Ella Jenkins, the first children's artist to receive a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award (in 2004), is known as "The First Lady of Children's Music" for her pioneering contribution to the field and for the role model that she has been for the host of children's artists that have followed in her footsteps.

This African American Legacy recording of sing-along songs and stories is emblematic of the musical mission that Ella-now in her late 80s-began in 1956, collecting and sharing with children the folk songs she has gathered from around the world and the songs of a personal heritage that includes her childhood in multicultural Chicago. Here, without bells and whistles, Jenkins sings spirituals, nursery rhymes, play-songs-even George Gershwin's "Summertime"-with the directness, warmth and simplicity that has invited generations of little listeners to join in all along the way.