Gary Lapow

Among numerous singer-songwriters devoted to children’s music, Gary LaPow achieved a smooth shift from folk listeners to those favoring pop-styled material for young audiences. Across twenty years he issued contemporary songs for preschool through elementary listeners on his personal Springboard imprint.

LaPow entered the world in Brooklyn in 1943. While studying at Brooklyn College he regularly performed with a jug band in Washington Square Park. Following graduation he played guitar for the Freedom Singers and later served as Malvina Reynolds’s accompanist. His debut solo album, Tell It From the Heart, appeared in 1982. Requests for children’s music soon arrived, leading him to play at parties and schools. In 1984 he self-produced and distributed his first children’s collection, Sing a Silly Song, which included original whimsical numbers such as the title track and “I Can’t Sleep.”

The well-received album was succeeded in 1985 by Supermarket Shuffle, arguably LaPow’s best-known release. Its title song describes the disorder that erupts once a grocery store closes: “The cabbage did a flip when the onions saw, they jumbled all together in a cool cole slaw… Supermarket shuffle, it’s quite informal, you get there in the morning and it all looks normal.”

Five additional albums emerged during the late eighties, among them I Like Noodles and Diddy Bop Dinosaurs, both recognized by Parent’s Choice. He also moved into video as a featured performer on the Disney Channel’s Kaleidoscope Concert series. In 1996 LaPow issued Strong, Smart, and Free, an album more focused on social topics than his earlier work. The songs spoke to older children and contained pieces such as “A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” together with the anti-drug message “Say No, No, No.”