tonality encourage children’s vocal participation, a curriculum goal introduced in Season Two. However, the verses are wordy and descriptive. They make reference to 12 different careers, school

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  103 and ‘numbers and the alphabet’. This combination of anthemic ‘sing-along’ choruses and more complex and wordy verses is a trope of vaudeville songs and exemplifies the Music Hall formula discussed elsewhere. Raposo’s ‘Somebody Come and Play’ is perhaps the most musically sophisticated song on this first album. Signifiers of nostalgia and melancholy colour the song’s plea for childhood companionship. The lightly swung rhythm and use of extended ‘jazzy’ major ninth and major sevenths chords align the song with the middle-of-the-road ‘easy listening’ styles that were popular in the early 1970s. The song combines an evocation of an unhurried, mindful childhood where participants can ‘smile the smiles … sing the songs … laugh the laughs’ and ‘see the pleasure in the wind’ with a downbeat appeal for company: ‘Somebody come and play before it’s too late to begin … watch the sun ‘til it rains again’.18 Moss’ ‘I Love Trash’ is a self- confident song of resistance that works across a number of goals concerning the social and physical environment. Sung by Oscar the Grouch, Sesame Street’s most materially impoverished and deliberately antagonistic resident, the song has a proudly anti- consumerist message that has been repeated in versions by pop- cultural outsiders k.d. lang and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. However, the lyrical theme and music are seemingly incongruous. The delicate waltz time signature, extravagant consecutive melodic intervals and 19 semi-tone melodic range somewhat belie its trash- cultural message. The musical theatre trappings spill over to the instrumental arrangement which features the show’s trademark highpitched brass and xylophones. The mix of simplicity and accessibility (the three syllables of the title line are held for three beats each) with complexity (the large consecutive intervals and overall melodic range) indicates a text with intergenerational appeal. While simplicity, rhyme, repetition and upbeat tempos are key features of many of the songs on The Sesame Street Book & Record, one notable exception closes the album. Raposo’s ‘Bein’ Green’ (the original title ‘Green’ is used on this album) has a low undulating tempo, barely defined acoustic guitar rhythm, relatively complex chordal progression (a downwards chromatic opening shift, followed by a minor dominant chord) and an extended musical theatre-influenced form. The lyrics (‘When green is all there is to be it could make you wonder why’) are existential and self-reflective. While themes of rejection, isolation and acceptance of bodies and selves all have precedent in children’s recorded music (‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’, ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’, ‘The Ugly Duckling’), they are, on the whole, accompanied by musical (medium to high tempi, repeated choruses and hook lines), lyrical (comedic or celebratory themes) and sonic signifiers of childness. Indeed, ‘Bein’ Green’ scored poorly in early Sesame Street audience evaluations. Children were confused, unable to identify that Kermit’s ruminations on his skin colour led to his resigned contentment (Fisch and Truglio 2000: 236). Unsurprisingly, the song found favour with adult artists. Frank Sinatra, Van Morrison, Ray Charles and others have recorded

104  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street it.  While Charles interpreted the song as a plea for racial pride and civil rights, Cooney suggested that ‘it was meant to be about people who are different in more ways than just race’ (Davis 2008: 257). Attesting to the song’s musical adaptability, it features on a number of Sesame Street albums including on Sesame Disco! (1979) and in a bluesy version by José Feliciano on ¡Sesame Mucho! (1974).

Season Two (1970–1971) The CTW’s review of their first season suggested that the original curriculum was too narrow in its focus. Numbers, mathematics, letters and language took up around half of the screen time. While the highly repetitive rote learning style had its supporters (Cook et al. 1975: 14 and 19), there were a number of criticisms.19 Education consultant Samuel Kliger commented that ‘we see only intermittent signs on Sesame Street that the producers really understand and apply rigorously and systematically what we now know … about how to arrange … a genuine language-learning experience’ (1970: 42–43). He explained that merely reciting the alphabet in a ‘mindless’ and ‘echoic’ fashion did not display competence (ibid.: 50) or prepare preschoolers for reading (ibid.: 48). Interestingly, a later Sesame Street study suggested that children learned the letters of the alphabet more effectively from a spoken word presentation than from versions which incorporated music or a storyline (Raposo and Reeves 1972: 5). The updated goals for Season Two (Appendix 6) were designed to more effectively engage viewers as active learners and address emotions and social skills (Bogatz and Ball 1971: 21–26). To this end, ‘symbolic representation’ was retained and expanded to encompass numbers up to 20 and other ‘pre-reading’ and number goals. ‘Conceptual processes’ was spilt into ‘cognitive organisation’ (perceptual discrimination and organisation, relational concepts, and classification) and ‘reasoning and problem solving’ (making inferences, generating explanation and solutions, and evaluating, explanation and solutions). The biggest change saw ‘the physical environment’ and ‘the social environment’ being subsumed into the new category of ‘the child and his world’. This category also included a broad range of goals concerning ‘self’ that covered the mind and its powers, emotions, body parts and functions, audience participation (ibid.: 214–222). Season Two saw the release of three major-label Sesame Street albums. Collectively, they encompass the majority of educational themes and entertainment devices of the next decade or so. In response to researchers’ positive feedback about the success of communicating literacy and numeracy, The Muppet Alphabet Album (1971) features one song or skit for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet plus opening and closing tracks that explain and review the ‘lessons’. On the whole, the emphasis is on listing words that start with specific letters (the song ‘P is my favourite letter’ mentions food and animals that start with ‘P’) and describing the shape of the letter

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  105 (‘I Stand up Straight and Tall’, ‘U Lecture’). The expanded curriculum encompassed the phonic sound of letters and words. The ‘Two G sounds’ exemplifies this new goal. In line with Sesame Street’s strategy of blending education with entertainment, the songs by Raposo, Moss and Jerry Juhl used large amounts of child-friendly humour. In ‘Y – Just because’ the confusion around the homophones of ‘Y’ and ‘why’ pushes Grover to apoplexy (‘I don’t know why nobody likes me! I try to be so nice’), while ‘U Lecture’ pokes anti-authoritarian fun at the boring Professor Hastings. The album includes Raposo’s ‘C is for Cookie’ which exemplifies how high levels of musical childness could deliver didactic content to pre-schoolers. Like many archetypal songs associated with children (folk songs, nursery rhymes, lullabies) the music of ‘C is for Cookie’ has short, scale-w ise melodic intervals, a major chord I, IV, V harmonic progression, perfect cadences that resolve on the tonic chord and a highly repetitive structure. Again, the song strikes a comedic and irreverent tone. The song opens with Cookie Monster saying: ‘Cookie starts with ‘C’. Let’s think of other things that start with ‘C’. Aaargh! Who cares about the other things!’ 1971 also saw the release of The Official Sesame Street 2 Book- and-Record Album which neatly reflected the updated curriculum. The new area of ‘the child and his world: audience participation’ is addressed by the songs ‘Play Along’, ‘High, Middle, Low’, ‘Sing’ and ‘Stop!’. Similarly, the songs ‘Everyone Makes Mistakes’, ‘What do I do when I’m Alone?’, ‘Mad!’, ‘The Grouch Song’ and ‘I’m Pretty’ tackle the new goals around ‘self’ and ‘emotions’. The song ‘Word Family’ (which was repeated on the television show to include different sounds to the record) shows how the curriculum had begun to reflect the more contemporary notions of phonemes and phonics. ‘Circles’ covers ‘geometric forms’; ‘Over, Under, Through’ tackles ‘relational concepts’. Raposo’s ‘Sing’ makes its first appearance on this album.20 Many subsequent versions of the song appear on Sesame Street albums sung by by ‘kids’ (the attributed vocalists for this album), various cast members and guests stars. Many children’s television shows communicate a narrow range of emotions and focus most closely on happiness, joy and contentment. Sesame Street deliberately used the character of Oscar (and to a lesser extent Bert, Grover and Kermit) to model anger, irritability and a number of ‘darker’ emotions. However, Jeff Moss’ ‘The Grouch Song’ matches ‘mean and grumpy’ words to ‘happy’ upbeat, up tempo, major-key vaudeville music, a contradictory combination that is repeated in nearly all of Oscar’s songs. In fact, The Count is the only character to regularly sing over minor-key compositions. His default Romani music does more to highlight his geographical origins (Transylvania) and ethnicity (Romanian) than his emotional state (he is always ecstatic about counting!). The Official Sesame Street 2 Book- and-Record Album also contains two songs that reflect the turbulent social and political climate into which Sesame Street was launched. The album captures the CTW’s utopian child- c entred

106  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street vision which had remained undimmed by the recent assassinations of progressive social leaders Dr Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy, widespread racial unrest and the upscaling of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In the soulful Joe Moss composition ‘Someday, Little Children’, African-A merican cast member Susan alludes to the then- current US Apollo space missions (‘someday soon there’s gonna be a lot of people living on the moon … it might be you little children’) and to the recent medical advances in vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella (‘Someday, little children, I hope it won’t be long, people won’t get sick no more, be always healthy, always strong’). Similarly, Susan and her on-screen husband Gordon (also African-American) duet on Joe Raposo’s laid-back ‘Picture a World’. The song centres on the curriculum areas of ‘animals’ (‘butterflies … frogs’) and ‘the natural world’ (‘rivers … flowers … stars’) and expresses early concerns for ‘the ecology’, a curriculum target introduced in Season Three. Both ‘Picture a World’ and ‘Someday, Little Children’ allude to the pressing racial issues of the day. Sesame Street’s updated Season Two curriculum included the category ‘the child and his word: social interactions’ soon to be replaced by ‘respect and understanding’. Forged in a climate of ongoing civil rights struggles and the unravelling of the 1960s progressive dream, lines such as ‘picture a world where the sunshine is pouring love and life on everyone’ and ‘someday, little children, in a world I’m dreaming of there’s gonna be a lotta people living in peace and love’ take on a wider political resonance. Moreover, while the struggle for children’s rights was certainly well underway in 1971, ‘Picture a World’ is evidence of the cultural power that adults have in constructing childhood. The song addresses the child in the diminutive third person (‘picture a world where little kids run’) while drawing on images of innocence and the rural idyll. As such, it positions its primary audience at a distance by singing about them rather than to them. The final album release of 1971 exemplifies Sesame Street’s goal of addressing under-privileged urban children in a language and musical form that reflected their everyday reality. The Year of Roosevelt Franklin (Columbia Records) was Sesame Street’s first solo album. Roosevelt Franklin was the Street’s first Black Muppet in all but skin colour (he was magenta) and was created and voiced by the original Gordon, Matt Robinson. Ten of the 12 songs on the album were clearly created to tackle elements of the newly expanded curriculum. Counting (‘Roosevelt Franklin Counts’), naming the days of the week (‘Days of the Week’) and the months (‘Mobity Mosely’s Months’), reciting the alphabet (‘Roosevelt Franklin’s Alphabet’) and safety (‘The Safety Boy Blues’) all have their own song while ‘social interaction’ is the subject of ‘Just Because’ (not hurting others), ‘Halfies’ (sharing) and ‘Me and You’ (cooperating). All are delivered in musical styles derived from and popularised by African-Americans. Rather than the ‘Northern’ soul21 that colours much of Sesame Street’s musical output, the bulk of the songs on The Year of Roosevelt Franklin feature the more rhythmic, bass- driven

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  107 Southern soul popularised by Stax Records, Muscle Shoals and Norman Whitfield’s Motown productions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Horns punctuate the album’s heavily syncopated vocals. Two songs contain c­ all-​­and-response sections reminiscent of gospel music and Black Southern churches (‘Days of the Week’ and ‘Old King Midas’). The majority of Sesame Street’s ‘race’ songs tend towards a universal philosophy where difference is either irrelevant or simply not mentioned. ‘Picture a World’ talks about ‘pouring life and love on everyone’. However, the first two songs on side two of The Year of Roosevelt Franklin tackle the issue of race head on. ‘A Bear Eats Bear Food’ emphasises variation and celebrates diversity while challenging w ­ ell-​­worn racial stereotypes (‘Plenty folks in Africa have never seen a jungle’). The direct and unflinching lyrics of ‘The Skin I’m In’ would not have been out of place on recent albums by Black music’s most politicised stars such as James Brown’s Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud (1968), Sly and the Family Stone’s Stand! (1969), Edwin Starr’s War and Peace (1970) or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On (1971). Over a g­ ospel-​­soul groove that builds dynamically from restrained bass and ­h i-​­hats to driving brass, tambourine, piano, bass and drums, Robinson as Franklin sings: If you’ve never seen my kind, I wonder where you have been. Lots of people have my kind of skin. You know, I love the skin I’m in. Way, way back in the old days we used to be ashamed (imagine that!). But then we found out we are beautiful and we’ve never been the same … Black is a fact. There is no taking it back … I’m happy to be a ­bright-​­eyed smart Black young man … If we stop all that foolishness, I have a feeling we’ll win. Curriculum head Gerald Lesser and others at the CTW felt that issues of race should be addressed obliquely rather than directly. A racially in­ frican-​ tegrated cast that provided strong Black role models and stable A A ­ merican relationships, such as the one between cast members Gordon and Susan, was the preferred approach (Polsky 1974: 77). While Sesame Street went on to broadcast and release many other groundbreaking politicised and potentially contentious songs such as ‘The Ballad of Martin Luther King’ and ‘Garbage’, Roosevelt Franklin made no further appearances on Sesame Street albums. The character was cut from the show soon after his solo album. CTW producers apparently bowed to pressure from a public concerned that Roosevelt’s vernacular speech patterns and streetwise behaviour peddled negative Black stereotypes (Davis 2008: 249– 250). In the context of the CTW’s progressive a­ dult-​­inclusive agenda, such a move seems reactionary and regressive. The occasional tropes of childhood innocence and naivety in Sesame Street songs were far outweighed by the show’s intergenerational musical and visual culture. The removal of

108  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street Roosevelt Franklin from Sesame Street perpetuates a normative childhood constructed white and middle class. The character’s precocious vernacular wisdom, his insights into the prejudice of adults and his mature articulations of racial injustice subvert a childhood defined by innocence and its protection. To William Blake, experience disavows childhood (1789). Drawing on Blake’s poem ‘The Little Black Boy’, Bond Stockton writes about ‘the weakness of whiteness’ whereby fictional Black children are too wise, too strong and too advanced to fit neatly into a still-resonant childhood of purity and powerlessness (2009: 31–32). While the CTW’s curriculum focussed on LatinAmericans in Season Three, the Taos Pueblo Indians in Season Seven and Hawaiians in Season Nine (Table 5.1), it was over 20 years until race relations received major curriculum attention (Lesser and Schneider 2000: 35).

Seasons Three and Four (1971–1973) During these first few seasons, Sesame Street attracted criticism from industry regulators, network executives, parents and academic researchers. Cooney vehemently defended the show from the former three and continued to develop the show’s form and content in response to and in collaboration with the latter. Scholars were critical of the programme’s use of television as an educational medium, as well as various aspects of its curriculum and audience survey methods.22 Although Sesame Street is ‘enjoyable’, critics suggested, it ‘merely reinforces the child’s desire to have fun’ (Kliger 1970: 43), and while parents reportedly enjoyed the show (Cook et al. 1975: 333) and thought that it was educational, they were spending less time reading with them (ibid.: 13). In an attempt to hold the attention of both the child and the adult, the updated curriculum (Table 5.1) included ‘audience participation’ (in ‘The child and his world’ category). To this end, the majority of the songs on Havin’ Fun with Ernie & Bert (1972) use a range of techniques to encourage listeners to participate in games (‘Name the Animal’, ‘The Listening Game’) and physical activity (‘Marching Song’, ‘Pat Patty Pat’, ‘Y’all Fall Down’, ‘Put it Away’). Both ‘Clink, Clank’ and ‘Simple Song’ celebrate the joys of making music from the ‘Lots of Stuff’ (the album’s opening track) to be found at home. Two songs seem designed to address the new goal of ‘the mind and its powers’ (in ‘The child and his world: self’), specifically the area of ‘being imaginative’.23 ‘Grover Takes a Walk’ guides listeners through a mindful journey that incorporates parts of the body and deep breathing. Raposo’s ‘Imagination’ is a creative meditation in which Ernie brings his thoughts to life. On record, the song is a slow and wistful lullaby; twinkling bells, a flute and Jim Henson’s gentle voice reassure the listener that ‘the nicest place is the middle of imagination when I’m there’. However, some self- censorship was required for the on-screen version which was originally preceded by a section in which Ernie had a bad dream in which ghostly monsters appear (‘Go away,

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  109 Table 5.1 Original, additional and special topics in the Sesame Street curriculum 1969–1984 (Lesser and Schneider 2000: 29 and 32) Season

Topic

1 (1969–1970)

1 Symbolic representation: Letters, numbers, geometric forms. 2 Cognitive processes: Perceptual discrimination, relational concepts, classification, ordering, reasoning and problem solving. 3 The physical environment: Natural environment, man­made environment. 4 The social environment: A

2 (1970–1971)

3 (1971–1972) 4 (1972–1973) 5 (1973–1974) 6 (1974–1975) 7 (1975–1976) 8 (1976–1977) 9 (1977–1978) 10 (1978–1979) 11 (1979–1980) 12 (1980–1981) 13 (1981–1982)

14 (1982–1983) 15 (1983–1984)

Social units: self, social roles, social groups and institutions. B Social interactions: differences in perspectives, cooperation, rules for justice and fair play. Sight words; counting numbers to 20; simple addition and subtraction; multiple classification; regrouping; property identification; emotions; the mind and its uses; conflict resolution. Rhyming; verbal blending; ecology; Latino-American culture. Measurement; sorting by activity; Spanish sight words. Complex geometric shapes; coping with failure; self- esteem; entering social groups. Creativity; divergent thinking; career awareness. Diversity – children with special needs; the Taos Pueblo Indians. Special topic: the nation’s bicentennial celebration. Special topics: roles of women and countering gender-based stereotypes. Special topic: the multicultural, ocean-oriented society of Hawaii. Deafness; sign language; nutrition; dental care; exercise; and science. ‘What’s alive?’ and ‘What’s inside?’. Special topic: ethnic diversity in New York City. Additional topic: literacy goals related to school workbook activities (e.g., draw a line; follow the arrow; cross out; circle and underline). Special topic: fire safety. Special topic: general safety (e.g., crossing the street and where to play). Sound pattern recognition – order, number, rhythm, dynamics, pitch, and tempo. Special topics: getting along in school (e.g., structure of the day, role of the teacher, social rituals, listening, and paying attention). Reading in a context; reading as useful and enjoyable; literary forms (e.g., stories, poems, letters and newspapers). Computers (parts and uses); the death of Mr Hooper.

110  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street bad things’). The show’s researchers found that children were more attentive to the visual representations of the monsters (they found them scary) than to the calming soporific music (Palmer and Fisch 2000: 11). The album Sesame Street Live! (1973) documents the stage show that allowed the songs to reach beyond the television broadcasts and records and into theatres, schools and other venues. This full- cast album covers the range of curriculum goals at the time. ‘Tu Me Gusta (I like you)’ addresses the Spanish language target of Season Four, while ‘Believe in Yourself’, ‘Still We Like Each Other’ and ‘My Name is David’ highlight recent ‘self’ goals. Similarly, ‘Show Me How You Feel’ deals with emotional literacy. The upbeat tone of the album is tempered with two songs that highlight Sesame Street’s artistic range and curriculum scope. In Raposo’s ‘How do I know I’m Here?’, Big Bird questions his very existence and through music investigates his perception of self (‘how do I know I’m not far away?’), profound subject matter for the under-fives. The album also features the first of a number of outings for Raposo’s reflective ‘Nobody’. Sung by the large lumbering Mr. Snuffleupagus, ‘Nobody’ covers themes of rejection (‘Nobody seems to want me’), self-reflection (‘everybody opens up their heart to familiar things but strange things make them shy and afraid sometimes’) and resigned acceptance (‘I’ll just go back to my house and make believe I’m the moon/Spring/love’). Contrasting the melancholic combination of the slow tempo and puppeteer Jerry Nelson’s low-pitched vocals, the music and structure of ‘Nobody’ are informed by the jauntiness of vaudeville with dominant sevenths in a circle of fourths providing the main chord progression. Rather than Kermit’s confident selfacceptance in ‘Bein’ Green’, the ritardando at the end of ‘Nobody’ serves to amplify Snuffy’s implied loneliness and his despondent retreat into the world of ‘make believe’.

Season Five (1974–1975) and beyond In 1974, the CTW set up its own record label primarily designed to bolster revenues through the lean mid 1970s. By then, the start-up grants from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and other private funders had all but dried up. Government funding from the U.S. Offices of Education, Economic Opportunity, Child Development and others was also under serious threat (Davis 2008: 218). The gap in revenue was plugged by repeats of the show and the licencing of characters, songs and other assets for merchandise. Bringing the album release schedule in house also seems to have placated some of the frustrations of the songwriters. Whereas Jim Henson had aggressively negotiated the intellectual property rights of his Muppets, the work of the contracted songwriters and composers was owned by the CTW. Furthermore, royalty rates were lower for music on children’s television and non- existent on public service channels (Ostrofsky 2015: 59–60). Negotiations resulted in a reciprocal deal whereby songwriters gained

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  111 ownership of their song rights. Licencing the songs to other artists in turn promoted the show (Davis 2008: 256). With the notoriously hard-headed Raposo in charge of selecting the songs not only for the show but for the albums, Moss felt that his songs were being under represented and departed in 1973. Raposo left shortly afterwards following a dispute with Cooney over publishing royalties (ibid.: 310), making way for a new wave of songwriters. Despite the financial imperatives, label head Arthur Shimkin’s erratic release schedule for Sesame Street Records served to over-saturate the market.24 The new model meant that whole albums could be dedicated to single curriculum areas. Core targets for ‘symbolic representation’ were met by the ­semi-compiled ​­ cast album Letters … and Numbers, Too! (1974), the singlecharacter ‘solo’ album The Count Counts (1975) and the Muppet-focussed Numbers! (1977). Other releases concentrated solely on activity-based learning (Somebody Come and Play, 1974), emotions (Let Your Feelings Show!, 1977), the Spanish language (¡Sesame Mucho!, 1974), acceptance of self (Aren’t you Glad you’re You?, 1977), social interactions (Fair is Fair, 1978) and telling the time (What Time is it on Sesame Street?, 1977). Album themes were repeated during Sesame Street Records’ decade-long existence. These include three Christmas albums (Merry Christmas from Sesame Street, 1975; Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, 1980; Sesame Street Christmas Sing-along, ­ ​­ 1984) which covered goals around ‘people and communities’ (EYFS) and ‘social institutions’. A series of sing-along albums (Bert & Ernie ­Sing-along ​­ 1975; Sesame Street Sing-along 1982; Sesame Street Christmas Sing-along ­ ​­ ­ ​­ 1984) repeatedly targeted the curriculum goals of ‘audience participation’. One of the more unusual releases on Sesame Street Records was ‘Sing, Sang, Song, Sing-along’ (1978). No Sesame Street cast members or Muppets performed on the album. All of the songs were performed by the Germanbased Les Humphries Singers. Other ‘concept’ albums include two of bedtime songs and stories (Sleepytime Bird, 1977; Big Bird’s Bedtime Stories, 1980) which covered ‘social interactions’ and ‘health and wellness’, and three of traditional tales (The Sesame Street Fairy Tale Album, 1977; Sesame Street Story Time, 1978; At Home with Bert & Ernie, 1979). Notably, the latter five albums feature mostly incidental music rather than vocalised song compositions. Both Moss and Raposo returned as songwriters for Season Seven (1975– 1976), by which time Broadway music aficionado Sam Pottle had joined as musical director. Other songwriters brought their own genre specialities. Tony Geiss favoured vaudeville-style songs (as did Raposo, Moss, Henson and Pottle), while Chris Serf brought a more contemporary rock/pop sound to Sesame Street. With release schedules remaining busy through the late 1970s, the albums reflect the changes in musical personnel as well as a number of trends in popular music and wider culture. Synthesised instruments begin to appear often incongruously alongside the live band (e.g., on Bob Sings!, 1977) before forming an integral part of the two disco albums (Sesame Street Fever, 1978; Sesame Disco!, 1979) and a number of disco songs on other albums such as

112  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street ‘Cookie Disco’ on Aren’t you Glad You’re You? (1977). The album Exercise! (1982) rode the popularity of the ‘keep fit’ movement. On Side one, Big Bird instructs listeners to ‘Warm up’, ‘Stretch’, do the ‘Ranch Aerobic Hoedown’ and ‘Cool Down’. Exercise! was released in the same year as the iconic Jane Fonda’s Workout video cassette. It was to this emerging ­play-​­at-home visual media that Sesame Street turned following the demise of its record label in 1984. The albums from the programme’s first 15 years highlight significant variations in curriculum focus from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s (Appendix 6. Summarised in Figures 5.1 and 5.2). The core curriculum category of ‘symbolic representation’ survived largely unchanged since the show’s inception. It has been retained as ‘literacy and numeracy/mathematics’ on current preschool programs of learning. However, while the share of songs addressing this category peaked at 40% in Season Two and accounted for 29% of the songs released between 1970 and 1975, it decreased suddenly from 1977 to ­single-​­figure percentages between 1977 and 1984. This downward trend is also apparent in the category of ‘cognitive processing/organisation’. A peak in Season One at 16% soon diminished to 4% of the songs in the first half of the survey and 1% in the second. Indeed, in the 46 analysed albums released between 1973 and 1982, only two songs address issues of ‘perceptual discrimination’, ‘relational concepts’, ‘classification’, ‘ordering’, ‘reasoning’ or ‘problem solving’. Recordings of songs on albums were clearly not felt to be the most appropriate way to meet cognitive and conceptual curriculum goals. Similarly, the attention paid by the album songs to the category of ‘the physical environment’ (either man made or natural) peaked in Season One. Not educational 10% Symbolic representation 29%

Health and wellness 19%

Cognative processes 5%

Emotional wellbeing 11% The social enviroment 20%

The physical environment 6%

Figure 5.1  Curriculum category distribution on Sesame Street albums 1970–1976.

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  113

Symbolic representation 6%

Cognitive processes 1% The physical environment 5%

Not educational 22% The social environment 25% Health and wellness 28% Emotional wellbeing 13%

Figure 5.2 Curriculum category distribution on Sesame Street albums 1977–1984.

However, with a relatively small sample size, single albums can have a significant impact. The rise in this category in the final three years of the sample is largely due to the albums Camping in Canada (Kids’ Records 1981), which focuses on an aeroplane journey (‘Aerodynamic’) and outdoor pursuits (‘Nature’s Family’, ‘Creatures in the Pond’), and The Sesame Street Christmas Sing-along (1984), which contains songs about the snowy weather and reindeer. ­ ​­ However, the most significant changes are those affecting ‘the social environment’. In Season One (1970) only two songs addressed this category. From Season Two, this rose steeply with the new and equivalent category of ‘the child and his world’.25 As the gendered labelling disappeared, ‘the child and his world’ expanded into four categories that now comprise the current Sesame Workshop curriculum: ‘science knowledge and skills’, ‘social and emotional development’, ‘social studies knowledge and skills’ and ‘health knowledge and practice’ (Appendix 6). The growing dominance of songs concerning self and sociability, personal expression and the appreciation of other cultures and physical and mental health suggests that Sesame Street was an early advocate of formalising and targeting such goals for preschoolers.26

Entertainment, genres and guest stars While curriculum goals and their manifestation as musical texts highlight the CTW’s pedagogical mission, the songs of Sesame Street were also designed to entertain. However, the CTW’s use of fast-paced music and visuals

114  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street and other devices common to advertising and commercial television were criticised; critics objected to the ‘sensory assault’ and feared that permanent hyperactivity might result (Halpern 1975). Despite these concerns, producers generally favoured entertainment over education when discussions remained unresolved (Lesser and Schneider 2000: 31). While many more recent children’s television shows have a residual or ‘accidental’ audience of adults (perhaps most notably My Little Pony; Burdfield 2015), Sesame Street was among the first to deliberately court older family members. Early evaluations found that the child’s learning increased when they watched with carers (Reiser, Tessmer and Phelps 1984), a result particularly apparent in children from lower social groups (Salomon 1977: 1146) and confirmed in subsequent studies (Strasburger, Wilson and Jordan 2009: 106). Equally, with only one television set in most households at the time, intergenerational appeal was preferable. Sesame Street’s ability to entertain audiences was greatly enhanced when puppeteer and entrepreneur Jim Henson was head-hunted for the show. The Muppets were already familiar to audiences from previous appearances in Sam and Friends (1955–1961), The Tonight Show (1957–present), The Jimmy Dean Show (1963–1967), The Ed Sullivan Show (1966–1971) and a host of advertising slots. Once Sesame Street was on air, CTW producers soon recognised The Muppets’ pedagogic potential. The increase in the on-screen presence of The Muppets from 25% in Season One to 45% in Season Two (Bogatz and Ball 1971: 66) is matched by a similar increase in their use as vocalists on the albums. While 34% of the songs on the albums were sung by Muppets in Season One (only 3% were sung by female Muppets), this jumped to 80% in Season Two with a corresponding increase in the use of female Muppet vocalists up to 9% overall (Appendix 8). Aside from the universal appeal of The Muppets, I now briefly explore two other ways in which music was used to attract and hold viewers of all ages, namely guest stars and the use of specific music genres. Guest stars Many well-known actors, singers and musicians visited The Street as guests in the 1970s performing instructive and engaging songs and skits. For example, African-American guests such as Richard Prior, James Earl Jones and Bill Cosby were filmed speaking the letters of the alphabet in a variety of comedic and dramatic ways. The pauses left by Jones were praised by the evaluation team for providing space for the child to anticipate the answers (Morrow 2008: 104–105). When Stevie Wonder visited in 1973, he performed his specially composed ‘1 2 3 Sesame Street’ alongside his current hit ‘Superstition’. However, the vast majority of on-screen musical guests from the 1970s and early 1980s, including high-profile African-A merican musicians such as Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Mahalia Jackson and Harry Belafonte, never appeared on Sesame Street albums. Apart from a number of Latin American stars such as José Feliciano, Jorge Santana and Vikki Carr

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  115 on 1974’s ¡Sesame Mucho!, the first album to consist entirely of guest performances was The Stars Come Out On Sesame Street (1979), which features Johnny Cash, Lena Horne, Judy Collins, Ray Charles, the Pointer Sisters, Helen Reddy and others. This was followed by In Harmony (1980) on which musically conservative and mostly prosocial songs are performed by James Taylor, the Doobie Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, George Benson and others. Of the 55 albums in the study, only three focus exclusively on guests. Pete Seeger & Brother Kirk Visit Sesame Street (1974) was the first. Seeger was invited to perform on the show at a time when he was blacklisted from television following his hearings with HUAC and the Committee on Internal Security. The two civil rights campaigners performed alongside a selection of children and the seemingly ubiquitous Big Bird on a range of upbeat c­ hild-​­friendly folk songs including ‘She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain’ and ‘Skip to my Lou’, the Cuban folk song ‘Guantanamera’ and Seeger’s own pioneering p ­ lastic-​­free anthem ‘Garbage’. The album also includes the contentious full version of Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land’ (‘by the relief office I saw my people as they stood hungry’) and Brother Kirk’s ‘The Ballad of Martin Luther King’ (‘some sick man shot him down … did you pull that trigger?’). The songs were not only tolerated by the CTW but also celebrated as part of their agenda of racial unity and progressive socialist politics. Interestingly, while civil rights campaigners in the Southern states tended to use folk music as protest, urban Northerners frequently used musical theatre, the style often favoured by Sesame Street, and employed irony and satire to disseminate their politics (Ostrofsky 2015: 223). In contrast, 1979’s Anne Murray Sings for the Sesame Street Generation features gentle l­ ow-​­tempo performances of many songs associated with children such as ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, ‘Inch Worm’ and ‘Animal Crackers’. The album also included Murray’s version of Woody Guthrie’s children’s song ‘Why, Oh, Why’. Whereas Guthrie’s upbeat original version mentions the ‘hard heads’ and ‘thick skins’ of the adults and authority figures that often ignore requests from children and other citizens, Murray’s soporific version excludes these references. Murray’s album also featured no Muppets or Sesame Street cast members. In fact, the album was a licenced rerelease of the Canadian singer’s album from two years prior attesting to the CTW’s need to generate capital at this time. Of the 570 songs in my sample, Murray’s album includes the only explicit reference to organised religion. With Sesame Street’s three Christmas albums being entirely secular, Murray’s ‘Stars are the Windows of Heaven’ draws on images of angels who ‘keep an eye on kids’ and ‘cry each time we are naughty’. The final guest star album is Dinah! I’ve Got a Song (1979) on which the jazz and big band singer Dinah Shore delivers instructional (‘Numbers’), self (‘Nothing to Do’, ‘Monsters can be Unhappy’, ‘I Like Myself’) and prosocial (‘Beautiful Day’, ‘Blue Skies, Apple Pies’) goals through a variety of vaudeville, musical theatre and light disco styles. These guest albums and the introduction of cast members Malvina Reynolds2 in 1972 and Olivia in 1976 boosted the representation of human female vocalists on the albums

116  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street from 14% of the songs from 1970–1976 to 24% between 1977 and 1984 (Appendix 8). Despite a range of feminist critiques of the early shows (Davis 2008: 213–215; Morrow 2008: 155–156) and complaints that Henson’s Muppets were overwhelmingly male, album songs sung by female Muppet vocalists dropped from 9% (1970–1976) to just 4% (1977–1984) over the same period. Genres My analysis reveals how the use of musical genres on the albums changed over the Sesame Street’s first 15 years (Appendix 8; Figures 5.3 and 5.4). Unsurprisingly, songs in the styles of vaudeville and musical theatre dominate both the first (1970–1976) and second (1977–1984) s­ ix-​­year periods, comprising around a third of all songs. As discussed in the previous chapter, music hall was the default genre choice of BBC radio’s Children’s Choice where the repetitive accessible choruses and complex wordy, and often worldly, verses proved the perfect combination for ensnaring and enculturing family audiences. Music hall/vaudeville comprised around half of the songs in 1971– 1972 and of the last few Sesame Street Records releases in the early 1980s.27

Jazz Rock'n'roll, rhythm & 2% blues, blues 6%

Novelty/Sound effects 2%

Classical and opera 1%

Country 6% Vaudeville/musical theatre 35%

World' 8%

Soul and funk 13%

Folk 13%

Contemporary Pop/rock 14%

Figure 5.3  Genre distribution of songs on Sesame Street albums 1970–1976.

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  117

World 3%

Soul and funk 2%

Jazz 2%

Classical and opera 2%

Novelty 1%

Country 5% Rock'n'roll, R&B, blues 6%

Vaudeville/musical theatre 37% Folk 14%

Contemporary Pop/rock 28%

Figure 5.4  Genre distribution of songs on Sesame Street albums 1977–1984.

Folk music Equally predictable is the strong and consistent contribution made by folk music which peaked in popularity in the mid 1970s. Historically, folk has often been the chosen form with which to circulate instructional pedagogy, prosocial values and wider culture (see Chapters 2 and 3). Folk was a staple of the progressive schools, summer camps, ­education-​­based record labels and school song books in the CTW’s New York, all of which informed Sesame Street’s pedagogy. Pete Seeger’s Sesame Street album and the traditional Spanish language folk songs on ¡Sesame Mucho! aligned the programme’s music with the popularity of folky ­singer-​­songwriters such as James Taylor, John Denver and Paul Simon, all of whom had links with Sesame Street and/or The Muppet Show. Contemporary pop The use of contemporary popular music more than doubled between 1970– 1976 and 1977–1984 boosted by two disco albums in 1978 and 1979. The ascent of Christopher Cerf as a songwriter contributed to this rise. Cerf’s

118  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street ­

­

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  119 ‘World’ music Supported by curriculum initiatives to cover ­Latin-​­American music (1973– 1974) and ­Spanish-​­language styles from ­Puerto-​­Rico in the early seasons, ‘world’ music accounted for around a tenth of the songs on the early albums. This was bolstered by the occasional song from Jamaica which was invariably in the traditional folk style of calypso rather than the more contemporary ska, rocksteady or reggae. Many of the songs sung by The Count also fall into the ‘world’ music category. Songwriters drew on the Eastern European folk style of Romani ‘gypsy jazz’ and the closely related sound of klezmer28 to create The Count’s vampiric leitmotif. Despite Hawaiian music and culture receiving curriculum attention in Season Nine (1977–1978) and a sharp increase in the release schedule (35 new albums in the second half of the study compared with 20 in the first), ‘world’ music fell significantly between 1977 and 1984. The rise in contemporary pop accounted for the loss of soul and ‘world’, a move that diminished the relative variety of genres overall. This fall in diversity seems to correspond to a priority change by the CTW to focus increasingly on younger audiences. This was made explicit by the introduction of Elmo in 1979 and his increasing presence through the 1980s and 1990s. As the ‘adult’ references have reduced over the show’s n ­ ear-​ 5­ 0-year run, young children increasingly watch alone (Fisch and Truglio 2014: 104). Miscellaneous genres Other genres maintained a relatively consistent presence on Sesame Street albums. Country music is featured on Sesame Country (1981) and Camping in Canada (Kid’s Records 1981) and throughout the period covered by the study. Similarly, rock’n’roll, rhythm and blues and doo wop remained steady. Counting songs ‘Four’, ‘Octopus Blues’ (both by Moss) and ‘Count it Higher’ (by Cerf), ­self-​­confidence builder ‘Proud’ (Moss) and the ironic ­emotion-​­explorer ‘I wish I had a Friend to Play with Me’ (Cerf) rode a wave of 1950s nostalgia during the 1970s. The musical films American Graffiti (Universal Pictures, 1973), Grease (Paramount Pictures, 1978) and the television series Happy Days (1974–1984) are exemplars of this revival. Classical and opera made sporadic appearances most notably on Big Bird Discovers the Orchestra (1981) and the incidental music for story albums such as The Sesame Street Fairy Tale album (1977). Jazz Despite a number of jazz performers such as George Benson, Nina Simone, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor guesting on Sesame Street in the 1970 and early 1980s, jazz constituted only eleven out of the 570 sampled songs. These range from the big band swing on Dinah Shore’s solo album

120  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street and the Christmas albums to the occasional light jazz tune sung by Bob. Despite being ­under-​­represented on the albums, jazz underpinned some of the most memorable television sequences. The series of animations known as ‘Jazzy Alphabet’ (starting in 1974) was performed by j­azz-​­funk band Donald Byrd and the Blackbirds. The song is a hard bop with Vince Collin’s minimalist graphic animation contributing to the modernist agenda. ‘Jazz Numbers’ (from 1969) by Denny Zeitlin is perhaps the most challenging piece of jazz on the show. Featuring a clavinet and a series of rapidly changing time signatures that seem to relate to the numbers (seven eight, six eight, etc.), the song is progressive and discordant. Vocalist Grace Slick of psychedelic rockers Jefferson Airplane improvises the lyrics (‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10’) repeatedly over the track in an intense and baffling attempt to teach children to count. As I argue elsewhere (Maloy 2019), jazz music in children’s television communicates complex and subversive messages about the child. As an a­ udio-​ ­visual text it signifies age, experience, sexuality, race and class and offers the child a glimpse of the ambiguous and unresolved world of adulthood. Jazz subverts a p ­ ost-​­Enlightenment Western childhood constructed around notions of innocence and normalised as white, heterosexual and middle class (Bernstein 2011: 36–39; Bond Stockton 2009: 31–32). However, jazz provides the opportunity for resistant readings by opening up a semiotic space for young viewers to explore complex ‘adult’ issues in ways often not possible by folk, vaudeville and other more widely used genres of music for children. ­Non- ​­educational songs A number of songs were clearly not designed to meet Sesame Street’s curriculum targets. While it could be argued that all music implicitly teaches the listener about musical schemas, genres and cultural norms, 9% of the songs released between 1970 and 1976 were ‘non educational’, seemingly included to entertain rather than to educate. Songs designed with the sole purpose of entertainment more than doubled between 1977 and 1984 (Figure 5.4). As discussed, this corresponded to a drop in the representation of the original core areas of both ‘symbolic representation’ (literacy and numeracy) and ‘cognitive processes’. The increased emphasis on both entertainment and contemporary popular music suggests that the role of these central curriculum areas in Sesame Street’s musical pedagogy began to diminish after the first five years. While television’s e­ ye-​­catching visuals and the use of frequently repeated segments continued to provide pedagogical support, the albums increasingly served the equally important role of entertaining listeners. As the 1970s progressed, the albums developed the distinct function of supplementing the television show rather than replicating it. Sesame Street has continued to release albums since 1984 although many are reissues and repackages of the songs and albums recorded in the 1970s and early 1980s. Yet more are the soundtracks of extended television specials

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  121 or spin-off movies such as Follow that Bird (RCA 1985) and The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (Sony Wonder 1999). Where my sample ends, Sesame Street’s life on VHS video begins. The first releases of stories, television specials and Follow that Bird started in 1985. The eight ‘Sesame Songs’ videos (Random House Home Video) released between 1990 and 1995 brought many songs from the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s to a new audience. The continuing popularity of Sesame Street has been demonstrated by a steady stream of DVD releases that include music-themed guest-heavy titles such as Sing it, Elmo! and Singing with the Stars (2001 and 2017).

Conclusion The songs of Sesame Street reveal much about the CTW’s initial formulation of a curriculum that could be delivered to preschool children through television, music, humour, animation, puppets and other attention-grabbing art forms. In the early 1970s, the songs on the albums mirrored the changes to the curriculum. As curriculum priorities shifted in the mid 1970s away from numbers, letters, sorting and ordering towards community, sociability, self-awareness, tolerance and racial pride, songwriters responded not only in terms of quantity but with compositions that were in turn clever, funny, political, emotional and sensitive to the issues at hand as well as being engaging and accessible for young listeners. Songs such as ‘Nobody’, ‘Somebody Come and Play’ and ‘Bein’ Green’ are nuanced and profound and deal with the ambiguities of adolescence and adulthood. Equally, ‘The Skin I’m In’, ‘Garbage’ and ‘A Bear Eats Bear Food’ are celebratory, prescient and politically astute. However, the albums as saleable products served other purposes. Their role in disseminating the curriculum through entertainment rapidly developed into one of revenue generating in order to prop up the CTW’s ailing finances during the mid to late 1970s. My research highlights the sharp rise in songs designed to engage and amuse rather than teach and instruct. While the genres of vaudeville and musical theatre remained steady through the first 15 years, contemporary popular music increased sharply after the mid 1970s. The prominent use of soul in the first few seasons declined dramatically during the same period. Guest stars on the television show, especially African-A merican guests, were under represented on the albums. Despite the increasing use of contemporary music and non- educational songs, a curriculum-based pedagogy continued to define the music of Sesame Street through the 1970s and 1980s. That the curriculum was devised by the internal production team is significant. Despite some of the teaching techniques (rote learning and a focus on letters rather than phonics) being perceived as old-fashioned in the late 1960s, the CTW was in many ways ahead of its time. My analysis shows that the albums of Sesame Street changed and developed through the 1970s and early 1980s to incorporate the CTW’s social and personal development

122  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street goals. Such objectives are now an integral part of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), a current nationally prescribed UK preschool curriculum. While Henson continued to operate and voice Kermit, Ernie, Guy Smiley and other Sesame Street characters until just a few months before his death in 1990, he began piloting a separate music- and humour-based television show from early 1974. Unlike Sesame Street, The Muppet Show was not informed by a curriculum nor purported to teach children about society, themselves or anything else. However, the analyses of the music of The Muppet Show (first aired in 1976) and of UK television programme Bagpuss (1974) in the next chapter reveal a progressive educational philosophy drawn from the same pedagogic sources that shaped Woody Guthrie’s songs for children and Sesame Street’s early curricula. While Sesame Street was not without its moments of nonsensical destruction29 and controversy, The Muppet Show frequently combined anarchic and sometimes sexualised visual violence with a range of intergenerational musical content which, I argue, contributes to a more radical pedagogy, one that offers the child a resistant reading of adult-prescribed notions of innocence and protection. While the songs and sketches of The Muppet Show depicted violence, anger, prostitution and sexuality, the musical genres helped construct (as well as constrict) the socialised m ixed-age domestic viewing environment in which the child, as an active participant, could start to process the often- complex lyrical themes. Again, I refer to the Music Hall formula to discuss how music and visuals with high levels of childness provide an accessible format through which the child can engage with complex themes that are often ‘disguised’ by coded language, double entendre, metaphor and satire.

Notes 1 Most viewers did not watch every episode or just watched parts (Bogatz and Ball 1971: 69). 2 A number of Sesame Street’s guest stars and cast members had been blacklisted through McCarthyism, HUAC and the Committee on Internal Security. These include Pete Seeger, Lena Horne and folk singer Malvina Reynolds (best known for her song ‘Little Boxes’) who appeared as cast member Kate. Like Reynolds long-standing cast member Will Lee who played Mr Hooper had banned from appearing on film or television for five years by HUAC in the 1950s. 3 For the full breakdown of Sesame Street funding between 1968 and 1971 see Cook et al. (1975: 29). 4 NET was replaced by PBS in 1970. 5 Over 70% of the segments of Sesame Street contained songs and music (Wolfe and Stambaugh 1993: 231), of which 36% was ‘vocal and instrumental’ (ibid.: 229). In my analysis, vocal and instrumental music accounted for 100%. 6 The first Sesame Street album rerelease was The Year of Roosevelt Franklin, which was renamed My Name is Roosevelt Franklin in 1974. 7 Cooney and the CTW team refer to Sesame Street as a ‘perpetual experiment’ (Morrow 2008: 161).

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  123

124  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street 21 Northern Soul is a specifically British term. It refers to the dance clubs in the North and midlands of England that in the 1970s played ­m id ​­1960s ­Motown-​ s­ tyle American records. 22 In the early 1970s, Sesame Street’s survey methods were not considered to be genuinely scientific or able to test more than cognitive responses, memory and recall (Hendershot 1998: 161–162). 23 As a curriculum goal, ‘Being imaginative’ is not stated in any CTW curricula to date. It is, however, covered explicitly by EYFS’s ‘expressive art and design’ (Appendix 6). 24 Thirteen albums were released on Sesame Street Records in 1974, six in 1975, none in 1976 (a change in business model and a switch of distributor from Children’s Records of America to Distinguished Productions may have contributed to this lack of product), 13 in 1977, eight in both 1978 and 1979, four in 1980, six in both 1981 and 1982, 11 in 1983, concluding with a solitary album in 1984 (Sesame Street Discography 2018). 25 The curriculum category of ‘the child and his world’ was a merger of ‘the social environment’ and ‘the physical environment’. ‘The social environment’ accounted for 45% of the songs released between 1970 and 1976 and 70% of those between 1977 and 1984. 26 Notably, ‘the child and his world’ is covered by five of the seven categories in the current EYFS preschool curriculum: ‘physical development’, ‘expressive art and design’, ‘understanding the world’, ‘communication and language (listening and attention, understanding, speaking)’ and ‘personal, social and emotional development’ (Appendix 6). 27 The two ‘­sing-​­along’ albums (The Gang’s All Here, 1983; Sesame Street Christmas ­Sing- ​­along, 1984) defer to the show’s early signature vaudeville/music hall/ operetta template. 28 Klezmer music was undergoing a revival in the USA in the 1970s. 29 Sesame Street’s moments of nonsensical destruction include Cookie Monster eating a typewriter.

Bibliography Bernstein, R. 2011. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York and London: New York University Press. Blake, W. 1789. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Reprinted 1967. Bogatz, G.A. and Ball, S. 1971. The Second Year of Sesame Street: A Continuing Evaluation. Volume 1. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Bond Stockton, K. 2009. The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Borgenicht, D. 1998. Sesame Street Unpaved: Scripts, Stories, Secrets and Songs. New York: Hyperion Books. Bryant, A.J. ed. 2007. The Children’s Television Community. London: Routledge. Buckingham, D., Davies, H., Jones, K., and Kelley, P. 1999. Children’s Television in Britain: History, Discourse and Policy. London: British Film Institute. Burdfield, C. 2015. ‘Finding ­Bronies-​­The accidental audience of My Little Pony: Friendship is magic’, The Journal of Popular Television, 3(1): 127–134. Cook, T.D., et al. 1975. Sesame Street Revisited. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Davis, M. 2008. Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street. New York: Penguin Books.

The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street  125 Department for Education. 2017. Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. London: Department for Education. Dewey, J. 1897. ‘My pedagogic creed’, Journal of the National Education Association, 18(9): 291–295. Reprinted 1929. Ellis, E.N. 1973. ‘The impact of Sesame Street on primary school pupils in Vancouver’, in Ollila, L.O., Summers, E.G., Downing, J., and Viel, P.J. eds. Learning to Read, Reading to Learn: Proceedings from the Transmountain Far West Regional Reading Conference, Second edition. Victoria, BC: 242–260. Fisch, S.M. and Truglio R.T., eds. 2000. G Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street. London and New York: Routledge. Green, L. 2008. Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy. London: Ashgate. Halpern, W.I. 1975. ‘Turned-on toddlers’, Journal of Communication, 25(4): 66–70. Hendershot, H. 1998. Saturday Morning Censors: Television Regulation before The Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ­V-Chip. ​­ Jones, P. and Robson, C. 2008. Teaching Music in Primary Schools. Exeter: Learning Matters. Kliger, S. 1970. ‘Fog over Sesame Street’, Teachers College Record, 72(1): 41–56. Lesser, G.S. and Schneider, J. 2000. ‘The creation and evolution of the Sesame Street curriculum’, in Fisch, S.M. and Truglio, R.T. eds. G Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street. London and New York: Routledge: 25–39. Maloy, L. 2019. ‘‘Ain’t Misbehavin’: Jazz music in children’s television’, Jazz Research Journal, 12(1): 63–85. Marsh, K. 2009. The Musical Playground: Global Tradition and Change in Children’s Songs and Games. London: Oxford University Press. Morrow, R.W. 2008. Sesame Street and the Reform of Children’s Television. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. O’Bryan, K.D. 1971. ‘Sesame Street: Education or entertainment?’, Orbit, 2(3): 24–25. Ostrofsky, K.A. 2012. ‘Taking Sesame to the streets: Young children’s interactions with pop music’s urban aesthetic in the 1970s’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 24(3): 287–304. Ostrofsky, K.A. 2015. An Aural History of the 1970s through the Sounds of “Sesame Street”. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania. Ostrofsky, K.A. 2017. ‘Sesame Street as a musical comedy-variety show’, in Giuffre, L. and Hayward, P. eds. Music in Comedy Television: Notes on Laughs. London: Routledge: 15–30. Palmer, E.L. and Fisch, S.M. 2000. ‘The beginnings of SS research’, in Fisch, S.M. and Truglio, R.T. eds. G Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street. London and New York: Routledge: 3–24. Polsky, R.M. 1974. Getting to Sesame Street: Origins of the Children’s Television Workshop. New York: Praeger. Potter, A. 2015. Creativity, Culture and Commerce. Bristol: Intellect. Raposo, J. and Reeves, B. 1972. ‘A Plan for the Study of Music’. 15. March 1972, CTW Archives. Box 37. Folder 8. Reiser, R.A., Tessmer, M.A., and Phelps, P.C. 1984. ‘Adult- child interaction in children’s learning from “Sesame Street”’, ECTJ, 32(4): 217–223. Salomon, G. 1977. ‘Effect of encouraging Israeli mothers to co- observe “Sesame Street” with their ­five-year-olds’, ​­ Child Development, 48(3): 1146–1151.

126  The musical pedagogy of Sesame Street Sesame Street Discography. 2018. Muppet Wiki [Online]. Sesame Workshop Education and Research Department. 2014. Sesame Street Framework for School Readiness. New York: Sesame Workshop. Shehan Campbell, P. 1998. Song in their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children’s Lives. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steemers, J. 2010. Creating ­Pre-School ​­ Television. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Strasburger, V.C., Wilson, B.J., and Jordan, A.B. 2009. Children, Adolescents and the Media, Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Thomson, P. and Kamler, B. 2016. Detox your Writing: Strategies for Doctoral Researchers. London: Routledge. Van Evra, J. 2004. Television and Child Development, Third Edition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. White, P.B. 1980. ‘Sesame Street: The packaging of a curriculum’, Journal of Educational Thought, 14(3): 209–219. Wolfe, D.E. and Stambaugh, S. 1993. ‘Musical analysis of Sesame Street: Implications for music therapy practice and research’, Journal of Music Therapy, 30(4): 224–235.

Audio sources See Appendix 7 for the list of Sesame Street albums sampled in this chapter.

6

How television music constructs childhood Bagpuss and The Muppet Show

This chapter focusses on music both in and on children’s television. I examine how fluid and multifarious musical-visual codes are negotiated by the child in the context of family viewing. I emphasise how television fosters a mode of reception that differs from that of radio, records, song books and oral culture. I analyse the songs of Bagpuss and The Muppet Show to support claims about music’s role in constructing childhood. I suggest that in both cases, music mediated the complex themes raised by the programmes while simultaneously restricting the child’s interpretive responses to those themes. I speculate about the tensions that arise when a child- centred ethos combines with concepts of ‘family’ broadcasting. Despite being produced in England in the early to mid 1970s and débuting on British television within two years of each other, there are obvious visual and narrative differences between Bagpuss and The Muppet Show. The meditative melancholy and gentle hand-made charm of the former contrasts with the colourful comic anarchy of the latter. Bagpuss depicts a cosy, if occasionally quarrelsome, group of stuffed toys and wooden creatures in the closed space in which they live. The Muppet Show also features a somewhat dysfunctional ‘family’ of puppets and mannequins, though this time they are at work rather than home. However, despite clear differences in setting, format, pace and styles of music, I propose that both programmes construct similar ideologies of the child and the family and use music as a central tenet of this construction. As noted in the introductory chapter, ‘the family’ is loaded with assumptions about the ways that people live together and about the people themselves. The term conjures a range of ideological, political and religious assumptions that have become normalised since the development of the concept of the post-industrial nuclear family in the Victorian age. The music of Bagpuss and The Muppet Show reflects these norms while offering resistant and subversive potential readings of them. The two programmes invoke alternative representations of the traditional nuclear family. The music communicates rich, diverse and, at times, potentially contentious themes that are often excluded from protectionist constructions of childhood. While The Muppet Show depicts many types of violence (including sexualised violence) and occasionally refers to sex and sexuality, issues

128  How television music constructs childhood that have historically led to the censorship of children’s television, Bagpuss covers equally complex and profound issues yet does so in a more implicit and contemplative manner. Bagpuss includes scenes and songs about physical and spiritual growth, self-imposed isolation, violence and anger, and the nature of reality. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how the music and visuals in Bagpuss and The Muppet Show contribute to constructions of the child as an active participant in an intergenerational domestic television viewing environment, a mode of viewing that, I argue, is essential to the child’s negotiation of the complex issues raised by the songs. I also acknowledge the problematic nature of ‘the family’ as a discreet unit of child support and recognise the constricting nature of both adult- derived texts for children and age-shared co-viewing. ​­ ​­ I examine how Bagpuss’ almost- exclusive use of British folk music and The Muppet Show’s extensive inclusion of British music hall songs helped attract and engage mixed-age family audiences. The dynamic combination of music and moving visuals was essential not only to attract and sustain such viewership but also to construct the socialised discursive domestic forum through which the child’s understanding could be mediated in the context of the British 1970s. I draw on two key concepts. First, I discuss modality and examine how the child’s perceptions of reality and fantasy were shaped not only by specific musical-visual attributes but also by the socialised television viewing arrangements that the texts helped to construct. The use of animation, puppets, storytelling, humour and a range of musical styles produced a range of modalities which, in a family setting, facilitated the child’s understanding of the violence, isolation, sex and the other multifaceted issues mentioned above. Second, I discuss the role of nostalgia and how musical and visual references to the past appealed to adult viewers, developed the child’s sense of cultural chronology and have contributed to the long-term popularity of the two programmes.

Music on and in children’s television Discussions of the semiotic relationship between music and moving visuals often focus on which medium dominates. Frith asserts that music is a device included primarily to grab the audience’s visual attention (2002: 280). Similarly, Bignell notes the ‘hailing function’ of music on television (2004: 100–101), while Chion contentiously describes television as ‘illustrated radio’ (1994). However, it is generally accepted that, rather than hearing the music and processing the visuals in isolation, the two media work together to denote meaning and engender interpretation (Alwitt et al. 1980; Deaville 2001: 8; Pillai 2016; Tagg 2000). The most useful question to ask, Cook suggests, is not ‘what does the music mean?’ but ‘what does the music mean

How television music constructs childhood  129 here?’ in this television show, advert or film (1998: 8). Image and music are ‘mutually implicated’; they work on as well as with each other (Gorbman 1987: 15). While each visual and aural element may be isolated and analysed for its own connotations, the combination occurs in spatial (visual) and temporal (musical) dimensions (Hodge and Tripp 1986: 17). The level of autonomy that each media has in relation to the other in this dynamic spatial-temporal context has been dubbed its ‘independent dimension of variance’ (Cook 1998: 263). Specific attributes of the visuals, spoken and sung words, music and sound design compete for attention, rising and falling in their pertinence to the individual viewer-listener in specific social reception contexts. The elements of an ‘instance of multimedia’ may conform, complement or contest each other (ibid.: 100). Even within musical-visual semiotic systems, there are hierarchies of signification that may temporarily elevate the spoken word over the singing voice or vice versa (ibid.: 145). Some sonic attributes will be more pertinent or significant than others. Alwitt et al. (1980) highlighted how women’s, children’s and ‘peculiar’ voices, special sound effects, laughter and instrumental music (they do not specify which attributes of the music) promote the child’s attention to television. Men’s voices, slow music and individual singing were deemed to have the opposite effect. Others have suggested that while musical and visual tempo may be useful for grabbing the child’s attention (especially young children of three to five years old), visuals and a strong narrative are better placed to hold it (Gunter and McAleer 1997: 37–40). Just as the Music Hall formula requires accessible and attractive musical tropes to deliver complex lyrical themes, so the hyperbolic visual signifiers of The Muppet Show are integral to the child’s televisual reception of ‘adult’ issues. As discussed in Chapter 4, George Martin’s novelty record productions were perfectly suited to the BBC’s intergenerational radio broadcasting in the late 1950 and early 1960s for similar reasons. As discussed more fully below, building a critical comprehension of genre and other conventions is essential in order for the child to make sense of any potentially confusing or upsetting content. As the child develops their competence to identify and decipher the codes of television, they internalise the technical attributes of the texts, attributes that are familiar to analysts of visual media. Television’s paradigmatic structure has led to ways to describe technical devices such as zooms, fades, edits and framing, as well as more concept-based structural elements. Describing how the paradigms relate to each other either temporally or spatially within the text itself is referred to as syntagmatic structure (Hodge and Tripp 1986: 20–21). This often involves comparing the scene in question to others that appear both before and afterwards in order to spot patterns, similarities and differences. Continuous syntagms will immediately precede or follow each other, while discontinuous syntagms will be separated within the whole text by other scenes (ibid.: 21). Clearly, this raises issues when scenes are slowly cross-faded, as

130  How television music constructs childhood in Bagpuss’ visualised thought sequences, or montaged, especially when the collection of images contains intertextual references. The child’s developing competence not only supports them in understanding the conventions of genres and the wider machinations of the media they are viewing, but also, most relevantly for this chapter, helps them to differentiate between degrees of fantasy and reality. Part of the child’s burgeoning ability to do this lies in how the music is visualised and whether it is performed on-screen or has no visible or implied origin. Literary studies scholars differentiate between intra- and extradiegetic narrators. Film and television music analysts tend to refer to diegetic sound, voices and music that viewers can see being made, or that the camera has panned away from, or sounds that are being referred to by on-screen characters, a narrator or some other means, and non-diegetic sound for which there is no on-screen ​­ referent. Diegetic music is performed ‘on’ television; non- diegetic music appears ‘in’ television usually emanating as underscore, theme tune or station­identity. Both Bagpuss and The Muppet Show use diegetic (the puppets and humans ‘play’ instruments and sing on-screen) and non- diegetic music. These categories prove useful even when it is clear that human musicians are providing the off-screen accompaniment to animated and puppet musi1 cians on-screen. ​­ Others have gone further by attributing a particular televisual aesthetic to specific genres of music. In his Jazz as Visual Language, Nicolas Pillai discusses the symbiotic relationships between jazz, television and animation (2016). An exploration of the technical aspects such as camera angles, pans, framing, effects and editing supports Pillai’s conception of ‘the dissonant image’ that describes not only the disruptive, improvisatory visuals that attempt to portray the affective and emotive potential of the music on-screen, but also the metaphorical rupture that jazz as audio-visual culture inflicts on societal norms (ibid.: 17). Such characteristic aesthetic codes have also developed around folk music and music hall on television. Languid and sedate, I suggest that Bagpuss represents ‘the dignified image’, while the frenetic chaotic visuals The Muppet Show exemplify ‘the hyperbolic image’. Family television The concept of socialised media consumption is essential to the child’s understanding of the aural-visual codes of television. In the family television viewing environment, the child can engage in conversations and hear comments about the moral, cultural and practical implications of the on-screen representations. Discussions with and the interjections of other family members help the child to interpret what they see and hear (Corder-Bolz 1980; Greenfield 1984; Messaris 1986). As Van Evra points out: ‘watching family television involves talking about it while it’s on’ (2004: 150). Importantly, the amount and nature of the interactions between family members are influenced by the context of the viewing experience, the ‘person context’

How television music constructs childhood  131 (their competence, their social and psychological development, their personality type) and the salience of the programme for individual group members (Brody and Stoneman 1983: 330). In Bagpuss and The Muppet Show, the various stark and slow or hyperbolic visuals, intertextual references, the deliberate evocation of nostalgia and other factors will be more or less salient to children (at different stages of their development) and to adults (and to different genders; ibid.: 333). The amount to which individuals are engrossed in particular programmes or scenes will have an effect on the amount of discursive interaction within the family. While studies have shown that some families use television in a purposeful way to stimulate conversation (Morley 1986: 20), the comments that ensue may be highly critical of the subject matter and result in family conflict (ibid.: 18). Discussions of violence, anger, isolation and sex in the context of children’s television, for example, may evoke a wide range of prejudicial, tolerant and celebratory responses that result in a diverse range of future family engagements with the programme. However, ‘the family’ is an idealised concept that masks significant variations in intergenerational co-habitation. Political discourse perpetuates the ‘nuclear’ family as white, middle- class, heterosexual and Christian. It is sanguinuptial; members are related by either marriage or blood (Chambers 2009: 137). This conception was central to John Reith’s ‘family values’ as communicated through the BBC’s children’s radio programming from the 1920s to the early 1960s (Chapter 4). Strong discreet family units, Reith argued, were the key to healthy communities. As discussed below, both Bagpuss and The Muppet Show represent alternative arrangements of the family that challenge hegemonic conceptions. It must be noted that any deliberate attempt to attract family audiences and adult co-viewers requires either that aspects of the content address both child and adult simultaneously or that the content momentarily stops addressing the child and sends a message ‘over their heads’ to adults. These two modes have been described as the ‘dual’ and ‘double’ address respectively (Wall 1991: 9). I refer to the ways in which the two programmes utilise these modes in pursuit of their family audiences. Both Bagpuss and The Muppet Show comprise complex and interrelated sonic and visual attributes that vary in their ‘childness’ (Hollindale 1997). By this, I am referring to the text’s attractiveness or salience for the child and its typicality within established and identifiable groupings of children’s media texts. The childness of a text contributes to the degree to which it may be considered as deliberately child- centred. Contextual factors such as scheduling, the nature of the network/station, marketing and merchandise also contribute. Discussions of this tension between family- and childcenteredness run through this chapter. By detailing the fluid ways that musical and visual elements may appeal to the child and/or the adult, I am reinforcing the idea that textual, contextual and paratextual factors are frequently inconsistent in how they address and evoke the child viewer. While subsequent sections refer to the importance of family and to the collective mediation of the child’s understanding of the issues raised by

132  How television music constructs childhood Bagpuss and The Muppet Show, I accept the varied and potentially unpredictable nature of such interactions. It is equally important to recognise the ways that the concept of ‘the family’ has been normalised in terms of its constituents and its relationship to the state and wider society (Coppock 1997: 61). Rather than a safe and stable retreat from the demands of the outside world, the family is often the source of tension and instability. The discussions of representations of sexualised violence, isolation and anger are informed by an implicit acknowledgment that such issues often emanate from within the family and that their contextualisation by the family is culturally and historically dependent (ibid.: 69–70). Methodology In order to assess how the music of Bagpuss constructs childhood, I analysed the overall melodic ranges, largest consecutive melodic intervals, time signatures and other attributes (Appendix 9) of the songs on the album Bagpuss: The Songs and Music (1998).2 As discussed in Chapter 1, these attributes indicate the childness of the text. The results were used to compare how the songs, as individual recordings and as a collection, encourage the child as a potential vocal or physical participant. Shorter melodic ranges and consecutive melodic intervals make the song easier to sing and contribute to its memorability. All of the music of Bagpuss is folk. Where possible, the national and regional origins were researched and noted. In addition, songs were viewed using The Complete Bagpuss DVD (2005) in order to assess them in the context of visuals, voice-overs and other televisual elements. Textual analysis was supplemented with contextual research. Biographical and autobiographical sources helped to explain the role and political ideologies of Oliver Postgate (Postgate 2010) and contextualise the importance of Sandra Kerr’s involvement with folk musicians Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on the music of Bagpuss (Harker 2007). In addition, I conducted an interview with Kerr and attended her performance of the songs of Bagpuss at Cartwright Hall, Bradford on 29 August 2018 at which we also spoke. The songs of The Muppet Show were categorised by genre and by the date of release of the original recordings. Commentators have noted significant changes in content and tone across the show’s five seasons (Kennedy 2009). My analysis focussed primarily on Seasons One and Five in order to confirm how these changes in content manifest in the music. The results are summarised in Figures 6.1–6.4. The primary focus is on the programme’s use of the genre of music hall. British versions of The Muppet Show were up to three minutes longer than their American equivalents due to differences in advertising requirements. As a result, additional ‘UK-only’ segments were often filled with British music hall songs and explicit references to British culture. My thematic, musical and visual analysis of a selection of these songs supports my argument that potentially challenging thematic content was mediated by specific musical and visual gestures, and by the

How television music constructs childhood  133 social dynamic of British family television viewing in the 1970s. While the many genres represented by the 650 songs of The Muppet Show present opportunities for a diverse range of identity-forming interpretations, the focus on music hall exemplifies how the conventions of a specific genre can communicate a focussed ideology which can include the child in discussions of sex, sexuality, violence and other complex themes.

Bagpuss and The Muppet Show ‘Once upon a time, not so long ago …’: introductions The thirteen 15-minute-long episodes of Bagpuss were originally aired on Tuesdays (a school day for most children over four-years-old in the UK at the time) at 13:45 between 12 February and 7 May 1974 on the BBC.3 The stories were written and narrated by Oliver Postgate, with the visuals created by Peter and Joan Firmin. The songs and music were written, adapted and performed by Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner who voiced the characters of Madeleine and Gabriel respectively. As noted at the end of Chapter 2, the music of Bagpuss had links to the American folk boom of the 1940s and 1950s. Key figures such as Alan Lomax, Peggy Seeger and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott all moved to the UK in the 1950s. Burl Ives, Paul Robeson and others toured the country inspiring a new generation of British folk musicians. Peggy Seeger married Scottish singer/actor Ewan MacColl. The couple set up the Singers’ Group and the Critics’ Group both essentially study workshops for traditional folk songs, singing techniques and political theatre. Among the members were future children’s author and Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen and folk duo Kerr and Faulkner. At the time, Kerr was working as MacColl and Seeger’s au pair and ‘folk apprentice’ (Kerr 2017). In the early 1970s, Rosen wrote, presented and produced children’s television programmes for the BBC. It was on the educational Sam on Boff ’s Island that Kerr and Faulkner’s music first accompanied the work of Postgate and Firmin, a collaboration soon repeated in Bagpuss. The networks and practices established by this mix of British and American musicians, producers and script writers helped to create the outlets for and the ideologies of the substantial amounts of folk music that appeared on British children’s television in the 1970s and 1980s.4 The Muppet Show premiered in the UK on 18 September 1976, four months before being aired in the USA. The 120 episodes were broadcast over four-and-a-half years and five seasons until 1981. The programme had a prime-time Saturday early- evening slot of 17:45 on commercial broadcaster Independent Television (ITV), the UK’s second most-popular station. After American networks had repeatedly rejected two pilot episodes,5 Jim Henson was approached by British media mogul Lew Grade whose Associated Television company (ATV) financed and produced the show entirely in the UK before licensing it to the rest of the world.6 With a history of anarchic

134  How television music constructs childhood confrontational nonsensical anti-authoritarian humourists such as The Goons and Monty Python, British audiences were perhaps better primed than their American counterparts to embrace the Muppet’s surreal and often-provocative aesthetic. The Muppet Show’s part-British identity was ex​­ emplified by the strong presence of music hall and other British cultural references. It is worth noting that British children’s television executives in the 1970s were somewhat resistant to American programmes with concerns often focussed around the threat to the child from consumerism and violence in cartoons. Notably, earlier in the decade, the BBC had rejected Sesame Street in favour of the home-grown Play School on the grounds of its pedagogy rather than the more typical tenets of the threat of Americanisation. The BBC initially conceived Bagpuss as ‘a colourful, all-singing, alldancing, musical extravaganza’ (Postgate 2010: 294). However, while music was integral to the show’s appeal and there were occasional displays of dancing, the pace was on the whole slow and the humour gentle. Postgate’s narrations are gentle and sedate, poetic yet never over emphasised. Like the folk instrumentation and the hand- crafted visuals, they leave an interpretive space to be filled by the child. With overtones of nostalgia and melancholy, the programme is more akin to Mr Roger’s Neighborhood than Sesame Street. Bagpuss was produced on adapted and invented equipment in a converted cow-shed due in part to the BBC’s limited budgets for children’s television production at the time (ibid.: 222). The process resulted in jittery stop-time animation and obvious technical ‘mistakes’. However, Kerr acknowledges the importance of the hand-made aesthetic to the child’s engagement. The show was ‘rough at the edges. Not every line [was] perfectly coloured in. It’s got human failure in it. It’s not so pristine as to be excluding as to make it seem impossible for anyone to create like that’ (Kerr 2017). Bagpuss represents a ‘family’ at home. The ‘adult’ characters are stuffed toys and puppets; Bagpuss is ‘an old saggy cloth cat’, Madeleine a rag doll, Gabriel a banjo-playing toad and Professor Yaffle a knowing and learned old wooden bird bookend. The ‘children’ are mice. However, the characters offer an alternative to the idealised nuclear family. It is not clear whether any of them are related by marriage or blood or whether the four ‘adults’ (three male; one female) and six mice have been thrust together by circumstance or are a ‘self-made family’ who have chosen to live together (Lorrah 2003: 167).7 Like many other television programmes for children, the format of Bagpuss is highly structured and repetitive. Much of the action focusses on their prosaic routines (waking up, cleaning, mending, watching television together,8 going to sleep). The narratives of each episode offer similar arcs of enquiry, exploration and resolution. The main action starts with Bagpuss waking up and finishes with him falling asleep. In each episode, eight-year-old Emily9 brings a lost and broken object into the shop, a safe closed space which is home to the characters. However, nothing was ever sold in ‘Bagpuss and Co.’ The inhabitants offer their interpretations as to the object’s identity. Bagpuss proffers an intuitive account based

How television music constructs childhood  135 10

on his travels, adventures and active imagination. Yaffle attempts a logical scientific explanation, while the musical duo of Madeleine and Gabriel sing songs and recite folk tales inspired by the object. The stories are visualised by Bagpuss’ imagination (a thought bubble that everyone else could see) and by the mice who sing and dance as they act out the stories and mend the objects. The link between recorded music and recorded moving visuals is made explicit within Bagpuss. The mice live on a Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ; a combination of a church organ, a 19th century pianola, a television screen and a video cassette recorder (Postgate 2010: 296). At a time when video playback devices and video cassette tapes were prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of families, Bagpuss’ piano rolls represented a storage device for the visuals that appeared on the Organ’s screen. While modern- day audiences take video-on-demand for granted, this depiction of replaying moving images on a screen was ahead of its time in 1974. The assemblage of historical signifiers creates a sense of retrofuturism that has now come to define 21st century steampunk.11 The show’s archaic imagery and the slow-moving story lines may seem anachronistic to modern- day audiences. However, Bagpuss has found favour in the current context of handmade, twee, vintage and shabby chic. Both the music and visuals chime with post- digital aesthetic tropes of tangibility and sensory ‘authenticity’ while providing a forerunner of more recent ‘slow’ television for children. The BBC’s (CBeebies’) Daydreams, In the Night Garden and Waybuloo sit in a lineage of Bagpuss, Mr Roger’s Neighbourhood and Blue’s Clues with their lethargic visuals, leisurely repetitive narratives and allusions to mindfulness and well-being. ​­ The Muppet Show was a variety show set in a music hall (UK) or vaudeville theatre (USA). The puppets, mannequins and guests work to put on a show for the theatre’s audience. As a collection of diverse individuals clustered around a handful of core characters (Kermit, Fozzie, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Rowlf), The Muppets offer a radical alternative to normalised sanguinuptial (blood and marriage) conceptions of the nuclear family (Chambers 2009: 137). The atmosphere is often frantic with Kermit and the others often appearing stressed and anxious. The cast’s frequent anti-authoritarian outbursts undermine any sense of practical and moral leadership by Kermit, Sam the Eagle and other cast members. Scenes also take place outside of the Muppet theatre in locations such as the ballroom dance floor, the Swedish Chef’s kitchen, a spacecraft (‘Pigs in Space’) and a hospital (‘Veterinarian’s Hospital’). Extravagant set design accompanied many of the musical numbers.12 Human guests such as Johnny Cash or Vincent Price lent each episode a musical or aesthetic theme; however, any sense of authorial narrative or plot resolution was often subsumed in seemingly random and anarchic violence, abusive heckling, nonsensical visual and verbal gags and baffling word play. The violence often took the form of slapstick with Wayne and

136  How television music constructs childhood Wanda’s onstage accidents, Fozzie’s frequent pratfalls and The Great Gonzo’s stunts providing the visual humour. Drummer Animal, Crazy Harry, the Swedish Chef and Sweetums were often central to the riotous destruction. Early seasons contained musical sketches that depicted sexualised violence (Kennedy 2009). However, the songs also allude to issues of feminism, multi- culturalism, race, class, the environment and anti-materialism (Garlen and Graham 2009). Compared with the sepia and black-and-white tones of Bagpuss, The Muppet Show is bright and colourful although it is worth noting that at least half of the British audience would have been watching in black-and-white when the show started in 1976 (Baird 2011).

‘I’ll sing you a story’: the music of Bagpuss At its launch in early 1974, Bagpuss was merely the latest British children’s television programme to which music was integral. After the BBC had rejected Sesame Street just two years before, the stop-time animation and gentle storytelling through song seemed more in line with earlier BBC programmes such as Muffin the Mule (1947), Camberwick Green (1966), Trumpton (1967) and Chigley (1969) than potential American imports. As with all of these programmes, Bagpuss used musical leitmotivs (Bignell 2017: 10)13 to provide an efficient way for the child to recall the traits and personalities associated with specific characters. The music of Bagpuss consisted almost entirely of English and Celtic folk. Kerr and Faulkner’s use of the English concertina, Appalachian dulcimer, banjo, guitar, mandolin and autoharp perfectly match the antiquated feel of Bagpuss’ visuals and its use of fairy stories and folk tales. Often broadcast alongside contemporary American cartoons and sitcoms2 Bagpuss was defiantly anachronistic. The vast majority of the melodies came from the extensive repertoire of traditional songs that Kerr and Faulkner had been collecting since Kerr began living and working with Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl in 1959. Their membership of the Critics Group from 1963 further expanded Kerr and Faulkner’s skills and knowledge of traditional regional playing and singing styles. While many of the melodies of Bagpuss can be traced to specific regions (Appendix 9), Kerr, Faulkner, Postgate and others14 wrote a selection of new words. For example, while the words of the traditional ‘I Saw a-Ship a Sailing’ with its selection of Medieval language (‘comfits in the cabin’) and allusions to slavery (‘chains around their necks’) were performed unchanged, those of ‘The Princess Suite’ were written specifically for the programme using the melody of ‘The Furze Field’ (see Chapter 1 for more on ‘The Princess Suite’).15 Sandra described how she and John would select and compose music and words in response to Postgate’s stories and scripts and Peter Firmin’s illustrations: ‘Through the post would come a kind of comic strip … We literally just popped it up on a music stand and played [laughs]. That was it!’ (Kerr 2017). Only ‘Turtle Calypso’ features folk music from outside the British Isles, in this case, Trinidad and West Africa.16 Calypso was popular in the UK in

How television music constructs childhood  137 the 1950s largely due to Lord Kitchener, The Might Terror, Lord Beginner and other established calypsonians arriving in England on the Empire Windrush in 1948. ‘Turtle Calypso’ seems to allude to this mass immigration. The scene begins with the cast questioning whether turtles are real, then the song describes the animals stuck in a pond and longing for home. They make the long journey and are happy again. The turtles are also central to perhaps the series’ most dramatic ​­ narrative, the story of ‘The Wise Man’. In a protest against the locals eating the turtles (a reference to vegetarianism), the otherwise placid Chinaman, full of fury, smashes the only bridge that separates his small island from the mainland. The turtles then assist the Wise Man to walk on water to begin his deliberately isolated yet contented life. ‘Song of the Flea’ is an example of how references to relationships of physical size, implied through lyrics, melody and tempo, can focalise the child. The first half of the song describes tiny animals who are in awe at the size differentials between each other. Each four-​­bar melodic phrase rises from a tonic ‘D’ note up to the dominant on the ‘A’, finally reaching the full octave as the smaller characters lift their heads to gaze at the larger ones. In the second half, both melody and structure change as the boy, Little Billy, describes his visit to the zoo where all the animals were ‘many, many times as big as me’. The song modulates to the relative major, while the melody drops a fifth as if Billy is now looking up from a lower vantage point. Madeleine replaces Gabriel as the singer, contributing to Billy’s smallness when compared to the rhinos, hippos and elephants he has just seen. The song rises and falls in tempo through the final two verses. When Billy becomes excited by the prospect of seeing the animals, the tempo rises. As he becomes overawed by a realisation of his relative size, the tempo slows to a halt. Most interestingly, this song uses a natural minor scale, just one note different from the modal Dorian scale. The Greeks associated the Dorian mode with strength and power as well as melancholy. The use of the minor third is unusual in children’s music. However, young children perceive tempo rather than tonality as a signifier of emotion (Mote 2011). To them, high tempo songs are happy, independent of the major and minor aspects of the melody. Through a process of enculturation in schemas, older children in the West begin to equate minor keys with sadness, melancholy and more contemplative emotions. The combination of a minor-​­tinged modal melody, self-​­reflective lyrics, shifting tempi and representational visuals evokes the fluidity, uncertainty and inevitability of the child’s physical growth while being tinged with the nostalgic sadness of a childhood rapidly passing. Bagpuss also contains work songs. ‘The Weaving Song’ hails from Northumbria. The songs in the medley of ‘Agricultural Jigs’ have various English regional origins. Others are centuries old. ‘Brian O’Lynn’ has been traced to Ireland and to the mid 1500s.17 ‘Old Woman Tossed up in a Basket’ is at least 330 years old and is commonly known as a humorous song for Morris dancing (Kuntz and Pelliccioni 2019a). The song shares a tune with ‘The Wee Cooper O’Fife’, a wife-​­beating song that was included as a Child Ballad

138  How television music constructs childhood (C277) and in Ewan MacColl’s repertoire.18 ‘Haste to the Wedding’ is a Gaelic song that was commonly played on church bells before the ceremony has been traced to at least 1767 but is almost certainly older (Kuntz and Pelliccioni 2019b). ‘Uncle Feedle’ is a derivative of ‘The Tailor and the Mouse’, which was printed in school folk song books in the very early ­20th century (Sharp and Baring-​­Gould 1905). Similarly, the various Celtic jigs and reels such as ‘The Oak Tree Reel’ (Donegal, Ireland), ‘The Laird of Drumblair’ (Aberdeenshire, Scotland) and many of the other songs of Bagpuss predate most modern Western conceptions of childhood. The pre ​­20th and early ­20th century working-​­class child would not only have worked alongside adults but would have danced, sang, drank and smoked with them (Faulk 2004: 9–10; Russell 1997: 91). Kerr’s ‘The Miller’s Song’ is an original composition in which the seasons change and the years pass. The words evoke a rural pre-​­industrialised life and describe the contributions of the ploughman, the farmer, the miller and the baker to the creation of a loaf of bread. The use of archaic technical language (‘harrow the ground’, ‘drill in the seed’, ‘roll it down’, ‘open the rill’), mid-​­tempo modal melodies and broken guitar chords conjure a nostalgic melancholy. This is amplified by the visual accompaniment of a series of Firmin’s watercolours of a rural water mill during the four seasons and depictions of the various workers cooperating on the corn-​­growing, harvesting and bread-​­making processes. Some of the pictures are shown full frame and remain static. In others, the camera slowly pans and zooms. The repeated use of vignettes and the evocative ritardando at the end add to the nostalgic feel of ‘The Miller’s Song’. The songs of Bagpuss have exceptional musicological attributes when compared to other samples of children’s music. Their average overall melodic range (the distance between the lowest and highest sung notes) is an octave and a major third (15 semitones). This is large compared with the nine semitones (a major sixth) of a selection of well-​­known nursery rhymes (Appendix 1), a fourth to a major sixth in children’s playground songs (Barton Hopkin 1984), occasionally an octave but more commonly a sixth to a seventh in American children’s folk songs (Shehan 1987) and a sixth to seventh for contemporary chart pop songs (Dockray 2005). Many of Bagpuss’ songs are in six-​­eight and three-​­four time signatures. These were either absent or rare in the research conducted by Barton Hopkin and Shehan. A comparison with more recent musical children’s television shows that the four albums of The Tweenies and Nickelodeon’s Lazy Town use exclusively four-​­four rhythms. The average largest consecutive vocal interval of the songs of Bagpuss is eight semitones. Four of the songs extend this to an octave.19 Compared with the predictable, scale-​­wise melodies and short often-​­repeated melodic phrases in most of Woody Guthrie’s songs for children and the other samples mentioned, those of Bagpuss are challenging in terms of their ‘sing-​­ability’ and their memorability. Limiting the range of top-​­line melodies and consecutive intervals promotes individual and group

How television music constructs childhood  139 vocal participation for untrained singers (Dockray 2005). However, as Kerr points out: … there are different ways of children being involved in the music … I think it’s incredibly important for children to be good listeners. It’s the key to so much in their lives and in their education. The fact that with those songs, they were hearing the kinds of intervals and modes that they would not necessarily be exposed to in popular music … With extensive experience as a student with Seeger and MacColl and as a university lecturer in folk music, Kerr highlights the role of folk singing in building a child’s vocal technique and extending their vocal range: Children can sing much wider ranges than they are given credit for. They can also sing lower usually than they are given credit for. I’ve heard a lot of stuff in schools and Sunday school groups where they want children to sing in these high angelic voices. That’s a total misconception of the nature of childhood [laughs]. That can sing low and they can sing high. … They need to stretch. While musical complexity and simplicity are both relative concepts, analysis of musical intervals and melodic ranges helps to describe textual differences and infer the relationship between text and listener/viewer. The broad categorisation of Western children’s music includes the many ‘complex’ classical records broadcast on BBC radio for children in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s as well as child-oriented (but equally ‘complex’) derivatives such as ‘Sparky’s Magic Piano’ and the Sesame Street album Big Bird Leads the Band (1977). The reification of classical music as ‘serious’ and ‘complex’ is ideological. In many ways, the music of Bagpuss is far from simple. ‘Oak Tree Reel’, for example, is a three-part Irish melody that modulates between the major and relative minor and requires high levels of instrumental virtuosity. ‘The Princess Suite’ changes both tempo and time signature. While extended melodic ranges, large intervals, relatively unusual time signatures and modal scales may not be commonplace in most commercial music for children, complexity may contribute to the songs’ sustained appeal. Contemporary children’s songwriter Paul K. Joyce is best known for his ‘Bob the Builder’ television theme song. Joyce revealed that he deliberately constructed the words and music of his 50-second-long theme to the television remakes of Noddy to contain high degrees of musical intricacy and elements of nostalgia (‘… it’s sixpence an adventure then he’ll take you home again …’; Joyce 2007). Basing his Noddy theme on ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’ from the 1940s, Joyce deliberately used complex chord changes, textured instrumental harmonies and representational sound effects such as the tooting of an old-fashioned car horn to allow the song ‘to be both catchy and bear repeated listening’ (ibid.: 2007). Similarly, performer and songwriter Nick

140  How television music constructs childhood Cope includes sophisticated chords and melodies in his songs for children (Cope 2019). Musically and thematically, the songs of Bagpuss are, on the whole, challenging for the child. This is progressive move which erodes the cultural separation of childhood and acknowledges the child’s concerns, concerns that are often unaddressed by other children’s television programmes. Bagpuss’ exclusive use of folk music is the key here. Evolved over many generations, folklore addresses universal fears. It is ‘psychologically sophisticated’ in a way that is often not matched by well-meaning pedagogical and moralistic musical media (Somerville 1990: 167). In a text that draws heavily on folklore, the child sees their fears and concerns represented on-screen and hears them articulated in song. Rather than ignored or repressed, moves that serve to further isolate the child from the mismatched power dynamics of the family and wider society, their issues are attended to as key elements in folk songs and stories. While Kerr asserts that there were jokes and references specifically designed for adults,20 she recognises that the music of Bagpuss pulled few punches for the child: What we were presenting was something that adults would enjoy too … we didn’t really want to separate adults and children … children and adults should do stuff together because so much is gained that way. Pleasure for both of them. Learning for both of them. Sensitivity for both. She goes on to emphasise the potential for the child’s growth and development in this age-shared family viewing context: There were no concessions, no patronising, and of course, children wouldn’t understand it. If you only ever give children what they understand, they will only ever understand ‘gaga mama’. As described more fully in Chapter 2, folk music communicates a purposeful social function that goes beyond the music (Tagg 2000: 34). With links to socialism and communalism and as a mouthpiece for disenfranchised working people, folk carries a ‘sense of social injustice and … want for a better and fairer world’ that Kerr and others see in Bagpuss (Kerr 2017).21 When used as the primary genre of music for a children’s television programme, traditional folk music and the melancholic connotations of modal melodies contribute to a progressive ethos in which the child’s immersion in an intergenerational culture is mediated by the socialised viewing environment and, in this case, by the tropes of childhood in the puppets, narratives and other elements. Themes of courtship, bodily transformation (‘The Princess Suite’) and more existential matters such as a longing for home (‘Turtle Calypso’), the passing of time (‘The Miller’s Song’) and aging (‘Song of the Flea’) are

How television music constructs childhood  141 conferred to the child through unadulterated folk melodies and a gentle appeal to nostalgia. The music of The Muppet Show, on the other hand, touches on more overtly provocative subjects. As a result, it is compelled to make a more explicit appeal to adults in order to secure its necessary family audience. In the next section, I describe how The Muppet Show employed a host of hyperbolic musical and visual devices, specific genres and decades-old songs to mediate the child’s interpretation of the show’s potentially contentious content.

‘It’s time to play the music’: the songs of The Muppet Show Jim Henson and his production team clearly understood the power of music to engage a prime-time family audience. With over 650 songs in the 120 half-hour ​­ episodes of The Muppet Show, one song started on average every six minutes. While the visual and musical elements contain high levels of childness, I highlight two main ways that the music of The Muppet Show was designed to appeal to adult viewers. First, very few of the songs were written specifically for the show. The vast majority had already been commercially released often decades earlier (Figures 6.1 and 6.2). Some of the songs pre- dated commercial phonographic recording. Many songs would have been familiar to UK and American audiences at the time. The oldest song in Season One is Beethoven’s ‘Minuet in G Major’ from 1796 (Figure 6.1). Apart from the ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ from 1900, there

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I 9

1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s

Figure 6.2 Year of release/publishing by decade of songs in The Muppet Show Season Five, 1981.

are three songs that originate from the 19th century including ‘Tit Willow’ from Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 Operetta The Mikado. Songs from the first two decades of the 20th century include ‘The Entertainer’ (1902) by Scott Joplin, and ‘Solace’ (1909), ‘Nobody’ (1906) and ‘Row Row Row’ from The Ziegfeld Follies of 1912. The 1920s and 1930s are well represented by songs such as ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’, ‘Side by Side’, ‘Mississippi Mud’, ‘It’s only a Paper Moon’, ‘You do Something to me’ and ‘I get a Kick out of You’. The mean average year of release of the songs featured in Season One (Figure 6.1) is 1946.22 The songs from Season Five (Figure 6.2) have an average release date of 1939. Second, the songs represent a wide range of genres (Figures 6.3 and 6.4). As discussed in Chapter 5, genres and identifiable styles of music operate as a shorthand. Specific attitudes and ideologies can be communicated directly and immediately through timbres, sonic textures and stereotypical musical and vocal gestures. It is to musical genre rather than aspects of composition that advertisers often turn in order to deliver their instant social messages (Cook 1998: 16–17). My analysis reveals how the music of The Muppet Show became more child-focussed in the later seasons.23 Changes in musical genres and a trend towards more contemporary songs were matched by changes in thematic and visual content, away from censor-baiting sexualised violence and towards less- contentious child- centred topics. In Season One, songs from musicals, mostly Hollywood musicals of the 1920s and 1930s, accounted for nearly a third of the total. ‘Pop’, the popular and commercial music of the day, was around half as popular, while jazz and ragtime accounted for around one in ten of the songs. Novelty songs were slightly less popular, while country and classical each accounted for

How television music constructs childhood  143 Soul 4%

Children’s 2%

Novelty 8%

Folk 8%

‘World’ 3%

Classical 5%

Jazz and Ragtime 9%

Ballad 3% Country 5%

Music Hall 8% Pop 15% Musicals 27%

Rock’n’roll/Rhythm & Blues 3%

Figure 6.3  Genre categories of the 116 songs in The Muppet Show Season One, 1976.

Soul Novelty 3% 1%

Children’s 1% ‘World’ 5%

Folk 7%

Ballad 4%

Classical 6%

Jazz and Ragtime 12%

Country 9% Pop and disco 16%

Music Hall 5%

Musicals 25%

Rock’n’roll/Rhythm & Blues 6%

Figure 6.4  Genre categories of the 146 songs in The Muppet Show Season Five, 1981.

144  How television music constructs childhood one in every 20 songs. Less popular genres such as rock’n’roll, ballad and ‘world’ (broadly defined as songs with an identifiable non-UK or US national identity, such as Spanish, Italian, or Mexican) added diversity. Interestingly, ‘children’s music’ is in the extreme minority, with only three songs being identified as such. In Season Five (Figure 6.4), classical compositions such as Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ (1716), Boccherini’s ‘Minuet in A Major’ (1771) and Liszt’s ‘Liebestraume’ (1850) provided high- cultural content, while folk songs such as ‘Goodnight Irene’ (1908), ‘Will the Circle be Unbroken’ (1907) and ‘Danny Boy’ (1913) represented more vernacular forms. Although the genre identity of individual episodes was sometimes informed by the guest star (Johnny Cash performed mostly country music in episode 521; Gladys Knight sang mostly soul in episode 516), most episodes combined music that signified both high and low culture. The changes in the use of musical genre between Seasons One and Five support Kennedy’s observations that The Muppet Show became less anarchic and more formulaic in later episodes (2009: 142). The most notable changes are the decrease in novelty songs and the songs of music hall. While Season One included humorous exotica such as ‘Does your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight?’, ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ and ‘Pachalafaka’ and a selection of original music hall songs discussed below, later seasons relied on more conventional musical styles from more contemporary sources. The use of funk, soul, rock’n’roll, blues and rhythm and blues increased between 1976 and 1981. Rhythm and blues songs such as Louis Jordan’s ‘Barnyard Boogie’ (episode 504) and ‘Rockin’ Robin’ (episode 510) have animal themes, rural settings and representational sound effects, all stereotypical signifiers of children’s music. However, rhythm and blues shares a number of characteristics with music hall. Sexual references are common but coded through double entendre and extended metaphors. While rhythm and blues was generally consumed by a range of ages, rock’n’roll was teen- centred, with many of the sexual references and lascivious vocal stylings of its antecedent genre expunged. As The Muppet Show became less anarchic and violently sexualised across its five seasons, so the music moved from the strange, exotic and sexuality- coded songs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the more formalised songs of Henson’s youth in the 1940s and 1950s.24 The show’s final season featured more contemporary chart songs and popular genres of the late 1970s and early 1980s such as disco (The Village People’s ‘In the Navy’ and ‘Macho Man’), new wave (Blondie’s ‘One Way or Another’), country and soul. In addition, the significant increase in the inclusion of music of Black origin across the five seasons better represented the racial origins of the audiences in the 100 or so countries to which the show was licenced and broadcast at this time. Only four of the songs from Season One appear to have been created specifically for children. These include the songs derived from the poems of

How television music constructs childhood  145 A.A. Milne (‘Cottleston Pie’, episode 107, and ‘Halfway Down the Stairs’, episode 110), the Disney musical Peter Pan (‘Never Smile at a Crocodile’, episode 114) and the Hollywood musical Hans Christian Andersen (‘Inchworm’, episode 109). Season Five contains many more such songs, including the traditional French nursery rhyme ‘Frère Jacques’ (episode 501), an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s 1871 poem ‘Jabberwocky’ (episode 506) and songs from family films The Wizard of Oz (‘We’re off to see the Wizard’, episode 506) and Doctor Doolittle (‘Talk to the Animals’, episode 524). Furthermore, the inclusion of Children’s Choice favourites such as ‘Teddy Bears Picnic’ (episode 508), ‘How much is that Doggie in the Window?’25 (episode 512), ‘The Laughing Policeman’ (episode 518), ‘The Gnu’ (episode 519) and ‘Ying Tong Song’ (episode 520) indicates the influence of the English production location. The show’s first two seasons reveal an ambivalent attitude to perpetuating constructions of childhood innocence and its protection. However, the increase of child- centred musical-visual content over the five seasons (Figures 6.1–6.4) supports Kennedy’s claims that representations of sex and violence were tempered over time. By Season Three, the violence had become more formalised and theatrical offering fewer opportunities for resistant readings. However, despite appearing in Season Five, one of the show’s best-k nown songs is not only atypical of the music of The Muppet Show but is in many ways uncharacteristic of music created for children in general. Unlike almost every other song on the show, Kenneth Ascher and Paul Williams’ ‘Rainbow Connection’ (episode 509) was written specifically for the Muppets.26 Despite visual signifiers of childhood such as a troupe of puppet frog boy scouts on backing vocals, the three-four waltz-time signature and slow tempo are uncommon in children’s music. The song also has large melodic intervals and a challenging intervallic top-line vocal melody. The lyrics are self-reflective, full of existential questions regarding hope and loss. On closer inspection, the song appears to be a conversation between adult and child. The words alternate between a cynical matter-of-fact realism (the adult voice asks the illusion-busting questions at the start of verses 1 and 2) and an undimmed hopefulness implied by the fantastical and metaphorical rainbows, mermaids, magic and dreams. The use of the collective firstperson plural (‘we’) in the choruses implies that the adult and child voices have combined and that they are jointly and optimistically seeking answers to life’s big questions. As a metaphor for the central ideologies of The Muppet Show, and equally Bagpuss, ‘Rainbow Connection’ encapsulates the ageshared discursive cooperation implied by family television viewing. The Muppets and music hall: the UK- only spots There are obvious links between The Muppet Show and music hall. The show is set in a theatre with an audience who veer between indifference and confrontation. The fast-paced variety format and mix of high and low cultural

146  How television music constructs childhood references mirror a typical music hall playbill from mid to late 1800s. Comedians, dancers, novelty acts, ventriloquists, burlesque performers, acrobats, circus acts, animals and ‘innovations’ involving pyrotechnics, lighting and other special effects all competed for the audience’s attention (Russell 1997: 112). The music in the halls was provided by an eclectic mix of brass bands, classical musicians and minstrel acts as well as vocalists performing opera, ballads, folk music and ‘supper-room songs’ (ibid.: 106). The comic songs from the 1860s until around 1900 have remained those most closely associated with the Halls. Many of the songs satirised figures of authority. Policemen, politicians, the upper classes and institutes of strict morality such as The Salvation Army and the Church were all objects of derision. Similarly, The Muppet Show’s use of original music hall songs challenges hegemonic discourses of childhood and of normalised family values while providing a site of resistance for identities of gender, sexuality, class and race. Despite the use of an eclectic array of musical genres, The Muppet Show included a substantial core of around 25 mostly English music hall songs as ‘UK-only spots’ (Appendix 10).27 The narrative of some of these songs takes place within the theatre itself. For example, in ‘The Boy in the Gallery’ (episode 204), Miss Piggy, dressed as music hall star Marie Lloyd, sings to her ‘lover’ Waldorf in the box. In the self- depreciating ‘She was one of the Early Birds’, Gonzo is infatuated with a fellow female theatre goer (episode 302). I examine below how The Muppet Show’s music hall songs use coded language and ironic gestures in combination with musical and visual signifiers of childhood in order to attract a family audience and mediate the child’s interpretation of the themes raised by the songs. Despite using mainly American puppeteers and having an American at the helm, the UK-only spots emphasise The Muppet Show’s partly British identity (Denison 2009).28 However, this identity is largely regional. Many of the songs refer to London (‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’; episode 519), its streets (‘Wotcher! Knocked ‘em out in the Old Kent Road’; episode 201), its boroughs (‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’; episode 201), Cockney culture and the rhyming slang with which it is associated. That London- c entric music hall dance songs such as ‘Knees up Mother Brown’ have an enduring appeal for family audiences is unsurprising. The Muppets’ version (episode 410) is led by Fozzie dressed as a Pearly King around a piano in a crowded pub. Its high tempo, sing-able chorus, verse- chorus structure and repetitive metre are tropes of many of the songs of Children’s Choice, Sesame Street and other children’s music samples. The song’s often-nonsensical action- c entred lyrics (‘Ee-aye, ee-aye, ee-aye-oh … knees up, knees up, don’t get the breeze up’) add to this textual childness. Yet even Fozzie visibly winces at the line ‘if I catch you bending, I’ll saw your legs right off’. A number of the songs are self-referential and reflect on the often-parodic relationship between the high and low cultural references in the show. In ‘I Want to Sing in Opera’ (episode 309), Miss Piggy plays an ambitious music hall star and sings: ‘I’m getting so tired of these comedy songs. I want to

How television music constructs childhood  147 sing something divine’. Similarly, Sam the Eagle, the much-ridiculed selfappointed arbiter of good taste and high culture, describes ‘A Frog he Would a-Wooing Go’ (episode 301) as a ‘charming 18th century romantic ballad’ that he considers ‘pure poetry’. He is forced to reconsider when pianoplaying singer Rowlf points out the nonsensical nature of the words. The UK-spots also included the popular Cockney drinking song ‘Down at the Old Bull and Bush’ (episode 321) and Noel Coward’s ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ (episode 216). With its high-tempo barrage of syllables and wordy proclamations of various stereotypical racial characteristics, ‘Mad Dogs’ is atypical of most children’s music. Unlike the majority of the Muppets’ music hall songs, it does not use the Music Hall formula; it lacks a simple singalong chorus and other musical attributes of childness. Consequently, it has failed to appear in compilations of children’s music, even those themed around Children’s Choice on which it was played (Chapter 4). Conversely, ‘Run Rabbit Run’ (episode 421) is a perfect example of the formula. The animal theme, repetition of short discreet phrases and perfect rhymes, and limited vocal range provide high levels of musical and lyrical childness for a theme that has become known as a British anti-German World War 2 song. The satirical and humorous nature of music hall is apparent in the Muppets’ version of ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’ (episode 201) in which an old tramp promenades the well-to-do streets of London dressed as ‘a toff’.29 Class, gender, poverty, aging and nostalgia are also central to ‘My Old Dutch’ popularised by original music hall star Albert Chevalier and sung by Muppets’ character Burlington Bertie (episode 206). Cockney rhyming slang (in this case, ‘Dutch’ refers to the Duchess of Fife = wife), Victorian back slang and other secret languages such as Polari mask the meaning of words and allow competent users to communicate privately in front of non30 speakers. ­ Two UK-spots highlight how coded language and sartorial symbolism were used to communicate homosexuality to those ‘in the know’ at a time when, as Oscar Wilde’s trial highlights, such matters were illegal. The music hall staple ‘Any Old Iron’ was sung by Kermit, Fozzie (again dressed a Pearly King) and two other male Muppets in episode 214. The repeated use of rhyming slang (‘iron’ is short for ‘iron hoof’ = poof; ‘Lorda-mayoring’ = swearing, etc.) and coded visual clues (green ties and the dismissal of the wearing of by-then old-fashioned pocket watches; Thompson 2001) identify this song as a gay anthem. The sub-text also refers to the singer wearing his trousers ‘front to back’, being laughed at when he marries a woman and getting chatted up by the vicar and the mayor. The gender non-specific compliments on the chorus (‘You look neat. Talk about a treat. You look a dapper from your napper to your feet’) make such a resistant reading seem obvious, yet this interpretation is only available to competent listener-viewers. In a possible nod to David Bowie’s now-legendary July 1972 Top of the Pops performance of ‘Starman’ in which Bowie put his arm around guitarist Mick Ronson’s shoulders, Fozzie puts his arm around Kermit throughout the whole of the first chorus.

148  How television music constructs childhood On a similar theme, the Muppets perform Vesta Victoria’s 1892 ‘hit’ ‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy me a Bow-wow’ in episode 306. This seemingly innocuous text about cats, dogs and other pets contains references to bi- curious dykes (Thompson 2001). The song’s animal theme, strong use of repetition and rhyme-heavy lyrics provide the childness, while metaphor and allegory hide the subversive subject matter. My final music hall example is ‘The Bird on Nellie’s Hat’ (episode 304). The lyrics detail a naïve young man’s courtship of a far more experienced woman. The ‘saucy’ bird on the hat offers asides that reveal Nellie’s promiscuity: ‘I’ll be your little honey, I will promise that!’, Said Nellie as she rolled her dreamy eyes. ‘It’s a shame to take the money’ said the bird on Nellie’s hat. ‘Last night she said the same to Johnny Wise’. Then to Nellie, Willie whispered as they fondly kissed, ‘I’ll bet you were never kissed like that!’. ‘Well he don’t know Nellie like I do!’, Said the saucy little bird on Nellie’s hat. The dialogue is delivered by Miss Piggy (as Nellie) and a male pig (as Willie), while the main narrative is carried by a more mature female pig in a purple feather boa. The repeated references to payments for romance and the purple theme (Gnostic Warrior 2015; Goodnewspirit 2016) seem to cast the older pig as a Madam and Miss Piggy as a prostitute. While references to sex and sexuality in children’s television have historically raised concerns from regulatory authorities and parent campaigning groups, such issues are, on the whole, self- censored by programme makers.31 School, family and church also inhibit the child’s exposure to mediatised representations of sex, a taboo perpetuated by adults’ desire to prevent psychological, moral and physical harm (Jackson 1982: 51). The impact on the child of references to sex was mitigated in The Muppet Show and in the original halls by the abundant use of visual and verbal humour and the frequent use of the rhetorical mode (the breaking of the fourth wall). Both used nods, winks, nudges and conspiratorial asides to help sneak sexualised content past censors and maintain broad audience demographics.32 While double entendre and other such cloaking devices are designed to place such references out of the child’s reach, they merely serve to reinforce the child’s notion that what has been hidden is probably sexualised (ibid.: 54). Rather than protecting children, they bolster the constructed separateness of childhood and perpetuate its most distinguishing feature, sexual innocence. The music of Bagpuss and The Muppet Show highlights the dynamic, tense and often- contradictory relationship in the simultaneous address of both child and adult. The degree to which programme makers attend to the child’s welfare and protect them from unsuitable content forms one of

How television music constructs childhood  149 five features of child- centred television identified by Buckingham et al. in their discussions with children’s television professionals (1999: 157–159). The others include the creation of a separate world, free to a large extant from adults. As discussed, the music of Bagpuss and The Muppet Show is not age specific. The genres and the attributes of the music, lyrics and sonics have wide intergenerational appeal with few concessions for the child. However, during the many repeats of Bagpuss through the 1970s and 1980s, it was never scheduled on prime time, but always on the ‘children’s ghettos’ of weekday lunchtimes, Saturday mornings or post-school pre-news afternoons. To compensate for the age specificity of these distinct worlds, child- centred children’s television must include variation. This requires a range of television genres to be scheduled together in these child-identified slots. While the public-service BBC consistently placed Bagpuss in such slots, The Muppet Show was scheduled on the commercial ITV alongside other ‘family’ programmes such as The World of Sport, Space 1999, Batman and New Faces. Buckingham et al.’s fourth feature of child- centred television is its difference from TV broadcasting for schools and the adoption of a non- didactic approach. Unlike Sesame Street, neither Bagpuss nor The Muppet Show were overtly didactic. Any sense of pedagogy was creative and progressive. The fifth feature, that content should be age and development specific, is also problematic, a fact acknowledged by television executives (ibid.: 158). Television generates myriad connotative visual and musical attributes. Fluid combinations of text, context and viewer are involved in the denotive process. Addressing the child in specific age bands or at different stages of their social and psychological development is in many ways impossible or at least unmeasurable. While some, but not all, of these criteria are met by Bagpuss and The Muppet Show, both programmes contain references and themes that centre on the child, the adult or both. With consideration of the contexts of viewing and the ‘person context’ of the viewer (Brody and Stoneman 1983: 330), the centredness of the text is open to fluctuations. In the family’s socialised mediation processes, individual member’s perceptions of inanity, incomprehension, concord and discord will influence the quantity and quality of the family discourse and affect the child’s understanding of the texts. This is particularly important when considering representations of issues that are often omitted from children’s television.

Violence and modality Although references to sex in children’s television are almost always absent or concealed, representations of violence are much more common. While The Muppet Show regularly depicted cartoon-like random, nonsensical and extreme acts of violence, a number of the musical sketches combine violence with fetishised and predatory acts of sexuality. This final section discusses

150  How television music constructs childhood how the child’s interpretation of sex, violence and other contentious content depends on their ability to differentiate between reality and fantasy. Despite little evidence to suggest a causal relationship between viewing violence and violent attitudes and behaviours (Lemish 2007: 123), American children’s television networks dramatically reduced on-screen portrayals of violence in 1968. The televised coverage of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and ongoing news reports of the war in Vietnam were thought to be affecting young viewers (Hendershot 1998: 27–31). A 1972 report from the US Surgeon General seemed to reinforce widely held views about the negative effects of television violence on the child’s attitudes and behaviours. A range of theories sought to explain the link. Social learning and cognitive theory suggested that the child imitates on-screen behaviours. The means by which the child learns violent behaviour and the methods used by television to script the child’s violence were thought to be dependent as much on the context (parental attitudes, the child’s underlying personality) as the content (Bandura 1967). Cultivation theory proposes that the child develops their view of the world from the content of what they watch, a view dependent on their pre- existing relationship to normalised and mainstream representations (Van Evra 2004: 6–8). More pertinent perhaps is the theory of ‘uses and gratifications’ which asserts that the child’s viewing habits are informed by their needs, preferences and choices (ibid.: 11–12). There may be a range of purposive, contextual and random reasons why the child might be motivated to view particular content including the current state of their cognitive psychological development. Violence in itself is a variable concept and has been defined differently over time and by various media and regulatory institutions (Hendershot 1998: 2). To highlight the point, Berger created a list of 31 opposing categories of violence, such as mediated violence vs violence we see directly; real mediated violence (wars) vs fictional mediated violence; comic vs serious violence; violence by children vs violence by adults; and ‘fake’ violence (wrestling) vs ‘real’ violence (street fight) (1995: 81). The sexualised violence in Seasons One and Two of The Muppet Show was mostly focused on the female human guests such as Candice Bergen, Ruth Buzzi, Sandy Duncan and Rita Moreno (Kennedy 2009: 144–147). For example, in episode 104 Ruth Buzzi sings an increasingly aggressive version of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ to and with the larger-than-human Muppet monster Sweetums. Set in a dark Medieval dungeon replete with chains, manacles and implements of torture, Sweetums repeatedly pushes, punches, drags and stamps on Buzzi in displays of violence that occasionally reveal her under-garments. Smiling throughout, Buzzi reciprocates. She cracks a chair over his head and knocks him unconscious. As he collapses, he looks directly into the camera and exclaims ‘That’s my kind of woman!’. Set in what appears to be a dark jazz club lit initially by a single red bulb, Rita Moreno attempts a sincere version of the song ‘Fever’ (episode 105). Her red dress, bare back and shoulders, sensual arm movements and

How television music constructs childhood  151 mannered vocal delivery are archetypes of the Hollywood femme fatale and of the sultry swing jazz vocalists of the 1940s. Moreno’s concentration and sustained eye contact with the camera are shattered by drummer Animal’s overly enthusiastic drum rolls, aural expressions of his lust for her. Moreno berates him in Spanish before telling him to ‘cool it!’, something he find impossible to do. After Animal hits a sustained solo, Moreno smashes his head between two large hand-held cymbals. Echoing Buzzi’s sketch in the previous episode, Animal, excited by the mix of violence and sexuality, shouts ‘My kind of woman!’ before slumping over the drums. The child’s affective response to such scenes depends on their ability to differentiate between representations of reality and fantasy. The degree of verisimilitude in the text is clearly not a fixed attribute. The complexity and fluidity of the relationships between the multitude of textual attributes, televisual genre conventions, the social context of viewing and the child’s stage of development lead to a spectrum of perceived realities. As Fredric Jameson asserted, realism is ‘… a peculiarly unstable concept owing to its simultaneous, yet incompatible, aesthetic and epistemological claims, as the two terms of the slogan, “representation of reality” suggest’ (2011: 158). Five criteria influence the child’s perceptions of reality: the constructedness or fabricated nature of the programme; the physical actuality of how the characters might exist in the real world; the possibility and probability that the events could happen in real life, and the formal features of the programme in question (Lemish 2007: 48). Clearly, news reports, commercials, animations and puppet shows may be perceived as more or less ‘real’ in different ways at different stages of the child’s development. However, television genres rely on recognisable conventions; young audiences quickly learn these aesthetic vernacular codes (Stewart, Maloy and Halligan 2017: 12). Many of the conventions of children’s television have evolved from the theatrical shorts and Hollywood cartoons of the 1920s and 1930s. These animations addressed adult cinema goers directly, while the representations of violence, sex, race and ethnicity were depicted with an obvious sense of unreality. For example, in The Old Man of the Mountain (Fleischer Studios 1933) the diminutive Betty Boop is preyed upon by a lecherous and much larger older man. The sexual attacks and attempted rape scenes are accompanied by funny dancing, cute animals, visual humour and the Cab Calloway Orchestra’s jaunty ‘hot’ jazz music. While the child’s competence as a media reader and the elements of the text that they might find pertinent (Middleton 1990: 175–177) and salient (Dubow and Miller 1996: 128) were undoubtedly affected by the social and intergenerational nature of the 1930s cinema audience, the antics of animated jazz-age stars such Betty Boop, Bimbo, Popeye, Olive Oyl, Koko the Clown and Mickey Mouse were toned down for their transition to children’s television in the 1950s. The depiction of violence in made-for-television cartoons relies on exaggerated comedic gestures and other widely recognisable tropes. Tom and Jerry, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner do not suffer the

152  How television music constructs childhood long-term effects of violence; they don’t die and rarely get punished. These stylistic conventions soften the blow for the child. While the violence in the Buzzi/Sweetums sketch is in many ways extreme, its modality is weakened by overtly theatrical devices that highlight the unreality of the situation. The action is clearly choreographed; hits and kicks are synchronised to beats in the music. The musical backing is non- diegetic, and the protagonists are clearly miming their vocals as they fight. The incongruous clash of ­cocktail-lounge-style ​­ middle-of-the-road ​­ ​­ music, medieval setting, visual humour and violence creates an ironic distance between the intensity of the fighting and its potential affect. In contrast, without recourse to humour or other established children’s cartoon tropes that serve to mitigate perceptions of reality, the death of Bambi’s mother (Bambi, Disney 1942) is potentially as affecting for both child and adult. Although a shot is heard and the death takes place off screen, the manipulation of tempo, dynamics, tonality and instrumentation in the accompanying soundtrack contribute greatly to the scene’s emotional impact. Hodge and Tripp describe a ‘functional irrationality’ whereby words, and by extension song lyrics and musical attributes, that traditionally anchor the meaning of the moving visual image become detached. This disconnect still offers the child a range of interpretations while helping to suppress an otherwise senseless and irrational barrage of semiotic signifiers (1986: 25). The words of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ perform this function in the Muppets’ violent sketch. The authors also refer to modality, a term adopted from literature studies that expresses the certainty or importance of textual elements and how these might relate to the author’s intentions (ibid.: 100). Depictions of fantasy in cartoons, they assert, are essential to the development of a child’s modal systems. Children are active in developing their ability to judge modality and will often seek a greater understanding of the processes of media production (ibid.: 103–104 and 130). Both The Muppet Show and Bagpuss offer the viewer a glimpse of such behind-the-scenes processes. The former includes frequent back-stage scenes that depict the stresses of staging a variety show; the latter reveals how the songs are stored and played (the Mouse Organ) and how the broken objects get mended. In one notable episode of Bagpuss, the mice make chocolate biscuits out of breadcrumbs and butter beans. Initially enthralled by the process, Yaffle becomes increasingly cynical before stating ‘I’m going ‘round the back to see what’s happening’, later exclaiming ‘It’s all a trick!’. The Muppet Show regularly employed Brecht’s alienation effect. Cast members would break from the action to communicate directly to the television viewer at home, bypassing both the in-house theatre audience and fellow cast members. These gestures jolt the viewer out of the by-now-familiar goings-on in the Muppet Theatre or Emily’s shop in order to proffer a sense of strangeness or distance that fosters a renewed critical reading of the text by the viewer. While the violently sexualised Muppet sketches are clearly pantomimic (Moreno’s less so) and can be contextualised by reference to feminism’s

How television music constructs childhood  153 second wave in the 1970s, they offer complex representations of sex and violence. The thrill of male protagonists at being physically assaulted produces a multifaceted psycho-sexual dynamic that, I suggest, is mitigated for the child by the high levels of modality and strong sense of unreality created by animation, puppets, humour, the adoption of on-screen personae and the ironic use of music. Theatrical devices provide the child with accessible and inclusive televisual texts that offer a glimpse of a world of risk, complexity and unresolved narratives. As I have argued throughout this and other chapters, the child’s understanding of violence, sex and other issues is also mediated by ‘the family’. However, at this point, it is worth revisiting the term’s idealised and normalised nature of ‘the family’ (Mills and Mills 2000: 16). The ‘family values’ espoused by John Reith, Walt Disney and others in the mid 20th century and onwards were laden with often unstated assumptions of race, culture, religion, gender and parental sexuality. Yet the idealised middle- class family, a model still central to state policies on the status of the child (Coppock 1997: 70–74), is a closed self-sufficient unit, a perceived safe haven from the troubles and traumas of the outside world. A more critical stance suggests that domestic co-living arrangements are increasingly diverse and that gendered and age- defined power relationships are more frequently played out as violence and sexual assault within rather than outside the family (ibid.: 62–64). In this scenario, the child viewer may be responding to themes that are in some ways familiar but no less fathomable. While the process of mediation in this instance is influenced by the child’s affective response to the text and by the ways that a family is able to acknowledge on-screen representations of sex and violence, it is clear that, as in conception of ‘the child’ and ‘the family’, there is no typical process through which the child comes to understand complex universal issues. Immersed in a mediated experience of such high modality, particular audio-visual moments become momentarily salient, resonating with the child to stimulate hyperbolic sensorial memories (Salmose 2018: 344). Mukerji and Gillespie describe a ‘visual flexibility’ whereby ‘cartoons create shifting worlds in which space and time become so distorted that realism drops away as a meaningful referent, at the same time partially stabilizing the imagery by using familiar artistic conventions and reflexive forms’ (2002: 227–228). Indeed, the ways in which Bagpuss and The Muppet Show represent and refer to chronological time, past events and memory are starkly different. These differences are apparent in the contrasting modalities of the programmes. Each episode of Bagpuss begins with Oliver Postgate intoning ‘Once upon a time, not so long ago …,’ immediately setting the story in the near, but elusive, past.33 Accompanied by the plucked autoharp theme tune, the introduction continues with vignette-style black-and-white Victorian photographs of street children (real ones) interspersed with sepia-tinted images of ‘Emily’ (modern recreations of the past) holding the eponymous stuffed cat. The 1970s floral wallpaper and assembled artefacts (steam trains, old toy

154  How television music constructs childhood cars, a film projector, a teapot, a drum and books) create a bricolage of archaic imagery. While now considered charming, Bagpuss’ clunky stop-frame ​­ technique harks back to the earliest days of animation and contrasts with the slick made-for-television cartoons of Warner Bros. and Disney in the 1950s or even the then- contemporary ‘limited’ animations of Hanna-Barbera in the 1960s. Bagpuss also used still water colours and very occasionally, filmed footage (mostly for the difficult-to-animate Gabriel) to illustrate stories and songs. The episodes repeatedly refer to story-related events in the past, then return to the shop and the ambiguously defined present day. Rather than disorientating the child, this vagueness of chronology and the back-and-forth representations of past and present create a ‘recognisable ambiguity’ that coheres meaning while retaining a sense of complexity and instability (ibid.: 229). The child immersed in Bagpuss’ vague temporality is momentarily removed from an adherence to the conceptions of chronological time that are central concepts of childhood (James and Prout 1990: 216). Nostalgia and perceived chronology This temporal ambiguity is also a cornerstone of nostalgia (Salmose 2018: 348), a concept that describes a range of emotions, often triggered by sensory stimuli such as music (Barrett et al. 2010: 390–391) and television, that evoke a sense of the past. While often positive in its affect, nostalgia is frequently described as a bitter-sweet yearning for certainty and the familiar. It is commonly associated with a return to a time and place of innocence and simplicity, safety and certainty, and a care-free child-like freedom. Like childhood, nostalgia is often evoked by reference to the rural idyll and communal anti-modernist values (Stauth and Turner 1988: 510–511). Adults constantly search for half-remembered snippets of their original experiences through recourse to nostalgia and to the melancholic aura of media that evoke childhood. The evocative music of Bagpuss and the pantomimic visuals of The Muppet Show act as surrogates for the feelings of loss experienced through growth and aging (Bernstein 2011: 23–24). They stand in as substitutes for ever-vanishing recollections of the past. This nostalgic sense of lost time and place is captured in constructions of childhood. However, childhood is far from selective in terms of what it communicates. As seen in this and other chapters, children’s media subsumes and archives ideas and cultural forms that are often problematic. Bernstein writes (ibid.: 3–5 and 33–36) about the pain and subjugation of the Black American experience that was manifest in minstrelsy has been preserved as a collective memory in the cartoons of Mickey Mouse, adaptations of the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Beecher Stowe 1852) and other children’s cultural forms. She argues that while children’s media archives and perpetuates problematic cultural, the process ultimately renders them as childish. Both folk music and music hall are far from problematic genre forms in the context of childhood. As the 20th century’s dominant children’s music genres, they have

How television music constructs childhood  155 archived traces of the fetishisation of the working classes and the notions of the role of the child, families and women that accompany such classbased conceptions (Gelbart 2007: 259 and 273). Music hall carries traces of its 18th century origins in British urban pub culture and a connection to the exploitation of children as performers and audience members. The performance of such problematic issues in children’s culture has the ability to normalise and justify radically different ideological views (Bernstein 2011: 4). In the case of folk and music hall, the working class can be both vilified and celebrated. A nostalgic sense of loss both can restore invented traditions and create imaginary homelands (Boym 2002: 43; Pickering and Keightly 2006: 932). As discussed, both folk music and music hall culture have been defined by such restorative desires and are imbued with specious notions of tradition and authenticity. By rooting itself in the familiarity of ‘the home’ and ‘the family’, Bagpuss appeals to a nostalgic sense of security. However, nostalgic media often communicate more about the time that they were made than the elusive bygone eras that they strive to depict. In its reference to an unspecified past, Bagpuss proposes a desired future based on conceptions of stable, pre-industrial communities embedded in family and friends and untainted by commercialism. However, the programme presents a more complex reading of perceived chronology. The outwardly nostalgic songs conceal the fluidity of the folk processes that shaped them. Lyrics and melodies were updated and adapted in the 1970s to fit the requirements of the often-traditional stories and attendant visual cues. As such, the songs exhibit an evolving relationship with the past that is evoked in each episode’s recontextualisation of a lost or broken object. This contrasts with The Muppet Show which, despite being staged in an old music hall, reveals the time period of its production through specific guest stars, clothing and slew of intertextual cultural references. The musical references to the Vikings, the jazz age, music hall culture and other historical eras are theatrical; it is obvious that the Muppets are putting on a show that playfully combines cultural references from the past and present. There is never any doubt as to when the action takes place; it is all contemporaneous. This reflective mode of nostalgia is ironic and selfreflective, humorous and parodic. In this mode, the past is fluid and open to reinterpretation. Normalised and authoritarian meta-narratives can be questioned and subverted. The Muppets’ rereading of The Village People’s ‘In the Navy’ mixes visual references of mixed chronology and references issues of sexuality and diversity.34 While the on-screen performances of the songs were often (but by no means always) parodic, the songs of The Muppet Show are almost always faithful imitations of the original recordings. Lyrics, instrumentation and musical arrangements are recreated accurately. As is the case with ‘Can’t Take My Eyes off You’ and ‘In the Navy’, much of the appeal of the Muppets’ music stems from the use of extra- diegetic references. In these instances, the meanings originally associated with the original recordings and artists are transferred to the new televisual context.

156  How television music constructs childhood The child-focussed hyperbolic visuals recontextualise these meanings; subversive ironic humour often results. Chronologically and culturally specific musical references are the building blocks of the Muppets’ intertextual relationship with the past. Clearly, particular sketches or stories and other aspects of the two programmes may fall somewhere on a spectrum between the ‘reality’ of actual historical events (real Vikings invading an Icelandic village or real millers making flour) and their mediatised recreations. In fact, differentiations may be made between real (a lived experience of the original events), simulated (a past that is evoked through storytelling, antique objects and songs that existed before it was possible to experience them) and collective (for an identifiable era or culture, such as ‘the 1970s’) nostalgia (Baker and Kennedy 1994: 173–174). Moreover, cultural nostalgia is perhaps one of the defining tropes of the 1970s. After an especially turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, and the rapid decline in counter- cultural optimism of which both Henson and Postgate had been proponents, Americans, and to a lesser extent the British, experienced a collective nostalgia for previous decades, especially the 1950s (Davis 1977: 421). This longing for safety and certainty explains not only the popularity of films such as American Graffiti and Grease, the ​­ family-friendly television series Happy Days, or rock’n’roll revival bands such as Showaddywaddy and Sha Na, but also presents a rationale for the success of The Muppet Show and Bagpuss. As Sandra Kerr explained: ‘We’re nostalgic not just for feeling secure with our parents but nostalgic for a political ethos’ (2017). While textual and contextual factors help to explain the appeal of Bagpuss and The Muppet Show in the ‘now’ of the 1970s, nostalgia is also a useful lens through which to view the enduring appeal of both programmes.35 In 1999, Bagpuss was voted the most popular British children’s television programme of all time (Sigman 2008). This led to renewed licencing deals for merchandise (there appear to have been none in the 1970s), pressures to produce new episodes, the first-time release of the music on CD and live performances by Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner. Sandra was struck by the outpourings of misty- eyed affection for the programme: By then, all the 30s and early 40-somethings had grown up with Bagpuss and were now passing that on to their children. And the things that people said to us were exactly about that. People would come up after the show and would say things like, ‘that makes me so happy because I remember sitting with my parents watching those films and feeling secure’. And I also had one young man say to me, ‘Madeleine, you were my surrogate mother when I was a child and Bagpuss was my home’.

Conclusion Music in and on children’s television can communicate complex, profound and potentially contentious messages to the child. Rather than the notions

How television music constructs childhood  157 of protection and simplicity that endure in children’s culture, the examples here show how weighty and sophisticated themes can form the core aesthetic of music-​­based children’s media. In Bagpuss and The Muppet Show, music, visuals and a host of contextual factors combined to attract the intergenerational audiences that were necessary to mediate the child’s understanding of anger, violence, sex, isolation, bodily transformations and other themes raised by the programmes. These factors include the logistic realities of British family viewing in the 1970s; most households were assembled around a single probably black-​­and-white television set (Baird 2011). Both programmes included specific genres of music and made historical references to the past. Bagpuss used traditional British folk music, imaginative storytelling, a slow home-​­made aesthetic and gentle humour to allude to an age-​­shared culture and an unspecified era before the construction of most tenets of modern Western childhood. The Muppet Show also made playful reference to the past using a wide range of accurately replicated chronologically specific songs and genres. However, The Muppet Show was always set in the ever-​­contemporary ‘now’ dictated by the constraints of the Muppet theatre’s show times and the demands of its in-​­built on-​­screen audience. The Muppets’ extensive use of British music hall songs engaged the child with an attention-​­grabbing and accessible musical form. Potentially contentious themes were communicated using the ironic, parodic and hyperbolic musical and performance gestures that characterised original mid-​­to-late-​ 1­ 9th century and early 20th century music hall culture. As discussed throughout, this combination offers the potential of resistant readings to normative constructions of childhood and of ‘the family’. The use of modality, nostalgia and other devices that manipulate perceptions of fantasy and reality facilitated the child’s interpretations of the often complex subject matter. Woody Guthrie’s songs for children (Chapter 3) were rooted in an ethos of progressive pedagogy. The creative work of Oliver Postgate and Jim Henson draws on similar ideological conceptions of the child. The songs of Bagpuss and The Muppet Show include challenging themes that reveal themselves to the child gradually in fragmented, unpredictable ways. Postgate and his family had a long history of political activism,21 and his socialist principles informed not only Bagpuss but also his other Small Films creations such as Ivor the Engine and The Clangers. Conversely, Henson was much less clear in articulating his ideology of childhood. He spoke vaguely of how television could be ‘an influence for good’ and could ‘help to shape the thoughts of children and adults in a positive way’ (Underwood 2009: 12). However, despite the barely controlled chaos and subversive subject matter of The Muppet Show, the music represents a similarly progressive pedagogical impulse. Informed by a comparable mix of civil rights politics and counter-​­cultural liberalism, and by the ideas circulating in children’s media industries from key progressive pedagogical texts,36 The Muppet Show presents an ‘inconspicuous … non-​­linear, anti-​­didactic way of thinking and teaching that extends far beyond our initial impressions’ (Maudlin 2009: 178).

158  How television music constructs childhood As the most ‘family’-focussed (rather than child-focussed) of the two programmes, The Muppet Show offers the strongest critique of the normalised conceptions of ‘the family’. The concept of the idealised bourgeois family with the father as the bread winner and the mother as caregiver and housekeeper developed in post-industrial Victorian England. Music hall songs were used at the time to address and subvert these concerns. This urban conception of the family contrasts with that of rural pre-industrial families in which generations and relations would live and work together, a situation represented in the folk music and conglomerated domestic set up of Bagpuss and the close working rather than living arrangements of The Muppet Show. By the 1970s, feminism, the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and others were highlighting the normative patriarchal assumptions on which concepts of the family were built. Folk music and the songs of music hall used in combination with racially ambiguous, gender- and age- defying puppets set in classless communal endeavour offer a direct critique of the ingrained ‘family values’ espoused by the BBC’s John Reith and others. As discussed, targeting media content by the child’s age and developmental stages, television scheduling, and perceptions of appropriateness reveal some of the tensions inherent in creating televisual content for children and for families. The next chapter discusses how music for children manifests and circulates in the digitised children’s music industry of the 21st century. While acknowledging that television, radio, records and books are still viable media, I investigate a range of products and artists to highlight the many ways in which music for children has been commercialised in recent years. I look at how folk music, radio, education and entertainment continue to find favour in contemporary music for children.

Notes 1 For example, while the puppet Muppet musicians provide on-screen accompaniment for Dizzy Gillespie’s performance of ‘Swing Low Sweet Cadillac in episode 413, the ‘real’ Muppet band play live off-screen and is clearly taking cues from Gillespie’s hand gestures. 2 Released in 1998, 24 years after the first showing of the television show, Bagpuss: The Songs and Music is an accurate studio recreation of the original soundtrack by the original musicians and vocalists, Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner. The original audio of the songs as broadcast was finally released in 2018, a full 44 years after the fact. 3 After its initial 13-week run, Bagpuss was repeated either two or three times a year until October 1986. The first repeated series was on Sunday afternoons (13:45) from 23 June 1974, the second was on Fridays at the same time from 3 January 1975, the third returned the show to a Tuesday 13:35 slot from 24 June 1975. Bagpuss first appeared in the BBC’s Saturday morning schedule on 20 December 1975 where it appeared alongside Hanna-Barbera’s Jeannie, the black-and-white 1950s helicopter drama Whirlybirds, the by-then-defunct American sitcom Bewitched, a 1968 episode of Star Trek, a 1930 Laurel and Hardy short film and the adult literacy programme On the Move, the only other British production on the list.

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17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29

30 31

debates about cultural appropriation raise questions about Percival’s use of an African- Caribbean accent on his 1965 George Martin-produced ‘Shame and Scandal in the Family’. Mainly Norfolk: English Folk and Other Good Music. 2019. https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/brianolynn.html. ‘The Wee Cooper O’Fife’ had been included on Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd’s 1956 album The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Volume II. The Bagpuss songs with consecutive melodic intervals of an octave are ‘Uncle Feedle’, ‘The Ear Song’, ‘Woman tossed up in a Basket’ and ‘Haste to the Wedding’. The scene in which the mice going on strike for better working conditions would have struck a chord with British adult viewers in 1974. While Kerr was involved in the counter- cultural British folk music scene from the late 1950s and the left-wing Singers and Critics Groups from the early 1960s, Oliver Postgate’s family background also contributed to the socialist ideals portrayed in Bagpuss. His father was Raymond Postgate, conscientious objector, pacifist, communist and socialist author and journalist. Raymond co-wrote The Common People, a social history of Britain from the mid 18th to the mid 20th centuries (1946). Oliver’s grandfather was George Lansbury who was a founder member of the Labour Party and leader in the 1930s, a campaigner for social reform and rights for workers and women, and a ‘militant pacifist’ (Postgate 2010: 12). Traditional songs and songs with no traceable date of origin were not included. Songs written for the show are deemed to be contemporary with the date of broadcast of the episode unless there is information otherwise. The Muppet Show’s use of ‘old’ songs and its move towards more contemporary child-focussed music over its five seasons is a trend I identified in both Children’s Choice (Chapter 4) and the albums of Sesame Street (Chapter 5). Like Oliver Postgate, Henson was an inter-war baby born in 1936. Commercial genres popular in his adolescence (folk, rock’n’roll, soul) largely replaced forms such as ragtime, jazz, operetta and Music Hall. While ‘How much is that Doggie in the Window?’ was written and originally recorded by Americans, it was the Liverpudlian Lita Roza who topped the UK charts with the song in 1953. ‘Rainbow Connection’ was written for The Muppet Movie (1979) and revised in episode 509 of The Muppet Show with Debbie Harry, and again in The Muppets movie of 2011. Alongside original music hall compositions, I have included older songs that were sung and popularised in the halls as well as later recordings from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that are in the style of music hall. The British version of The Muppet Show was just one of many regionally specific versions that were dubbed and localised in up to 100 countries (Denison 2009: 158). Denison has highlighted many references to the Britishness on the show. She acknowledges that the Muppets’ national identity is fluid and extends beyond the text to encompass the production processes and the critical reception (ibid.: 167). Although the Muppets’ character is male, the class-parody of ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’ (with verses in the minor key) was popularised by early 20th century music hall star Ella Shields, a male-impersonator who derived the character of Bertie from drag king Vesta Tilley. Children have often used derivations of back slang such as Pig Latin to communicate in secret. A song on folk-blues singer Lead Belly’s children’s album Negro Songs for Young People31 (1960) teaches the listener how to use this language. Research on representations of sex in children’s television has almost exclusively focussed on ‘young adults’ and teens rather than younger children (Lemish 2007: 91).

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162  How television music constructs childhood Barrett, F.S., et al. 2010. ‘Music- evoked nostalgia: Affect, memory and personality’, Emotion, 10(3): 390–403. Barton Hopkin, J. 1984. ‘Jamaican children’s songs’, Ethnomusicology, 28(1): 1–36. Beecher Stowe, H. 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Boston, MA: John P. Jewett and Company. Berger, A.A. 1995. Essentials of Mass Communication Theory. London and Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Bernstein, R. 2011. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York and London: New York University Press. Bignell, J. 2004. An Introduction to Television Studies. London: Routledge. Bignell, J. 2017. ‘Broadcasting children’s music’, Nordic Journal of Art and Research, 6(2): 1–16. Boym, S. 2002. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Brody, G.H. and Stoneman, Z. 1983. ‘The influence of television viewing on family interactions: A contextualist framework’, Journal of Family Issues, 4(2): 329–348. Buckingham, D., Davies, H., Jones, K., and Kelley, P. 1999. Children’s Television in Britain: History, Discourse and Policy. London: British Film Institute. Chambers, S.A. 2009. Queer Politics of Television. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Company Limited. Cheshire, D.F. 1974. Music Hall in Britain. Newton Abbot: David and Charles. Chion, M. 1994. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press. Cook, N. 1998. Analysing Musical Multimedia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cope, N. 2019. Messenger conversation with Liam Maloy, 9 July. Coppock, V. 1997. ‘“Families” in “Crisis”?’, in Scraton, P. ed. ‘Childhood’ in Crisis. London: UCL Press: 58–75. Corder-Bolz, C.R. 1980. ‘Mediation: The role of significant others’, Journal of Communication, 30(3): 106–118. Davis, F. 1977. ‘Nostalgia, identity and the current nostalgia wave’, Journal of Popular Culture, 11: 414–424. Davis, M. 2008. Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street. New York: Penguin Books. Deaville, J. ed. 2001. Music in Television: Channels of Listening. London and New York: Routledge. Denison, R. (2009) ‘“British to a fang, British to a whisker”: Reconsidering the Muppets Show’s national identity’, in Garlen, J. and Graham, A.M. eds. Kermit Culture: Critical Perspectives on Jim Henson’s Muppets. Jefferson: McFarland & Co Inc.: 154–169. Dobrin, S.I. and Kidd, K.B. eds. 2004. Wild Things: Children’s Culture and Ecocriticism. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Dockray, R. 2005. Deconstructing the Rock Anthem: Textual form, participation and collectivity. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool. Dubow, E.F. and Miller, L.S. 1996. ‘Television violence viewing and aggressive behaviour’, in Macbeth, T.M. ed. Tuning in to Young Viewers: Social Science Perspectives on Television. London: Sage: 117–147. Faulk, B.J. 2004. ‘Music hall and modernity: The late-Victorian discovery of popular culture’. Athens: Ohio University Press. Frith, S. 2002. ‘Look! Hear! The uneasy relationship of music and television’, Popular Music, 21(3): 277–290.

How television music constructs childhood  163 Garlen, J. and Graham, A. eds. 2009. Kermit Culture: Critical Perspectives on Jim Henson’s Muppets. Jefferson: McFarland & Co Inc. Gelbart, M. 2007. The Invention of “Folk Music” and “Art Music”. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Gnostic Warrior. 2015. The Royal Purple Silk Prostitute. [Online]. http://gnosticwar​­ rior.com/purple-silk.html. Goodnewspirit.com. 2016. The Harlot, Prostitute and Whore in Scarlet and Purple. [Online]. http://goodnewspirit.com/harlot.htm. Gorbman, C. 1987. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; and London: BFI Publishing. Greenfield, P.M. 1984. ‘Using television to overcome educational disadvantage’, in Murray, J.P. and Salomon, G. eds. The Future of Children’s Television. Boys Town, NE: Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Home: 81–86. Gunter, B. and McAleer, J.L. 1997. Children and Television, Second Edition. London and New York: Routledge. Harker, B. 2007. Class Act: The Cultural and Political Life of Ewan MacColl. London: Pluto Press. Hendershot, H. 1998. Saturday Morning Censors: Television Regulation before the ​­ Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. V-Chip. Hodge, B. and Tripp, D. 1986. Children and Television: A Semiotic Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hollindale, P. 1997. Signs of Childness in Children’s Books. Stroud, Glos. UK: Thimble Press. Jackson, S. 1982. Childhood and Sexuality. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell. James, A. and Prout, J. 1990. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood. London, New York, Philadelphia, PA: The Falmer Press. Jameson, F. 2011. Signatures of the Visible. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Joyce, P.K. 2007. Conversation with Liam Maloy, 27 November. Kennedy, K.E. 2009. ‘It’s time to get together for some sex and violence on The Muppet Show?’, in Garlen, J. and Graham, A.M. eds. Kermit Culture: Critical Perspectives on Jim Henson’s Muppets. Jefferson: McFarland & Co Inc.: 142–153. Kerr, S. 2017. Telephone conversation with Liam Maloy, 27 November. Kuntz, A. and Pelliccioni, V. 2019a. ‘Old woman tossed up in a basket’. The Traditional Tune Archive [Online]. https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Old_Woman_ Tossed_Up_(1). Kuntz, A. and Pelliccioni, V. 2019b. ‘Haste to the Wedding’. The Traditional Tune ­Archive [Online]. https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Haste_to_the_Wedding_(1) Leal, A. 2009. ‘Muppets and money’, in Garlen, J. and Graham, A.M. eds. Kermit Culture: Critical Perspectives on Jim Henson’s Muppets. Jefferson: McFarland & Co Inc.: 202–216. Lemish, D. 2007. Children and Television: A Global Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Lorrah, J. 2003. ‘Love saves the world’, in Yeffeth, G. ed., Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Television Show. Dallas, TX: Benbella: 167–175. Maloy, L. 2019. ‘“Ain’t misbehaving”: Jazz music on children’s television’, Jazz ­Research Journal, 12(1): 63–85.

164  How television music constructs childhood Maudlin, J.G. 2009. ‘The Muppet Show as educational critique’, in Garlen, J. and Graham, A.M. eds. Kermit Culture: Critical Perspectives on Jim Henson’s Muppets. Jefferson: McFarland & Co Inc.: 202–216. Messaris, P. 1986. ‘Parents, children and television’, in Gumpert, G. and Cathcart, R. eds., Inter/media: Interpersonal Communication in a Media World, Third edition. New York: Oxford University Press: 519–536. Middleton, R. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Mills, J. and Mills, R. 2000. Childhood Studies: A Reader in Perspectives of Childhood. London and New York: Routledge. Moran, J. 2002. ‘History, memory and the everyday’, Rethinking History, 8(1): 51–68. Morley, D. 1986. Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure. London and New York: Routledge. Mote, J. 2011. ‘The effects of tempo and familiarity on children’s affective interpretation of music’, Emotion, 11(3): 618–622. Mukerji, C. and Gillespie, T. 2002. ‘Recognizable ambiguity: Cartoon imagery and American childhood in Animaniacs’, in Cook, D.T. ed. Symbolic Childhood. New York: Peter Lang Inc.: 227–254. Overly, N. 1970. The Unstudied Curriculum: Its Impact on Children. Alexandria, VI: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Pickering, M. and Keightly, E. 2006. ‘The modalities of nostalgia’, Current Sociology, 54(6): 919–941. Pillai, N. 2016. Jazz as Visual Language: Film, Television and the Dissonant Image. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Company Limited. Postgate, O. 2010. Seeing Things: A Memoire. Edinburgh: Canongate. Postgate, R. and Cole, G.D.H. 1946. The Common People. London: Methuen. Russell, D. 1997. Popular Music in England 1840–1914: A Social History. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Salmose, N. 2018. ‘“A past that has never been present”: The literary experience of childhood and nostalgia’, Text Matters, 8(8): 332–351. Sharp, C. and Baring- Gould, S. eds. 1905. English Folk- Songs for Schools. London: J. Curwen & Sons Ltd. Shehan, P.K. 1987. ‘Finding a National Music Style: Listen to the Children’, Music Educators Journal, 73(9): 38–43. Sigman, A. 2008. ‘Children need slow TV such as Bagpuss and other Oliver Postgate characters’, The Telegraph, 14 December. Snyder, B.R. 1970. The Hidden Curriculum. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Somerville, C.J. 1990. The Rise and Fall of Childhood. New York: Vintage Books. Stauth, G. and Turner, B. 1988. ‘Nostalgia, postmodernism and the critique of mass culture’, Theory, Culture and Society, 5: 509–522. Stewart, J., Maloy, L., and Halligan, B. 2017. ‘Practices of verisimilitude in pop music biopics: A conversation with Todd Eckhert and James Anthony Pearson on Control, and Nick Moran on Telstar: The story of Joe Meek’, Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Journal, IASPM@Journal, 7(1): 11–28. Tagg, P. 2000. Kojak: 50 Seconds of Television Music. Towards the Analysis of Affect in Popular Music, Second edition. New York: Mass Media Scholars Press. Thompson, W. 2001. ‘Have a Gay Old Time’, The Guardian, 9 March.

How television music constructs childhood  165 Underwood, B. 2009. ‘How to become a Muppet; or The Great Muppet Paper’, in Garlen, J. and Graham, A.M. eds. Kermit Culture: Critical Perspectives on Jim Henson’s Muppets. Jefferson: McFarland & Co Inc.: 9–21. Van Evra, J. 2004. Television and Child Development, Third Edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wall, B. 1991. The Narrator’s Voice: The Dilemma of Children’s Fiction. New York: St Martin’s Press.

Audio sources Kerr, Sandra and Faulkner, John. Bagpuss: The Songs and Music, Smallfolk/Fellside Recordings, 1998. Kerr, Sandra and Faulkner, John. The Music from Bagpuss, Earth Recordings, 2018. MacColl, Ewan and Lloyd, A.L. ‘The Wee Cooper O’Fife’. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Volume II, 1956. The Muppets. The Muppet Show. Pye Records, 1977. The Muppets. The Muppet Show 2. Pye Records, 1978. Various. Bang on a Drum: Songs from Play School & Play Away. BBC Records, 1973. Various. Play On: Songs from Play School. BBC Records, 1978.

Visual sources The Complete Bagpuss. DVD. Universal, 2005. The Muppet Show 1: The Complete First Season. DVD. Disney, 2005. The Muppet Show 2: The Complete Second Season. DVD. Disney, 2007. The Muppet Show 3: The Complete Third Season. DVD. Disney, 2008.

7

How the 21st century children’s music industry constructs childhood

This chapter tells the inside story of recorded music for children. It gives a voice to the recording artists, songwriters, performers, radio producers, event organisers, promoters and public relations managers working in the children’s music industry in the second decade of the 21st century. The collection of experiences and opinions provides a snapshot of specific networks of the children’s music industry during changes in recording, distribution and broadcast technology, fluctuations in the social status of the child and widespread cuts to budgets for schools, libraries and the arts in general. The discussions reveal how these changes have affected and continue to affect working practices and musical products. The interviewees offer distinctive perspectives on three main areas. First, individuals describe how their recordings, radio stations and other children’s music-related ventures are funded, created and distributed. They divulge the challenges and benefits of making, performing and broadcasting music for children. The interviewees describe how they evoke the child in their musical practices and reveal the methods they use to both challenge and perpetuate dominant ideologies of childhood. They reveal their conceptions of education, entertainment and ‘the family’ and reveal the ways in which their music addresses localised and global childhoods. Second, interviewees discuss the content of their work. They describe the music and the lyrical themes and detail the aesthetic and logistical choices they make when creating and broadcasting music for children. Some explain how the content of their work is sometimes directly informed by specific communities of children. Third, individuals address questions of value and ruminate on the reception of their work. They identify how and to whom their work is of value. Contrary conceptions of quality and value expose the richness and diversity of contemporary music for children and its ongoing importance to the children and communities that it aims to serve. The quality of children’s music is often defined by the aesthetic preferences of its adult creators (Bickford 2019: 223–224). Interviewees reveal how the child and their tastes are frequently, but by no means always, sidelined in the process.

The 21st century children’s music industry  167 Furthermore, the chapter draws on practitioners’ experiences of working in children’s music from the 1970s onwards and acknowledges the growth and subsequent contraction of the commercial potential of ‘kindie’ in the early 21st century. I look at how digitisation continues to reshape the children’s music industry and explore the discursive tensions between ideas of quality, the constraints of funding and creative freedom. Cross-platform licensing deals, corporate sponsorship and crowd funding have blurred the lines between traditional conceptions of mainstream and independent. By inhabiting a creative and commercial space that was previously the almostexclusive domain of ‘tween’, Disney and Kidz Bop, many of the artists I interviewed explained how they addressed their child audiences outside of the ideological confines of a ‘family music’ ethos (Bickford 2019: 228) and engaged them as agentic individuals, active community members and creative collaborators.

Children’s music: 1980s–2000s The following overview of children’s music since the end of Children’s Choice, Sesame Street Records and The Muppet Show in the 1980s is necessarily brief. Many key artists and trends from these intervening years are covered by the interviewees below. Children’s folk music has enjoyed considerable success in Canada. Canadian Alan Mills released 19 albums for Folkways in the 1950s and 1960s. However, it was in the late 1970s that albums by Raffi1 (1976) and Sharon, Louis and Bram (1978) sparked a rapid and sustained growth in the Canadian children’s music industry (Hoefnagels 2010; Posen 1993; Raffi 2000). My interviewees highlight how the Canadian folk scene has proved influential on 21st- century children’s musicians in other parts of the world. With similarly modest origins, the success of Barney & the Backyard Gang and Barney & Friends (late 1980s to early 2000s) was largely driven by the extensive use of original music on the television programme and the 30+ spin-off albums, some of which have been rerecorded in Spanish, Hebrew, German, Korean and Portuguese. While much derided by children’s musicians (Bickford 2019: 231) and academics as the nadir of taste and sophistication,2 the music of Barney perhaps comes the closest in this book to making an overt attempt at the ‘single’ address of the child rather than the ‘double’ and ‘dual’ modes of address to the adult employed by most of my interviewees (Wall 1991: 9). The following overview of a range of overtly commercial music products for children aims to provide context for the interviews that follow. The global dominance of a small number of entertainment corporations saw the rapid expansion of the children’s media market in the 1990s and early 21st century. While authors have highlighted the deleterious effects of consumerism on the child (Linn 2005; Mayo and Nairn 2009: 219; Schor

168  The 21st century children’s music industry 2004), others assert the market’s role in the child’s socialisation and identity formation (Buckingham 2000: 192–207; Seiter 1993: 50, 96). The child consumer is often stratified by age and gender. Children from 8 to 12 years are the target audience for ‘tween’ music which blends the aesthetics of contemporary chart pop with tropes of innocence (Bickford 2012: 424). I briefly discuss Kidz Bop as well as similar less-successful tween music brands, as well as a notorious 1980s forerunner. I begin with a brief look at how contested discourses of education spawned highly successful children’s music brands.

(Pseudo)Educational music for children The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the proliferation of commercial musical media aimed primarily at parents. Ironically, many such products emerged to assuage parental concerns aroused by the commercialisation of childhood. For example, The Mozart Effect®3 makes bold claims about music’s ability to alter the structure of the foetal brain in order to stimulate brain growth, aid fine motor skills, and improve language, literacy and social skills while developing emotions and attitudes in pre-natal babies (Campbell 2000: 3). While support for the ‘Mozart Effect’ is inconsistent (Steele, Bass and Crook 1999; Thompson, Schellenberg and Husain 2001),4 politicians have proved susceptible to its power.5 The Mozart Effect® products are created and targeted to separate ages (foetuses, new-borns and toddlers), genders (mothers and fathers) and activities (healing, sleeping, relaxing, travelling and ‘brain tuning’). Interestingly, The Mozart Effect® founder Don Campbell states that ‘perhaps the key to Mozart’s greatness is that it all sounds so pure and simple … the wit, charm, and simplicity of his compositions allow us to locate a profound joy, and a deeper wisdom, in ourselves’ (2000: 13). While, as we have seen, ‘purity’, ‘charm’ and ‘simplicity’ are all loaded ideological terms, Campbell’s re-recorded symphonies reduce orchestral arrangements to just two instruments, remove all of the modulations and reduce the tempi.6 Following media reports of the ‘Mozart Effect’, pseudo- educational musical products proliferated. Disney’s Baby Einstein range includes Baby Bach, Baby Vivaldi and Baby Beethoven. Again, the marketing makes an appeal to the adult (‘the curiosity of young children and the wish of parents everywhere to nourish it’), while the recordings contain prototypical aural and musical attributes of children’s music. Top line melodies are often carried by high-pitched bells, glockenspiels and xylophones. Novelty sounds such as squelches, chicken voices and ‘boings’ are common. The music and accompanying visuals also evidence the limited production values that often accompany recorded music for children. Similar products include the Brainy Baby, Baby Genius (‘entertaining and enriching toddler with content and products “with a purpose”’) and Nuerosmith’s Sunshine Symphony. The singing voices are typically ‘polite’, highly enunciated and predominantly female. Lyrical themes tend to focus on didactic education

The 21st century children’s music industry  169 (counting, alphabet, colours), activity (songs with actions) and bedtime routines (lullabies). Similarly, the Intelikids range of ‘Baby Style’ albums, which feature lullaby versions of songs by artists such as U2, Abba, The Beatles and Queen, are aimed at foetuses and toddlers. ‘Rolling Stones Baby Style’ boasts how it ‘affects concentration, attention and memory [and] contributes to their mental and emotional development’. Again, the production values are extremely basic.7 Arrangements consist of a single electric piano top-line melody and rudimentary chords on a synthesised pad. Lyrics about heroin and abusive slave owners (‘Brown Sugar’), sexual frustration (‘Satisfaction’), ‘prescription pills’ and ‘blood-stained hands’ (‘You Can’t Always Get What you Want’) have been replaced by a soporific music-box twinkle, the ultimate aural signifier of childhood innocence.8 Another brand, Punk Rock Baby, features lullaby versions of The Clash, The Ramones and others. Creator Ian Walker’s aim was to counter the ‘destructive’ effects of contemporary chart pop music that ‘rob[s] children of their childhood’ (Petredis 2005). Lesser, more basic products perpetuate protectionist notions of innocence and serve to increase the power dynamic between adult and child. Established brands such as Sesame Street and Winnie the Pooh also expanded their toddler and baby musical product ranges around the turn of the millennium (Linn 2005: 55).

Kidz Bop By far the most commercially successful manifestation of the repackaging of the recorded original is Kidz Bop9 in which performers aged between approximately 13 and 17 sing ‘safe’ versions of contemporary pop songs. The albums are considered by adult purse-holders as a suitably harmless transition into fully fledged chart pop, ‘one point along a spectrum of appropriateness’ (Bickford 2012: 422). While swearing and overt references to sex, drugs and other ‘inappropriate’ themes are removed, suggestions of sex and sexuality often remain in the content of the recordings and videos (ibid.: 421; Shrikant 2018) as do racial and gender stereotypes (Christopher Bell interviewed in Shrikant 2018). Like The Muppet Show, Kidz Bop blends visual tropes of childhood (bright colours, soft toys, singing in bedrooms, anthropomorphised animals) with tropes of adulthood (allusions to nightclubs in the videos, sexualised lyrics and dances). My interviews reveal that most Kidz Bop recordings are not playlisted on some dedicated children’s radio stations due to their inappropriate content. However, the mainstream acceptance of Kidz Bop demonstrates the changing and variable attitudes of parents to both pop music and to child performers. By comparison, the 1983 British television programme Minipops featured mostly pre-teens singing unadulterated contemporary chart pop. It was cancelled after just one series following media criticisms that focused not only on the inappropriate nature of some of the lyrics, but specifically on the female performers’ dress and dance moves. A typical article reads like a Victorian- era opprobrium of

170  The 21st century children’s music industry young female music hall performers; surface-level condemnation mixes with highly descriptive sexualised, racist and body shaming comments (Barnes 1983: 40). Pop Jr, Kids Pop Party and others attempted to replicate the success of Kidz Bop; each exposes the problematic issues that arise when children voice and perform adult sentiment.10 On Pop Jr (2008), sexually suggestive chart pop11 rubs shoulders with children’s television themes,12 animal songs (‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, ‘Who Let the Dogs out’, ‘The Duck Song’, ‘Big Fish Little Fish’) and Disney soundtracks (‘Can you Feel the Love Tonight’). Product-based songs (‘The Gummy Bear Song’, ‘Moshi Monsters’) constitute ‘advertainment’ and reveal the licencing links between toy, sweet and music manufacturers whereby product and promotion become indivisible. The success of Kidz Bop and subsequent copycat franchises was driven in part by rapidly falling revenues from CDs and other physical recorded formats. Rights holders of the original ‘adult’ songs saw such licencing opportunities as a way to replace lost revenue.

The Wiggles, YouTube Kids and beyond The Wiggles exemplified the commercial potential of the children’s music market in the decade that followed the mid 1990s. While recordings and live performance were central to their business model, The Wiggles utilised television, animation, computer games and merchandising to become Australia’s second-most successful performing act after AC/DC (Giuffre 2013: 145). Like The Muppet Show, The Wiggles used ‘dual’ and ‘double’ modes of address to communicate both simultaneously and separately to child and adult. This was achieved through the use of bright primary colours, animation, perma-smiles, costumed characters and the inclusion of guest stars such as John Fogerty, Kylie Minogue, Tim Finn, Leo Sayer, Rolf Harris and Keith Urban. Despite this obvious intergenerational appeal, commentators and critics have focussed almost exclusively on the didactic and instructional aspects of The Wiggles rather than issues of pleasure and entertainment derived from their musical compositions and recordings (McDermott and Lowe 2003: 66). If the number of YouTube channel subscribers and video views is the current barometer of success, then canonised nursery rhymes and traditional children’s songs visualised with colourful eye- catching animated videos are the most popular music for children in the early 2020s. All of the most successful children’s music channels on YouTube are presented as brands rather than an identifiable artist name or persona.13 By comparison, my most subscribed and viewed interviewees fall some way behind these anonymised sector leaders.14 Responding to calls by advocate groups, YouTube Kids uses algorithms and filters in an attempt ‘to give children a more contained environment that makes it simpler and more fun for them to explore on their own’ (YouTube

The 21st century children’s music industry  171 15

Kids 2020). However, YouTube Kids has attracted criticisms for its US bias and its continued use of advertising and other monetised in-video promotions. The system also seems unable to filter violent and sexualised algorithmically produced parodies of mainstream children’s media. In a nod to the often diminished nature of children’s media, YouTube Kids restricts the functionality on children’s music content. In order to further ensure age separation, YouTube is discussing the possibility of removing videos that have been created primarily for children from their mainstream ‘adult’ provision (Orphanides 2018; Perez 2019; Schoon 2020). Similarly, Spotify Kids, which launched in the UK and Australia in 2020, bills itself as ‘a playground of sound just for kids’ (Spotify Kids 2020). Unlike YouTube Kids, the songs and stories are free from adverts but only on payment of a monthly fee of £14.99. In contrast to YouTube’s algorithms, Spotify Kids’ content is ‘hand-picked’. However, most of the playlist ‘editors’ hail from the largest corporations in the children’s music and media industries (Nickelodeon, Disney, Discovery Kids, Universal Pictures). Despite input from Public Service professionals in Spotify’s home country of Sweden and consultation with the National Children’s Museum in Washington, D.C., critics point to the increasing homogeneity of streamed musical content. Algorithms and the newness of streaming media serve to narrow not only the listener’s choice of recordings but also the musical and sonic diversity of those recordings (Hepworth 2020). While corporations and brands now dominate YouTube, Spotify and other digital media platforms, many musicians, songwriters, performers and educators continue to make a living from children’s music. While revenue from performance seems to have largely replaced that from royalties from recordings, many have embraced digitisation and are thriving online. Children’s music makers, broadcasters and promoters16 In explaining how they became involved with making music for children, some of my interviewees expressed an ideological and vocational mission to improve the lives of children, families and their communities. Others arrived in more accidental ways (‘but while your here, you have a responsibility to do the best you can’: Kathy O’Connell). Ashli Christoval of the band Jazzy Ash, Patricia Shih, Nick Cope and others used music as part of their regular teaching roles. Cope was running his own Montessori childcare business in Oxford and performing at other such schools in the city. Christoval was delivering music classes for children and writing songs for the sessions. This sparked a return to education to study child development and an opportunity to record the songs that became her first album. Kaitlin McGaw of Alphabet Rockers was teaching songwriting in music schools. Others began playing for children after their ‘adult’ music careers had stalled. Dan Zanes career as a children’s artist began after leaving The Del Fuegos and becoming a father. Although his ex-band had moderate critical

172  The 21st century children’s music industry and commercial success, Zanes explained that ‘it wasn’t as if I was leaving a super lucrative pop career’. He admitted that his move to children’s music was seen by some of his ‘rock’ peers as ‘copping out’ but stated that: ‘I didn’t care what people thought. I was so happy to be making music for people who wanted to hear it. It was beautiful, carving my own path’. In the late 1990s, he, along with Laurie Berkner, David Weinstone and others inadvertently spearheaded the ‘kindie movement’, generally focussed around ex-alternative band members turned children’s musicians (Bickford 2019: 223). Relatedly, The Not-Its! were formed by members of independent Seattle-based bands. Most notably, lead singer Sarah Shannon was in Sub Pop signings Velocity Girl. Nick Cope was a member of The Candy Skins (Geffen and Ultimate) who have occasionally reformed and performed during his now-full-time children’s music career. I was the songwriter and bass player for mid 1990s major-label Britpop band Soda. Koo Koo Kanga Roo evolved from a five-piece folk-rock band. The duo’s children’s music success took off after spending four years playing in bars with punk bands. Bryan Atchison explained that the use of backing tracks, the absence of on-stage instruments and ‘songs about dinosaurs and rainbows, and a lot of audience participation’ were a deliberate ‘juxtaposition to a really raw bar act’. Their ‘super-simple sing-alongs and dance moves’ were filmed cheaply for a DVD that was sold in college gigs and bars. A Kindergarten teacher shared these videos on YouTube and social media where they have proved popular in classrooms as transitional activity breaks for children.17 Andrés Salguero of 123 Andrés has a background in classical music. As a clarinet player and a Doctor of Musical Arts he was hired to play in the backing group for children’s music Dino O’Dell (Kevin Dolan). Salguero subsequently developed his own highly successful bilingual (SpanishEnglish) children’s band. Some of my interviewees began writing and performing for children when they were children themselves. Joe Mailander and fellow Okee Dokee Brother Justin Lansing began performing their ‘allages sing-alongs’ in high school and at summer camps. They set up a nonprofit organisation and performed for free in homeless shelters, low-income housing facilities and day- care centres for families. All of the songs on Barry Louis Polisar’s first album I Eat Kids (1975) were written before he turned 21. Conversely, Patricia Shih was a contracted recording artist as a child at the age of 15 making records for adults. After studying and practicing visual art and glass craft and being mentored by musician Janice Buckner, she transitioned to a now-33-year career as a school-based children’s artist. The Not-Its! explained how the five-piece band now operates around the schedules of the members who work in education. While half-jokingly suggesting that most ex-alternative musicians would ‘choose to play Lollapalooza instead of libraries for kids’, they extoll that children’s music is ‘an achievable avenue to still play music and make some money’ while satisfying their ‘creating impulses to write and perform and to travel’. Zanes concurred, admitting that ‘I was happy to have an audience who were really

The 21st century children’s music industry  173 into what I was doing. I feel like I’m a useful member of society for the first time. This is pure up side. The creative level is higher’.

Musical influences The interviewees discussed the influences on their music. Polisar was inspired by the anti-parent anarchy in ‘The Chipmunk Song’ and by the ‘adult’ references on the Rolf Harris album he owned as a child. Similarly, Cope cites novelty songs such as ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ and the BBC radio programme Junior Choice (the subject of Chapter 4). In contrast to press reports about the banality of his music (Kelly 2000), Cope, Zanes and others claimed Raffi as an influence. Raffi’s non-patronising delivery, the organic feel of his records and his use of a diversity of folk instruments were all seen as appealing attributes. Zanes explained: ‘When my daughter was born, I was looking for music that we could listen to together. It would be a mix of old and new songs from a variety of places in different styles and sounded as if it was recorded in a house’. He found this combination in the work of Raffi, Sweet Honey in the Rock, English folk singer David Jones, the For Kids Only album by David Grisman and Jerry Garcia, Donovan’s albums for children For Little Ones and HMS Donovan, and the rock’n’roll versions of children’s songs such as ‘Wheels on the Bus’ that Jonathan Richman included on his ‘adult’ albums. Shih cited activist musician Tom Chapin as a major influence. Others such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen inspired her to address ‘meaningful’ topics that expressed something of ‘the inner life’. Shih claims classical, jazz, country and ‘show tunes’ as influences. Christoval and David Gibb also mentioned musical theatre. Gibb alluded to the ‘big soaring melodies’ and ‘intricate, clever, carefully thought out’ songs of Disney and of M-G-M musicals such as Oklahoma, South Pacific and Annie Get Your Gun. As a British artist, Gibb described how he has taken inspiration from the work of contemporary American children’s musicians The Okee Dokee Brothers, Elizabeth Mitchell and Brady Rymer. Pop-punk band The Not-Its! collectively cited melodic, guitar-based New Wave and pop-punk sources such as Blondie, The Pretenders, Green Day and Quiet Riot.

Addressing both child and adult with children’s music As discussed throughout, conceptions of the separateness of childhood have social and ideological foundations. All of the artists stated that their performances and recordings made some address to the adult as well as the child, either simultaneously as a dual address or sequentially as a double address. This was particularly pertinent when their music and live events were marketed to ‘the family’. Zanes explained: ‘I was trying to make songs that I could listen to myself but wouldn’t leave the kids behind … It doesn’t necessarily have to be simple. Simple enough so that young people can get into it

174  The 21st century children’s music industry but not simplistic. There is a lot of depth to it’. He describes what he does as ‘all-ages social music’. Likewise, Nick Cope explained how his songwriting was designed to ‘entertain everybody’ and was musically related to that of his previous band. He talked about balancing humour and ‘sophisticated chords and melodies’ based on classic song writers from the 1960s (Kinks, Beatles) with subject matter sometimes derived from listening to children. He explained how his Montessori-informed conception of the child is one in which the adult ‘builds their confidence … gives them independence and a route to grow at their own speed rather than en masse’. Cope admitted the child might not (yet) understand the jokes, ‘dark and political’ themes or references to gender stereotyping and other issues in his work but was keen that they ‘have a view of the world and everything in it’. Similarly, The NotIts! explained how music for children can contain ‘lyrics that are clever and engaging and interesting’ for both child and adult. David Gibb concurred stating that ‘children don’t need to understand every part of the song … It has to be something they can relate to, but I don’t try and be too careful about including things that they might not get, because life is full of things that you don’t understand’. This use of the dual address was echoed by Joe Mailander. With reference to The Okee Dokee Brothers’ song ‘Lighten your Load’, he discussed the role of metaphor in communicating ‘heavy’ themes to the child. He went on to explain how their ‘The Great Grandmother Tree’ covers issues of death: ‘We did it in a respectful way. If it’s over their heads, then maybe they’ll grow into it’. In the tradition of folk, gospel and other participatory genres, Mailander invites his gig audiences to become part of the performance. Rather than adopting the one-way communication of the archetypal singersongwriter, he expressed how ‘it’s all about telling folks that this is a team effort. It’s not just us playing these songs. We need everybody engaged and, of course, that’s a metaphor for how we think the whole society and the whole world should be … We should all celebrate that togetherness’. While sharing The Okee Dokee Brothers’ inclusive approach, fellow Minnesota residents Koo Koo Kanga Roo explained how a listener-viewer’s perception of the band is dictated by the context of reception. Atchison told me ‘if you discovered us as a support act for Frank Turner or a punk band, then we’re a weird rock band. If you found us through a teacher at school, then we’re a kids band. You will use that lens’. Of my interviewees, Koo Koo Kanga Roo were perhaps unique in that they regularly played to all-adult (including 21 years +) audiences.18 However, like The Okee Dokee Brothers and others, the duo performed the same live show at all of their gigs independent of the age of the audience. Despite the variety of genres represented by my interviewees, Atchison highlighted the often-under-acknowledged role of the child’s musical preferences: ‘People have taste. Not every kid is going to like every kids band. No one fan likes everything that we do’. He noted how adults sometimes over- emphasise the universal appeal of children’s music: ‘Everyone wants it to be a one-size-fits-all. “Hey! You play kids songs,

The 21st century children’s music industry  175 cool! You’re good for every kid”’. Koo Koo Kanga Roo’s live shows and videos19 employ simple repetitive dances and lyrics. Similarly, Patricia Shih explained how her inclusive ideology is constituted musically through calland-response, singable and instantly memorable choruses, incitements for bodily movement and sign language, and spontaneous on-stage songwriting. On the issue of song selection, Dan Zanes explained how the folk singers of old needed to ‘know songs that [were] going to galvanise the room’ and how ‘there wasn’t a sense yet that young people were a world unto themselves’. In 2017, he released Lead Belly, Baby! in which he recreated some of the songs on Play Parties in Song and Dance, as sung by Lead Belly (1941) and other children’s songs from Lead Belly’s repertoire. Zanes explains how Lead Belly ‘wanted to open some windows so young people could see his life and his experiences and understand a bigger version of America or the world’. Lead Belly’s spoken introductions included references to racial injustice, forced labour and slavery. Deriving much of his current repertoire from folk and other multicultural roots styles, Zanes stated that his aim was to ‘desegregate’ music and to ‘bring together’ generations and communities. He referred to how Lead Belly, Pete Seeger and other folk artists ‘gave kids a lot of credit for being able to take things on whatever level they could’. Rather than trying to hide challenging and potentially disturbing themes from the child, Zanes suggests that ‘the healthy option is to begin to talk about it and address it’. Others refer to their use of the double address, ‘adult’ references that bypass the child. Polisar claims to include ‘lots of in-jokes’ explaining that ‘kids will get them in 30 years.’ Christoval explained that she adapts the set list, her performance style and her between-song banter to suit the age make-up of the audience. She not only mentioned making ‘adult-only’ reference to teachers and parents, but also talked about how songs such as the handclapping ‘hambone’ song that she recorded with children’s musician Uncle Devlin were included as a form of dual address. Polisar admits to ‘under- cutting’ the superficially serious children’s rights message of his ‘Marching Shoulder to Shoulder’ (‘We’re not just “cute”, we’re important … We ain’t just kids, we’re human beings too’) with sometimes- dark humour (‘We’re tired of being pampered. We’re tired of being coddled. We’re making Molotov cocktails from our baby bottles … we won’t trust anybody who is over thirteen’). He explained how many of the songs on his first two albums were written as part of his former ‘adult’ repertoire or during his transition to a children’s artist. He pointed out that each of his albums contain love songs that work equally well for the child and for the adult: ‘Loving sweet moments are part of a kid’s experience. They may think about it in terms of their parents or siblings’. As Kathy O’Connell explained in reference to the intergenerational appeal of humourist and television presenter Soupy Sales, ‘if you cast a wide net you will bring in the whole family’. Considering this ‘wide net’ approach to intergenerational engagement, I asked my interviewees about the reception of their inclusion of complex

176  The 21st century children’s music industry and potentially ‘inappropriate’ issues. Many described a positive reception. ‘Seattle is a liberal city’ explained The Not-Its!; ‘You can talk about politics onstage’. Alphabet Rockers told me how a rabbi mentioned to them that ‘everything I’m teaching in my work is reflected on your stage’. Conversely, the duo had received some backlash on issues of immigration and transgender acknowledgement: ‘Teachers are worried about bringing politics into the schools’, McGaw told me. Nick Cope admitted to challenging gender stereotypes and raising issues of racial diversity in his work: ‘Some people don’t like it’, he revealed: ‘They take offence’. I was told that Hullabaloo’s ‘I wear pink’, a song about a boy who grew up with sisters, had received a ‘venomous’ response from some parents. Similarly, The Okee Dokee Brothers’ ‘Snow People’ had received some critical comments for ‘teaching gender identity too early’. While expressing his sensitivity for divergent religious beliefs, Joe Mailander explained that ‘the song was more of an anthem for being authentic, for being who you are, and expressing yourself’. Bizarrely, a reviewer refused to pass comment on Barry Louis Polisar’s Juggling Babies album, not for its seemingly contentious title (the full title is Juggling Babies and a Career), but for its repeated references to crying babies; the reviewer ‘did not feel that it is totally normal for a baby to cry’. Dave Stevens described how, despite a visit to his Kinderling Kids Radio studios by the Kidz Bop singers, the station was unable to broadcast most of the songs on the album they were promoting. He explained that despite lyrical changes to the originals to make them ‘a bit cuter’, most of the songs were still unsuitable for the station’s primary demographic of three-to-six-year-olds. Rather than themes that should be avoided, David Gibb revealed how a book publisher had sent him a list of themes they thought should be included: morality, emotions, friendship, bullying and climate change. While streaming technology offers free access to previously out-of-print children’s music, discussions have circulated on the forum of the Children’s Music Network (CMN) and elsewhere about the contemporary appropriateness of some historical songs. As a radio programmer, Stevens is sensitive to dated ideologies that ‘in today’s climate don’t quite sit right with the audience’. This has included the blanket removal of songs by fellow Australian Rolf Harris, Michael Jackson and The Jackson Five.20 Like some of the folk singers of the CMN, Barry Louis Polisar has adapted some of his lyrics to suit the times. However, with reference to the violence in ‘Three Blind Mice’ (a song in which executions for treason and anti-Catholicism are ‘cloaked’ by allegory; Roberts 2005: 37–40) and other nursery rhymes, Polisar suggests that ‘if you start holding a microscope to every song that is created, you will get into problems’. While he explained how the meaning of a song is never fixed, especially when satire and irony are used, Polisar’s regular school audiences of elementary, middle and high school students ‘often get the codes.’ He bemoaned that ‘we’ve become a less literate and a more literal society’, one in which ‘subtlety, nuance and irony just seem to be absent’. Polisar described how while ‘just doing the same thing’, the reception of

The 21st century children’s music industry  177 his music has changed depending on ‘the ebb and flow of the times’ and the political climate. He explained how ‘when a liberal is president, the criticism is from conservative groups who say I am undermining authority and challenging public figures. When a conservative is president, I get attacks from liberals saying that I’m not teaching enough politically correct stuff.’ The changing children’s music industry The careers of most of my interviewees began before digital recording and streaming technology. As such, they were able to identify a peak and subsequent drop in recorded music sales in the first decade of the 21st century. Stefan Shepherd (Zooglobble) highlighted the circumstances that sparked mainstream media’s interest in independent children music. In one week in 2006 (11 March), he noted, the top three albums on the Billboard chart were all ‘kid focussed’. The High School Musical soundtrack, Kidz Bop 9 and Jack Johnson’s soundtrack to Curious George were symptomatic of an increase in child-targeted albums. As a radio music reviewer, Shepherd was asked to comment on this phenomenon. As a result, he became interested in kindie and its familiar sound of 1980s college radio rock. He suggested that kindie was defined not only against Disney-affiliated and child-targeted pop, but also against the traditional folk music that was a children’s music staple in the 20th century. Advances in digital sound technology and online communication meant that high-profile albums could be recorded in small local studios and non-traditional temporary or ‘bedroom’ recording settings and released on labels that could be run from home such as Little Monster Records.21 Bill Childs noted how ‘there was a big increase in people saying, “If Dan Zanes can do it, I can do it too”’. Sensing the commercial potential of kindie, Childs pointed out that ‘there were a lot of bands coming over from the grown-up music world and doing music for families, some of them far more successfully than others.’ The waning of kindie in the 2010s corresponded to industry shifts from physical product, initially to file sharing and downloading, then to streaming via Spotify, YouTube22 and other platforms. Shepherd admits that the change to digital happened much faster than he expected. There was, however, some respite as children and parents still valued the recorded artefact long after streaming had become the norm. The Not-Its! explain how they were ‘still selling a good amount of CDs at shows until about two years ago [2017]. Then we saw a pretty hard drop off. We don’t even see a lot of online sales.’ With their income from streaming now considered negligible, the band use CDs mainly as give-aways at gigs and to promote their live shows. The change to digital has raised questions about the continuing validity of the album format for children. While the Grammy Awards, music reviewers and some artists still uphold the album as the measurable statement of focus and commitment, many in the industry now embrace the single song,

178  The 21st century children’s music industry or increasingly, the single video. Children’s music PR manager Beth BlenzClucas advocated this return to the ‘singles’ era of 45 rpm jukebox-friendly records. Her advice to her artists is to ‘focus on your best songs … a simple catchy single will drive everything else’. Blenz-Clucas suggested that guitar-based kindie artists still value the album format. Nick Cope expressed that he is still committed to making collections of songs that are recorded in a studio every year or so: ‘It’s nice to document the time that you wrote them’. Koo Koo Kanga Roo regularly record albums and create up to two videos per month for the album songs. Atchison explained how producing albums with well-defined themes and concepts helps to focus the duo’s songwriting. While early Koo Koo Kanga Roo albums were released in physical format, recordings are now only available for streaming. An exception was the band’s Triangle of Success album that was manufactured on cassette as a nostalgic homage to ‘motivational, inspirational audio guides to achieving your dreams’ from the 1980s. In contrast, YouTube children’s music writer-performers such as Blazer Fresh and brands such as Go Noodle! (with which Koo Koo Kanga Roo were once associated) release single videos and compiled playlists rather than albums.23 Both Shepherd and The Not-Its! noted that declining budgets for schools, libraries and public events had led to a decrease in the size of bands and a rise in solo children’s performers. Patricia Shih has always worked in schools in the New York area but admitted that arts education funding has rapidly decreased. While since the late 1980s, she made a ‘great living’ playing ‘schools, libraries, municipalities, parks and festivals with a kids stage’, she described how the global financial recession in 2008 and Common Core’s focus on science, technology, engineering and maths subjects diverted dwindling school budgets away from music. These moves, she suggested, have drastically reduced her ability to tour. She mused that ‘very few artists make a living from their art. They need patrons or a straight job, or fingers in a lot of pies’. ‘The arts’, she explained, ‘are a necessity for us to be compassionate, moral, emotional, social and philosophical. It’s what makes us human’. To Shih, music is the ‘can opener’ for hearts and minds. Involved with children’s music radio since 1983, Kathy O’Connell pointed out that even the most high-profile artists were not making ‘big bucks’ in the first decade of the 21st century. She noted how independent children’s musicians such as Raffi, Trout Fishing in America, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, and Barry Louis Polisar, whose careers preceded kindie, continue to be successful by adapting to the times.24 The commercial growth and subsequent decline of children’s music had a direct impact on O’Connell’s career. Her previous Kids America show on public radio was syndicated to up to 26 stations at its peak. The show was ‘big budget, won awards and had big staff’ yet was closed in 1987 due to the removal of funding. Admitting sadly that ‘it doesn’t matter how much you’re enriching kids’ lives, she went on to set up her own Kids Corner on WXPN where she now co-organises

The 21st century children’s music industry  179 KindieComm with Robert Drake. This biennial children’s music industry showcase has also changed with the times, evolving from the previous New York-based KindieFest, which was organised by Stephanie Meyer and others. Rather than the ‘TV show people and big venues’ of its predecessor, O’Connell explains how KindieComm is a ‘very informal … organic … attendee driven’ networking event that attracts many members of the CMN who run their own (annual) conference. This do-it-yourself ethos was reiterated by other interviewees. Koo Koo Kanga Roo, Nick Cope and others do their own recording, publishing, booking and promotion. Assisted by his 9-year-old son Bert, Cope also creates the drawings and animations (‘it’s very time consuming’) for his recordings, books, website and videos. While he admits that his approach is a ‘slow burner’, as of April 2020, 15- episodes of his ‘Popcast’ have been commissioned and broadcast by CBeebies. While almost all of my interviewees revealed that they earn significantly more money from performance and education than from recording (Zanes and Mailander both suggested a 70/30% split), it is the transition to the moving image that perhaps best characterises contemporary children’s music. Videos by Zanes, The Lucky Band, The Okee Dokee Brothers and others have been licenced to Netflix, Disney and other networks through companies such as batteryPOP, Ameba and Kidoodle that search out and distribute suitable content. The Okee Dokee Brothers took a ‘big gamble’ by self-funding a 40-minute film of their month-long trip down the Mississippi. The experience served as the inspiration for their Can You Canoe? Album which won them a Grammy Award for Best Children’s Album in 2013, an accolade that gave the duo a ‘great boost’ and ‘lots of press’. Released slightly before streaming became the dominant consumption technology for children’s music, the album sold around 50,000 copies over the subsequent six years. Similarly, 123 Andrés won a Latin children’s music Grammy in 2016. Salguero told me how the nomination was ‘not a magic wand’ but provided a ‘wake-up call’ for him to build a team around his work in order to raise the quality. He explains how the comments under his YouTube videos provide a ‘direct connection’ with his fans. He contrasted this ‘conversation’ with the previous ‘cumbersome and complicated’ model which he felt made it difficult for independent artists to gain access to television and national radio. Andrés now uses the digital recording process to record his vocals and create a ‘sketch’ of his songs in New York before sending them to studios in Columbia (his country of birth), Argentina and Mexico. The local musicians provide the necessary ‘authenticity’ central to Salguero’s wider cultural mission. American Brady Rhymer and British David Gibb performed a similar international recording collaboration.25 While the internet offers opportunities to connect with audiences and other artists across national borders, Gibb points out that many music-hosting and review sites do not have categories for ‘music for children or families.’ He also noted that there are no dedicated PR managers or radio stations in the UK

180  The 21st century children’s music industry and that it was the American release of his single with Rymer that has scored him his biggest financial reward to date. The renewed emphasis on DIY practices and the rise in licensing, sponsorship and endorsements may suggest a return to an earlier music industry business model and reveal the perhaps anomalous nature of the physical recorded product. Indeed, the downscaling of revenue from recorded music has corresponded to a resurgence in song books for children. Cope has published three illustrated books based on his songs. Zanes’ House Party! is ‘a family roots music treasury’ that is reminiscent of the notated and illustrated song books by Ruth Crawford Seeger (1948 and 1950), Beatrice Landeck (1948 and 1950) and Woody Guthrie (1992) in Chapter 3. Threetime children’s Grammy nominee Justin Roberts has published four books for children, Koo Koo Kanga Roo five. The Okee Dokee Brothers have produced two book/CD combinations, while Gibb and Christoval are both ​­ soon-to-be children’s authors. While public service radio broadcasting for children may have suffered due to funding cuts, digital radio and podcasts are flourishing. Dave Stevens from Australian Kinderling Kids Radio noted that radio has been resilient when compared with the recording industry and that broadcasting now involves multiple streaming and social media platforms. In a changing mediascape, the eight staff members face the constant challenge of where best to target resources. Expenditure on staff (three full time), licences for both the digital radio and the app, PRO (Performing Rights Organisation) fees for each song and studio equipment are funded by a deal to host content on national airline Qantas and through adult- rather than child-focussed advertising. Bill Childs runs the Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child radio station alongside his day job as a lawyer. His interest in music for children and families was sparked by the success of Justin Roberts and Dan Zanes. He now runs a home-based ‘syndication education’ station that, as a ‘Triple A’ (adult album alternative), is associated with the professionally run university station and has a ‘huge signal’. His own children have worked on the station as presenters since it started. The station has served as a label through which he has released the albums Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti (2010) and Let all the Children Boogie: A Tribute to David Bowie (2016). While Sagan Thacker points out that his Radio Active Kids is ‘on a community radio station with no commercials [with] only one underwriter [funded announcement] and one PSA [Public Service Announcement] per hour’, the internet offers him a global listenership. The 21-year-old explains how compiling his weekly two-hour show involves searching Bandcamp and other sites for new children’s music that Kinderling, Spare the Rock, SiriusXM Kids Place Live, Radio Disney and other stations might not have yet discovered. Kinderling, Zooglobble and Spare the Rock balance kindie and independent children’s artists with recordings from previous decades that are ‘appropriate for kids but not necessarily aimed at them’ (Childs). A sample Spare

The 21st century children’s music industry  181 the Rock play list featured ELO, the Beatles, Sam Cooke, Link Wray, Shonen Knife and Jonathan Richman. Childs spends time trying to balance genres, genders and races. Similarly, Kinderling’s strap line is ‘from the Wiggles to the White Stripes’; the station features ‘classic’ and ‘cool’ recordings, such as The Strokes and Daft Punk from the 1950s to the present day. While the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) have fostered a healthy roster of children’s music artists of which The Wiggles are the highest profile, Kinderling have promoted fellow Australian children’s bands The Vegetable Plot (healthy- eating themed three-piece band) and Bunny Racket (rabbitthemed rock/metal). Stevens’ job involves ‘coding’ incoming recordings for ‘energy’ and ‘mood’ on a scale of one to five. Programming software then uses his scores to create playlists for each hour of the day. Defining each recording as ‘dreamy’, ‘chilled’, ‘mid-tempo’, ‘bouncy’, ‘hyped’ or as ‘happy’, ‘curious’ or ‘ambient’ ensures the appropriate affective match between music and time-prescribed domestic activity.26

Diversity and complexity While many children’s musicians work and perform in schools or have backgrounds as teachers, questions about the role of music in didactic curriculumbased education raised some strong opinions. Thacker warned that ‘if a song is explicitly educational, be very, very careful. Kids will sense if they are being talked down to or being preached to’. Incisively, he also noted that the ‘huge franchises’ have saturated the market for commercial music-based educational products while suggesting that music ‘serves a very specific purpose that is to do with education rather than entertainment’. Likewise, Childs talked about ‘Wikipedia Rock’ and the ‘heavy-handed’ listing of factual information in song. ‘There is a place for that’, he proposed, ‘but not on a music-oriented radio programme’. The success of They Might Be Giants’ three educational children’s albums may have influenced other artists to produce didactic material. However, many of those that I spoke with had moved away from such songs towards pro-social and ideological themes. Alphabet Rockers exemplify this shift. The hip-hop duo’s emphasis is now on ‘bigger stronger messages.’ Their songs are written through child- centred inquiry-based session and by taking cues from communities in their hometown of Oakland, California. The collaborative creative process is informed by children, families and professionals; each song comes from ‘its own community’. Their latest Grammy-nominated albums ‘Rise Shine #Woke’ and ‘The Love’ cover a range of social and personal development issues such as confidence, race and (trans)gender identity. Kaitlin and Tommy explained the benefits of including the child and their communities: ‘We are able to allow young people’s complexities to come through in their songs. We let it be in their own cadence. We honour people’s truth and we try to find their place in the song’. Kaitlin described how hip-hop could ‘engage learners in a culturally relevant way’ and express something of the ‘complexity of the

182  The 21st century children’s music industry present that we are in’ while appealing to adult teachers and carers. She asserted the potential of hip-hop to ‘interrupt patterns’ in ways that may elude more ‘nostalgic’ genres. As Tommy explained: ‘Songs for liberation don’t have to be the slow jam that makes you cry. It can be the hot trap song that makes you want to dance and cry’. For an artist who has been recording for children for over 40 years and whose songs are often characterised by satire, irony and surrealist humour, Barry Louis Polisar talked about attempting to depict ‘the reality of life with kids’ and of ‘trying to find the humour in everyday life’. He mentioned how he had moved away from the didacticism of some of his earlier songs and had been asked to write explicitly about racism and the environment, an approach that he has resisted. Despite including the occasional antiVietnam War and civil rights reference, he suggested that he preferred to take a covert ‘non preachy’ approach that uses humour to expose the power relationships between child and adult. ‘I wanna write about teaching kids to be happy and well adjusted’, Polisar told me: ‘If they are, then we could probably solve a lot of those other problems.’ Mailander and Salguero both referred to using music to ‘start conversations’ about social and cultural issues. The Okee Dokee Brothers circulate resources to schools that raise issues about the geographical, social and cultural routes of their songs. Salguero described how his song ‘Les Claves’ is accompanied by on-stage introductions and downloadable-learning guides that explain how the percussive wood sticks have travelled from Africa to the Caribbean, South America and Cuba to form the basis of salsa and other African-Latin-Cuban-A merican styles in New York in the 1950s. Similarly, Ashli Christoval uses New Orleans jazz to connect to her family’s geographical roots and to facilitate conversations about race, slavery and segregation. She expressed how many white teachers often feel ill equipped to talk about these issues (‘American culture is scared of difficult themes’) and how jazz music and reference to her family background (her grandfather marched with Martin Luther King; her mother was one of six Black children in an allwhite school in New Orleans) help communicate the complex social history of Black America. While issues of racial violence and colonialist power may be seen by some as inappropriate themes for children’s music, Christoval pointed out that ‘kids’ music is the most honest of music’ and carries stories that are often absent from history books. The complexity of Christoval’s subject matter is matched by the intricate melodies and chords of jazz which reflect the complicated life of the child. She asserted that ‘we’re dumbing it down when we sing about butterflies and buttercups all the time … It’s OK to talk about difficult stuff with children as long as it’s framed in a developmentally appropriate way’. While she continues to include songs that are designed for audience participation, Christoval describes how her music increasingly raises ‘difficult’ issues. Bill Childs commented on the diversification of children’s music in terms of race, ethnicity and genre while noting its increasing willingness to tackle

The 21st century children’s music industry  183 emotional issues. As a radio programmer, he expressed how he was drawn to artists such as Josh Lovelace and Justin Roberts who reflected the ‘sadness and complexity’ of children’s lives and could offer an alternative to depictions of childhood as ‘puppies and kittens, light and happy’. Stefan Shepherd and others highlighted the rise of songs for children that deal with LGBTQ+ issues. Childs mentioned that he and his children talk about same-​ ­sex marriage equality on air and how the proceeds from the Bowie tribute record benefit ‘It Gets Better’, a project that supports LGBTQ+ young people around the world. Additionally, Stevens spoke about how Kinderling Kids Radio caters for Sydney’s diverse LGBTQ+ community and produces a play list called ‘Gotta Be Me’ to coincide with Mardi-​­Gras. McGaw described how children could be ‘change makers at any age’. She detailed how local children were engaged in an activist art project designed to raise awareness of the USA’s detention of immigrant children.27 ‘They can’t vote’, she pointed out, ‘but they’re making people do stuff’. Salguero noted how ‘youth is being drawn into activism younger’ and described how 123 Andrés perform fundraising gigs for immigrant organisations and diaper banks in their hometown of Washington, D.C. McGaw mentioned how parents have expressed their fears to her that Alphabet Rockers’ music is ‘going to take away their child’s innocence’. In response, she pointed out that ‘children can observe homelessness and people living in tents. We can choose to ignore it, to wish it away, or we can talk to our kids and families’. She described how ‘kids want to be empowered’ and that getting children to ‘acknowledge that things are happening to kids their own age’ can present a challenge to some parents. While describing how his approach is not ‘in your face’ or ‘preachy’, Salguero articulated the political implications of a Columbian-​­American duo singing in both English and Spanish in 21st-​­century America. In a social climate in which ‘immigrants feel under threat’ violence against minorities is rising, ‘families with children question whether the USA is the right place for them’. Salguero understood that ‘going to places and singing in Spanish and having positive experiences with the culture is politically disruptive for many people’. He mentioned that in many places, his band would not be welcome. He describes how some bi-​­lingual Latino children live ‘in fear that someone will tell them not to speak Spanish’ and how his music communicates not only that ‘speaking your own language is OK’28 but also the sense that ‘we belong here’. The act of performing music for children in such places gives them ‘a glimpse of a different reality than the one they see at home’. Patricia Shih recounted some of the racial tensions of touring the South with Kim and Reggie Harrison and mused over the best way to ‘get the messages to those who disagree’. ‘If you can’t reach out’, Shih explained, ‘then you perpetuate the divisions between us. Music is such a powerful tool as a way to open up dialogues and hear other points of view’. Christoval expressed how in the last two years (since 2017), America ‘feels scary as a performer as well as an individual’. She asserted the power of music

184  The 21st century children’s music industry to cross cultural and generational lines and described how ‘it’s heavy out there, especially in the South. Children are seeing so much trash on the news and on social media. They need people like us to bring some light, even if it’s just to have a good time.’ Christoval described how she had performed a series of concerts after the Sandy Hook school shootings in 2012: ‘There are kids out there living the struggle who had seen their classmates shot to death. The parents did not have the answers for their kids’. While the school brought in councillors and therapists during term times, Jazzy Ash were asked to perform during the summer vacation. Christoval admits that the shows were ‘heavy … but so necessary’. In addition, she talked about performing in a school in Georgia that had experienced racial tension. The teachers, she explained, had not felt able to address the issues in their multi-​­cultural classrooms. She mentioned how the hosts came to her in tears after the show, exclaiming ‘We needed this show more than you can realise’. Where dialogue had failed, ­music had ‘provided the opportunity to start the conversation, even by just looking at our band’.29 Like Jazzy Ash, Alphabet Rockers are a multi-​­racial group. McGaw explained how ‘in the skin that we’re in and the body that we are in, we are already going to walk in the room and have an effect on young people just by our outward appearance and the assumptions about who we are’. ‘That’s why I do this’, Christoval confirmed: ‘Kids music doesn’t pay that great! Those are the moments I hold on to. Those are the moments that make the difference’. She is currently writing a musical for children that harnesses the ‘multi-​­cultural inception of jazz’ to depict the slavery experiences of a mother and son in Vacherie while ‘just an hour away in New Orleans, Creole women were owning property and working as bankers. The city had its own laws and food, but slavery was so close’. She highlighted how music for children is the perfect vehicle to ‘keep telling our stories’. Likewise, Alphabet Rockers explained how intergenerational music could be utilised to ‘open up safe spaces for other languages’ and ‘for gender diversity when people don’t see them as gender diverse’. When I spoke with them, The Not-​­Its! had just returned from performing at the Hand in Hand International Children’s Music Festival in China30 on a bill with Dutch children’s rock band Hippe Gasten. L.A.-based The Lucky Band (formerly Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band) have also performed at this multi-​­city festival.31 The venture is significant.32 As recording and touring for children, especially in bands rather than as solo artists, has recently declined in America and elsewhere, the Chinese market seems to be expanding. Apart from the festivals, Hand in Hand also work to promote the artists’ recordings to over 50 countries. The process involves ‘localising’ the songs by translating lyrics into the native languages and distributing them to media outlets and educational institutions. On stage, the bands are accompanied by a local who translates their between-​­song banter and introductions. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and most other Western social media, search engines and news sites are blocked in mainland China and elsewhere. Chinese audiences are potentially seeing and hearing certain

The 21st century children’s music industry  185 types of Western children’s music for the first time and at least partly in their own language. My interviewees repeatedly detailed how accessible, vernacular musical styles could engage the child and foster dialogue between generations and communities. Hip-​­hop (Alphabet Rockers), Latin-​­American music (123 Andrés), jazz (Jazzy Ash), folk (Zanes, The Okee Dokee Brothers) and other roots styles are good examples. Where cultural and ideological tensions exist, music for children is facilitating dialogue and opening up spaces for shared understanding.

Conclusion Barry Louis Polisar explained how his aim was never to make money: ‘Just go and do your stuff and see what happens’, he told me. He had been recording and performing for children for over 30 years when his song ‘All I Want is You’, a ‘filler’ track from his second album that he had never sung nor been asked to sing during that time, was included as the opening song in the surprise-​­h it film Juno in 2008. Initial sales from the soundtrack album more than quadrupled Polisar’s already considerable combined record and book sales up to that point33 and exposed his songs to a new and receptive generation. More film soundtracks, advertisements and a 60-​­song tribute album (We’re Not Kidding 2009) followed. Many of the interviewees talked about ‘planting seeds’ and building a ‘legacy’. They discussed how their music could ‘grow’ and how the child might elicit a greater understanding of the recordings in the future. Most spoke of the necessity of addressing the child as part of an intergenerational community that both included and transcended the boundaries of the family. They discussed the opportunities and challenges of including topics that have been largely absent from recorded children’s music in the past. Some mentioned making explicit topics that have previously been hidden from the child by various modes of address in family-​­audience settings. The conversations highlighted the delicate balancing act that is central to working conceptions of music for children. A broad-​­brush approach to a widely defined intergenerational audience and a nod to the child’s future pleasures must be weighed against considerations of the child’s agentic enjoyment of the music in the ‘now’. The mostly independent artists that I spoke with pondered the task of creating engaging, inclusive and accessible recordings that increased their hermeneutic potential as the child’s competence developed, that appealed to adults as purse holders and gatekeepers, and that had the musical and sonic attributes to allow them to transcend the social and temporal specificities of their creation. Some admitted that this ‘sweet spot’ was often elusive, only hit with a selection of their songs. As with Polisar’s success, many admitted that chance and circumstance played as much of a role as an inspired, well-​­crafted, well-​­intentioned song. long independent artist,34 Barry Louis Polisar extolled the As a life-​­ benefits of the free accessibility to his music through streaming: ‘It gives

186  The 21st century children’s music industry everybody in the world the opportunity to listen to the songs anytime they want. That’s really important to me. That is for the future and for some greater purpose’. The seemingly arbitrary success of Polisar’s ‘All I Want is You’35 exemplifies the fluid and irreducible relationships between recorded music, the wider entertainment industries and the audience’s consumptive power. The close networks and oral processes of children’s folk music, the hyperbolic novelty recordings of children’s radio, the coded multi-layered songs of music hall and the materiality of the recorded physical product continue to assert their influence on mainstream children’s music aesthetics and the day-to-day practices of those working as performers, songwriters and educators. However, commercial children’s music is increasingly characterised by ‘safe’ prescribed online playlists, algorithms and filters, advertisements and subscriptions. On YouTube and other streaming sites, brand identities have eclipsed recognisable artists in terms of the number of views. Animated videos rather than audio recordings are now the norm. By talking directly to those on the front line of children’s music production and distribution, this chapter has revealed some of the ideological and practical tensions that have emerged around the new media in the context of childhood. However, it has also highlighted the ways in which artists are harnessing the power of streaming, algorithms, digital recording and social media to create and promote their work.

Notes 1 Raffi’s autobiography (2000) details the context of his part federally funded early albums Singable Songs for the Very Young (1976) and More Singable Songs (1977). 2 To Hilty, Barney is ‘all saccharine and no substance’ (1997: 79). 3 The Mozart Effect® (a trademarked phrase) is a series of books and recordings written and developed by Don Campbell that use music to ‘improve the health of families and communities … improve memory, awareness … [and treat] mental and physical disorders and injuries’ (The Mozart Effect Resource Centre 2016). 4 Notably, while the original studies were on adults (Rauscher, Shaw and Ky: 1993 and 1995), the ‘Mozart Effect’ is now largely associated with children and notions of their prodigious talents (Beauvais 2015). This ‘scientific legend’ was a product of a combination of the application of neuroscience to educational practice, the ‘high art’ aura of classical music, and parents’ willingness to invest in a ‘quick-fix’ solution (Ibid.: 185). In the context of the increased testing of even young children’s academic abilities, the success of such musical media becomes clearer. 5 In 1998, all school children and new mothers in Georgia, USA, were issued with a classical CD entitled Build Your Baby’s Brain through the Power of Music (Nantais and Schellenberg 1999). 6 For example, The Mozart Effect®’s Music for Children, Volume 1: Tune Up Your Mind features ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik KV. 525 – IV. Rondo: Allegro’. The complex string arrangement for violin, viola and cello of the original is replaced by a single accordion part and a top-l ine flute melody. The high tempo and key change in the original are absent in the version for children.

The 21st century children’s music industry  187

188  The 21st century children’s music industry

17 18

19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

(Zooglobble), Sagan Thacker (Radio Active Kids), Kathy O’Connell (Kids’ Corner; co- organiser of KindieComm) and Sugar Mountain PR founder Beth BlenzClucas. Interviews took place in 2018 and 2019. Koo Koo Kanga Roo have at least ten videos with over 1 million views, while their ‘Milkshake’ (17 million) and ‘Dinosaur Stomp’ (16 million) have attracted the duo’s most views. My interview was conducted while Koo Koo Kanga Roo were on tour with The Aquabats, a band with a 25-year history who similarly use humour and a ‘kidult’ aesthetic. As creators of television programme Yo Gabba Gabba (four seasons on Nick Jr.) and their The Aquabats! Super Show! (CITV, ABC, The Hub Network) the band blend pop-punk, ska and electro-pop with super-hero characterisation. Atchison listed Peelander-Z, Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship, Kitty Kat Fan Club, Leslie and the Lys as other pop-punk-indie- electro-hip-hop acts that have varying degrees of kid-adult appeal. Koo Koo Kanga Roo’s initial videos were simple single- camera shoots against a green screen. Bryan Atchison explained how the duo filmed 17 in a 90-minute session. ‘There were loads of mistakes, he admits. ‘Nobody wants to dance along with someone whose really good’. In 2014, Rolf Harris was convicted of 12 counts of indecent assault on underage girls. Michael Jackson faced numerous child sexual abuse allegations both during his lifetime and after his death in 2009. Little Monster Records was founded by Kevin Salem and Kate Hyman. Salem performs music for children under the name Gustafer Yellowgold. 58% of children who access YouTube do so to watch music videos (Jackson 2016). Blazer Fresh videos appear under the GoNoodle banner with other artists such as Koo Koo Kanga Roo. Both acts have videos with between 10 and 25 million views. Raffi has recently begun performing again. Despite the near-30-year career break, his PR manager Beth Blenz- Clucas revealed that his concerts in large theatres sold out quickly. Gibb and Rymer collaborated on the ‘Songs across the Pond’ UK tour in 2018 and on the remotely recorded ‘Rain Rain (You Can Stay)’ single. Kinderling’s hourly slots correspond to activities such as waking up, brushing the teeth, mealtimes, getting out of the house, riding in a car and going to bed. The music’s match to domestic routines is highly evocative of the children’s songs of Woody Guthrie in Chapter 3. The Butterfly Effect. 2019. Migration is Beautiful Project [Online]. Born in America to Columbian parents, Andrés’ wife and fellow 123 Andrés’ performer Christina learned to speak English from watching Sesame Street. Ashli Christoval mentioned that on stage, she talks about how 60 years ago, it may have been illegal for the multi-racial Jazzy Ash band to perform together. The Not-Its! have also performed in India and admitted that children’s music had taken them further than their previous ‘adult’ bands. My band, Johnny and the Raindrops, is also contracted to Hand in Hand. Hand in Hand was established by American journalist Rebecca Kanthor and her Chinese husband, musician and author Liu Jian. Prior to Juno, and as an independent artist, Polisar had sold almost 200,000 records and CDs, and 200,000 songbooks and other books for children. Despite never seemingly having courted fame or fortune, Polisar was approached by the Children’s Television Workshop in 1977 to write an album based on the ‘kids liberation’ themes on his first two albums. He was still in college at the time. Despite Sesame Street already using Polisar’s ‘I Wanna Be a Dog’ in their stage show and him writing three songs for the project, the album was

The 21st century children’s music industry  189 never made. However, after his ‘I’ve got a Dog and his name is Cat’ appeared in a slightly amended form on Giggle and Grin with Big Bird (1981), Polisar had to threaten a law suit to get the composition credit changed and receive the royalties from the estimated 20–40,000 copies that the album sold. 35 Juno’s producers inadvertently stumbled across Polisar’s song while searching for another (Polisar 2019).

Bibliography Barnes, J. 1983. ‘The best and the worst of C- 4’, The Observer, 27 February: 40. Beauvais, C. 2015. ‘The ‘Mozart effect’: A sociological reappraisal’, Cultural Sociology, 9(2): 185–202. Bickford, T. 2012. ‘The new ‘tween’ music industry: The Disney Channel, Kidz Bop and an emerging childhood counterpublic’, Popular Music, 31(3): 417–436. Bickford, T. 2019. ‘The Kindie movement: Independent children’s music in the United States since 2000’, in Young, S., Ilari, B. eds. Music in Early Childhood: Multi-disciplinary ​­ Perspectives and Inter-disciplinary ​­ Exchanges. New York: Springer: 223–233. Buckingham, D. 2000. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. London: Polity. Campbell, D. 2000. The Mozart Effect® for Children: Awakening Your Child’s Mind, Health, and Creativity with Music. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Caulfield, K. 2014. Kidz Bop Charts 40th Album. Billboard [Online]. Christman, E. 2015. ‘Facing flagging sales. Will expansion plans for ‘Kidz Bop’ pay off?’. Billboard, 6 April. Giuffre, L. 2013. ‘Top of the tots: The Wiggles as Australia’s most successful (underacknowledged) sound media export’, Media International Australia, 148: 145–154. Guthrie, W. 1992. Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs. New York: HarperCollins. Hepworth, S. 2020. ‘Streaming spells the end of the ‘ownership’ era of music, but are we ready to let go?’, The Guardian, 1 February. Hilty, E.B. 1997. ‘From Sesame Street to Barney and friends: Television as teacher’, in Steinberg, S.R. and Kicheloe, J.L. eds. Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hoefnagels, A. 2010. ‘Children’s folk music in Canada: Histories, performers and canons’, MUSICultures, 37: 14–31. Jackson, J. 2016. ‘Children spending more time online than watching TV for the first time’, The Guardian, 26 January. Kelly, E.S.J. 2000. ‘Songs for children that won’t make the adults fwow up’, New York Times, July 9: CY3. Landeck, B. 1948. Songs to Grow on. New York: Marks & Sloane. Landeck, B. 1950. More Songs to Grow on. New York: Marks & Sloane. Linn, S. 2005. Consuming Kids: Protecting our Children from the Onslaught of Marketing and Advertising. New York: Anchor Books. Mayo, E. and Nairn, A. 2009. Consumer Kids: How Big Business Is Grooming Our Children for Profit. London: Constable. McDermott, L. and Lowe, J. 2003, ‘Using popular children’s characters to help parents protect their young children from the sun’, Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 14: 66–69.

190  The 21st century children’s music industry Nantais, K.M. and Schellenberg, E.G. 1999. ‘The Mozart effect: An artefact of preference’, Psychological Science, 10(4): 370–373. Orphanides, K.G. 2018. ‘Children’s YouTube is still churning out blood, suicide and cannibalism’, Wired, 23 March [Online]. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ youtube-for-kids-videos-problems-algorithm-recommend. ​­ ​­ ​­ Perez, S. 2019. ‘YouTube Kids launches on the web’, TechCrunch, 30 August [Online]. https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/30/youtube-kids-launches-on-the-web/. ​­ ​­ ​­ Petredis, A. 2005, ‘Preschool of rock’, The Guardian, 10 June. Posen, L.S. 1993. ‘The beginning of the children’s (folk) music industry in Canada: An overview’, Canadian Journal for Traditional Music/Revue de musique folklorique Canadienne, 21: 19–30. Raffi. 2000. The Life of a Children’s Troubadour. Vancouver: Homeland Press. Rauscher, F.H., Shaw G.L., and Ky, K.N. 1993. ‘Music and spatial task performance’, Nature, 365: 611. Rauscher, F.H, Shaw, G.L., and Ky, K.N. 1995. ‘Listening to Mozart enhances spatial-temporal reasoning: Towards a neurophysiological basis’. Neuroscience Letters, 185: 44–47. Roberts, C. 2005. Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason behind the Rhyme. London: Granta Books. Seeger, R.C. 1948. American Folk Songs for Children: In Home, School and Nursery School. New York: Doubleday & Company Inc. Seeger, R.C. 1950. Animal Folk Songs for Children. New York: Doubleday & Company Inc. Seiter, E. 1993. Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Schoon, B. 2020. ‘YouTube Music restricts music made for children’, 9to5Google. [Online]. https://9to5google.com/2020/01/30/youtube-music-disney-kids-songs-limit/. ​­ ​­ ​­ Schor, J.B. 2004. Born to Buy: The Commercialised Child and the New Consumer Culture. New York: Scribner. Shrikant, A. 2018. ‘Kidz Bop’s “censored” songs aren’t just annoying – they’re problematic’. Vox, 3 October. Steele, K.M., Bass, K.E., and Crook, M.D. 1999. ‘The mystery of the Mozart effect: Failure to replicate’, Psychological Science, 10(4): 366–369. The Mozart Effect® Resource Centre. 2016. [Online]. Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg E.G. and Husain, G., 2001. ‘Arousal, mood, and the Mozart effect’, Psychological Science, 12(3): 248–51. Wall, B. 1991. The Narrator’s Voice: The Dilemma of Children’s Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Audio and visual sources Alphabet Rockers. Rise Shine #Woke. School Time Music LLC, 2017. Alphabet Rockers. The Love. School Time Music LLC, 2019. Baby Genius. Genius Brands International Inc., 2016. Polisar, Barry Louis. Juggling Babies and a Career. Rainbow Morning Music, 1988. Brainy Baby. The Brainy Store, 2016. Donovan. For Little Ones. Pye, 1967. Donovan. HMS Donovan. Dawn Records, 1971.

The 21st century children’s music industry  191 Grisman, David and Garcia, Jerry. For Kids Only. Acoustic Disc, 1993. Kids Pop Party. Exceed, 2007. Kidsii. 2016. Baby Einstein Music Collection [Online]. Kidz Bop. Razor and Tie/RCA. Koo Koo Kanga Roo. Triangle of Success: A Motivational, Inspirational Audio Guide to Achieving Your Dreams. Uniroo Records, 2016. Pop Jr. Universal Music TV, 2008. Punk Rock Baby. Punk Rock Baby, 2002. Raffi. Singable Songs for the Very Young. Shoreline/Troubadour, 1976. Raffi. More Singable Songs. Shoreline/Troubadour, 1977. Rolling Stones Baby Style, Sum Records, 2006. Sharon, Lois and Bram. One Elephant, Deux Éléphants. Elephant Records, 1978. The Okee Dokee Brothers. Can You Canoe? Okee Dokee Music, 2012. They Might Be Giants. Here Come the ABCs. Disney Sound, 2005. They Might Be Giants. Here Come the 123s. Disney Sound, 2008. They Might Be Giants. Here Comes Science. Disney Sound, 2009. Various. Juno. Original Soundtrack. Rhino, 2008. Various. We’re Not Kidding!: A Tribute to Barry Louis Polisar. Snail Sounds/Rainbow Morning Music, 2009. Various. Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti. Spare the Rock Records LLC, 2010. Various. Let  All the Children Boogie: A Tribute to David Bowie. Spare the Rock Records LLC, 2016.

8

Conclusion

Recorded music for children can take many musical forms and cover many themes. The assertive fending off of unwanted male attention and English folk of Bagpuss’ ‘The Princess Suite’, the emphatic funk-soul proclamations of civil rights in Roosevelt Franklin’s ‘The Skin I’m In’ from Sesame Street and the wistful waltz-time existentialism of The Muppet Show’s ‘Rainbow Connection’ merely hint at the myriad subjects and musical styles sampled in this book. Some of the recordings may still resonate with the child long after their exposure to them at a young age. Similarly, the songs may appeal to the first-time adult listeners listening and watching alongside their children. Age-shared culture raises the problem of categorisation. As discussed, many practitioners swerve this problem by referring to ‘family’ or ‘all-ages’ music. However, the study has highlighted how normalised assumptions of ‘the family’ and indeed ‘the child’ come bundled with ideals of race, gender, age, education, sexuality, experience and other factors. These ideals serve to narrow the diversity of the representations of childhood in the recordings. In this sense, music for children both constructs and constricts. A musical childhood is just one of many discourses that shape the child. The child’s status in law, family, school and society, their relationship to other media as both consumers and producers, and the wider context of economics, politics and the environment all have their influence. It is this confluence of discourses that leaves its mark on recordings of music made for children. The case studies highlight the complexity, fluidity and unpredictability of the construction and continual reconstruction of a series of musical childhoods. The chapters have discussed the nature of these childhoods by revealing the priorities placed on particular ideologies and moralities at specific socio-historical moments and exploring the tensions between them. Tensions arise between the constricted and unrealistic representations of childhood in the recordings and the diversity of real children outside them. A close inspection of recorded music for children has exposed the distance between the symbolic and the social child. The opening chapter laid out some of the book’s key terms and concepts: childhood, the family and children’s music. I discussed the similarities and

Conclusion  193 differences of analysing recordings of music compared to a work of literature and explored the issues raised when considering the relationship between the text and the implied reader. The chapter explained the unique contribution of the research: a sustained critical analysis of the text of recorded music for children set in specific socio-historical contexts. Chapter 2 examined the enduring bond between folk music and childhood. Shared tropes of simplicity, authenticity and purity have been drawn from similar specious origin myths. The two terms reveal common associations of bucolic nature, the rural idyll and primitivism. Both ‘the child’ and ‘the folk’ have been defined by middle-class, white, usually male scholars, poets and philosophers. I examined how oral folk culture became enmeshed in the urban American networks of recording studios, radio stations, song books, progressive educationalists and summer camps that sparked the children’s folk music recording industry in the 1930s and 1940s. I explained how values of collectivism, anti-consumerism, anti-authoritarianism, counter-culturalism and amateurism came to define both folk music and childhood. Woody Guthrie wrote most of his 400-plus songs for children in this hotbed of children’s music activity. Chapter 3 looked at how the modernism, experimental creative pedagogy and progressive socialist politics that informed his songs were symptomatic of a wider sense of post-War growth that fuelled budgets for the arts and education. Guthrie’s songs for children combine the prosaic machinations of home, family and community life with profound universal themes. Yet despite his status as a protest singer and novelist, many of his children’s music projects remained unreleased during his lifetime, some to this day. They have remained in the archives as an unstudied hidden history. Two points highlight the unpredictable nature of the musical construction of childhood. First, Guthrie wrote and recorded the majority of his songs for children while he had Huntington’s disease. The degenerative condition fuelled his creative output and left its mark on the childhood he wrote and sang about in his songs. Second, mid 1940s socialist optimism was soon replaced by the ‘Red scares.’ This government witchhunt of perceived communist actors and musicians inadvertently pushed singers such as Guthrie and Pete Seeger from ‘adult’ folk into children’s music and drove many others to Europe. As I discussed, UK television’s substantial inclusion of folk music for children in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s owes an inestimable debt to the US musicians who made the journey decades earlier. Chapter 4 revealed how fluctuations in the BBC’s radio programming for children corresponded to the corporation’s changing conceptions of the child and the family. The paternalistic morality of John Reith was riven with normalised notions of the child’s class, educational background and Christian upbringing. His attempts to civilise his young audience relied on classical, military and ‘world’ music and many other recordings that were designed to appeal to both child and parent, particularly mothers. The

194 Conclusion comedic novelty songs and hyperbolic sonic productions of George Martin proved the perfect vehicle for Reith’s generation-bonding ideology in the 1950s and early 1960s. My Music Hall formula showed how child-focussed sing-along music and ear-catching productions could be combined with profound and complex lyrical themes. This address to a combined child-adult audience was also key to the albums of Sesame Street in Chapter 5. I documented how songs written on-spec and in-house could meet institutionally specific curriculum targets. My analysis revealed how changes in pedagogical emphasis, from overt instruction to personal, social and emotional development, corresponded to fluctuations in the use of specific genres. Through soul, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz and funk, Sesame Street courted an intergenerational Black and ethnic audiences while meeting its own curriculum goals. As material artefacts, the albums and their accompanying booklets and games served to script the child’s performance and translate the recordings into real-world behaviour. The albums served a unique function as supplements to the television programmes while acting as stand-alone resources. Chapter 6 examined music’s role in communicating weighty and potentially contentious messages to children and families through television in the 1970s and early 1980s. The chapter offered perhaps the book’s most potent critique of ‘the family’. Both Bagpuss and The Muppet Show depicted differing non-traditional family set-ups. The undiluted archaic folk songs of Bagpuss covered themes of physical and spiritual growth, self-imposed isolation, violence and anger. A meditative hand-made folk aesthetic alluded to an age-shared culture before the dominant tropes of Western childhood had emerged. The Muppet Show used jazz and music hall in sketches that depicted sexualised violence, prostitution, homosexuality and other potentially problematic issues. I suggested that these and other genres opened up sonic and visual spaces in which the child could begin to question and resist the hegemonic constructions of a protectionist childhood. A modality that promoted fantasy over reality merged with the subversive power of 19th century music hall culture to destabilise overriding narratives of the nuclear family. Like Children’s Choice and Sesame Street, the music of The Muppet Show became more child-focussed and stereotypical with each subsequent season highlighting the power of internal and external stakeholders to shape children’s culture. The Muppet Show and Bagpuss relied on the particular circumstances of mid 1970s viewing technology (one television set per household) to cement the intergenerational audiences essential to the child’s discursive engagement with the weighty issues raised. The final chapter gave a voice to children’s music song writers, recording artists, performers, radio producers, event organisers and public relations managers. The interviewees revealed how changes in technology, funding and the nature of childhood had impacted on their work. While most reported that their revenue from recorded music had drastically diminished,

Conclusion  195 many were embracing digital recording and broadcasting. Discussions revealed how on a practical level the term ‘children’s music’ remains a useful shorthand for what many accept is a complex phenomenon. I discussed some of the implications of the emergence of YouTube Kids and Spotify Kids. These recent age-segregated spaces have no doubt been influenced by well-meaning protectionism. However, by letting children loose in a walled-garden of videos that have been selected respectively by algorithms and corporate editors, the platforms potentially deny the child the socialised age-shared environment that fosters not only their understanding of the content intended for them but also their ability to counter some of the parodic, bizarre and violent algorithmically produced content that circulates on YouTube Kids. Despite the variations in the social and historical contexts across the chapters, recognisable tropes of childhood seem to have endured. While the book has covered examples that alternately perpetuate, resist and subvert dominant conceptions of childhood, I accept that the work of the predominantly independent artists of Chapter 7, mavericks such as Oliver Postgate and Jim Henson, pioneers such as Joan Ganz Cooney and Joe Raposo and politically charged folk singers such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger tends to offer critical and disruptive responses to the well-worn norms of childhood. However, in the later years of Junior Choice, The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, in the chart-dominating Kidz Bop albums and in the countless singles, albums, cassettes, CDs and YouTube videos that continue to fly under the radar of sales charts and scholarly examination, depictions of childhood innocence and long-established conservative notions of the family endure. After well over a century of recorded music for children, many of its creators continue to draw on tired tropes and unquestioned representations. When unchallenging anodyne musical and visual representations of childhood can score hundreds of millions of views on YouTube, especially when addressing younger children, especially in the context of education, what incentive is there to rock the boat? My analysis revealed as much about the stability of a musical childhood as it did about its fluid diversity. The study has also revealed that communicating to the child through recorded music is complex. Getting the music to children’s ears involves songwriting, arranging, recording, the creation of visual art, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, broadcasting and a host of other tasks. Even when the process is driven by visionary individuals, the involvement of industry stakeholders, critics, children’s advocates and children themselves can make it unpredictable. The process of interpretation is potentially even more complex. Notably, this study’s primary focus was on representations of childhood rather than what real living children think about and do with the music that is produced specifically for them. Clearly, ethnography and reader-focussed research could have helped to explain how the case studies presented here have been interpreted, consumed, resisted and subverted by

196 Conclusion children over the years. As discussed, most of the existing research on children’s music takes this child- rather than text-focussed approach. My aim was to expose recordings of music for children to the analytical and critical rigour afforded not only to other children’s media (mainly books but also television and film) but to recorded music in general. I attempted to provide some approaches and methodological foundations for future investigations. My primary method was to analyse the content of recorded music by examining the music, lyrics and sonic factors in isolation and combination. The introduction of visual factors in the context of television added further levels of analytical complexity. I have used both qualitative and quantitative analysis and drawn on musicology and literary studies. These textual analyses were placed in the specific social, historical and geographical contexts into which they were released, giving them meaning and a more specific sense of implied readership. In the introductory chapter, I noted the cultural specificity of the Western 12-tone scale and the limits to the countries and cultures represented by the case studies. While occasional references were made to the music of South America, the Caribbean and elsewhere, further research into recorded music for children outside of the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would provide comparisons with childhoods less defined by the New Testament, the Enlightenment, Èmile, Romanticism, ‘Golden Age’ literature and Western modes of analysis. The study also involved concepts of modality, nostalgia, childness and other theoretical ideas in order to critique the power relations that lie at the heart of children’s music. The adoption of the ideas in key texts by Bernstein (Racial Innocence) and Bond Stockton (The Queer Child) and to wider critical theory has helped to add weight to what may still be regarded by many as a trivial subject. Ultimately, knowing more about how music contributes to constructions of childhood helps us to appreciate the implications of creating media for real children. Producers of children’s media who are sensitive to childhood’s constructed nature and how their work contributes to it will potentially be better served to empower children. By creating products that both reflect and facilitate the racial, gendered, physical and neuro diversity of their intended audience, children’s media producers can play a major part in fostering the child’s transformative agency. I recommend a nuanced and rounded approach to the study of recorded music for children, one that captures the volatile relationship between the child, discourse and industry. I urge for an appreciation of the fluid, improvisatory and unpredictable nature of both production and reception processes and stress the need to consider music for children as integral to, rather than separate from, studies of music, media and childhood. As discussed in the introductory chapter, scholars, practitioners and children’s music gatekeepers have an opportunity to contest the homogeneity of a musically constructed childhood. Recognising the distinction between

Conclusion  197 the child in the music and the real child outside it is just the first step. Colouring the normative whiteness and queering the innocence, simplicity and authenticity of a hegemonic childhood requires empathy, compassion and courage. A critical approach and analytical tools also help. My hope is that those involved in both the creation and study of children’s music rise to this challenge.

List of appendices

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Musical analysis of well-known nursery rhymes Songs for children written and recorded by Woody Guthrie Thematic analysis of Woody Guthrie’s songs for children Quantitative thematic and genre analysis of Children’s Choice, Children’s Favourites and Junior Choice playlists Recordings most frequently included on Children’s Choice-themed compilations and Radio 2 annual broadcasts, 1990–2013 Sesame Street album songs mapped to curricula List of Sesame Street albums, 1970–1984 Genres and vocalists for Sesame Street album songs Musical analysis of the songs on Bagpuss: The Songs and Music The Muppet Show’s UK-only Music Hall songs

Appendices

Appendix 1 Musical analysis of well-known nursery rhymes Title

Time signature

Overall melodic range

Largest consecutive interval

Baa Baa Black Sheep

2/4

6th

6th

Eensy Weensy Spider

6/8

Octave

4th

Frère Jacques

4/4

6th

4th

Humpty Dumpty

6/8

6th

4th

London Bridge is Falling Down 6/8

6th

4th

Here we go ‘round the Mulberry Bush

6/8

Octave

Major 3rd

Old MacDonald

2/4

6th

6th

Rock-A-Bye Baby

3/4

Flat 6th

Flat 6th

Row Row Row Your Boat

2/4

Octave

4th

Three Blind Mice

6/8

Octave

4th

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

2/4

6th

5th

9 semitones Interval: 6th

6 semitones Interval: Flat 5th

Average:

Woody at 100

We all work together

Build my house Build a house

Blubber my gum

All work together

Bling-Blang

Bubble Gum

Woody at 100

‘Car Songs’ (Cover of FC 7005). ‘Car Car song (Riding in my car)’ (CD SF 45036). ‘Take me for a ride in the car car’. ‘Take you riding in my car’.

Choo-Choo Choo Choo Choo Choo

Clean-O

Car Song

Choo choo train

Cleano

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

Candy Tree

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

A B C Song

Listed in Woody at 100 liner notes (Logsdon 2012: 143–144) Woody at 100

Alternative title

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Title

Appendix 2 Songs for children written and recorded by Woody Guthrie

Nursery Days D302, Disc 5050B

Unreleased

Nursery Days Woody at 100

Unreleased

1946

29 May 1949

1950 NB S-1 #8b(8/9)

27 Jan 1947

20 Sept 1946 31 Jan 1947 NB-1 56(29)

Songs to Grow on D596, Disc 5073A Nursery Days

31 Jan 1947. NB-1 #12(57)

1946

1946

Woody Guthrie Archives (WGA) location and date

D595, Disc 5075B Woody at 100

Unreleased

Songs to Grow on

Album/s

‘Sticky licky candy’ song

Not in WGA

Notes

200  List of appendices

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

Don’t you push me down

Goodnight Little Arlo

Woody at 100

I want it now

I want my milk

Woody at 100

I see Mama

Songs to Grow on

Unreleased by Woody Guthrie

Daddy-O Daddy!

–

Howdy Little Newlycome

‘Howdido’ (CD SF 45036) ‘Howjadoo’ ‘How joo do?’

How Doo Do

Unreleased Nursery Days Woody at 100

–

Happy Hanuka

Hanukkah Dance

Songs to Grow on Cub 4A

Woody at 100

Songs to Grow on

Nursery Days Cub 9B D305, Disc 5052A

Nursery Days D304, Disc 5051A

Unreleased

Nursery Days

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

Grow, Grow, Grow

Grassy Grass Grass

–

Woody at 100

Dance Around

Goodnight Little Cathy

Woody at 100

Cowboy Ranch

Goodnight Little Darling

Woody at 100

Come See

1943 NB S-1 #23(36)

6 Aug 1944 NB-1 #26(71) NB S-1 #8b(7)

1949

1946

22 Jan 1947

1946

1946

1948?

1948. NB S-1 8a

(Continued)

Not in WGA

1951 home recording

List of appendices  201

My little seed The Little seed Plant a little seed

Little Saka Sugar Little Sack O/of Sugar Eat you up

‘Make a blubble’ ‘Make a bubble’ (FC 7015)

Mary go round Merry-go-round

Little Seed

Little Sugar

Make a Blobble

Merry go ‘round

My Daddy Ship in the sky (Flies a Ship in the Sky)

Woody at 100

Hey Piggy Run

Jiggy jiggy bum

–

Woody at 100

Woody at 100 Logan English

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

Jig along home

Woody at 100

‘Write a word’ (FC 7015)

I’ll write and I’ll draw

Listed in Woody at 100 liner notes (Logsdon 2012: 143–144) Woody at 100

Alternative title

I’ll eat you, I’ll drink you

Title

The Asch Recordings Vol.3 (1944) Woody at 100

Nursery Days

Songs to Grow on

Songs to Grow on

D594, Disc 5075A Woody at 100

Nursery Days

D306, Disc 5052B

Songs to Grow on Cub 10B

Songs to Grow on

Album/s

15 Nov 1941

1948

1946

25 Sept 1946 NB-1 #56(29)

5 March 1946

1946

1946

Woody Guthrie Archives (WGA) location and date

Marjorie’s words and music

Chorus appears in NB S-1 #23(24) 1943

Currently out of print

Notes

202  List of appendices

Woody at 100

Needle Song

1 day, 2 days, 3 days old

Needle Sing

One day old

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

–

Race you down the mountain

Rattle My Rattle

Roll on

Woody at 100

Pretty and Shinyo

Put your finger Put your finger (FC 7005) in the air

Woody at 100

Pick It Up

Pretty and Shiny-O

Woody at 100

My yellow crayon

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

My Dolly

Nursery Days 1992 CD. SF 45036

Songs to Grow on

Nursery Days

Nursery Days Cub 9A D303, Disc 5051B

Songs to Grow on D593, Disc 5073B

Songs to Grow on D597, Disc 5074B

Songs to Grow on

Songs to Grow on D592, Disc 5047A

Nursery Days

Nursery Days

NB S-1, #62

1948

20 Sept 1946 & 31 Jan 1947. NB-1 56(29).

20 Sept 1946. NB-1 56(29)

August 1947. NB-1#57(122).

31 Jan 1947. NB-1 56(29).

27 Jan 1947

1948. NB S-1 8a NB S-1#8b(4).

(Continued)

‘New comer album’ (top of lyric sheet). ‘New told babies’ (bottom).

Marjorie’s words and music

List of appendices  203

Woody at 100 Woody at 100

Woody at 100 Woody at 100 Woody at 100

Tippy Tap Toe Tip Tap Toe Tippy Tappy Toe

Train Song

Wake Up

Want to See Me Grow

Wash-y Wash Wash Woody at 100 Woody at 100

Who’s My Hey Pretty Baby Pretty Baby

Why, Oh Why Whyo Why

Warshy Little Tootsy

Woody at 100

Take my penny

Woody at 100

Woody at 100

‘Sleepy eyes’, ‘Sleepy tight’ (SF 45036) ‘Go to sleep’

Sleep Eye

Listed in Woody at 100 liner notes (Logsdon 2012: 143–144)

Swimmy Swim Swim Swim Swimmy Swim Swim

Alternative title

Title

Woody Guthrie Archives (WGA) location and date

Songs to Grow on Woody at 100

Songs to Grow on

Songs to Grow on

Unreleased by Woody Guthrie

Nursery Days D301, Disc 5050A

3 Feb 1947 NB-1 #55(?)

1946

1946

1947 NB S-1 #8b(6)

1948 NB S-1 #8b(3)

Unreleased by Woody Guthrie Cub 10a

26 Sept 1946. NB S-1 #8b(8?)

Unreleased by Woody Guthrie

Songs to Grow on Cub 4B

Nursery Days only on FC 1948. NB S-1 #8b(5) 7005, not FC 7675

Album/s

Not in WGA

Not in WGA. Currently out of print

Notes

204  List of appendices

List of appendices  205 Appendix 3 Thematic analysis of Woody Guthrie’s songs for children Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Theme/ function 3

Date

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Counting (Hoodoo Voodoo)

Dance

Nonsense

1946

A B C Song

Education

Counting

1946

Abie Gal & Arlo Davy

Family

Arlo

–

Aboot me hoose

Domestic

House / home

Scotland

1944

Add me Ruth

Domestic

Babysitter

Game / Play

1947

All work together

Work

Domestic

Cooperation / Social

1947

Angel baby

Baby

Arlo?

1947

Anny draws me

Drawing

Anneke

1952

Apple Farm House, The

Domestic

Family

1946

Appeldy Juice

Domestic

Food / drink

1948

Arlo

Family

Arlo

1947

Arlo Barlow

Family

Arlo

1952

Arlo Davy

Family

Arlo

1947

Arlo Dubuck Davy

Family

Arlo

1949

Arlo Sing

Family

Singing

Arlo

1954

Arlo’s choo choo

Family

Train

Arlo

1950

Arlo’s chuggy boat

Family

Boat

Arlo

1950

Arlo’s tuggy boat

Family

Boat

Arlo

1950

Arlo Tutty

Family

Arlo

Ask and see

Question

Game

Play

1950

1948

Babysitter

Game / Play

1947

Away from Ruth

Domestic

Babies asleep on the ground

Domestic

Baby birdy

Nature

Animals

–

–

Baby Buzzard

Nature

Animals

1953

Baby Daddy Mommy

Domestic

Arlo

1948

Baby Joady

Family

Joady

1948

Animals

1953

Bananny Wagon

Transport

Batty Bat

Nature

Beat my clay

Work

Bed and the bath, The

Domestic

1949 1948 Routine

Babysitter

1946 (Continued)

206  List of appendices Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Big boat Tug boat

Transport

Big Family

Domestic

Big fat legs

Body

Theme/ function 2

Theme/ function 3

Date

1947 Family

1947 1947

Big John

Uncategorised

Bigger

Growth

Dance

1948

Bigger as a flower grows

Growth

Nature

1946 Bereavement

1947

Biggy big big

Growth

–

Bim Bomm (Bimm Bomm)

Nonsense

–

Birdy nest

Nature

Animals

Birthday Cake, The

Celebration

Family

Counting

1947

Birthday song (One year older)

Celebration

Family

Growth

1947

Family

1947

Biting Fly

Nature

Animals

Bleederbug

Nature

Animals

1955

Bling-Blang (Build a Building house / Build my house)

Work

1946

Blue banana

Food

Nonsense

1947

Bobbylink and Tommylinka

Domestic

Friends

1947

Bozun Pozun

Family

Joady

Briar Rabbit

Nature

Animals

Bright Clear Day, (A)

Weather

Bright Eyes

Body

Domestic Bubble gum (Blubber my gum) Bugeye Jim

1944

– Story

– 1939

Weather

Activity

1939

Food

Cathy

1947

Uncategorised

Bugs and Snakes

Nature

Animals

–

Build me a boat

Building

Transport

–

Build my house (Bling Blang)

Building

Bussy window

Transport

Butterfly Fly

Nature

1947 1950 Animals

1950

Buzzy Bee Man

Nature

Animals

1949

Call me at one

Telephone

Communication

–

Candy Tree

Food

Sweets

Cheepie Cheep

Nature

Animals

Dance / actions 1950 1943

List of appendices  207 Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Theme/ function 3

Date

Cheese and Crackers Food

–

Chess horse

Domestic

Game

Chew I Chew

Eating

Domestic

Play

1954 1947

Chewed and Chewed Eating

Domestic

1947

Choo choo train

Transport

Train

1949

Cleano

Domestic

Family

Cockity Donk

Nonsense

1946 1946

Cole Cole ground

Nature

Weather

1949

Come home

Domestic

Marjorie

1948

Come see

Family

Domestic

1948

Cowboy Ranch

Cowboy

Autobiography

1948

Crackerlin’ Bread

Food

1955

Crab Song

Nature

Animals

1950

Curly Headed Baby

Family

Cathy

1944

Daddy gone a ronndack

Family

Dance Around

Dance

Deedle Dumper

Family

1949 1946 Joady

1950

Deedly Doo

Family

Joady

1950

Diaper service

Domestic

Routine

1947

Did you ever see a monkey?

Nature

Animals

1944

Didn’t old John

Uncategorised

1948

Dig a hole

Work

–

Digger man

Work

1950

Dinky dinky doo

Nonsense

1946

Do lika me

Copying

Do me a favour

Cooperation

Game

Play

1952 –

Dobee brick

Building

Adobe brick

1953

Don’t you push me down

Domestic

Assertiveness

Bullying

1946

Doodle Jump

Dance

Joady

Family

1950

Down by the station Transport

Coney Island

1947

Down Do

‘By Arlo’

1949

Nonsense

Dry bed

Domestic

Routine

1950

Dry my diaper

Domestic

Routine

1950

Duckbill Bill

Family

Bill

1941 (Continued)

208  List of appendices Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Duffy song

Family

Nora

Eggy eggy

Food

Domestic

Every 100 years

Domestic

Growth

Face washed

Domestic

Routine

Fastest of ponies

Nature?

Animals

Fathers are happy

Family

Bill, Sue, Gwen

Fibber Fibber

Uncategorised

Theme/ function 3

Date

1950 – Work

–

Coney Island

1950

1945 1947 1950

Figgy Feegie

Uncategorised

–

First job

Work

1950

Fishes

Nature

Flower tree

Nature

Foole dee Rooldey

Nonsense

1948 Tree

1949 1949

Fox and the Goose

Nature

Animal

–

Free sample gum

Food

Coney Island

1947

Fruit tree

Nature

Tree

1949

Funny Face

Body

Participation

1946

Funny Fly

Nature

Animal

Funny Mountain

Nature

Arlo

1950 –

Get up early

Domestic

Routine

–

Give me a nail

Building

Work

1943

Go down to the water

Nature

Beach / sea

Go to sleep (#1)

Domestic

Routine

Go to sleep (#2)

Domestic

Routine Wordplay

Go waggaloo

Nonsense

Go way

Domestic

Family

1945

Arlo

1947

1946 1947 1945

Goodbye everybody

Domestic

Goodnight Goodnight

Domestic

Routine

Cathy

1947 1947

Goodnight Little Arlo (Goodnight Lil darlin’)

Domestic

Routine

Play

1947

Goodnight Little Cathy

Domestic

Routine

Play

1947

Goody Goody Goody

Uncategorised

1941

Gorilly Dance

Nature

Animal

Gowann Grass and Grow

Nature

Growth

Dance

1951 1947

List of appendices  209 Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Grassy Grass Grass (Grow, Grow, Grow)

Nature

Growth

Theme/ function 3

Date

1946

Grassy Grow

Nature

Growth

1950

Grassy Mountain

Nature

Growth

–

Green corn

Nature

Food

–

Hally got a sister

Domestic

Friendship

1946 1949

Hammer Ring

Work

Hang my clothes

Domestic

Tidying up

1944 Family

Hanuka Bell

Celebration

Hanuka Candle

Celebration

Hanukah Dance (Happy Hanuka)

Celebration

Participation

Hanuka Gelt

Celebration

Counting

Routine

1949 1949

Dance

1949 1949

Hanuka Hanuka

Celebration

1949

Hanuka Theme

Celebration

1949

Hanuka Time

Celebration

Hanukah Tree

Celebration

Hanuka’s Flame

Celebration

Celebration Happy Joyous Hanukah (How many nights for Hanukah?/ Nights of Hanuka)

1949 Dance Weather

1949 Hope

Counting

1949 1949

Hay Stacker

Family

Cathy

1948

Head rise

Domestic

Waking

–

Heady Down

Domestic

Bed time

Arlo and Joady

Hello Dolly

Domestic

Play

Cathy

Hello

Greeting

1949 1944 1946

Hello everybody

Greeting

1947

Hey Hey Hey Hey

Uncategorised

–

Hey Pretty Baby

Family

–

Hey Rattler

Family

–

Hi, Little Arlo

Domestic

Hock Hocky Hock

Uncategorised

Hokenaye

Uncategorised

Honey Bee

Nature

Honeyky Hanukah

Celebration

Routine

Arlo

1947 1947 1949

Animal

1947 1949 (Continued)

210  List of appendices Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Hoople Dee Doo

Uncategorised

Theme/ function 2

Theme/ function 3

Date

–

Hot burn

Domestic

Fire

Autobiog

1953

How doo do (Howdido, How joo do?)

Domestic

Routine

Coney Island

1944

Howdy friend

Greeting

Friendship

1948

Howdy Little Newlycome

Family

Joady

1948

Howdy Miss Norey Duff

Family

Nora

1950

I go beach

Nature

Beach / sea

1947

I go tippy toe

Dance / action

I like to stay home with daddy

Domestic

Dance / action 1950 Routine

Cathy

1945

I love it all

Uncategorised

1949

I see mama

Family

–

I see you

Senses

1945

I touch this

Senses

1952

I want it now (I want Domestic my milk)

Feeding

Routine

1943

I want to make

Uncategorised

1945

I want to ride

Transport

1945

I was born (Birthday Birthday song)

Counting

Growing

1950

If you say

Uncategorised

–

In my town

Neighbourhood

1946

I’ll eat you, I’ll drink Domestic you

Routine

I’ll spell you a word

Domestic

Writing

I’ll write and I’ll draw

Domestic

Writing

I’m a little atom

Nuclear energy

It’s Hanukah

Celebration

Jet plane

Transport

Jig a big jig

Dance

Jig along home

Animals

Jigger Jigger Jim

Dance

Jiggy jiggy bum (Hey Piggy Run)

Animals

Jiggytoe jig

Dance

Counting

1946 1948

Drawing

1946 1948 1949

Plane

1952

Dance

1947

1947 1947 Dance?

1946 –

List of appendices  211 Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Joady Ben

Family

Joady

Theme/ function 3

Date

1948

Joady Benny

Family

Joady

1949

Joady Bozun

Family

Joady

1949

Joady Lee

Family

Joady

1948

Joady Poady

Family

Joady

1949

Joady Toady

Family

Joady

Juggy Band Boy

Music

Juicey time

Domestic

Jump up and Seddown

Dance

Jumpy Judy

Friend

Just like Mommy

Family

1949 1945

Drink

1949 1949

Toddler

Dance / action 1949 1952

Kids Kuttinup

Domestic

Activity

–

Koffee Pot

Domestic

Drink

1952

Listen Little Children

Domestic

Little Arlo

Family

Little Bird (Little Baby bird)

Nature

Little Billy

Family

–

Animals

Little bitty bedbug

Nature

Animals

Little Cathy

Family

News story

Little Cathy Annie

Family

Actions

Little Curly Head

Family

Arlo

1947

Family

1947

Bill

– 1947

Another Cathy 1949 Cathy

1944

Cathy

1946

Little fellow

Famliy

Baby

Little riddle (Liddle Riddle)

Riddle

Wordplay

Arlo?

–

Little Seed

Nature

Growth

Weather

1946

Little Sugar (Little Sack O Sugar)

Family

Dance

Cathy

1946

Bedtime

1944

1947

Little Willy

Friend?

Bill (son)

Looloo Looloo Babula

Domestic

Routine

Look out and see

Senses

1947

Look out my window

Domestic

1948

Looky at me

Uncategorised

Lost my bottle

Domestic

1949

1947 Routine

1952 (Continued)

212  List of appendices Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Mail myself to you

Nonsense

Routine

1946

Mailman (The) (Mailyman; 1945)

Work

Routine

1945

Family

Make a blobble

Domestic

Mama and Papa game

Family

Mama Daddy Little One

Family

Mama’s little baby boy

Family

Merry go ‘round

Coney Island

Theme/ function 3

Date

Burping

1948

Game

1948 1950

Play

Arlo

1947

Dance

1948

Miss Duff Duffy

Family

Nora

1950

Miss Puffy Duff

Family

Nora

1950

Mister sunshine

Nature

Weather

1947

Mistero Sun

Nature

Weather

1947

Mommy dance

Family

Dance

Mommy shoe Daddy Domestic shoe

1953 1950

Mommy’s music

Family

Music

1953

Mommy’s piano

Family

Music

1953

Morning’s Morning

Domestic

Routine

Mr. Rabbit Mr. Rabbit

Nature

Animals

My Daddy (Flies a Ship in the Sky)

Work

My dolly

Domestic

Play

My flying saucer

Space

Love

My little chicky dee

Family

Dancing

1946 – 1941

Routine

1946 1950 1947

My little pretty cup

Domestic

Drink

1951

My mousie

Animal

Play

1947

My Noralena

Family

Nora

1950

My pony

Nature

Animals

–

My sugar in the gourd

Family

1950

My yellow crayon

Domestic

Drawing

Needle Sing

Domestic

Routine

Sharing / Social 1946 1947

New Baby Train

Family

Babies

–

Nine little turkeys

Nature

Animals

1944

No kitty

Nature

Animals

1947

List of appendices  213 Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Theme/ function 3

Date

No Santy Claus

Celebration

Holidays

–

Routine

–

No touch

Domestic

No water for baby

Domestic

–

Nora Lee Guthrie

Family

Nora

1950

Nora My Belle Belle Family

Nora

1950

Nora’s Darklit Eye

Family

Nora

1950

Noraleeneo

Family

Nora

1950

Noraling

Family

Nora

1950

Noreylee

Family

Nora

1950

Norey Newnye

Family

Nora

1950

Nory Dory

Family

Nora

1950

Nosh oh Nosh

Food?

–

Ocean Go

Nature

The Sea

1951

Ode Man Joade

Family

Joady

1949

Oh Sun

Nature

Weather

–

Old Briar Rabbit

Nature

Animals

1947

Old Man Joads

Family

Joady

Old old man

Aging

1949 1947

Old shoe

Domestic

Clothes

One day old

Growth

Family

One of our bath songs

Domestic

Routine

1944

One Little Bull Frog Nature (The bull frog song)

Animals

1946

One step two

Counting

Activity

One to ten

Counting

One, two, I need some shoes

Counting

Ones and twos

Counting

1949 Counting

Game

1947

1948 1948

Actions

1944 1952

Our flying house

Domestic

Nonsense

1950

Out from the wolf’s belly

Animal

Story

–

Patta Paddy Paddery

Activity

Body

Peace song

Peace

Pee pee hole

Body

Game

1952 1952

Domestic

1950 (Continued)

214  List of appendices Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Theme/ function 3

Date

Peejamas I hate

Domestic

Sleep

Routine

–

Perty and clean

Domestic

Washing

Pick It Up

Domestic

Routine

1950

Routine

1946

Piggy Pig Pig

Nature

Animals

1952

Pocono Joady

Family

Joady

1951

Poor Little Stevie

Friend

Pretty and Shinyo

Domestic

Pretty baby

Family

Pretzel Stick

Food

1949 Washing

Routine

1946

Domestic

Coney Island

1948

1949

Pritty Little Baby

Family

Pushy Poosh

Activity

Dance

1949

Pushy Pushy Boogie Activity

Dance

1950

Put your finger in the air

Play

–

Body

Game

1948

Queeny Beany

Friend

Race you down the mountain

Play

Game

Dance / Actions

– 1946

Raindrop song

Nature

Weather

Routine

1949

Rats and cats

Nature

Animals

1947

Rattle My Rattle

Domestic

Routine

1947

Red apple juice

Domestic

Routine

–

Ride my horse

Riding

Animal

1949

Riding in my car (Car song, Take you riding in my car)

Transport

Car

Riding on my bus

Transport

Bus

Roll on (Roll on little ocean)

Boats

The sea

Rover dog Rover

Nature

Animals

Rowl Dee Fowl Dee

Nonsense

Rub my tumbo

Domestic

Run Little Judey

Family

Runaway Train

Transport

Runny shoes

Activity

Ruth circle of truth

Domestic

Routine

1946

– Counting

1945 1948 1946

Routine

Body

1948 1957

Dance

1939

Babysitter

1947

1946

Rutheye gone

Domestic

Babysitter

1947

Ruthy any place

Domestic

Babysitter

1947

Ruthy found a honey Domestic rock

Babysitter

1947

List of appendices  215 Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Ruthy gone

Domestic

Babysitter

Theme/ function 3

Date

1947

Ruthy Goofy

Domestic

Babysitter

1947

Ruthy M

Domestic

Babysitter

1947

Ruthy put your kettle on

Domestic

Routine

1947

Ruthy Ruthy Ruth

Domestic

Babysitter

1947

Ruthy’s rains

Domestic

Babysitter

1947

Animals

1953

Routine

1945

Sally Anne

Friend

Say Mister Rabbit

Nature

See me

Senses

Shoe on wrong

Domestic

Skinny my Roosey

Nonsense

Skippy Skip

Activity

– 1950 1950 Game

–

Sky letter (to Ruthy) Babysitter Sleep Eye (Go to sleep)

Domestic

1947 Routine

Bedtime

1948

Sleeping time

Domestic

Routine

Bedtime

1946

Sleepy eyes

Domestic

Routine

Bedtime

1946

Bedtime

Sleepy tight

Domestic

Routine

Sloppery Slippery

Nonsense

Domestic

Snow Song

Nature

Weather

Snowsled song

Transport

Play

1946 1946 1948

Weather

1950

Something dandy

Uncategorised

Soapy Water

Domestic

Routine

1950

1949

Soda Soda

Domestic

Drink

1948

Someday some morning sometime

Uncategorised

1948

Something for Venus Friend Speedy Beetle

Nature

1950 Animals

–

Spin Dreydl Spin

Domestic

Play

Game

1949

Stack my blocks

Domestic

Play

Game

1945

Stacky Boney

Family

1945

Stackabones

Family

1945

$tackerlee

Family

Stackerooney

Family

Sucky sucky Arlo

Family

1945 Growing

1946 Arlo

1947 (Continued)

216  List of appendices Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Sue and Teeny in and out of jail (In and out of jail)

Family

Sue and Gwen

Swimmy Swim

Domestic

Routine

Take my penny

Shopping

Routine

Take my turn

Play

Game

Talking May Day Parade

Coney Island

Theme/ function 3

Date

1944

Bath time

1946 1946

Social etiquette

1946 1948

Tamboraena

Music

Participation

1952

Tamborene

Music

Participation

1947

Teeny and Arlo

Family

Gwen and Arlo

1947

There was a little bird

Nature

Animals

1946

Play

Throw my ball

Game

Ti Ti Tooky Tooky Tidle Oh

Nonsense

Ticky Tock

Clock / time

1949 1943

Hands / body

1947

Time Time

Clock / time

Tippy Tap Toe

Dance

Body

Dance

Tipple Tipple toe toe Dance

Body

Dance

Tizzy Tizzy Tizzy

1950

Uncategorised

Today is rain

Nature

Tractor Song

Transport

Train song

Transport

Trees hair cut

Nature

Trick or Treat

1948 1948 1950

Weather

1946 1951 –

Animals

–

Halloween

1950

Trucky song (Trucky Transport Trucker)

1951

Tumbledy bumble

1947

Uncategorised

Tummy door

Body

1946

Ubangi You

Uncategorised

1941

Upside down

Uncategorised

Wake up

Domestic

Routine

Morning time

1947

–

Wake up and do right

Domestic

Routine

Morning time

1947

Wake Uppy Time

Domestic

Routine

Morning time

1953

Want to See Me Grow

Growth

Domestic

Routine

1947

Warshy little tootsy

Domestic

Routine

1946

List of appendices  217 Song title Alternate titles in brackets

Theme/ function 1

Theme/ function 2

Theme/ function 3

Date

Washrag Song

Domestic

Routine

1950

Wash-y Wash Wash (Warshy Little Tootsy)

Domestic

Routine

1946

Weepy willow

Nature

Tree

1950

What do I want?

Uncategorised

–

What’s the rush

Uncategorised

–

What’s the hurry

Uncategorised

–

Whatchagonnado?

Uncategorised

1949

Wheely go ‘round

Transport?

Where did you go? (Where was you?)

Counting

Game

Play

Bereavement

Cathy

Whistle birdy

Animals

Whoozdat

Uncategorised

Who’s My Pretty Baby

Family

1949

Routine

Domestic Political satire

Why, Oh Why

Questions

Nonsense

Nature

Animals

1946 1947 1947

Wind my Klock

Clock

Time

Windshield wiper

Transport

Car

Participation

Animals

Woodpecker

Woodpecker pecking Nature

1950 1952

Wild Aminul

Woopity ti yi yay

1948

1955

Uncategorised

1947 1947 1945

Worm song

Nature

Animals

Worm

1952

Wormy Song

Nature

Animals

Worm

1953

Write a word

Writing

1946

Yo Ho

Uncategorised

–

You can’t fool me

Uncategorised

1948

You fly

Uncategorised

1952

You gonna see me

Dance

You guyz toot joy

Music

Activity

Marjorie

1949 1949

Your clock

Clock

Time

1945

Zibber Zee, The

Family

Arlo

1948

Zibby Zeeble

Family

Arlo

Zoo Zoo song

Animals

Family

1948 Zoo

1946

The dates are from notebooks, letters, lyric sheets and/or publishing lists. Due to the many rewrites and updated versions, the earliest date has been included. Some of the entries are best guesses based on contextual information. Undated entries are included; some are in specific notebooks that may cover a range of dates (1947–1952, for example) or as separate undated lyric sheets. Clearly, many were written some time before the date stated.

13

9

Animal theme

Child singer/s

3

1

3

3

Music Hall / Operetta

Song from a Musical

Film or television theme

Contemporary popular music

2

1

Songs from Disney films

6

3

Manipulated / speeded-up vocal

Comedy / Novelty

14

Intentionally created for children

Classical / Military

3

Number of playlists analysed

–

–

1

3

6

–

3

5

–

–

13

2

6

11

6

1

2

8

4

–

–

2

2

3

6

5

4

2

7

3

1

8

–

2

12

4

1958

16

5

6

5

10

8

1

12

–

3

15

4

16

3

4

5

13

5

4

10

1

2

4

4

1961

5

8

7

3

3

5

3

–

–

–

2

4

1962

1960

1956

1953

1954

Changes in staff and ethos

Reith’s family values

25

4

7

7

9

9

2

8

–

4

16

5

1963

19

4

6

4

3

8

4

7

–

1

6

3

1966

Youth/pop culture

2

4

14

2

2

–

–

–

1

2

1

1968

47

3

2

3

1

6

7

2

–

–

7

3

1973

32

3

5

3

1

5

4

6

1

–

17

4

1977

Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart

2

12

3

2

–

1

2

4

1

–

6

1

1978

Appendix 4 Quantitative thematic and genre analysis of Children’s Choice, Children’s Favourites and Junior Choice playlists

20

1

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

1

1982

37

1

1

–

–

2

–

4

–

–

4

2

1983

Tony Blackburn

218  List of appendices

1

Unknown*

–

2

1

–

1

–

1

2

–

1

5

10

–

1

1

3

3

–

1

4

3

3

1

–

5

4

3

4

21

13

–

1

1

3

3

3

6

7

11

6

2 1

2

1

1

5

3

6

3

19

5

3

–

6

3

12

6

–

3

1

–

–

3

3

3

7

–

–

–

1

1

1

–

6

1

1

–

1

17

–

1

2

26

–

–

–

–

28

–

1

2

23

–

6

1

1

–

–

2

–

9 –

–

–

–

–

2

–

–

2 –

–

–

–

–

9

1

–

5

Similar months for each calendar year were chosen (usually February and March) to counter seasonal tendencies in song selection such as an overrepresentation of Christmas or summer songs. Audio versions of the programmes as broadcast were not available in the BBC Archives or elsewhere. Recordings of the songs on the playlists were sourced from albums and from online sites.

*Songs in the ‘unknown’ category could not be sourced.

1

2

Hymns

Jazz

–

2

1

4

Pastiche

Christmas

2

1

‘World’ music

2

2

3

2

Cowboy / Country

–

Folk (including Scottish music)

4

Light pop

List of appendices  219

1957 1954

Shirley Abicair

The laughing policeman

The runaway train

I taut I taw a puddy tat

Teddy bears’ picnic

Buckingham Palace

In the middle of the house

Big Rock Candy Mountain

Sparky’s magic piano

Right said Fred

Ernie

Puff the magic dragon

The ugly duckling

I know an Old Lady

Little boy fishing

Max Bygraves Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea

Me and my teddy bear

12

12

11

9

9

9

9

9

8

8

8

8

8

8

7

1971

1962

1948

1945

1956

1941

1932

1950

1925

1922

1953

1952

Rosemary Clooney 1950

Burl Ives

Danny Kaye

Peter, Paul & Mary 1963

Bennie Hill

Bernard Cribbins

Henry Blair Feat. Ray Turner

Burl Ives

Alma Cogan

Anne Stephens

Henry Hall

Mel Blanc

Vernon Dalhart

Charles Penrose (Charles Jolly)

1956

13

Mandy Miller

Nellie the Elephant

Year

14

Artist

Song

Incidence

Columbia

HMV

Parlophone

Brunswick

RKO

Warner Bros

Columbia

Parlophone

Capitol

Decca

HMV

HMV

EMI

Capitol

Victor

Regal

Parlophone

Record label

George Martin production

George Martin production

10-year-old vocalist

Rereleased in 1931 on Edison Records

Rereleased in 1926 on Columbia. Song from 1890 by George W. Johnson

12-year-old vocalist. George Martin production

Further information

Appendix 5 Recordings most frequently included on Children’s Choice-themed compilations and Radio 2 annual broadcasts, 1990–2013

220  List of appendices

Three wheels on my wagon

Two little boys

Morningtown ride

Pickin’ a chicken

Ragtime Cowboy Joe

Don’t jump off the roof Dad

Run Rabbit Run

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf Mary Moder, Dorothy Compton, Billy Bletcher

The owl and the pussycat

Boom OO Yata Ta ta

5

5

5

4

4

4

4

4

4

Morecambe and Wise

Elton Hayes

Flanagan and Allen

Tommy Cooper

David Seville and The Chipmunks

Eve Boswell

The Seekers

Rolf Harris

New Christy Minstrels

Mel Blanc

Dick James

Terry Scott

5

My brother

6

Ronnie Hilton

Robin Hood

Windmill in Old Amsterdam

6

Flanders and Swann

Woody Woodpecker

The Hippopotamus song

6

Keith Michell

6

Captain Beaky and his band

6

Clive Dunn

6

Grandad

7

1962

1953

1933

1939

1961

1959

1955

1966

Parlophone

Parlophone

Disney

Decca

Palette

London

Capitol

Capitol

Columbia

Columbia

1965 1969

Capitol

Parlophone

Parlophone

HMV

Parlophone

Polydor

Columbia

1948

1956

1962

1965

1961

1980

1970

George Martin production

George Martin production

(Continued)

From Disney’s Three Little Pigs

George Martin production

George Martin production

George Martin production

List of appendices  221

Song

Jake the Peg

The Ballad of Davy Crockett

My grandfather’s clock

(How much is) that doggie in the window?

My boomerang

You’re a pink tooth brush

The bee song

Bimbo

Kitty in the basket

On the good ship lollipop

All things bright and beautiful

Three little fishes

Four-legged Friend

Incidence

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

Roy Rogers

Frankie Howerd

Uncle Mac

Shirley Temple

Jimmy Boyd & Gayla Peevey

Jim Reeves

Arthur Askey

Max Bygraves

Charlie Drake

Lita Rosa

The Radio Revellers

Fess Parker

Rolf Harris

Artist

HMV 1953.4 Average

Harmony

BBC session

1952

1949

1953

Fox Film

Columbia

1954 1934

RCA

HMV

HMV

Parlophone

Decca

Peter Pan

Columbia

Columbia

Record label

1957

1938

1955

1961

1953

1940

1955

1966

Year

6-year-old vocalist. Song from the film Bright Eyes

George Martin production

Also recorded in 1953 by Mandy Miller (aged 9) and Ann Stephens (aged 9)

Written in 1876

Further information

222  List of appendices

Curriculum areas

Cognitive organisation Perceptual discrimination & organisation. Relational concepts Classification Reasoning and problem solving Making inferences. Generating explanation & solutions Evaluating, explanation & solutions

Cognitive processes Perceptual discrimination Relational concepts Classification. Ordering Reasoning & problem solving Logic and reasoning Reasoning and problem solving Approaches to learning Initiative and curiosity Executive function skills

Symbolic Language representation development Pre-reading goals: Literacy letters, words knowledge and Numbers goals: skills numbers 1–20, Mathematics numerical knowledge operations Geometric forms

Symbolic representation Letters Numbers Geometric forms Communication and language Listening and attention Understanding Speaking Literacy: Reading, writing Mathematics: Numbers Shape, space and measure

Sesame Workshop EYFS Statutory 2014 Framework 2017

CTW Season Two 1970–71

CTW Season One 1969–70

Appendix 6  Sesame Street album songs mapped to curricula

4 6%

3

40%

16%

16%

25

4%

26%

2%

1

12%

6

0%

0

37%

22

1971–2 1973– 4 1975– 6

3

1970

Album release dates

1%

1

8%

13

0%

0

4%

2

1%

6%

0%

0

3%

3

6%

3

9%

4

1977– 8 1979–80 1981–2 1983– 4

(Continued)

12 2%

78 14%

No. of songs % of total

List of appendices  223

Personal, social and emotional development (PSED) Self-confidence & self-awareness Managing feelings and behaviour Making relationships Understanding the world People and communities Physical development: Moving and handling Health and self-care Expressive art and design Exploring and using media Being imaginative

The child and his Social and world emotional Self: The mind development & its powers, Social emotions relationships Social units Emotional Social interactions development and self-regulation Social studies knowledge and skills Health knowledge and practice

Creative arts expression

The child and his world Body parts and functions, audience participation

The social environment Social units: self, social roles, social groups & institutions Social interactions: diff. in perspectives, cooperation, rules for justice & fair play

Not educational

Science knowledge Understanding the and skills world Scientific skills The world and methods Technology Concepts of the natural world Concepts of the physical world

The child and his world The man-made environment The natural environment

The physical environment Natural environment Man-made environment

Sesame Workshop EYFS Statutory 2014 Framework 2017

CTW Season Two 1970–71

CTW Season One 1969–70

1 2%

4

1

1

13%

32%

5%

8

6

7 11%

1 5%

13 21%

2 11%

5 8%

3

12

17%

0

4

25%

15

17%

10

3%

2

21%

11

0%

15

25%

40

25%

40

16%

25

23%

37

8%

12

7

28%

16

35%

20

14%

8

19%

11

0%

0

6

34

6%

9

15%

16

32%

22%

27%

13%

32 30% 25%

5%

4%

4

4

19%

9

11%

5

21%

10

26%

12

9%

4

1977– 8 1979–80 1981–2 1983– 4

Number of albums in each year group

11

4%

2

27%

14

24% 10%

9%

13 25% 18%

5%

6%

3

1971–2 1973– 4 1975– 6

16%

1970

Album release dates

380 67%

100 18%

137 23%

71 12%

141 22%

31 5%

No. of songs % of total

224  List of appendices

List of appendices  225 Appendix 7 List of Sesame Street albums, 1970–1984 This is a list of the albums that were analysed for Chapter 5. All were released on Sesame Street Records unless otherwise stated. Compilations, rereleases and repackages were excluded from the analysis. Year

Title

Record label / Notes

1970

The Sesame Street Book & Record

Columbia Records

1971

The Muppet Alphabet Album The Official Sesame Street 2 Book-andRecord Album The year of Roosevelt Franklin

Columbia Records Warner Bros. Records Columbia Records

1972

Havin’ fun with Ernie & Bert

Columbia Records

1973

Sesame Street LIVE!

Columbia Records

1974

Bert’s Blockbusters Big Bird sings! C is for Cookie Ernie’s hits Grover sings the blues Let a frown be your umbrella Letters … and Numbers too! Pete Seeger & Brother Kirk visit Sesame Street ¡Sesame Mucho! Somebody Come and Play

1975

Bert & Ernie Sing-Along The Count Counts Merry Christmas from Sesame Street The Sesame Street Monsters!

1977

Aren’t you glad you’re you? Big Bird leads the Band Bob sings! Happy birthday from Sesame Street Let your feelings show Numbers! The Sesame Street fairy tale album Signs Sleepytime bird What time is it on Sesame Street?

1978

David, Daydreamin’ on a Rainy Day Fair is Fair On the Street where we live – Block Party! Sesame Street Fever Sing, sang, song singalong

Includes no Muppets or Sesame Street cast (Continued)

226  List of appendices Year

Title

Record label / Notes

1979

Anne Murray sings for the Sesame Street generation At home with Ernie & Bert Dinah! I’ve got a song Every body’s record Sesame disco! The stars come out on Sesame Street

Rerelease of a nonSesame Street album

Audio from television guest appearances

1980

Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

1981

Warner Bros. Records Getting ready for School Grin & Giggle with Big Bird Sesame Country In Harmony: A Sesame Street record Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch: Camping in Kids’ Records Canada

1982

Big Bird presents Hans Christian Andersen Exercise! For the First Time Sesame Street sing-along!

1983

Born to Add The Gang’s all Here! Surprise!

1984

Sesame Street Christmas sing-along

Audition from TV show

Audition from TV show Audition from TV show Audition from TV show

0

5

%

Soul and funk

7

39

0

0

Contemporary pop / rock / disco

%

Country

%

28

0

Folk

%

6

33

6

4

11

7

22

14

0

0

48

31

4

1

Vaudeville / Musical theatre

1971–2

1970

9

9

5

6%

14% 2

1

17

13%

13%

21

11

36%

23

12

11

1973–4

11

7

6

4

3

2

25

15

34

21

4

1975– 6

Album release dates Number of albums in each year group

%

Genres

Appendix 8  Genres and vocalists for Sesame Street album songs

2

4

29

50

6

11

12

21

37

63

15

1977–8

5

3

40

23

2

1

16

9

21

12

7

1979–80

6

6

5%

14

13

27%

17

16

2%

13%

18

17

35%

31

30

9

1981–2

0

0

22

11

0

0

6

3

49

24

4

6

32

22

127

8

44

13

76

35

199

(Continued)

1983–4

Total

List of appendices  227

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Jazz and Ragtime

%

‘World’

%

Classical and Opera

%

Novelty. Sound effects

%

4

17

Female human

%

Vocalist/s

0

%

9

7

6

4

0

0

2

1

2

1

5

3

4

1

0

1971–2

1970

2

1

7

0

0

0

0

14%

11

2%

1%

8%

19

10

2%

6%

8

4

11

1973–4

0

0

2

1

8

5

3

2

6

4

19

19

4

1975– 6

Album release dates Number of albums in each year group

Rock’n’roll, Rhythm and blues, Blues and Doo wop

Genres

19

40

1

2

3

5

2

4

1

2

5

8

15

1977–8

4

2

0

0

4

2

7

4

2

1

40

34

7

1979–80

1

1

1

1

4

4

1

1

7

7

24%

29

42

1%

2%

3%

2%

7%

9

1981–2

10

6

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

22

11

4

1983–4

20

159

2

9

1

7

5

26

2

11

7

38

Total

228  List of appendices

21

4

14

%

Child / children

%

1

3

9

31

Female Muppet/s

%

Male Muppet/s

%

7%

6

Male human

71

55

9

7

3

2

8

6

50%

39

26

9%

2

1

20

13

20%

29

19

44

44

15

15

0

0

23

23

39

83

6

12

6%

3

7

34

73

42

36

2

2

4

4

12

10

42%

33

49

4%

2

3

13

19

24%

23

34

73

46

8

5

0

0

10

6

45

348

6

43

6

49

23

177

List of appendices  229

6/8

Celtic

Calypso

Uncle Feedle

Turtle Calypso

English folk (North East)

Irish folk

English folk

I Saw a Ship a-Sailing

Mouse Round / Mending Song

The Miller’s Song

Song of the Flea

Folk

English

The Town Band

Irish

Scottish

The Laird of Drumblair

English work song

Scottish (Glasgow) work song (‘The Carlton Weaver’)

Weaving Song

Brian O’Lynn

English: Norfolk / Hants (‘The Furze Field’)

The Princess Suite

Agricultural Jigs

4/4

English

Mouse Round / Here’s a pin

2/4

2/4

4/4

4/4

¾

–

6/8

5th

Octave

–

Flat 6th

4th

4th

6th

Largest consecutive interval

A to C# = Octave + two tones

First Half D to D = Octave 2nd half A to A = Octave

B to C = Octave + semitone

C# to A = Flat 6th

D to D = Octave

–

4th

4th Minor 3rd

4th

Flat 5th

5th

–

B to C# = Octave + five tones b7th

A to C# = Octave + two tones

A to A = Octave

D to G = Octave + five tones

A to D = Octave + five tones

6/8 4/4

A to C# = Octave + two tones

A to C# = Octave + two tones

C to D = Octave + one tone

Overall melodic range

3/4 4/4

2/4

4/4

British

The Bony King of Nowhere

Time signature

Genre (all folk unless otherwise stated)

Title

Appendix 9 Musical analysis of the songs on Bagpuss: The Songs and Music (1998)

230  List of appendices

Irish folk

English folk (words: Stephen Sylvester) 4/4

Irish folk (Donegal)

Nursery Rhyme

Haste to the Wedding

The Porcupine Song

The Oak Tree Reel

Row Row Row your Boat

Average:

English folk (Dorset)

The Old Woman Tossed up in a Basket

4/4

–

6/8

6/8

–

Scottish bagpipes

Hamish McTavish

4/4

Folk (sea shanty)

The Ear Song

Octave + four tones

A to D = Octave + five tones

–

G to C = Octave + five tones

G to D = Octave + seven tones

G to D = Octave + seven tones

–

C to D = Octave + tone

7.4 semitones (5th – flat 6th)

4th

–

Flat 5th

Octave

Octave

–

Octave

List of appendices  231

232  List of appendices Appendix 10 The Muppet Show’s UK-only Music Hall songs Title

Year

Episode Notes / Original performers

Any Old Iron

1911

214

Harry Champion. Homosexual subtext (Thompson 2001).

Knees Up Mother Brown

1918

410

Many sung the song prior to this date.

Burlington Bertie from Bow

1900

201

Transvestite Vesta Tilley in character as Burlington Bertie.

Wotcher Knocked ‘Em in the Old Kent Road

1891

210

Albert Chevalier, ‘the singing costermonger’.

Down at the Old Bull and Bush

1903

321

Florrie Forde. Drinking song.

The Boy in the Gallery

1885

204

Originally Nelly Power, later Marie Lloyd. Set in a Music Hall.

Waiting at the Church

1908

223

Vesta Victoria.

She Was One of the Early Birds

1895

302

George Beauchamp. Set in a Music Hall.

My Old Dutch

1892

206

Albert Chevalier. Poverty and gender differences.

The Bird on Nellie’s Hat

1906

304

Popularised by Helen Trix.

Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow

1892

306

Vesta Victoria. Homosexual subtext (Thompson 2001).

I Want to Sing in Opera

1911

309

Class differences. Music Hall star as the protagonist.

Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner

1947

519

Flanagan and Allen.

Run Rabbit Run

1939

421

Flanagan and Allen. Associated with anti-German sentiment.

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?

1924

109

Originally “Does the Spearmint Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?” by The Happiness Boys.

Tit Willow

1885

120

From The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan.

A Transport of Delight

1956

522

Flanders and Swann.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

1931

216

Noel Coward.

Danny Boy

1913

520

English / Irish ballad.

Auld Lang Syne

1788

502

New Year’s Eve song.

I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

1944

513

–

English Country Garden

1918

218

Percy Grainger as ‘Country Gardens’.

A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go

16th C. 301

Rowlf points out the nonsense words and courting theme.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. 123 Andrés 172, 179, 183, 185, 187n14, 188n28 Almanac Singers 24, 33n25 Alphabet Rockers 171, 176, 181, 183–5 animals: child as 6, 79, 89, 94n62; in children’s musical media 1, 26–7, 48–50, 74, 80–1, 93n33, 102, 108, 115, 137, 144, 147, 148, 151, 169–70 animation 81, 85, 97, 120–1, 128, 130, 134, 136, 151–4, 159n13, 170, 179 Ariès, Philippe 5, 42, 90 Asch, Moses 24, 31n5, 31n7, 55, 60n4, 62n21, 65n85, 65n87 audience 11–12, 14, 29, 72–7, 97, 114; modes of address 10, 16, 80, 131, 167, 170, 173, 175 Bagpuss: representations of family: 131–2, 134, 158, 194; nostalgia 154–6; songs and music 1–2, 127–9, 130, 135–41, 145, 148–9, 157, 192; television programme 127, 130–1, 133–5, 152–4, 156–7, 158n2, 158n3, 159n9–11, 159n15–17, 160n18–22 Barny & Friends 167, 186n2 BBC: CBBC 90; CBeebies 90, 135, 179, 187n12; concepts of the child 71, 74–5; concepts of the family 70–2, 76–7, 86, 91, 131; radio 71–3, 85–7, 129, 131, 139, 173; television 85, 133–6, 149 Bernstein, Robin: Racial Innocence 8, 11–12, 15, 23, 99, 120, 154–5, 196 Bond Stockton, Kathryn: The Queer Child 9, 11, 12, 108, 120 Bragg, Billy 59

cartoons see animation childhood: constructions of 6, 8, 17n8, 22–3, 90, 192, 196; gendered childhood 2, 5, 70, 77, 81, 96, 146–7, 153, 168–9, 176, 181, 184, 192, 196; queer childhood 9, 12, 17n7, 147, 194; racialised childhood 2, 5, 9, 11, 23, 26, 29–30, 70–1, 85, 96, 104, 107–9, 120, 136, 151, 154–5, 181–2; sexualised childhood 6, 9, 12, 30, 71, 91, 120, 122, 127, 131, 136, 142, 144, 147, 148–53, 155, 169–71 childness 9–10, 15, 56, 71, 79, 81–4, 88–90, 102–3, 105, 122, 131–2, 141, 146–8, 196 Children’s Choice attracting older listeners 71, 77–83; George Martin productions 84–5; music of 72, 76–84, 90–1, 92n8, 92n21, 92n29, 93n32–6, 93n39, 94n60, 96, 116, 145–7, 160n24, 194; radio programme 10, 70, 76, 91n1, 92n19–20 Children’s Favourites see Children’s Choice Children’s Hour 73–4; music of 75–6 Children’s Television Workshop: curriculum 97, 100–1, 104, 108, 121, 223; development 98; pedagogy 98, 100, 107, 114–15, 119 Christoval, Ashli see Jazzy Ash competence listener/reader/viewer 4–5, 9–10, 15, 17n1, 17n7, 42, 83–4, 129–31, 147, 151, 161n33, 185 Cooney, Joan Ganz 97, 99, 104, 108, 111, 195 Cope, Nick 139–40, 171–4, 176, 178–80 Cribbins, Bernard 83–5

234 Index Dewey, John 27, 28, 33n28, 45, 98, 99 Digital music 12, 14, 72, 135, 171, 177, 179–80, 186 Disney: Baby Einstein 168; music on films 80–1, 145, 152, 170; radio 180; record label 24 Donovan 173 double entendre 10, 122, 144, 148, 161n33 Dylan, Bob 59, 67n108, 173 education 4, 6–7, 24, 43–5, 50, 139; curriculum-based music 7, 45, 97–98, 100–2, 104–13, 119–22, 123n16, 123n23, 123n25–6, 181; didactic pedagogy 8, 14–15, 43, 45, 57, 75, 96–7, 102, 105, 168, 170, 181; educational media 24–6, 31, 72, 77, 81, 96–7, 104, 108, 117, 133, 168–9, 180–1; music education 17n5, 26–8; progressive pedagogy 14, 22, 24, 28–30, 36, 40, 45, 55, 98, 122 Elliott, Ramblin’ Jack 30–1, 32n23, 59–60, 133 family, the: as audience 16, 70–1, 73–4, 76–7, 86, 90, 114, 128, 130–1, 133, 140–1, 145–6, 149, 157, 185; construction of 6, 16, 70, 73, 76, 127, 131–2, 134–5, 153, 157–8, 159n7, 194–5; family music 5, 27, 71–2, 77–81, 84–5, 90–1, 116, 127, 140, 146, 167, 173, 175, 180, 192 Faulkner, John 133, 136, 156, 158n2, 159n16–17 Flanders and Swann 82 folk music: and childhood 22–3, 29–30, 36, 54, 139–41, 154, 175; children’s folk music industry 22–9, 53, 132–3; children’s folk radio 25–6, 76–9, 81; children’s folk records 24–5, 54, 115–18, 167, 176; children’s folk song books 26–7; progressive schools 27–8; summer camps 29, 33n27–30; television 128, 130, 132–4, 136, 143–4, 157, 158, 159n4 Folkways Records 24–5, 27, 29, 31, 45, 46, 59, 167 For the Children 73–4 Foucault, Michel 11, 17n8 Freud, Sigmund 6, 30

Gibb, David 173–4, 176, 179–7, 188n25 Guthrie, Arlo 37, 43–4, 56–7, 59, 61n10, 62n15, 63n38, 63n44–5, 64n73 Guthrie, Cathy Ann 36–9, 42–4, 46–8, 52–3, 56–9, 61n9–10, 61n13, 62n18, 62n20, 63n34, 64n57, 65n90, 66n99–100 Guthrie, Marjorie 28, 33, 36–40, 46–7, 49, 55–9, 62n20, 65n87, 66n98, 66n104 Guthrie, Nora 37–8, 40–1, 43, 59, 61n10, 63n46 Guthrie, Woody: on BBC’s Children’s Hour 25, 32n14; conception of the child 28, 36; conception of the family 42–4; effects of Huntington’s disease 47–8; Nursery Days album 39, 43, 54–5, 65n85; on dance 28, 36, 40, 46–7; on education 44–6; on growth and work 51–3; on nature 48–51; on parenting 40–2; recordings for children 55–6; songs for children 37–8, 56–9; Songs to Grow On albums 25, 27, 31n11, 32n23, 33n24, 65n85, 65n87, 66n101; Songs to Grow On screenplay 57; Woody’s 20 Grow Big Songs book 33n24, 65n82, 66n100; Woody’s Grow Big Songs album 66n101; writing with Cathy Ann 136–8 Hanna-Barbera 154, 158n3, 159n13 Henson, Jim 102, 108, 110–11, 114, 116, 122, 133, 141, 144, 156, 157, 159n5, 160n25, 161n36, 195 Hollindale, Peter see childness House of Un-American Activities (HUAC) 31n12, 60, 115, 122n2 Housewives’ Choice 76–7, 90 innocence 6, 8–10, 12, 22–3, 31n2, 39, 49–50, 71, 79, 83, 90, 106–8, 120, 122, 145, 148, 154, 168–9, 183, 195, 197 intertextuality 1, 10, 13, 98, 130–1, 155–6 Ives, Burl 26, 32n15, 33n25, 36, 59, 80, 133, 220 Jazz 75, 78, 81, 93n36, 102–3, 115–20, 130, 142, 143, 150–1, 160n25, 182, 184, 194 Jazzy Ash 171, 173, 175, 180, 182–4, 185, 188n29 Jenkins, Ella 23–4, 33n25, 59 Junior Choice see Children’s Choice

Index  235 Kerr, Sandra: 132–4, 136, 138–40, 156, 158n2, 159n15–16, 160n22 Kidz Bop 10, 17n6, 169–70, 176, 187n9, 195 Kinderling Kids Radio 176, 180–1, 183, 188n26 Klezmatics, The 60 Koo Koo Kanga Roo 172, 174–5, 178–80, 187n14, 188n17–19, 188n23 Lead Belly 23–6, 32n17, 33n25, 46, 54, 59–60, 83, 160n31, 175 Lomax, Alan 7, 26, 32n15, 32n17, 32n20, 52, 60, 133 McCarthyism 29, 31n12, 59, 66n106, 122n2; see also House of Un-American Activities (HUAC) MacColl, Ewan 60, 132–3, 136, 138–9, 160n19 McCulloch, Derek 73–4, 76, 85–6, 90 McGaw, Kaitlin see Alphabet Rockers Martin, George 71–2, 84–5, 90, 160n17, 194 Mazia, Marjorie see Guthrie, Marjorie methodology 14–16, 100–1, 132–3 Minipops 169 Mitchell, Elizabeth 60, 65n89, 173 Montessori, Maria 28, 52, 171, 174 Mozart Effect, The 168, 186n3–4, 186n6 Mr Roger’s Neighborhood 97, 134–5 The Muppet Show music of 127, 130, 132–3, 141–8, 155; pedagogy 122, 157, 161n38; television programme 133–6, 149; The Muppets on Sesame Street 99, 104, 106, 110, 111, 114, 116–18 music hall 10, 16, 17n7, 31n1, 39, 75–8, 80, 82, 84, 88, 93n39, 116, 123n13, 124n27, 128–30, 132–5, 143–8, 154–5, 157–9, 160n25, 160n28, 160n30, 161n33, 186, 194 Music Hall formula, The 10, 16, 71, 82, 84, 86, 88, 91, 96, 103, 122, 129, 147, 194 New Deal 26, 31n4, 51–2 Noddy: music of 90, 139, 187 nostalgia 8, 22–3, 71, 82, 84, 88–91, 103, 118–19, 128, 131, 134, 137–9, 141, 147, 154–7, 159n8, 161n34, 178 Not-Its!, The 172–4, 176–8, 184, 188n30

Okee Dokee Brothers, The 172–4, 176, 179–80, 182, 185, 187n14 Opie, Iona and Peter 7, 17n4, 30, 33n31, 46 Orff, Carl 17n5, 27–8, 45, 54 Piaget, Jean 52 Polisar, Barry Louis 173, 175–6, 178, 182, 185, 188n33–4 Postgate, Oliver 132–6, 153, 156–7, 159n11, 159n15, 160n22, 160n25, 195 public service broadcasting: 91, 171; BBC 70–1, 80, 86, 149; CTW 98, 110; radio 180 radio 25–6, 70–2, 85, 93n47, 176–8, 180–1, 183 Radio Active Kids 180, 187n16 Raffi 167, 173, 178, 186n1, 188n24 Raposo, Joe 102–6, 108, 110–11, 123n15, 123n18, 195 Reith, John 70–6, 80–2, 85, 87, 89–90, 131, 153, 158, 193–4 Reynolds, Malvina 29, 51, 59, 115, 122n2 Robinson, Matt 106–7 Rose, Jacqueline: The Case of Peter Pan 8, 9, 50 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 6, 22, 28; Èmile 17n3, 49, 50 Sam on Boff’s Island 133 Seeger, Peggy 32n21, 59–60, 132–3, 136, 139 Seeger, Pete 24–6, 31n11–12, 32n15, 32n22, 33n25, 33n30, 36, 51, 52, 54, 59–60, 61n13, 65n81, 175, 193, 195; For Kids or Just Plain Folk 65n81; on Sesame Street 115, 117, 122n2 Seeger, Ruth Crawford 18n12, 26–8, 32n21, 180 Sesame Street; albums 99–100; format 97, 100, 113; genres 116–20; guest stars 114–16; race issues 107–8; The Year of Roosevelt Franklin 106–8, 118, 122n6, 192; see also curriculum-based music Sex, sexuality see childhood, sexualised childhood Shepherd, Tommy see Alphabet Rockers simplicity 1, 2, 7, 9, 17n5, 22–3, 27, 49, 54, 56, 83, 103, 139, 154, 157, 168, 193, 197 skiffle 60, 67n109, 81–2, 159n4

236 Index Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child 180, 187n16 Spotify Kids 171, 195 Steiner, Rudolph 27

violence 29, 79–80, 84–5, 122, 127–9, 131–2, 134–6, 142, 145, 149–3, 176, 182–3 Vygotsky, Lev 42

television: BBC 75, 90, 133; childcentred 148–9, 158; educational 97, 98, 108; family viewing 128, 130–1, 133, 145; music in and on 101, 120, 127–30, 138–40, 156, 167, 169; ownership 58, 85, 114, 157 twee 135 The Tweenies 138

Whyton, Wally 67n109, 104n4 Wiggles, The 15, 170, 181 YouTube Kids 170–1, 187, 195 Zanes, Dan 171–3, 175, 177, 179–80, 187n14 Zooglobble 177, 180, 187n16