Jean Ruth Ritchie (December 8, 1922 – June 1, 2015) was an American folk singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player,[1] called by some the "Mother of Folk".[2] 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 and Irish songs, including dozens of Child Ballads.[3][4] In adulthood, she shared these songs with wide audiences,[5] as well as writing some of her own songs using traditional foundations.[4]
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.[4]
She also spent time collecting folk music in the United States and in Britain and Ireland,[6][7] in order to research the origins of her family songs and help preserve traditional music.[4]
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.[1] The Ritchies of Perry County were one of the two "great ballad-singing families" of Kentucky celebrated among folk song scholars (the other was the Combs family of adjacent Knott County, whose repertoire formed the basis of the first scholarly work on the British ballads in America, a doctoral thesis by Professor Josiah Combs of Berea College for the Sorbonne University published in Paris in 1925).[9]
Jean's father Balis had printed up a book of old songs entitled Lovers' Melodies[10] 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".[11] However, Balis preferred playing the Appalachian dulcimer to singing, often singing entire ballads in his head along with his dulcimer playing.[12] In 1917, the folk music collector Cecil Sharp collected songs from Jean's older sisters May (1896–1982) and Una (1900–1989),[13][14][15] whilst her sister Edna (1910–1997) also learnt the old ballads, much later releasing her own album of traditional songs with dulcimer accompaniment.[16] Most of the Ritchie siblings seemed dedicated to performing and preserving traditional music.[17] 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.[18] 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.[11]
The paternal ancestors of the Ritchie family, Alexander Ritchie (1725–1787)[19] and his son James Ritchie Sr. (1757–1818) of Stewarton, East Ayrshire, Scotland,[20] emigrated to the United States. 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 Lake in what is now Knott County, Kentucky, with his family. When he drowned in the lake in 1818,[11] his family moved back to Virginia except his son Alexander Crockett Ritchie Sr. (1778–1878), Jean Ritchie's great-great-grandfather.[21]
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.[22]
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.[23]
Her "uncle" Jason (1860–1959), who was actually her father's cousin,[24] practiced law while owning a farm in Talcum, Knott County, Kentucky.[11] 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".[24]
As the youngest of 14 siblings,[1] 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.[6] The Ritchies would sing improvised harmonies to accompany some of their songs, including "Pretty Saro".[25]
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.[6] 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.[24] 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.[6]
Ritchie playing the dulcimer in 1950, photo from the Library of Congress
In 1949 and 1950, she recorded several hours of songs, stories, and oral history for Lomax in New York City.[32] All of Lomax's recordings of Ritchie are available online courtesy of the Lomax Digital Archive.[33] She was recorded extensively for the Library of Congress in 1951.
In 1952, Ritchie was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to trace the links between American ballads and the songs from England, Scotland and Ireland.[34] As a song-collector, she began by setting down the 300 songs that she already knew from her mother's knee.[6] Then, Ritchie and her husband, George Pickow, spent 18 months tape recording, interviewing and photographing singers,[34] including Elizabeth Cronin,[4]Tommy and Sarah Makem,[24]Leo Rowsome,[24] and Seamus Ennis in Ireland;[34]Jeannie Robertson[4] and Jimmy MacBeath in Scotland; and Harry Cox and Bob Roberts in England.[24] 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.[35] 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;[4] a broader selection was issued by Folkways on the two LPs Field Trip–England (1959) and As I Roved Out (Field Trip–Ireland) (1960).[24] Some transcriptions and photographs were later published in Ritchie's book From Fair to Fair: Folksongs of the British Isles (1966).[24]
In 1955, Ritchie wrote a book about her family called Singing Family of the Cumberlands.[38] The book documented the role of the family songs in everyday life, such as accompanying everyday tasks on the farm and in the home, or being sung when gathered on the porch in the evening to "sing the moon up". Singing Family of the Cumberlands is widely regarded as an American classic, and continues to be used in American schools.[4]
As well as work songs and ballads, Ritchie knew hymns from the "Old Regular Baptist" church[6] she attended in Jeff, Kentucky.[39] These were sung as "lining out" songs, in a lingering soulful way, including the song "Amazing Grace",[40] which she helped popularize.[4] Family versions of "Amazing Grace" and the hymn "Brightest And Best" were released on the 1959 album Jean Ritchie Interviews Her Family, With Documentary Recordings.[41]
In 1963, Ritchie recorded an album with Doc Watson entitled Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson Live at Folk City (1963).[4] The traditional Appalachian song "Shady Grove" was popularized by Doc Watson after he most likely learnt it from Jean Ritchie, who in turn learnt it from her father Balis Ritchie.[44]
As folk music became more popular in the 1960s, new political songs overshadowed the traditional ballads. Whilst Ritchie largely stuck to the traditional songs, she wrote and recorded Kentucky-themed songs with wider implications, such as the destruction of the environment by loggers and the strip-mining techniques of coal firms.[45] These songs included "Blue Diamond Mines", "Black Waters" and "The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore", which was covered by Johnny Cash,[4] after he heard his wife, June Carter Cash, singing it.[46] Ritchie had written numerous songs about mining under the pseudonym "'Than Hall", to avoid troubling her non-political mother, and believing they might be better received if attributed to a man.[47]
From her uncle Jason (actually her father's first cousin),[24] Ritchie had learnt to alter tunes and lyrics from verse-to-verse and performance-to-performance, viewing elements of improvisation and variation as a natural part of traditional music. Her versions of family songs and original compositions vary slightly between performances, and she often created new songs by using bits of material from existing ones or adding newly composed verses to flesh out song fragments she recalled from her childhood.[6] Unfortunately, Cecil Sharp had failed to arrange a meeting with Jason Ritchie when he stayed in Knott County in 1917.[24]
Her record None But One (1977), which won the 1977 critics' award in Rolling Stone magazine, introduced her music to a younger audience,[4] and secured her place in mainstream folk music.[6]
Her 50th anniversary album was Mountain Born (1995), which features Peter and Jonathan, her two sons.[50]
Ritchie was the subject of the 1996 documentary Mountain Born: The Jean Ritchie Story, which was made for Kentucky Educational Television.[24]
The dulcimer revival
Appalachian dulcimer
Ritchie is credited with bringing national and international attention to the Appalachian dulcimer as the main initiator of the "dulcimer revival".[6] Distinct from the hammer dulcimer, the Appalachian dulcimer (or "mountain dulcimer") is an intimate indoor instrument with a soft, ethereal sound, probably first played by Appalachian Scotch-Irish immigrants in the early half of the nineteenth century.[51] The Ritchies strummed their dulcimers with a goose-feather quill.[4]
Her father Balis (1869–1958) had played the Appalachian dulcimer but forbade his children to touch it, but aged five or six, Ritchie defied this prohibition and covertly played the instrument. Then, by the time her dad decided to teach her how to play, she was already accustomed to the instrument so father labeled her as a "natural born musician".[6] By 1949, her dulcimer playing had become a hallmark of her style. After her husband George Pickow made her one as a present,[52] the couple decided there might be a potential market for them, and Morris Pickow, Pickow's uncle, set up an instrument workshop for them under the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn.[24] At first they were shipped to New York in an unfinished state by Ritchie's Kentucky relative, Jethro Amburgey, back then the woodworking instructor at the Hindman Settlement School. George placed a finish and Jean tuned the dulcimers, and soon they had sold 300 dulcimers. Later they manufactured them themselves from start to finish.[24]
Ritchie's use of the dulcimer and her tutorial, The Dulcimer Book (1974), inspired folk revival musicians both in the US and Britain to record songs using the instrument.[4] Because fans kept asking her "Which album has the most dulcimer?", she finally recorded an album called The Most Dulcimer in 1984,[53] which included the dulcimer on every song.[54]
Personal life and death
Ritchie in 2004
Ritchie was married to photographer George Pickow from 1950 until his death in 2010, with whom she had two sons, Peter (1954–) and Jonathan (1958–2020).[55] She lived in Baxter Estates, New York, and was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2008.[56][57][58]
In early December 2009, Ritchie was hospitalized after suffering a stroke which impaired her ability to communicate.[59] She recovered to some degree[60] then returned to her home in Berea, Kentucky.[6] A friend reported on her 90th birthday, "Jean has been living quietly in Berea for the last few years, in good spirits and well cared for by neighbors and family."[61] She died at home in Berea on June 1, 2015, aged 92.[62][63]
Ritchie, Jean (1963). The Dulcimer Book; Being a Book about the Three-stringed Appalachian Dulcimer, Including Some Ways of Tuning and Playing; Some Recollections in its Local History in Perry and Knott Counties, Kentucky. New York: Oak Music. LCCN63020754.
Ritchie, Jean (1965). Apple Seeds and Soda Straws. illustrated by Don Bolognese. New York: H.Z. Walck. LCCN65013223.
Ritchie, Jean (1965/1997) Folk Songs of the Southern AppalachiansISBN978-0-8131-0927-5. The original 1965 edition was issued by Oak Publications, the 1997 expanded version by University Press of Kentucky. The task of transcribing Ritchie's sung music into musical notation was carried out (1965) by Melinda Zacuto and Jerry Silverman.
Ritchie, Jean, ed. (1953). A Garland of Mountain Song; Songs from the Repertoire of the Ritchie family of Viper, Kentucky (New ed.). New York: Broadcast Music. LCCNm53001732.
Ritchie, Jean (1971). Celebration of Life: Her songs, Her poems. Port Washington: Geordie Music Publishing. ISBN0-8256-9676-3.
Ritchie, Jean; Brumfield, Susan (2015). Jean Ritchie's Kentucky Mother Goose: Songs and Stories from My Childhood. Milwaulkee, WI: Hal Leonard Books. ISBN978-1-4950-0788-0.
Awards and honors
Rolling Stone Critics Award in (1977) for her album None But One
^Alan Lomax, foreword to Jean Ritchie, Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians as Sung by Jean Ritchie, forewords by Alan Lomax and Ron Pen (University of Kentucky Press, 2nd edition, 1997). p. 1. The book by Combs, who was a specialist in the dulcimer, was translated into English as a monograph by D. K. Wilgus in 1967 as Folk-Songs of the Southern United States (Folk-Songs Du Midi Des Etats-Unis), Publications of the American Folklore Society, Bibliographical and Special Series, Vol. 19 (University of Texas).
^Charles Wolfe and Jean Ritchie, foreword to new edition of Jean Ritchie, Jean Ritchie's Swapping Song Book with photographs by George Pickow (University of Kentucky Press, [1952] 2000), p. 1.
^"Kitty Ritchie". Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections. Retrieved January 14, 2021.
^Peters, Brian (2018): "Myths of 'Merrie Olde England'? Cecil Sharp's Collecting Practice in the Southern Appalachians", Folk Music Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, p. 15.
^On June 8, 2010, Ritchie's son Jon reported: "Great news! Mom is coming home tomorrow. She has surpassed all expectations and is talking, laughing and in general being herself."; Jean Ritchie recoversArchived March 6, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, mudcat.org
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