<P> Reynolds was a folk singer - songwriter and political activist in the 1960s and 1970s . Nancy Reynolds, her daughter, explained that her mother wrote the song after seeing the housing developments around Daly City, California, built in the post-war era by Henry Doelger, particularly the neighborhood of Westlake . </P> <P> My mother and father were driving South from San Francisco through Daly City when my mom got the idea for the song . She asked my dad to take the wheel, and she wrote it on the way to the gathering in La Honda where she was going to sing for the Friends Committee on Legislation . When Time magazine (I think, maybe Newsweek) wanted a photo of her pointing to the very place, she couldn't find those houses because so many more had been built around them that the hillsides were totally covered . </P> <P> Reynolds' version was first released on her 1967 Columbia Records album Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth, and can also be found on the Smithsonian Folkways Records 2000 CD re-issue of Ear To The Ground . However, Pete Seeger's rendition of the song is known internationally, and it reached number 70 in the Billboard Hot 100 . Also a political activist, Seeger was a friend of Reynolds and, like many others in the 1960s, he used folk songs as a medium for protest . </P> <P> The profundity of the satire was attested to by a university professor quoted in 1964 in Time magazine as saying, "I've been lecturing my classes about middle - class conformity for a whole semester . Here's a song that says it all in 11⁄2 minutes ." </P>

Who sang little boxes made of ticky tacky