More Than Child's Play

By JANICE C. SIMPSON

PERFORMERS: UNEXPECTED POP STARS

ALBUMS: TUNES FOR TOTS

THE BOTTOM LINE: There's a whole lot of shaking going on as Little Richard and others move into children's music.

Back in the quaint days when rock 'n' roll was young, parents used to get all shook up over the hip-swiveling antics and soulful squeals of Elvis Presley, Little Richard and other rock pioneers. Now Graceland is a venerable tourist attraction, and good golly, Miss Molly, Little Richard is whooping his way through an album of children's songs.

The original wild man of rock 'n' roll struck a chord with the tiny-bopper set last year with a rambunctious rendition of Itsy Bitsy Spider that appeared on For Our Children, a benefit album for pediatric AIDS victims. Now he's back with Shake It All About, a collection of 12 children's classics all done up in Little Richard's flagrantly flamboyant style. He turns On Top of Spaghetti into a rhythm-and-blues lament, raps his way through If You're Happy and You Know It and performs a funky, fanny-wiggling version of The Hokey Pokey.

This time, though, Little Richard isn't boogieing into new musical territory but following in some unlikely footsteps: those of a rebel named Raffi. Raffi is the Canadian troubadour whose frisky tunes and kid-comfy lyrics sold 7 million copies of albums and videotapes during the early 1980s and transformed children's music from a backwater populated mainly by folk singers and people who performed preachy songs in funny voices into a booming business. Raffi has since retired from entertaining the peanut-butter-and-jelly crowd, but major record labels and musicians of every persuasion, from rock to reggae and from country to cabaret, have picked up on Raffi's riff.

Tunes for tots are hot, thanks largely to a rise in U.S. births, which reached a 24-year high of 4 million in 1989. Record companies "are reading the demographics and realizing that there are going to be a lot more children around," says Leib Ostrow, president of Music for Little People, a seven- year-old California-based company.

The phenomenon also reflects the fact that today's parents worry about the increasingly violent or sexually provocative lyrics that currently flood mainstream music. The grownups are more comfortable, says Mark Jaffe, vice president of Walt Disney Records, with material "that has a contemporary sound but lyrics that can relate to things that kids can relate to."

Thus traditional children's tales are being set to a contemporary beat. "I been rapping with kids for a long, long time/ Even your parents know my rhymes," chirps a character called Mama Goose on MCA's Nursery Rhymes Rap. And although many new songs continue to deal with subjects like eating vegetables or coping with siblings, some grapple with difficult family issues. "You see, Timmy's dad was married/ To his mom a while ago/ But now they are divorced/ Sometimes that's the way things go," sings Craig Taubman, who also records for Disney.

Movie sound tracks remain the best sellers. Disney's Beauty and the Beast album has sold more than 1.9 million copies and has been on the pop charts for the past 49 weeks. MCA has tried to tap into the Nintendo craze with White Knuckle Scorin', an album about the video game that echoes the Who's celebration of a pinball wizard in the 1969 rock opera Tommy.

Attentive parents can find other reminders of the glory days of their own youth. A&M Records' Tim Noah belts out a Springsteen-style anthem: "I was raised on rock 'n' roll/ Bo Diddley, Fats Domino/ Mama rocked me by the radio/ Raised on rock 'n' roll." Rory, who records for Sony, does a tongue-in-cheek imitation of Diana Ross in a cut from her album I'm Just a Kid. This Saturday, Radio AAHS, a 24-hour children's station in Minneapolis, will sponsor a concert featuring well-known kids' performers like Joanie Bartels and Bob McGrath. They're calling the event Kidstock.

Still, the clearest sign that kiddie music has arrived is the presence of performers like Little Richard, who are more familiar on the adult circuit. Cabaret singer Michael Feinstein recorded Pure Imagination, 19 children's songs from musicals and films. Last summer, Disney released Country Music for Kids, featuring Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Emmylou Harris and the Oak Ridge Boys. However they play it, this music isn't just kid stuff anymore.