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Home › Mom of the Month

Courtney Campbell

By iParenting Staff

Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a mother who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a woman and a mother. Above all, the Mom of the Month is dedicated to her children. Rich or poor, famous or not, she shines as an example of what mothering is all about.

Meet December's Mom of the Month, child entertainer Courtney Campbell.

"When I saw her play, I was basically 5 years old again," says Joel Wertman, 51, a record-industry executive about his new colleague Courtney Campbell. As a children's entertainer, Campbell has an instant ability to connect – via her voice and guitar – with children and their parents.

For that reason, the first time Wertman saw Campbell perform for an audience of rapt preschoolers (and one very rapt Wertman), he approached her after the gig in Los Angeles and signed her as his recording artist.

Campbell has that "indefinable charisma" seen in other famous stars he's represented, Wertman says. These celebrity bands include Heart, Bush and Kiss.

"She's got that inexplicable thing that people relate to, and that's what I saw in her," says Wertman. "They [the preschool kids] were transfixed, I mean literally. It was like she had a laser beam to each kid."

That was three years ago. Today, Campbell and Wertman have co-created a nationally televised Public Television program for the preschool and early elementary-school set. The show is getting rave reviews from the kids and their folks.

Mustard Pancakes, the brainchild of Campbell and Wertman, airs for a half-hour, 26 times a year. The show is hitting some of the highest Nielsen ratings and is shown in about 80 percent of Public Television's markets – representing near-capacity viewership in the world of public broadcasting, according to Wertman.

"I really just found where I belong; it's really the most gorgeous thing," says a very enthusiastic Campbell of where her on-again, off-again musical career has taken her.

Mom and Grandma First
Courtney Campbell, 58, is once a mother, twice a grandmother and twice a divorcée. She raised her son, Grady, now 33, on her own from the time he was 2 until he was 17.

All the while she worked odd jobs, including waiting tables and retail, to pay the small family's bills, and she lunged at any opportunity – usually on weekends – to sing.

"The most important thing is that I'm a mother and a grandmother," says Campbell, who splits her time between Vancouver, B.C., Whidbey Island, Wash., and Los Angeles, Calif. Her son Grady, his wife, Erin, and their two young sons, Cosmo, 2, and Django, 6 months, also live in Los Angeles. Whenever anyone asks, "What do you do?" Campbell answers, "I'm a singer. I always identified myself as a singer."

Find out what Campbell is reading here.

"I'd fit singing in when I could and then I would be with him," Campbell continues, speaking of Grady. "It was heaven. That relationship is very close because it's just the two of you."

Grady, today a senior technical director for Sony Pictures Imageworks, remembers from a very young age the importance of his mom's music and her deep love for him. "I have so many memories of music and singing, it's just as much a part of my childhood as eating," Grady says. "I knew all her songs, played all her instruments, went to tons of gigs and concerts, hung out backstage and all that stuff as long as I can remember. I remember having so much fun at music festivals and concerts."

He adds, "One thing I knew for sure was that my mom's love for me was infinite and that she would support me and be there for me no matter what I did."

First Break Into TV
Back in high school, Campbell played Emily Webb in a production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and she sang and strummed guitar in a group she says was "fittingly" named The Misfits.

She then headed to a small women's college in Vermont, where she spent only one year. Doing so, she says with her breezy laugh, "Inspired me to leave and find my place in the world."

And that place would be behind a microphone, with guitar in hand and – later – a pencil and piece of paper to write songs of her own.

In the mid-1980s, at 39, a friend of Campbell's asked her to perform for a classroom full of little kids at the friend's nursery school, the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica. Campbell had not sung to little ones before, but accepted the invitation since it was a paid performance.

"So I made up a song on the way to the school, in the car," Campbell recalls in a recent phone interview from a production office in Vancouver, B.C.

Her off-the-cuff performance was such an immediate hit, her friend called her back right away, gushing to Campbell, "You've gotta come back. The kids keep asking when you're coming back. It's not normal for kids to demand you come back and do so enough that their parents want to know who you are."

Drawing on an enjoyment of folk music and experiences opening for artists the likes of the late John Denver, Campbell began penning more original tunes. Once Grady was in college, she chose to spend years living and singing abroad, including more than two years in Holland and performances in at least 16 countries – France, Egypt and Iceland among them.

Songwriting was to be a talent Campbell was smart to cultivate. It served her well years later once she convinced Wertman to attend one of her performances.

Wertman says he remembers approaching Campbell following her act at the nursery school and telling her that he didn't know anything about what she did, but he wanted to sign her. He adds, "Thankfully, it was an excellent move."

Campbell brings only herself to her work, and that's what seems to resonate with so many, Wertman says. "She's just a pure person," he says. "I mean, what you see with her is exactly what you get."

Where kids are concerned, Campbell is like an eternal child with no false pretenses, Wertman says. She's not condescending, and she's respectful of children.

"My kids are nuts about her," Wertman says of his own 4-year-old and 7-year-old children who watch Mustard Pancakes and have seen Campbell's live performances.

"When we made this show, we just wanted it to be genuine," Campbell says. And it is, from its set to its content.

She wanted the sets to reflect the interiors of her own homes: country in style and alive with bold colors. Mustard Pancakes also features four puppets: three dogs – Mo, Oogleberry Ink Dog and Tiny Tina Ten Toes – and one wisecracking, slightly haughty cat, Mr. D.

She also wanted her show to focus on literacy and diversity and include an international component. In each half-hour episode, the puppet animals face a problem, such as how to invent something or how to play a musical instrument. The show also includes sprinklings of dialogue between the animals and Campbell, a quick geography lesson, problem resolution, jokes meant for both young kids and adults and, of course, songs.

For example, at the start of each program, Campbell walks into her "house" and sings – accompanied only by her guitar – the title track. It's a tune she made up, and it reveals not only the meaning behind the show's quirky title but also a true story from her own childhood.

"Well it started last month when my brother Johnny/Put mustard in the syrup jar instead of honey/And hid behind the stove to see what I would do/ ... I put the mustard on and started eating/The joke was on him not me I'm telling you. ... Well you may think I'm nuts/But I think they're great."

Wertman says Mustard Pancakes will air at least through 2008, if not longer. "This is an incredible amount of work. You pray that some of your sleeping hours won't be given over to it," Campbell says of her commitment and hours devoted to Mustard Pancakes.

Despite her long hours, she still ekes out time to read and to cook (see below for favorite books and a favorite recipe). Still, her family comes first. She was even present at Django's birth.

"When I'm with them, I'm with them one hundred and six thousand percent," Campbell says of her grandsons.

Grady attests to this. "She is fantastic with them, of course," he says. "She is zany and fun and just plain gets what kids enjoy. Sometimes she does the subtlest things and they just set Cosmo off into hysterics."

See Campbell's favorite recipe here.

Grady adds, "Django is just starting to interact with people, but 'Memo' (as the grandsons call her) can calm him down as well as anybody."

Campbell believes she owes a bit of her work's inspiration to her grandsons. She records her personal thoughts and impressions, including those of times spent with Cosmo and Django, in journals and then later puts such reflections in her lyrics.

"This is how you mine your own inner resources," she says.

(Check local listings for Mustard Pancakes show times. The program is produced by Mustard Pancakes Productions Inc., in association with Oregon Public Broadcasting. And for more information about the show's availability on DVD and Campbell's music on CDs, go to www.courtneycampbell.com.)