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All Music Guide:
Jean Ritchie was born into a large and musical family in Viper, Kentucky in 1922. The Ritchie family was very much a part of the Appalachian folk tradition, and had committed over 300 songs (including hymns, traditional love songs, ballads, children's game songs, etc.) to its collective memory, a tradition that Ritchie has drawn on (as well as preserved and maintained) for the entire length of her performing career. She grew up in a home where singing was intertwined with nearly every task, and the beautiful, ephemeral nature of these mountain songs and fragments was not lost on her. After graduating from high school, Ritchie attended Cumberland Junior College in Williamsburg, Ky., moving on to the University of Kentucky, where she graduated in 1946. She accepted a position at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City and soon found her family's songs useful in reaching out to the children in her care. Her singing, although she never had a strong pop sort of voice, was perfect for the old ballads, especially when she accompanied herself on lap dulcimer, and the ancient modal melodies of her family felt fresh and airy in her hands. Ritchie soon found herself in demand in the New York coffeehouses, and her official career in music began. After hearing some casually recorded songs by Ritchie, Jac Holzman, who was just starting up Elektra Records, signed her to the label, eventually releasing three albums, Jean Ritchie Sings (1952), Songs of Her Kentucky Mountain Family (1957) and A Time for Singing (1962) at the height of the folk revival. Although she never reached the household name status of Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, Judy Collins or the Kingston Trio, Ritchie maintained her Appalachian authenticity, and her subsequent albums worked to preserve the rich folk tradition of the Southern Appalachians. Among her many releases are two from Smithsonian Folkways, Ballads From Her Appalachian Family Tradition and Child Ballads in America, None but One (which won a Rolling Stone Critics Award in 1977), High Hills and Mountains, Kentucky Christmas, and The Most Dulcimer. Married to the photographer George Pickow, the couple has re-released many of her albums on their own Greenhays Recordings imprint.
Wikipedia:
Jean Ritchie (born December 8, 1922) is an American folk music singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player.
Out of Kentucky [edit]
Abigail and Balis Ritchie of Viper, Kentucky had 14 children, and Jean was the youngest. Ten girls slept in one room of the farming family's house in the Cumberland Mountains.
Jean Ritchie quickly memorized songs and performed at local dances and the county fairs with Chalmers and Velma NcDaniels (who grew up with her in Viper), where they repeatedly won blue ribbons Hazard. In the late 1940s the family acquired a radio and discovered that what they were singing was hillbilly music, a word they had never heard before. In the mid-thirties Alan Lomax recorded in Kentucky for the Library of Congress's Archive of Folk Song. Among the people he recorded were The Singing Ritchies.
Ritchie attended Cumberland College (Now the University of the Cumberlands) in Williamsburg, Kentucky and later the University of Kentucky in Lexington. At college she joined the glee club and choir and learned to play piano. In 1946 she graduated with a BA in social work. During the war, she taught in elementary school.
In the summer of 1946, she moved to work in the Henry Street Settlement in New York. There she met Oscar Brand, Lead Belly, and Pete Seeger and started singing her family songs again. In 1948 she shared the stage with The Weavers, Woody Guthrie and Betty Sanders at the Spring Fever Hootenanny. Oscar Brand's Folksong Festival on WNYC radio adopted her as a regular by October 1949.
George Pickow [edit]
In the early 1940s George Pickow was at Camp Unity in New York. There he heard Cisco Houston and Woody Guthrie jamming every night in a tiny cabin. He took up a career as a photographer, but still went to square dances. He met Ritchie and put her on the front cover of a trucker's magazine. They married in 1950. In 1953 Alan Lomax, George Pickow, and Peter Kennedy directed a film Oss Oss Wee Oss (Colour, 16 minutes) showing the May Eve and May Day Festivals at Padstow, Cornwall. George visited the UK again in 1960. In 1961 Alan Lomax and George Pickow directed Ballads, Blues, Bluegrass. Pickow, who had been in declining health for a long time, died December 10, 2010, two days after Ritchie's 88th birthday. He is also survived by their two children, Peter, and Jon, who is also a musician. Peter plays guitar and Jon plays banjo and guitar.
The dulcimer revival [edit]
Ritchie sang unaccompanied folk songs mostly, but occasionally accompanied herself on guitar or lap dulcimer (not a hammer dulcimer). Balis Ritchie played dulcimer but forbade his children to touch it. At the age of 4 or 5 Jean Ritchie defied the ruling to pick out "Go Tell Aunt Rhody". By 1949 it was an instrument that distinguished Ritchie from all other singers. Ritchie and her husband George Pickow became convinced there was a potential boom. Pickow's uncle, Morris Pickow, set up a workshop under the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. George Pickow did the finishing and Jean did the tuning. Soon they had sold 300 dulcimers. Today most folk festivals have several people selling dulcimers. Elektra records signed her up and released three albums: Jean Ritchie Sings (1952), Songs of Her Kentucky Mountain Family (1957) and A Time for Singing (1962). She had a charming voice rather than a powerful or dramatic one, but it was authentic. Her fans would ask her "Which album has the most dulcimer?" She finally gave in, recording an album called The Most Dulcimer in 1992.
The Fulbright expedition [edit]
Jean Ritchie was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to trace the links between American ballads and the songs of the British Isles. As a song-collector, she began by setting down the 300 songs that she already knew from her mother's knee. Jean Ritchie spent 18 months tape recording and interviewing singers. Pickow accompanied her, photographing Seamus Ennis, the McPeakes, Leo Rowsome, Sarah Makem and others. One of Jean's own songs was Child Ballad 76, "The Lass of Lochroyan". She was delighted to discover that Elizabeth Cronin, an elderly Irish woman, knew a version of the same song. In 1955 Ritchie wrote a book about her family called Singing Family of the Cumberlands.
"The Mother of Folk" [edit]
Ritchie became known as "The Mother of Folk". As well as work songs and ballads, Ritchie knew hymns from the "Old Regular Baptist" church she attended in Jeff, Kentucky. These were sung as "lining out" songs, in a lingering soulful way. One of the songs they sang was "Amazing Grace". She wrote some songs, including one on the effects of strip mining in Kentucky. (Some of Ritchie's late 1950s/early 1960s songs on mining she published under the pseudonym "'Than Hall" to avoid troubling her non-political mother, and believing they might be better received if attributed to a man.) "My Dear Companion" appeared on the album Trio recorded by Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, and Emmylou Harris. Judy Collins not only recorded some of Ritchie's traditional songs, "Tender Ladies" and "Pretty Saro", but used a photograph by George Pickow on the front of her album Golden Apples of the Sun (1962). Ritchie's 50th anniversary album was Mountain Born (1995), which features her two sons, Peter and Jonathan Pickow. In 1954 Ritchie and George Pickow released some of their UK recordings under the name Field Trip. It was re-issued in 2001 on the Greenhays label. It has recordings by Elizabeth Cronin, Seamus Ennis, and others, side by side with Ritchie family versions of the same songs.
In 1996 the Ritchie Pickow Photographic Archive was acquired by the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway, along with tapes of Irish recordings.
Ritchie has performed at Carnegie Hall and at the Royal Albert Hall. Her album, None But One, was awarded the Rolling Stone Critics award in 1977.
In 2002, Ritchie received a National Endowment For The Arts National Heritage Fellowship, the Nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
In early December 2009, Ritchie was hospitalized after suffering a stroke which impaired her ability to communicate. At first she was expected to require institutional care. However, on June 8, 2010, Ritchie's son Jon Pickow reported: "Great news! Mom is coming home tomorrow. She has surpassed all expectations and is talking, laughing and in general being herself."
For many years, Ritchie lived in Port Washington, New York and in 2008 was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. She currently lives in Berea, Kentucky.
