Jean Ritchie 1998 Folk Alliance International Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient

Jean Ritchie: Mountain Born

Jean Ritchie with dulcimer 1976

Jean Ritchie was 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. (via Folk Alliance International on YouTube)