January 25, 2022 • 29 mins
How a musical experiment became the most iconic kids’ album of all time.
Guests in this episode:
- Ken Whiteley, award-winning multi-instrumentalist and producer
- Bert Simpson, senior associate at Troubadour Records
- Dr. Patricia Shehan Campbell, University of Washington School of Music
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Here we go. There's nothing more comforting than hearing the
soft crackle of a needle on a record. The more
we get together again, the more we get together your
(00:26):
life friends and my friends, sorry, your friends, the more
we get together. When I started listening to Raffie, I
ordered his first kid's album on vinyl, single Moore Songs
for the Very Young and Sorry, Raffie. I got it
on eBay, so you won't be seeing any of this money.
But as soon as I got it, I went all in,
(00:47):
maybe a little too much. Love of bis and children's
songs are just kind of weird and halfway terrifying, Like,
what is this song even about it? I can imagine
it on a Beatles album. Also, so why the kids
love Whistle so much? I wonder? Is this strategy me
into madness. I have these wild, almost conspiracy theories about
how he's naming his albums. I'm not actually sure what
(01:10):
that means, but it sounds fun, that little burbling keyboard sound.
I'm gonna go ahead and call it a club banger.
Dear Raffi, I like your hat. Do you write lots
of songs? Because I like them a lot. I appreciate
his attention to detail on putting this very comfortable song
(01:30):
after that kind of scary, weird song, I started to
see just how carefully crafted it was. Starting with the cover.
It's a portrait of Raffi in crayon, drawn by a
seven year old fan, and it really captures Raffi, the beard,
the guitar, he's even sitting on a stool as if
he's performing at some coffee house in the village. And
(01:52):
at the bottom he added his personal flare with the
words great with a peanut butter sandwich. The cover loan
speaks to Raphie's commitment to his audience and do his
great attention to detail. Looking back, it feels like it
was like pulling teeth, but it wasn't quite. But even
something like that crayon border, I tried it in four
(02:16):
or five different colors, and I cut the paper out
and put it on the rest of the cover and
stood on a chair looking down. Well, it's so well
put together. Just the artwork alone is so well composed
and so thoughtful and so intentional. What do you think
of yourself as a perfectionist I was back then, but
(02:37):
I mean even without that, you you strive for excellence
you know, if I did a good job, I'm proud
of it. Where do you think this came from? This
drive to do something excellent, because it's not within everybody
to be completely excellent at all times. I was a
very good student when I was younger. I was always
near the top of my class. There was a push
to excel that came from my parents, and there was
(03:00):
also the model of my father's photography, where he was
immaculate and what he did he had high standards, and
I think I I soaked up a lot of that,
you know, so I gave it my best certainty. Raphael's father, Arto,
was a master portrait artist. So was Arto's father. These
(03:21):
men had confidence in their trade and worked constantly. When
Arto presented his clients with a finished product, he'd only
give them one proof, just one proof that met his
standards of perfection. I know something about having a perfectionist father.
My dad, Andres was an aerospace machinist, a trade where
(03:42):
there's no room for error. He drove two hours to
and from work each day, coming home smelling like metal.
I think about that every time I don't want to
go out and do a set, or when a joke
doesn't land just right. His dedication to his craft set
the bar for me, leading to my own perfectionism, something
Raffi has struggled with. Two In his book, he writes
(04:05):
that he used to take things too seriously. It was
always a push and pull between following joy and meeting
the standards set by generations of Cabukians, especially when it
came to sweating the small stuff. And you can see
it in the liner notes of single bowl Songs for
the very Young, where no detail has missed and no
opportunity for a little more playfulness is left on the table.
(04:28):
You credit Santa for playing the sleigh bells, Well, you
got credit Santa. Nothing Raffie did was by accident. I'm
Chris Garcia and This is Fighting Raffie, a ten part
series from My Heart Radio and Fatherly in partnership with
(04:49):
Rococo Punch, about the life, philosophy, and the work of Raffie,
the man behind the music. Raphi was seven in nine.
At night, he was playing gigs and smokey bars, loud
clubs and coffee houses around Toronto to make some extra cash.
(05:12):
He started playing for a new crowd in Toronto. There
was a program that used to pay folk singers to
come into the classroom sing songs with kids like Michael
Roll the Boat, Ashore, Swing Low, Sweet Area, all that
kind of stuff, you know, and that was fun. He'd
also reunited with his high school sweetheart, Deborah Pike also
(05:33):
known as deb Or Debbie, who was a primary school teacher.
Deb taught Raphy the words to these songs he hadn't
grown up with. So I had to learn Bah bah
black sheep word for word, and I went wow. Raphy
didn't really know any kids. He'd never really even thought
(05:55):
about them until they became his audience. I'm marvel that
what I was learning about kids, the kind of people.
They are there spontaneous for sure, and they're learning all
the time. Everything is fresh and new for them. They're
learning what it feels like to be human. Something happened
(06:19):
when he showed up with a guitar and sat down
on a rug surrounded by eager, white eyed kids. He
held their attention. He was a natural. That's when Deb's mom, Daphne,
made a suggestion, maybe Ralph he should make an album
for kids, and I thought, well, that's an interesting idea.
After all, RAPI wouldn't be the first folk singer to
(06:39):
make an album for kids. One of his heroes, Pete Seeger,
did it, maybe he could too. He and Deb decided
to do some field research. She and I visited a
couple of records stores as we called them in the
nineteen seventies, and we noticed that most, if not all,
(07:02):
the children's recordings were stuck in some lowly been at
the back of the store, and there was a sign
that said to nine nine or something like it was.
It was like they were just pieces of extraneous trash
or something. This is what Raffi was up against. He
needed to persuade the music industry to take children's music seriously,
(07:26):
to invest in it. And to do that he had
to make something of quality, an album that demonstrated what
kids deserve. The language in most children's albums at the
time didn't reflect anything, I mean just it just talked
down to children, as if they were all babies and idiots.
That's Burt Simpson, Ralphie's longtime friend, collaborator and now senior
(07:50):
associate at Troubadour Raphy's record company. Bert, along with his
wife Bonnie and Deb, became Raffie's official educational advisors. What
Bonnie and Debbie and I had was a lot of
experience with very young children and a lot of educational theory.
But on the most practical level, we knew what kids like,
(08:11):
We knew what they would sing. Ralphie called them the Committee. Bert,
Bonnie and Debb were well versed in what young kids
needed to thrive. They were teachers who believed that children
should be active participants in their education. They subscribed to
the progressive educational models that were gaining popularity in the
sixties and seventies, like Monessori and the free school movement.
(08:35):
Raphie immersed himself in these ideas. It felt like he
and the Committee were getting down to something essential. Children
are people like you and me, their whole people. Just
because they're younger doesn't mean they're lesser people, And that
the way to be with children is to treat them
with respect for the people that they are, keeping in
(08:58):
mind where they are beginning stage of life. You see there,
your compassion comes up here. These kids are learning all
about what it's like to be who we are as adults.
Only it's like they're in their adults and training kind
of thing, right, And how can you not have compassion
for a child who's basically doing their best, you know,
(09:21):
and learning from there, Raffie and the committee came up
with a basic album philosophy. It was simple. One the
songs had to be fun for kids to sing to.
The album had to be enjoyable for adults, and three,
the album would respect children as listeners. So Ralphie had
(09:41):
his experts, he had his album philosophy. He knew what
he wanted the album to sound like. Now he needed musicians.
So I enlisted the help of my good friend and
multi instrumentalists, Ken Whitely. And that was the smartest thing
I did, because Ken said, yeah, man, let's do it.
(10:03):
So I played banjo and mandolin and you know different
kinds oft and keyboards, you know, piano, accordion. This is
Ken Whiteley. And when Ralphie says he's a multi instrumentalist,
well that's an understatement, because woo's all that kind of stuff.
Cannon Raffie met in their twenties through the Toronto folk
scene and reconnected after both had started to make contacts
(10:24):
in the industry. That's how kennew about a studio nearby
where they could record Ralphie's album. In n I had
recorded a couple of albums at this studio that was
ten dollars an hour in the basement of these two
brothers where they lived in the suburbs of the city
called Hamilton, Ontario. There's the Landwa Brothers, Bob Lanjue, his
(10:49):
brother Daniel Lanoix Danny for all you music nerds, Yeah,
that Daniel Lenois, producer of you Two's Octung Baby, Dylan's
Time out of Mind. He produced Brian Know, Willie Nelson,
I Mean, Lou Harris, Neil Young, the man Rolling Stone
called the most important record producer to emerge in the eighties,
(11:09):
started with Raffie No Wonder. I love this album so much.
Dan Lenois is a legend and I am not cuckoo
bananas for noticing this album's exquisite production value. It was
Daniel Lenoi's mother's home in the basement studio ad egg
(11:31):
Carton's on the ceiling. It occupied the whole basement. There
was a control room and they could move baffles around
to sort of create an isolated space. I said to myself,
I'm getting my money's worth here. Everything was starting to
come together. The idea was to create an album for
kids that would be tonally and lyrically appropriate, but also
(11:52):
musically dynamic and interactive. It would have beautiful, pristine, high
quality production, and it would embrace the fact that kids
were a real audience, just like their parents. So with
beginner's luck, we proceeded to record in that setting. After
(12:29):
months of planning, it was go time for Raffi's first
children's album. Bob and Dan landwas sat behind the board.
Raffi and his musicians were tuned up and ready to go.
Ken was, you know, doing his multi instrumentalist magic. He'd
play guitar here, he'd played banjo there, he'd play something else.
(12:50):
And his brother Chris Whitelee, very talented musician, played trumpet
and he played harmonica. He played trumpet on Robbing in
the Rain. That turned out to be a great horn
section that that he did. Robbing in the ring. What
a saucy fellow, robbing in the ring on your socks
(13:13):
of yellow, running in the garden on your nimbo feet,
digging for your dinner with your long, strong beating. I
do remember bumping up and down in my little red
wagon because you know, it's basically Raphy singing and playing
guitar and me overdubbing half a dozen other instruments on
(13:35):
bumping up and down in my little red wagon, Bumping
up and down in my little red wagon, bumping up
and down in my little red wagon. Won't you be
in my dark? So these songs. The more we get
together with mandolin and down by the bay Willoughby Wallaby
who had trumpet in it, one track after another, this
(13:59):
little album that could started to gain form. You know,
Peanut butter sandwich made with jam, one for me and
one for David m Rama. Peanut butter sandwich made with
jim sticks stick sticky stick stick. I love to picture it.
(14:20):
Ken Whiteley playing every instrument he can get his hands on,
Dan Lenois and his mom's basement, telling RAFFI, hey, Raffy,
because who was coming in a little flat on peanut
butter sandwich. Let's go ahead and take it from the top.
We literally, quote unquote didn't know what we were doing,
which is a delightful way to be when you're making
music because you're not self conscious about it. I mean,
(14:42):
if you listen to Willoby Wallaby woo and listen to
the what could I even call it? It's like a
vocal instrumental in the middle that dude that that yeah,
that that is totally unself conscious do and it ends
with bah bah blah blah blah blah. But I'm and
(15:04):
sometimes I listen to now and I go, did I
really do that? The timing of it is perfect. It
just fell into the groove, you know, it just became
a groove thing. It was great. That's what I mean
about the un self consciousness of that beginner effort. I
made it out. They even included to holiday songs my
(15:28):
dradal and must be Santa, Who's got a beard that's
long and white comes around. We weren't going by any
you know, market research or anything. We were kind of
winging it, you know, having fun, including songs that we
thought kids would enjoy singing. And that's what we did.
(15:50):
I mean, I remember, you know, driving to a blues
gig with a harmonica player and say, hey, you got
to hear this project I'm working on. You know, it
had that sort of enthusiasm attached to it, you know,
where you're wanting to share it as broadly as possible,
and so I kind of had a feeling, Wow, this
could really be successful. You know. In those early days,
this group of adults was somehow able to tap into
(16:12):
what it feels like to be a kid. They captured
the wonder and the insecurity that's most evident to me
listening to the lyrics of I Wonder if I'm Growing.
I Wonder if I'm growing. I wonder if I'm growing.
My mom says, yes, I'm growing, but it's hard for
(16:36):
me to see. My mom says, I remember playing nylon
string guitar on that song, not my steel string acoustic.
You can just feel that it's coming from a vulnerable
place that Raphael is singing I Wonder if I'm growing
in a genuine way, if I'm growing. I wonder if
(16:57):
I'm growing. My mom seemed to touch people who hear it,
you know, because the song goes from wondering if I'm
growing too. Hey, I can reach the tap now for
the very first time today. So the song goes somewhere.
It takes you somewhere, and if you're a young child listening,
(17:19):
I think it probably adds to the child's wonderment of growing.
I Wonder if I'm Growing was the basic album Philosophy
in Action, a beautiful song that both kids and parents
would love that also respects children as they are, and
I think I must be growing if he only knew
(17:39):
how much he was about to grow in terms of
his career, in terms of what he was going to
be allowed to do as a person, speaking not just
to thirty five people at a coffeehouse, but you know,
to thirty people in an auditorium, or selling millions of records.
It was November m Robbie Robertson in the Band held
(18:03):
their farewell concert. Jimmy Carter won the presidency over Gerald Ford.
The first Mega mouse Shark was discovered off the coast
of Oahu, and Raffie released his first kids album single
Bowre Songs for the Very Young Well Mr Son Son,
Mr Golden Sun, We Shine down on Me, Mr Sun.
(18:23):
Raffie was a one man record company. There was no
released team behind him. He really did it all d
I y, He licensed songs, he made the press, get
himself designed promotional posters. He had one thousand albums pressed
for its initial run. Well in time, I could afford
some help, some stuff, so that was great. But while
(18:46):
I was doing it, I had an adventure of play
actually about it. Here I was I was pretending I
was the delivery guy getting in my car and delivering albums,
going to the train station and sending him by train
across the country to a children's bookstore. Who was going
to sell my albums? Wow? I was a delivery man.
Wea you know, everyone on the committee chipped in to
(19:09):
get their beloved album out into the world. Bonnie and
Bert Simpson would even bring small record players two stores
so they could play the album. Everyone loved that because
nobody thought of that before. People would say, oh, who's
what's that? Who's that? And they showed in the record
and they sold really well. Right from the very beginning.
(19:30):
Ralphie's bet paid off single Bore Songs for the Very
Young was a hit right from the start. And then
when the album was released, I was singing in nursery
schools around Toronto and I'd take the album with me
and copies of it for sale, and people were buying
it in threes and fours to give his gifts. I
(19:50):
couldn't leave it. I mean, the word was getting out.
You know that this was a special album that you
can have some with you because I shared with you.
You have to to look back now and decipher why
(20:14):
Singapore Songs was so successful. It's hard to point to
one thing. Everything seemed to line up. The quality, production,
the research, the beginner spirit. These were key ingredients. But
there's also something to be said for Raphie and Ken's
history with folk music in a lot of ways that
set them up to make good music for kids in
(20:36):
the mood, in the mood, and the folk element is
there even in many of his own selections on these
marvelous recordings that work very well with children. This is
Dr Patricia she Hand Campbell. She's an ethno musicologist who
studies children's music. Patricia says ralphie songs tell stories and
(20:59):
a sound chill element of folk, and Raphie's music, just
like the songs of his heroes Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie,
are also especially easy for kids to sing along to.
And they don't reach a full octave, generally speaking, until
they're about eight or nine. So many of the songs
are within that smaller pitch range, within an octave, maybe
(21:22):
only five pitches in distance from one another. And that
was the place where were children's voices landed comfortably. Little
upon the name there was in the mood, in the
mood there was, and his name was with the overwhelming
(21:49):
success of Singable Songs, Raffi and his team started working
on the follow up album, More Singable Songs, came out
in ninety seven, and it slapped two. It was time
to take the show on the road. Hello, Hi, boys
and girls. And I'll never forget the very first concert
I had where we charged admission were buck when the
(22:14):
very song I said, the more we get together, and
by the time we got to the work together, the
whole place was singing. I couldn't believe it, dep cried.
I mean she was at the back of the hall,
she cried, hearing everyone sing. And that was it. That's
how it was gonna be from then on. Here's something
(22:36):
that amazes me about Raffie, how easily he can hold
the attention of an auditorium full of kids. I know
firsthand how difficult that is, because I used to be
a children's entertainer myself. At you see Berkeley's Public Science Center.
I dress up like a wizard and teach kids about
electricity or do improv about the human brain. It was
(22:58):
so hard that I made the switch to stand up
comedy and entertaining drunk adults. Instead bumping up and down
in the little red Wagon bumping up and down. I
keep thinking about this one Raffy concert video, in particular,
whoa Dot to be My guard? Raffy is physically jumping
(23:19):
up and down in his seat. The camera pans up
to the balcony to show a pair of kids mimicking
his movements. In fact, the entire concert hall of kids
is bumping up and down in Unison's Hey, this wagon
is still busted. The stick of the song is that
the wagon keeps breaking down. By this point, the kids
(23:43):
are losing their minds yelling out the names of tools
Raffy could use to fix the wagon. Listen to those ideas.
This place is full of mechanics today. And just when
you think a riot is about to break out, if
Raffy stalls one more minute, he comes in with a
punch line. I wonder what I do is to fix
the wagon? Raff He's gonna fix it with those sandwich
(24:05):
Raffy's gonna fix it with this man's got time so
that he can eat it up and down in my
little red wagon. We had fun singing any songs together,
and then I would meet the audience after the show,
and that was kind of neat because kids with their
(24:26):
parents would come up and the child would be trying
to say something to me, and maybe it was taking
their time, and the parents would be trying to hurry
them along. Sometimes I'd say wait, let's just listen, please,
and then the child would have time to say something.
And kids would ask wonderful questions of me. In those
(24:47):
days of cassettes, Raffie, how did you get out of
my tape? They would say, well, it wasn't me who
was in there in the first place. It was just
my voice. That's what you're hearing. Oh that's Raffi reflects
on these early days of success in his autobiography. They
(25:09):
were thrilling, but they were also stressful. He recalls getting
upset when dab, Bonnie and Bert were having too much
fun in the process. Back then, he thought they had
serious work to do. You know, I've had periods of
my life where it's you know, I've had challenges to
go through. You know, I'm no different than anybody else,
(25:30):
personal challenges, professional challenges. At one point I said to myself,
I keep falling up hill. Here's Burt. Rafi will spend
a lot of time on the tiniest details of things,
getting them exactly the way he wants them to be,
and that's just the way he is. The perfectionism could
(25:53):
be tiring sometimes sometimes I just go on and say, okay,
well let's just pick one show, you know, and get
on with that. But it's not like that. So if
that's what he meant by taking himself seriously, you know
he did. Ralphie's attention to detail and commitment to excellence
to the point of perfection sometimes put work ahead of fun.
(26:13):
He writes that he could be controlling and moody if
things didn't go his way, and that he often put
too much pressure on others, but especially on himself. The
friends in our lives can be a huge support to us.
A prayerful attitude can often help in many ways. You know.
I'm just grateful to always return to a place of
(26:35):
love and joy. Meanwhile, as Ralphie's family audiences kept growing,
his dream of becoming a folk singer for adults started
to fade. He kept some of his night gigs, but
the dream started to feel too distant, so he decided
to fully commit to his children's music career. Soon he
would start selling out thousand seat venues and festivals from
(26:56):
coast to coast. He'd make hit album after hit album.
He'd be offered movie deals and endorsements. The path to
superstardom was knocking on his door, but Raffie said no,
No toys, no fast food deals, no corporate endorsements, no
to the industry standard. Rafie was determined to forge his
(27:20):
own path, and he was going to make it happen
his way next time. On Finding Raffie, the primary goal
(27:50):
of advertising and marketing is to train kids to become consumers.
If I love my audience and if I respect for
the people that they are, my young audience, how can
I explain them? Why would I ever want to do
commercial indorsements or you know, sell things to them based
(28:11):
on my popularity? That would be right with it. Finding
Raffie is a production in My Heart Radio and Fatherly
in partnership with Rococo Punch. It's produced by Catherine Fendalosa,
Meredith Hannig, and James Trout. Production assistance from Charlotte Livingston.
(28:36):
Alex French is our story consultant. Our senior producer is
Andrea Swahee. Emily Foreman is our editor. Fact checking by
Andrea Lopez Crusado. Raphae's music is courtesy of Troubadour Music
Special thanks to Kim Layton at Troubadour. Our. Executive producers
are Jessica Albert and John Parotti at Rococo, punch, Ty Trimble,
(28:58):
Mike Rothman and Jeff I's a Minute, Fatherly and Me
Chris Garcia, thank you for listening. Okay, wonder if I'm growing.
(29:26):
I'm wonder if I'm growing. You got me tearing up
over here, ken, I can't believe it.
Here we go. There's nothing more comforting than hearing the
soft crackle of a needle on a record. The more
we get together again, the more we get together your
(00:26):
life friends and my friends, sorry, your friends, the more
we get together. When I started listening to Raffie, I
ordered his first kid's album on vinyl, single Moore Songs
for the Very Young and Sorry, Raffie. I got it
on eBay, so you won't be seeing any of this money.
But as soon as I got it, I went all in,
(00:47):
maybe a little too much. Love of bis and children's
songs are just kind of weird and halfway terrifying, Like,
what is this song even about it? I can imagine
it on a Beatles album. Also, so why the kids
love Whistle so much? I wonder? Is this strategy me
into madness. I have these wild, almost conspiracy theories about
how he's naming his albums. I'm not actually sure what
(01:10):
that means, but it sounds fun, that little burbling keyboard sound.
I'm gonna go ahead and call it a club banger.
Dear Raffi, I like your hat. Do you write lots
of songs? Because I like them a lot. I appreciate
his attention to detail on putting this very comfortable song
(01:30):
after that kind of scary, weird song, I started to
see just how carefully crafted it was. Starting with the cover.
It's a portrait of Raffi in crayon, drawn by a
seven year old fan, and it really captures Raffi, the beard,
the guitar, he's even sitting on a stool as if
he's performing at some coffee house in the village. And
(01:52):
at the bottom he added his personal flare with the
words great with a peanut butter sandwich. The cover loan
speaks to Raphie's commitment to his audience and do his
great attention to detail. Looking back, it feels like it
was like pulling teeth, but it wasn't quite. But even
something like that crayon border, I tried it in four
(02:16):
or five different colors, and I cut the paper out
and put it on the rest of the cover and
stood on a chair looking down. Well, it's so well
put together. Just the artwork alone is so well composed
and so thoughtful and so intentional. What do you think
of yourself as a perfectionist I was back then, but
(02:37):
I mean even without that, you you strive for excellence
you know, if I did a good job, I'm proud
of it. Where do you think this came from? This
drive to do something excellent, because it's not within everybody
to be completely excellent at all times. I was a
very good student when I was younger. I was always
near the top of my class. There was a push
to excel that came from my parents, and there was
(03:00):
also the model of my father's photography, where he was
immaculate and what he did he had high standards, and
I think I I soaked up a lot of that,
you know, so I gave it my best certainty. Raphael's father, Arto,
was a master portrait artist. So was Arto's father. These
(03:21):
men had confidence in their trade and worked constantly. When
Arto presented his clients with a finished product, he'd only
give them one proof, just one proof that met his
standards of perfection. I know something about having a perfectionist father.
My dad, Andres was an aerospace machinist, a trade where
(03:42):
there's no room for error. He drove two hours to
and from work each day, coming home smelling like metal.
I think about that every time I don't want to
go out and do a set, or when a joke
doesn't land just right. His dedication to his craft set
the bar for me, leading to my own perfectionism, something
Raffi has struggled with. Two In his book, he writes
(04:05):
that he used to take things too seriously. It was
always a push and pull between following joy and meeting
the standards set by generations of Cabukians, especially when it
came to sweating the small stuff. And you can see
it in the liner notes of single bowl Songs for
the very Young, where no detail has missed and no
opportunity for a little more playfulness is left on the table.
(04:28):
You credit Santa for playing the sleigh bells, Well, you
got credit Santa. Nothing Raffie did was by accident. I'm
Chris Garcia and This is Fighting Raffie, a ten part
series from My Heart Radio and Fatherly in partnership with
(04:49):
Rococo Punch, about the life, philosophy, and the work of Raffie,
the man behind the music. Raphi was seven in nine.
At night, he was playing gigs and smokey bars, loud
clubs and coffee houses around Toronto to make some extra cash.
(05:12):
He started playing for a new crowd in Toronto. There
was a program that used to pay folk singers to
come into the classroom sing songs with kids like Michael
Roll the Boat, Ashore, Swing Low, Sweet Area, all that
kind of stuff, you know, and that was fun. He'd
also reunited with his high school sweetheart, Deborah Pike also
(05:33):
known as deb Or Debbie, who was a primary school teacher.
Deb taught Raphy the words to these songs he hadn't
grown up with. So I had to learn Bah bah
black sheep word for word, and I went wow. Raphy
didn't really know any kids. He'd never really even thought
(05:55):
about them until they became his audience. I'm marvel that
what I was learning about kids, the kind of people.
They are there spontaneous for sure, and they're learning all
the time. Everything is fresh and new for them. They're
learning what it feels like to be human. Something happened
(06:19):
when he showed up with a guitar and sat down
on a rug surrounded by eager, white eyed kids. He
held their attention. He was a natural. That's when Deb's mom, Daphne,
made a suggestion, maybe Ralph he should make an album
for kids, and I thought, well, that's an interesting idea.
After all, RAPI wouldn't be the first folk singer to
(06:39):
make an album for kids. One of his heroes, Pete Seeger,
did it, maybe he could too. He and Deb decided
to do some field research. She and I visited a
couple of records stores as we called them in the
nineteen seventies, and we noticed that most, if not all,
(07:02):
the children's recordings were stuck in some lowly been at
the back of the store, and there was a sign
that said to nine nine or something like it was.
It was like they were just pieces of extraneous trash
or something. This is what Raffi was up against. He
needed to persuade the music industry to take children's music seriously,
(07:26):
to invest in it. And to do that he had
to make something of quality, an album that demonstrated what
kids deserve. The language in most children's albums at the
time didn't reflect anything, I mean just it just talked
down to children, as if they were all babies and idiots.
That's Burt Simpson, Ralphie's longtime friend, collaborator and now senior
(07:50):
associate at Troubadour Raphy's record company. Bert, along with his
wife Bonnie and Deb, became Raffie's official educational advisors. What
Bonnie and Debbie and I had was a lot of
experience with very young children and a lot of educational theory.
But on the most practical level, we knew what kids like,
(08:11):
We knew what they would sing. Ralphie called them the Committee. Bert,
Bonnie and Debb were well versed in what young kids
needed to thrive. They were teachers who believed that children
should be active participants in their education. They subscribed to
the progressive educational models that were gaining popularity in the
sixties and seventies, like Monessori and the free school movement.
(08:35):
Raphie immersed himself in these ideas. It felt like he
and the Committee were getting down to something essential. Children
are people like you and me, their whole people. Just
because they're younger doesn't mean they're lesser people, And that
the way to be with children is to treat them
with respect for the people that they are, keeping in
(08:58):
mind where they are beginning stage of life. You see there,
your compassion comes up here. These kids are learning all
about what it's like to be who we are as adults.
Only it's like they're in their adults and training kind
of thing, right, And how can you not have compassion
for a child who's basically doing their best, you know,
(09:21):
and learning from there, Raffie and the committee came up
with a basic album philosophy. It was simple. One the
songs had to be fun for kids to sing to.
The album had to be enjoyable for adults, and three,
the album would respect children as listeners. So Ralphie had
(09:41):
his experts, he had his album philosophy. He knew what
he wanted the album to sound like. Now he needed musicians.
So I enlisted the help of my good friend and
multi instrumentalists, Ken Whitely. And that was the smartest thing
I did, because Ken said, yeah, man, let's do it.
(10:03):
So I played banjo and mandolin and you know different
kinds oft and keyboards, you know, piano, accordion. This is
Ken Whiteley. And when Ralphie says he's a multi instrumentalist,
well that's an understatement, because woo's all that kind of stuff.
Cannon Raffie met in their twenties through the Toronto folk
scene and reconnected after both had started to make contacts
(10:24):
in the industry. That's how kennew about a studio nearby
where they could record Ralphie's album. In n I had
recorded a couple of albums at this studio that was
ten dollars an hour in the basement of these two
brothers where they lived in the suburbs of the city
called Hamilton, Ontario. There's the Landwa Brothers, Bob Lanjue, his
(10:49):
brother Daniel Lanoix Danny for all you music nerds, Yeah,
that Daniel Lenois, producer of you Two's Octung Baby, Dylan's
Time out of Mind. He produced Brian Know, Willie Nelson,
I Mean, Lou Harris, Neil Young, the man Rolling Stone
called the most important record producer to emerge in the eighties,
(11:09):
started with Raffie No Wonder. I love this album so much.
Dan Lenois is a legend and I am not cuckoo
bananas for noticing this album's exquisite production value. It was
Daniel Lenoi's mother's home in the basement studio ad egg
(11:31):
Carton's on the ceiling. It occupied the whole basement. There
was a control room and they could move baffles around
to sort of create an isolated space. I said to myself,
I'm getting my money's worth here. Everything was starting to
come together. The idea was to create an album for
kids that would be tonally and lyrically appropriate, but also
(11:52):
musically dynamic and interactive. It would have beautiful, pristine, high
quality production, and it would embrace the fact that kids
were a real audience, just like their parents. So with
beginner's luck, we proceeded to record in that setting. After
(12:29):
months of planning, it was go time for Raffi's first
children's album. Bob and Dan landwas sat behind the board.
Raffi and his musicians were tuned up and ready to go.
Ken was, you know, doing his multi instrumentalist magic. He'd
play guitar here, he'd played banjo there, he'd play something else.
(12:50):
And his brother Chris Whitelee, very talented musician, played trumpet
and he played harmonica. He played trumpet on Robbing in
the Rain. That turned out to be a great horn
section that that he did. Robbing in the ring. What
a saucy fellow, robbing in the ring on your socks
(13:13):
of yellow, running in the garden on your nimbo feet,
digging for your dinner with your long, strong beating. I
do remember bumping up and down in my little red
wagon because you know, it's basically Raphy singing and playing
guitar and me overdubbing half a dozen other instruments on
(13:35):
bumping up and down in my little red wagon, Bumping
up and down in my little red wagon, bumping up
and down in my little red wagon. Won't you be
in my dark? So these songs. The more we get
together with mandolin and down by the bay Willoughby Wallaby
who had trumpet in it, one track after another, this
(13:59):
little album that could started to gain form. You know,
Peanut butter sandwich made with jam, one for me and
one for David m Rama. Peanut butter sandwich made with
jim sticks stick sticky stick stick. I love to picture it.
(14:20):
Ken Whiteley playing every instrument he can get his hands on,
Dan Lenois and his mom's basement, telling RAFFI, hey, Raffy,
because who was coming in a little flat on peanut
butter sandwich. Let's go ahead and take it from the top.
We literally, quote unquote didn't know what we were doing,
which is a delightful way to be when you're making
music because you're not self conscious about it. I mean,
(14:42):
if you listen to Willoby Wallaby woo and listen to
the what could I even call it? It's like a
vocal instrumental in the middle that dude that that yeah,
that that is totally unself conscious do and it ends
with bah bah blah blah blah blah. But I'm and
(15:04):
sometimes I listen to now and I go, did I
really do that? The timing of it is perfect. It
just fell into the groove, you know, it just became
a groove thing. It was great. That's what I mean
about the un self consciousness of that beginner effort. I
made it out. They even included to holiday songs my
(15:28):
dradal and must be Santa, Who's got a beard that's
long and white comes around. We weren't going by any
you know, market research or anything. We were kind of
winging it, you know, having fun, including songs that we
thought kids would enjoy singing. And that's what we did.
(15:50):
I mean, I remember, you know, driving to a blues
gig with a harmonica player and say, hey, you got
to hear this project I'm working on. You know, it
had that sort of enthusiasm attached to it, you know,
where you're wanting to share it as broadly as possible,
and so I kind of had a feeling, Wow, this
could really be successful. You know. In those early days,
this group of adults was somehow able to tap into
(16:12):
what it feels like to be a kid. They captured
the wonder and the insecurity that's most evident to me
listening to the lyrics of I Wonder if I'm Growing.
I Wonder if I'm growing. I wonder if I'm growing.
My mom says, yes, I'm growing, but it's hard for
(16:36):
me to see. My mom says, I remember playing nylon
string guitar on that song, not my steel string acoustic.
You can just feel that it's coming from a vulnerable
place that Raphael is singing I Wonder if I'm growing
in a genuine way, if I'm growing. I wonder if
(16:57):
I'm growing. My mom seemed to touch people who hear it,
you know, because the song goes from wondering if I'm
growing too. Hey, I can reach the tap now for
the very first time today. So the song goes somewhere.
It takes you somewhere, and if you're a young child listening,
(17:19):
I think it probably adds to the child's wonderment of growing.
I Wonder if I'm Growing was the basic album Philosophy
in Action, a beautiful song that both kids and parents
would love that also respects children as they are, and
I think I must be growing if he only knew
(17:39):
how much he was about to grow in terms of
his career, in terms of what he was going to
be allowed to do as a person, speaking not just
to thirty five people at a coffeehouse, but you know,
to thirty people in an auditorium, or selling millions of records.
It was November m Robbie Robertson in the Band held
(18:03):
their farewell concert. Jimmy Carter won the presidency over Gerald Ford.
The first Mega mouse Shark was discovered off the coast
of Oahu, and Raffie released his first kids album single
Bowre Songs for the Very Young Well Mr Son Son,
Mr Golden Sun, We Shine down on Me, Mr Sun.
(18:23):
Raffie was a one man record company. There was no
released team behind him. He really did it all d
I y, He licensed songs, he made the press, get
himself designed promotional posters. He had one thousand albums pressed
for its initial run. Well in time, I could afford
some help, some stuff, so that was great. But while
(18:46):
I was doing it, I had an adventure of play
actually about it. Here I was I was pretending I
was the delivery guy getting in my car and delivering albums,
going to the train station and sending him by train
across the country to a children's bookstore. Who was going
to sell my albums? Wow? I was a delivery man.
Wea you know, everyone on the committee chipped in to
(19:09):
get their beloved album out into the world. Bonnie and
Bert Simpson would even bring small record players two stores
so they could play the album. Everyone loved that because
nobody thought of that before. People would say, oh, who's
what's that? Who's that? And they showed in the record
and they sold really well. Right from the very beginning.
(19:30):
Ralphie's bet paid off single Bore Songs for the Very
Young was a hit right from the start. And then
when the album was released, I was singing in nursery
schools around Toronto and I'd take the album with me
and copies of it for sale, and people were buying
it in threes and fours to give his gifts. I
(19:50):
couldn't leave it. I mean, the word was getting out.
You know that this was a special album that you
can have some with you because I shared with you.
You have to to look back now and decipher why
(20:14):
Singapore Songs was so successful. It's hard to point to
one thing. Everything seemed to line up. The quality, production,
the research, the beginner spirit. These were key ingredients. But
there's also something to be said for Raphie and Ken's
history with folk music in a lot of ways that
set them up to make good music for kids in
(20:36):
the mood, in the mood, and the folk element is
there even in many of his own selections on these
marvelous recordings that work very well with children. This is
Dr Patricia she Hand Campbell. She's an ethno musicologist who
studies children's music. Patricia says ralphie songs tell stories and
(20:59):
a sound chill element of folk, and Raphie's music, just
like the songs of his heroes Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie,
are also especially easy for kids to sing along to.
And they don't reach a full octave, generally speaking, until
they're about eight or nine. So many of the songs
are within that smaller pitch range, within an octave, maybe
(21:22):
only five pitches in distance from one another. And that
was the place where were children's voices landed comfortably. Little
upon the name there was in the mood, in the
mood there was, and his name was with the overwhelming
(21:49):
success of Singable Songs, Raffi and his team started working
on the follow up album, More Singable Songs, came out
in ninety seven, and it slapped two. It was time
to take the show on the road. Hello, Hi, boys
and girls. And I'll never forget the very first concert
I had where we charged admission were buck when the
(22:14):
very song I said, the more we get together, and
by the time we got to the work together, the
whole place was singing. I couldn't believe it, dep cried.
I mean she was at the back of the hall,
she cried, hearing everyone sing. And that was it. That's
how it was gonna be from then on. Here's something
(22:36):
that amazes me about Raffie, how easily he can hold
the attention of an auditorium full of kids. I know
firsthand how difficult that is, because I used to be
a children's entertainer myself. At you see Berkeley's Public Science Center.
I dress up like a wizard and teach kids about
electricity or do improv about the human brain. It was
(22:58):
so hard that I made the switch to stand up
comedy and entertaining drunk adults. Instead bumping up and down
in the little red Wagon bumping up and down. I
keep thinking about this one Raffy concert video, in particular,
whoa Dot to be My guard? Raffy is physically jumping
(23:19):
up and down in his seat. The camera pans up
to the balcony to show a pair of kids mimicking
his movements. In fact, the entire concert hall of kids
is bumping up and down in Unison's Hey, this wagon
is still busted. The stick of the song is that
the wagon keeps breaking down. By this point, the kids
(23:43):
are losing their minds yelling out the names of tools
Raffy could use to fix the wagon. Listen to those ideas.
This place is full of mechanics today. And just when
you think a riot is about to break out, if
Raffy stalls one more minute, he comes in with a
punch line. I wonder what I do is to fix
the wagon? Raff He's gonna fix it with those sandwich
(24:05):
Raffy's gonna fix it with this man's got time so
that he can eat it up and down in my
little red wagon. We had fun singing any songs together,
and then I would meet the audience after the show,
and that was kind of neat because kids with their
(24:26):
parents would come up and the child would be trying
to say something to me, and maybe it was taking
their time, and the parents would be trying to hurry
them along. Sometimes I'd say wait, let's just listen, please,
and then the child would have time to say something.
And kids would ask wonderful questions of me. In those
(24:47):
days of cassettes, Raffie, how did you get out of
my tape? They would say, well, it wasn't me who
was in there in the first place. It was just
my voice. That's what you're hearing. Oh that's Raffi reflects
on these early days of success in his autobiography. They
(25:09):
were thrilling, but they were also stressful. He recalls getting
upset when dab, Bonnie and Bert were having too much
fun in the process. Back then, he thought they had
serious work to do. You know, I've had periods of
my life where it's you know, I've had challenges to
go through. You know, I'm no different than anybody else,
(25:30):
personal challenges, professional challenges. At one point I said to myself,
I keep falling up hill. Here's Burt. Rafi will spend
a lot of time on the tiniest details of things,
getting them exactly the way he wants them to be,
and that's just the way he is. The perfectionism could
(25:53):
be tiring sometimes sometimes I just go on and say, okay,
well let's just pick one show, you know, and get
on with that. But it's not like that. So if
that's what he meant by taking himself seriously, you know
he did. Ralphie's attention to detail and commitment to excellence
to the point of perfection sometimes put work ahead of fun.
(26:13):
He writes that he could be controlling and moody if
things didn't go his way, and that he often put
too much pressure on others, but especially on himself. The
friends in our lives can be a huge support to us.
A prayerful attitude can often help in many ways. You know.
I'm just grateful to always return to a place of
(26:35):
love and joy. Meanwhile, as Ralphie's family audiences kept growing,
his dream of becoming a folk singer for adults started
to fade. He kept some of his night gigs, but
the dream started to feel too distant, so he decided
to fully commit to his children's music career. Soon he
would start selling out thousand seat venues and festivals from
(26:56):
coast to coast. He'd make hit album after hit album.
He'd be offered movie deals and endorsements. The path to
superstardom was knocking on his door, but Raffie said no,
No toys, no fast food deals, no corporate endorsements, no
to the industry standard. Rafie was determined to forge his
(27:20):
own path, and he was going to make it happen
his way next time. On Finding Raffie, the primary goal
(27:50):
of advertising and marketing is to train kids to become consumers.
If I love my audience and if I respect for
the people that they are, my young audience, how can
I explain them? Why would I ever want to do
commercial indorsements or you know, sell things to them based
(28:11):
on my popularity? That would be right with it. Finding
Raffie is a production in My Heart Radio and Fatherly
in partnership with Rococo Punch. It's produced by Catherine Fendalosa,
Meredith Hannig, and James Trout. Production assistance from Charlotte Livingston.
(28:36):
Alex French is our story consultant. Our senior producer is
Andrea Swahee. Emily Foreman is our editor. Fact checking by
Andrea Lopez Crusado. Raphae's music is courtesy of Troubadour Music
Special thanks to Kim Layton at Troubadour. Our. Executive producers
are Jessica Albert and John Parotti at Rococo, punch, Ty Trimble,
(28:58):
Mike Rothman and Jeff I's a Minute, Fatherly and Me
Chris Garcia, thank you for listening. Okay, wonder if I'm growing.
(29:26):
I'm wonder if I'm growing. You got me tearing up
over here, ken, I can't believe it.
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