The boyish folk singer Michael Cooney.  His persona is adolescent, and his voice is high and thin, and truth be told, if his livelihood rested exclusively on his vocal ability, I don’t think I would have heard of him.  But he is a virtuoso of the six string guitar, twelve string guitar, five string banjo, fretless banjo, concertina, slide, finger picking, pickety picking, and something new with each album.  And he knows at least a million songs, all kinds of traditional folk music.  Michael Cooney is one of the greatest folklorists alive, though I don’t believe he ever went to college, and he doesn’t stand around smoking a pipe, cultivating a trimmed beard, and wearing corduroy jackets with patches on the elbows.  The liner notes to his albums are as historically informed, musicologically analytical, imaginatively recondite, and exploding with love for the subject as anything in the Journal of American Folklore.  Fact is, he is one of the greatest deepest folk singers who ever lived.  And everything he ever did, whether he meant it or not – or whether the creators of the songs he sings meant it or not – was made for children.

Here is a silly song, played on the banjo, about a poor sap who is drafted and sent into war.  To those unfamiliar with the childish mind, a song about the sufferings of war may not seem an appropriate subject for a children’s song.

I wish you could have been there for Leslie Fiedler’s lectures on Huckleberry Finn.  He said that it is a mistake to equate childhood with innocence.  Those who call childhood a time of innocence are unaware of the natural inclinations of children.  Huck plays cruel tricks on Jim, and this reminds us that cruelty is a childish impulse.  The cruel humor of children exposes an ambivalence we are reluctant to acknowledge.  Leslie said this irony, the selfishness and brutality in the children we idealize as adorable and gentle, is a deception all humans blithely adopt.  There was never a world of innocence.  Even metaphorically, ascribing innocence to childhood does not make sense. The childhood of humanity was rooted in brute survival.  The childhood of technology was rooted in war.  The childhood of America was rooted in slavery.

There is hardly a book with more terror and wickedness and cruelty than Huckleberry Finn.  The hero is a young teenage boy who smokes, plays hooky, lies continuously; he decides on his own that what preachers, teachers, and legislators have told him is wrong; he runs away from family, civilization, and the church; he has an ambivalent racist-love relationship with Jim – he follows the impulses of his own foolish heart.  The thing is, kids really respond to all this wildness.  And, by any standard, Huckleberry Finn is one of the greatest works of children’s literature.  Leslie said, if you do not like Huckleberry Finn, you were born old.

And so it is with this song.  If you can’t find the virtue of childish laughter in this song about a very serious problem, you were born old.  After all, ain’t the neglect of laughter part of the problem?

The Captain said to fire at will
And I said, “Which is he?’
The old fool got so ragin’ mad
He fired his gun at me
In that war, that crazy war.

Verse after verse of the madcap adventures of this reluctant warrior.

A cannonball flew overhead,
I started home right then;
The Captain he came right after me,
But a General beat us in,
In that war, that crazy war.

According to Michael’s scholarly notes, this is a song that has been around at least since the Spanish Civil War.  It has many verses, some versions referencing specific battles.  And, as Michael points out, it is reassuring to know that the Vietnam generation was not unique in resenting being dragged off to a crazy war.

No author, traditional, “That Crazy War,” No publisher (No date).  From Michael Cooney, Michael Cooney or “The Cheese Stands Alone,” Folk-Legacy Records, Inc., FSI 35 (1968).  Album design – Not credited.

One of the best courses I ever took in all my many years of college was a graduate class on children’s literature by the legendary American scholar Leslie Fiedler.  What I learned from Leslie informs my interpretations of children’s music.

Leslie said that children’s literature – books written specifically for children – is a recent phenomenon.  Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, published in 1865 was probably the first such book.  The same is true of children’s songs.  Much of what we now regard as classic children’s music, was never intended for children at the time it was created.

Fairy tales were originally not written for children at all.  Even the Mother Goose stories of Charles Perrault – author of “Cinderella” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” and inventor of the Fairy God Mother – were meant to be read by courtiers.  Unexpurgated fairy tales are often full of flagrant lust and blunt violence.  One of Leslie’s favorite fairy tales was “The Juniper Tree,” collected by the Brothers Grimm – a bewildering and mystical tale in which the wicked step mother serves her husband a stew made from the body of his beloved son.

Leslie said that practically every great 19th Century American novel has become a children’s classic:  Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, Rip Van Winkle, the stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe.  Similarly many great 19th Century British works have entered the children’s canon: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and several of the books of Charles Dickens.  And novels of the 20th century like Gone With the Wind and Of Mice and Men have been taken in by children.  Leslie said Gone With the Wind is the greatest American book of the 1930’s, meaning it shuts down F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, and Dr. Seuss.  Beginning at the age of nine, my daughter, Cadance, read Gone with the Wind over and over.  Most of the history of children’s literature is the appropriation of adult literature by kids.  In fact, one of the marks of great literature is whether or not it has been picked up by children.

This is certainly true of children’s music as well, as is demonstrated by many of the children’s songs I will discuss in the future.  But with contemporary, late 20th Century children’s music, I would suggest, there is also a reverse dynamic.  Nowadays, the mark of a great piece of music for children is that it is appreciated not only by the sprogs, but by the biddies as well.  So much children’s music is patronizing and panders to a misguided interpretation of a child’s interests.  Children know the world is not all bunnies and Magilla Gorillas and silliness.  When I was a yard ape, my favorite songs were “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley, “A Guy is a Guy” by Doris Day, and everything and anything by Harry Belafonte.  None of this music was intended for children.  The one ostensibly childish song, “Purple People Eater,” concerns cannibalism, about which I will tell you much more, later.  Some of the best children’s tunes are old gospel songs.

The greatest children’s songs do not avoid romantic love, loneliness, poop and pee, spirituality, violence, and death.  And these subjects are prevalent in the ancient folk songs that have entered the children’s canon.  I am not suggesting that high production contemporary commercial kid’s music can’t be great.  Nor am I suggesting that a great children’s song cannot be grounded in calculated innocence.  The most polished songs in the Disney movies like, “You Can Fly,” “Zorro,” “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” “Wringle Wrangle,” or “I’m Wishing,” and the guileless sweetness of Raffi, Dick Lourie, and Sandy Tobias Offenheim are as captivating to children as the wise, edgy, sparsely produced songs of Woody Guthrie, Ella Jenkins, or Leadbelly.  The greatness of all this music lies in the fact that it captivates the squirts and the coots and all the schlimazels in between.

Photo of Leslie Fiedler by Todd Goodrich.

The Director’s Cut of a short video of my grandson enjoying my music – or at least, my guitar.  The soundtrack is my song, “The Teddy Bear.”

Thanks to Bill Parker, host of the Children’s Show on WRIU Public Radio in Kingston, Rhode Island (WRIU Kids, @wriukids) for playing “Beautiful Song, Wonderful Song” from my album.

In addition to great kid’s music by Raffi, The Rockin’ Berries, and the Boogers, Bill throws in surprising, but obviously kid appropriate, tunes by such groups as Queen, Devo, and Maria Muldaur.

Thanks, Bill Parker, for the vote of support.

Here is a taste of “Beautiful Song, Wonderful Song.” Beautiful Song Wonderful Song Clip MP3

My album is available worldwide from Amazon.com, CDBaby, and many MP3 vendors.

My album is available worldwide from Amazon.com, CDBaby, and many MP3 vendors.

I was playing my guitar for Juniper, our two-year old, when she impulsively began telling a story about a Teddy Bear who had to use the bathroom.  Where did he live? I asked.  A barn.  Was anyone else there?  A man.  What did he look like?  Red flowers.  What else happened?  He went swimming, ch ch ch ch.   In short order, asking Juniper to fill in more details, I shaped these images into a story.  The melody arose magically from an A-minor chord and Juniper laughed and laughed.  The true test of this song is the fact that young adults, who demanded to hear The Teddy Bear song over and over when they were toddlers, now tell me how much they still love it.

My new CD, Songs for Children is now available at https://www.createspace.com/1980790.  Both the CD and MP3 downloads are available from Amazon.com.

Please tell all your friends and neighbors.