Jean Ritchie

Jean Ruth Ritchie (December 8, 1922 – June 1, 2015) was an American folk singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player, called by some the "Mother of Folk". In her youth she learned hundreds of folk songs in the traditional way (orally, from her family and community), many of which were Appalachian variants of centuries-old British, Scottish and Irish songs, including dozens of Child Ballads. In adulthood, she shared these songs with wide audiences, as well as writing some of her own songs using traditional foundations. She is ultimately responsible for the revival of the Appalachian dulcimer, the traditional instrument of her community, which she popularized by playing the instrument on her albums and writing tutorial books. She also spent time collecting folk music in the United States and in Britain and Ireland, in order to research the origins of her family songs and help preserve traditional music. She inspired a wide array of musicians, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Shirley Collins, Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris and Judy Collins. Jean Ritchie was born to Abigail (née Hall) Ritchie (1877–1972) and Balis Wilmar Ritchie (1869–1958) of Viper, an unincorporated community in Perry County in the Cumberland Mountains of southeastern Kentucky. Along with the Combs family of adjacent Knott County, the Ritchies of Perry County were one of the two "great ballad-singing families" of Kentucky celebrated among folk song scholars. Jean's father Balis had printed up a book of old songs entitled Lovers' Melodies in 1910 or 1911, which contained the most popular songs in Hindman at that time, including "Jackaro", "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender", "False Sir John and May Colvin" and "The Lyttle Musgrave". However, Balis preferred playing the Appalachian dulcimer to singing, often singing entire ballads in his head along with his dulcimer playing. In 1917, the folk music collector Cecil Sharp collected songs from Jean's older sisters May (1896–1982) and Una (1900–1989), whilst her sister Edna (1910–1997) also learnt the old ballads, much later releasing her own album of traditional songs with dulcimer accompaniment. Most of the Ritchie siblings seemed dedicated to performing and preserving traditional music. Many of the Ritchies attended the Hindman Settlement School, a folk school where students were encouraged to cherish their own backgrounds and where Sharp found many of his songs. It is possible that many of the Ritchies' songs were absorbed from neighbors, relatives, friends, school mates and even books, as well as being passed through the family. The paternal ancestors of the Ritchie family, Alexander Ritchie (1725–1787) and his son James Ritchie Sr. (1757–1818) of Stewarton, East Ayrshire, Scotland, emigrated to the United States.[when?] James Ritchie Sr. fought in the Revolutionary War in 1776 (including at the Siege of Yorktown), and lived in Virginia before settling on Carr Creek in what is now Knott County, Kentucky, with his family. When he drowned in 1818, his family moved back to Virginia except his son Alexander Crockett Ritchie Sr. (1778–1878), Jean Ritchie's great-great-grandfather. Most of the Ritchies later fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War, including Jean's paternal grandfather Justice Austin Ritchie (1834–1899), who was 2nd Lieutenant of Company C of the 13th Kentucky Confederate Cavalry. Alan Lomax wrote that: They were quiet, thoughtful folks, who went in for ballads, big families and educating their children. Jean's grandmother was a prime mover in the Old Regular Baptist Church, and all the traditional hymn tunes came from her. Jean's Uncle Jason was a lawyer, who remembers the big ballads like "Lord Barnard". Jean's father taught school, printed a newspaper, fitted specs, farmed and sent ten of his fourteen children to college. Her "uncle" Jason (1860–1959), who was actually her father's cousin, practiced law while owning a farm in Talcum, Knott County, Kentucky. He was the source of several of Jean Ritchie's songs and Cecil Sharp narrowly missed meeting him in 1917, stating in his diary that "they couldn't get hold of him". As the youngest of 14 siblings, Ritchie was one of ten girls who slept in one room of the farming family's farm house. Ritchie and her family sang for entertainment, but also to accompany their manual work. When the family gathered to sing songs, they chose from a repertoire of over 300 songs including hymns, old ballads, and popular songs by composers such as Stephen Foster, which were mostly learnt orally and sung unaccompanied. The Ritchies would sing improvised harmonies to accompany some of their songs, including "Pretty Saro". Ritchie graduated from high school in Viper and enrolled in Cumberland Junior College (now a four-year University of the Cumberlands) in Williamsburg, Kentucky, and from there graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in social work from the University of Kentucky in Lexington in 1946. At college she participated in the glee club and choir as well as learning the piano. According to Ritchie, Maud Karpeles later said "[Ritchie] cannot be termed a folksinger, because she has been to college," which she took as a compliment. During World War II, she taught in an elementary school. Meanwhile, in 1946, whilst still in Kentucky, Ritchie was recorded performing traditional songs with her sisters Edna, Kitty, and Pauline by Mary Elizabeth Barnicle and by Artus Moser. After graduating she got a job as a social worker at the Henry Street Settlement in New York, where she taught her Appalachian songs and traditions to local children. This caught the attention of folk singers, scholars, and enthusiasts based in New York, and she befriended Woody Guthrie, Oscar Brand, Pete Seeger, and Alan Lomax. To many, Ritchie represented the ideal traditional musician, due to her rural upbringing, dulcimer playing, and the fact her songs came from within her family. In 1948, Ritchie shared a stage with The Weavers, Woody Guthrie, and Betty Sanders at the Spring Fever Hootenanny. By October 1949, she was a regular guest on Oscar Brand's Folksong Festival radio show on WNYC. In 1949 and 1950, she recorded several hours of songs, stories, and oral history for Lomax in New York City. All of Lomax's recordings of Ritchie are available online courtesy of the Lomax Digital Archive. She was recorded extensively for the Library of Congress in 1951. By 1951, Ritchie became a full-time singer, folksong collector, and songwriter. Elektra records signed her and she released her first album of family songs, Singing the Traditional Songs of Her Kentucky Mountain Family (1952), which included family versions of such songs as "Gypsum Davy", "The Cuckoo", and "The Little Devils", a song which had particularly fascinated Cecil Sharp when he heard it from Una and Sabrina Ritchie in 1917. In 1952, Ritchie was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to trace the links between American ballads and the songs from England, Scotland, and Ireland. As a song-collector, she began by setting down the 300 songs that she already knew from her mother's knee. Ritchie and her husband, George Pickow, then spent 18 months tape recording, interviewing and photographing singers, including Elizabeth Cronin, Tommy and Sarah Makem, Leo Rowsome, and Seamus Ennis in Ireland; Jeannie Robertson and Jimmy MacBeath in Scotland; and Harry Cox and Bob Roberts in England. When people asked what sort of songs they were looking for, Ritchie would sometimes ask them if they knew Barbara Allen and sing a few verses for them. In 1954, Ritchie released some of the British and Irish recordings on the album Field Trip, side by side with Ritchie family versions of the same songs. A broader selection was issued by Folkways on the two LPs Field Trip–England (1959) and As I Roved Out (Field Trip–Ireland) (1960). Some transcriptions and photographs were later published in Ritchie's book From Fair to Fair: Folksongs of the British Isles (1966). While in Britain,