ENTERTAINMENT

Folk music legend Jean Ritchie dies at age 92

Jeffrey Lee Puckett
Louisville
  • Jean Ritchie%2C a folk music legend from Viper%2C Ky.%2C has died at age 92.
  • Ritchie was considered a vital influence on modern folk music.
  • Ritchie was best known for her extensive knowledge of traditional folk and dulcimer expertise.

Jean Ritchie, an internationally acclaimed singer, songwriter and dulcimer player known as "The Mother of Folk," died Monday in Berea, Ky. She was 92.

A native of Viper, Ky., Ritchie came from a long line of folk singers with Kentucky roots dating back to the 1700s. She learned hundreds of traditional songs from her parents, Abigail and Balis, giving her a solid grounding that would prove to be a strong influence on modern folk.

Famed musicologist Alan Lomax began recording Ritchie for the Library of Congress in the 1940s, and in 1952 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study the relationship between American folk and the music of Britain and Ireland. In 2002, she received a National Endowment For The Arts National Heritage Fellowship.

In a post on its Facebook page, the American Folklife Center said, "No one was more important to the survival, appreciation, and revival of traditional Appalachian folk music in the (20th) and (21st) centuries than this ballad singer, songwriter, folksong collector, Fulbright scholar, and champion of the Appalachian dulcimer."

Ritchie recorded more than 30 albums beginning with 1952's "Jean Ritchie Singing The Traditional Songs Of Her Kentucky Mountain Family," and performed on some of the world's most famed stages, including Carnegie Hall.

She was a regular at the famed Newport Folk Festival, held in Rhode Island. Fans were especially enamored of her performances on the mountain dulcimer, an instrument she popularized and at one time manufactured with her husband, George Pickow, who died in 2010.

A 2014 album, "Dear Jean — Artists Celebrate Jean Ritchie," featured tributes from Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and Janis Ian, along with written testimonials from Dolly Parton and Joan Baez.

"She had a pervasive influence on a number of women, especially, notably people like Michelle Shocked," said Louisville musician John Gage, a longtime friend of Ritchie's.

"Beyond that, I think that we in Kentucky have underestimated her. You go look at those early Newport Folk Festivals and she was up there introducing Bob Dylan. She was hanging out with Rambling Jack Elliott, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly."

Nancy Johnson Barker, a longtime friend and musical compatriot of Ritchie's who organizes the annual Kentucky Music Weekend festival at Iroquois Amphitheatre in Louisville, described Ritchie as the "premiere folk singer and traditional folk artist" not only in Kentucky but also nationally — and even internationally.

"She's the reason everybody across the country knows about the dulcimer," Johnson said. The albums she recorded "were shared and played and shared again all across the country."

Ritchie had performed at nearly all the Kentucky Music Weekend festivals until she suffered a stroke in 2009, and the 40th — and last — festival July 24-26 will be dedicated to her, Barker said: "It's fitting."

A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday at Union Church, 200 Prospect St., Berea, Ky, with visitation from 2 to 4 p.m. Her family has requested that her memory be honored by donations to Appalachian Voices. Ritchie was a supporter of efforts to halt mountaintop removal.

Reporter Martha Elson contributed to this story. Jeffrey Lee Puckett can be reached at (502) 582-4160, jpuckett@courier-journal.com and on Twitter, @JLeePuckett.