Jean Ritchie

One of America’s preeminent folk singers, Jean Ritchie has been making songs since she was a little girl.  By the early 1950s she was an important figure on the New York folk scene;  this led to her first recording, which launched Elektra Records’ folk music catalogue.  Since then she has recorded more than 30 albums.  Ms. Ritchie frequently performs at music festivals as well as colleges, where she is in demand as a guest teacher and artist-in-residence.  Her album None But One received the Rolling Stone Critic’s Circle Award and England’s Melody Maker Award.  Her autobiographical book Singing Family of the Cumberlands was reviewed as “an American Classic.”  In 1998 the Folk Alliance gave Ms. Ritchie its Life Achievement Award.  She says of her work, “I believe that old songs have things to say to the modern generation and that’s why they’ve stayed around.  That’s also why I am still singing.  Agents say you have to change and grow, but I believe you can sing the same songs and sing them better and grow new songs out of the old.” 

The first time I heard Jean Ritchie was one of the high points of my musical life.  Swarthmore was one of the first colleges to have a regular folk festival in the early ’50’s and one of them (perhaps the very first) featured a young woman from Kentucky whose unaccompanied singing of a hymn called Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah was a revelation to me.  I never realized how ornamental, how almost Moorish or Far Eastern, American singing could be.  When she sang this it was the only time in my life I remember calling friends at intermission and saying, “You’ve got to get down here”.  Since then I have enjoyed Jean Ritchie many times, in concert or on recordings, and have always basked in her voice, her style, and the beautiful songs she shares with us. 

—Peter Schickele