JEAN RITCHIE

(December 8, 1922–)

The youngest of fourteen children, Jean Ritchie grew up surrounded by music. In the evenings, her family gathered on the porch of their farmhouse in Viper, Kentucky, to sing and to tell tales. Ritchie's father taught her how to play the lap dulcimer when she was only five years old.

Ritchie graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1946 with a degree in social work, then moved to New York City and worked in a settlement house, intending to return eventually to Kentucky to establish much-needed social services in her native state. While in New York, her music brought her to the attention of Alan Lomax, who was collecting recordings of folk artists for the Library of Congress.

Astonished by Ritchie's repertoire of more than three hundred traditional songs, Lomax not only recorded her but encouraged Ritchie to write a book about her musical childhood. Singing Family of the Cumberlands was published in 1955 and is still in print almost fifty years later. Said one Chicago critic, “Jean writes with such tenderness at times that one murmurs an apology for intruding on the family circle.”

Over the years, Ritchie has made numerous recordings and performed at folk festivals throughout the world with such artists as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Doc Watson. In 1977, her album None But One was awarded the Rolling Stone Critic's Award. Her work is also featured on Washington Square Memoirs (2001), and Contemporary Anthology of Music by Women (1999).

She is known today, not only as a performer, but as an author, songwriter, and folklorist. Her many awards include a Fulbright, as well as two Honorary Doctors of Letters, one from the University of Kentucky and the other from Berea College. In 2002, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Ritchie a National Heritage Fellowship: the Bess Lomax Hawes Award “for outstanding contributions as a ‘keeper of tradition.’” Ritchie divides her time between her home in Port Washington, New York, and a cabin in Viper, Kentucky.

What follows are the opening paragraphs of Ritchie's Singing Family of the Cumberlands.

OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE

PRIMARY

Autobiography: “The Song about the Story—The Story behind the Song,” in Bloodroot (1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 226–32. Nonfiction: Black Waters (1983), Jean Ritchie's Dulcimer People (1975), Apple Seeds & Soda Straws: Some Love Charms and Legends (1965), Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians (1965), The Dulcimer Book (1963), Jean Ritchie's Celebration of Life, Her Songs…Her Poems (1971). Singing Family of the Cumberlands (1955). Selected recordings: Mountain Born (1999), Kentucky Christmas (1990), Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City (1990), None But One (1977).

SECONDARY

Beverly Boggs, “Religious Songs Remembered: Sweet Rivers, Jean Ritchie,” Appalachian Journal 9:4 (summer 1982), 306–10. George Brosi, “New Books,” review of Singing Family of the Cumberlands, Appalachian Heritage 17:1 (winter 1989), 72. Joyce Dyer, “Jean Ritchie,” in Bloodroot, 223. Loyal Jones, “Jean Ritchie, Twenty-Five Years After,” Appalachian Journal 8:3 (spring 1981), 224–29. Mountain Born: The Jean Ritchie Story (Kentucky Educational Television [KET], 1996).