Charity Bailey audio and moving image collection

circa 1950-1978

Charity Alberta Bailey (1904-1978) was a pioneering children's music educator, and the host of two children's television shows, Sing a Song, and Here's Charity.

Bailey was nationally recognized for her use of folk music to teach children the elements of rhythm, melody, and folk dances. Her repertoire included folk songs from the Caribbean, South Africa, Scotland, and the American South. Her teaching methods included ear training; sight singing; and the use of percussion and simple tone instruments, such as the recorder. From 1954 to 1956, Bailey hosted Sing a Song, a musical television show for children, on New York City's WRCA-TV (now WNBC). In the late 1960s she hosted another children's television program, Here's Charity, on WNET-TV, New York, New York. Bailey also recorded albums of folk music for children, released on Decca Records, Smithsonian Folkways Records, and Young People's Records.

Bailey was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1904. She studied at the Rhode Island College of Education, the Dalcroze School of Music, and Juilliard School of Music. She taught at Spelman College Laboratory Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia, and at the Heathcote School in Scarsdale, New York, from 1959 to 1970. She was the music director at the Little Red School House in New York City for ten years. Bailey died at age 74 in New York.