Jean Ritchie

Jean Ritchie was an American folk singer and songwriter born in 1922 in Perry County, Kentucky. Known as the “Mother of Folk”, she was a performer of traditional Appalachian songs and played the Appalachian dulcimer. Ritchie learned her repertoire orally from family and neighbors in Kentucky before moving to New York City in the late 1940s. While working as a social worker, she began performing traditional songs and became a guest on the radio show Folksong Festival. She released her debut studio album, Singing the Traditional Songs of Her Kentucky Mountain Family, in 1952. Her subsequent recordings included the albums Kentucky Mountains Songs (1954) and Children's Songs & Games from the Southern Mountains (1956). In 1955, she published the book Singing Family of the Cumberlands, which documented the role of traditional music in her family's daily life. In 1977, her album None But One received a critics' award from Rolling Stone. Ritchie died in 2015.

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