New Music: The Little Red Hen & Other Stories

The Good Ms. Padgett is something of a throwback, in these days of ultrahip, genre-hopping children's music. Her second kids' CD, The Good Ms. Padgett Sings the Little Red Hen and Other Stories, contains four classic children's stories told in a combination of spoken word and song, with acoustic-guitar accompaniment that put me immediately in a retro frame of mind, as if I'd suddenly switched on an old TV set and found myself watching Carole and Paula on The Magic Garden. (I suppose I am forgetting that retro is ultrahip...)

But Padgett, whose real first name is Anna rather than The Good Ms., knows what she's doing. She honed her storytelling skills in front of some of our nation's most demanding audiences—Brooklyn preschoolers—and it shows. (It doesn't hurt, of course, that she has naturally great pacing and a lovely singing voice.)

She's savvy enough to have chosen stories—including one of my own childhood favorites, the Billy Goats Gruff—that fall into repeating patterns, allowing for the kind of musical repetition that hooks preschool-age kids immediately. They learn the simple melody the first time through, and then can sing along themselves each time the pattern comes around again.

Yes, Pete Seeger and hundreds before him have been using this technique for years, but there's a reason for that: It works. As proof, I offer up my three-year-old, Griff, who was mesmerized by The Good Ms. from hello. Since he is not, as a rule, mesmeriz-able at this age by anything, even ice cream, for much more than a minute, that's a pretty serious recommendation right there.

[Cover image courtesy of The Good Ms. Padgett]

New Music: Hey, Pepito!

It's not every artist—even in the famously diverse kids'-music field—who can move genre to genre and sound good in every one of them. But then, Key Wilde and Mr Clarke proved with their eclectic, energetic debut album, Rise and Shine, that they're not your everyday kids' musicians. (In fact, "artists" might be the term to stick with, since Wilde has also made a name for himself as an illustrator.)

On their follow-up EP, the download-only release Hey Pepito!, the duo swing from the (truly!) punk sound of the title track (about a frenetic squirrel, suitably enough) to the happy indie pop of "Don Mario's Song" to the folk homage to Seeger and early Dylan "Talking Big Pet Pig"—and as always, all of it sounds fantastic. "Hey Pepito" itself (the song, I mean) is probably the highest-energy kids' song I've ever heard—in a good way; I used to try to drag myself into consciousness back in my college years with the Pixies' "Debaser," and this might be that kid-friendly replacement I so desperately need.

It's a short but sweet set of songs that kids will love (let them wear themselves out dancing to the first two tracks!) and parents will be happy to play as well.

[Image courtesy of Key Wilde and Mr Clarke]

New Music: Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti

The all-star-musician benefit concept goes back years, of course, to George Harrison's Bangladesh concert, and a bit later the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and "We Are the World" singles. But with the exception of a few giants like Pete Seeger (who's been doing benefit and charity work with his music his whole career, really), there haven't been enough big names in kids' music for such a thing to be possible in the genre.

But Dean Jones (no, not the one from the original Love Bug movies—the frontman of kids' band Dog on Fleas), with a little help from the recent explosion of talent in this genre, has changed all that. Back in January, Jones desperately wanted to do something to help the earthquake victims in Haiti; he came up with the idea of a kindie-rock album to raise money. He joined forces with KindieFest cofounder Bill Childs, and the pair proceeded to put together an incredibly impressive roster of artists for the project.

The result is Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, a CD of 22 songs, one each from many of the top children's musicians working today. Seriously, if I were making a list of the genre's top echelon of talent, it would look a lot like this track list: Recess Monkey, They Might Be Giants, Frances England, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Jonathan Coulton, Dan Zanes, Gustafer Yellowgold, Elizabeth Mitchell...the list goes on and on. Even the venerable Seeger himself contributed a track!

The proceeds (all the greater because everyone involved in the album's production, replication, and distribution either donated or heavily discounted their services) will benefit the Haitian People's Support Project, an organization with a long history of important work in the country. Knowing this is certainly one benefit to parents and kids who purchase this CD.

But of course, you're also getting the best possible sampler of the cutting edge of today's kids' rock, pop, folk, and hip-hop. If your kids are already familiar with most of the artists, they'll be excited to get a new song from so many of them between new releases. (My five-year-old's favorites: "Fiddlehead Fern," by Recess Monkey, and "Quite Early Morning" from Seeger.) And if they're not, Many Hands offers the best single way I've seen to get a taste of so many of the genre's leading lights, all in one place, and find out which your kids (and you!) might want to hear more of.

So it's a great album, and a great opportunity, all serving a great cause. (I should also mention that there are still a few release shows upcoming in September in Brooklyn; Portland, Oregon; and Northampton, Mass., each featuring a number of the artists on the CD, so if you're in or near those places, check those out, too!)

[Cover image courtesy of Spare the Rock Records]

Old School: Pete Seeger

The “Old School” tag has pretty much jumped the shark these days, but it fits my purpose here well: These posts are about the unique joy of sharing something you enjoyed as a kid with your own children.

And how better to start than with Pete Seeger, who’s working on at least his third generation of that particular joy? Both my wife and I listened to his music as children—in my case predictably enough, as a child of left-wingers who attended Woodstock, but less so for Whitney, whose parents just had a taste for folk music, especially Seeger’s work with the Weavers. (One of the many remarkable things about Seeger is how he has managed to both be fiercely political in his music and yet also somehow transcend politics with it.)

I remember loving in particular Seeger’s “story” songs, like “The Foolish Frog,” though I can’t precisely recall which record it is I was listening to. (I was thinking it could be Stories & Songs for Little Children, but it turns out that’s a compilation album that dates back only to 1994, by which time I’d definitely gone electric.) Later on, when I was no longer listening to my Seeger record, I would still marvel from time to time at a discovery: He wrote the Byrds’ hit “Turn, Turn, Turn”? His co-arrangement popularized the Cuban standard “Guantanamera” worldwide?

Seeger’s work for kids has been so widespread through the years that you can’t help but run into it all the time when you have some of your own. I was delighted to stumble upon an animated version of “The Foolish Frog” on YouTube—and even more delighted when I saw how much Dash enjoyed it; it remains a favorite of his.

Then Dash started learning some of Seeger’s other classics in preschool music classes. And then Bruce Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions became one of his (and our) favorite CDs to listen to on long drives in the car. And then we all watched in wonder as 89-year-old Pete sang Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” on TV, at President Obama’s inauguration festivities.

Last year, we were able to take both sons to see the great man live at the Clearwater Festival. It wasn’t just their first live Seeger concert; it was ours, too. Pete’s voice isn’t as strong as it once was, of course, but he’s still a force on any stage. He sang “Guantanamera,” then “Turn, Turn, Turn,” encouraging the audience to sing along with him, as always. Dash complied, and so did we. As we sang, I looked around us, and saw dozens of other sets of grateful grandparents, parents, and children, all sharing the song with one another, and with Pete Seeger.

[Photo: Donna Lou Morgan, U.S. Navy, via Wikimedia Commons.]