Union Church family and friends,
We are saddened by the loss of Jean Ritchie on June 1. Her obituary, from Rev. Gail Bowman of the Willis D. Weatherford Campus Christian Center at Berea College, follows. Let me add that Jean’s family expressed gratitude for those Union Church folks who visited Jean and sang with her, brought pies, and helped to make her stay in Berea truly full of loving community.
There will be a service commemorating Jean’s life on Sunday, June 7, in Union Church’s Sanctuary at 4:00 pm. A visitation will precede the service from 2:00 – 4:00 pm.
With love and gratitude,
Rev. Kent H. Gilbert
Pastor, Union Church,
CPO 2105, Berea, KY 40404
859-986-3725
“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief…
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
–Wendell Berry
Berea Beloved, it is with the special sadness that comes at the passing of a Great Soul that we make you aware of the death, yesterday, of cherished Berea resident, “Kentucky mountain music matriarch” and “the mother of folk music,” Jean Ritchie.
Jean Ritchie was born on December 8, 1922 in the Viper community south of Hazard, Kentucky. She was the youngest of 14 children. Her family did their work and enjoyed their evenings while singing together, favoring everything from traditional folk tunes to Stephen Foster to the Regular Baptist hymnal. Jean’s instrument was the lap dulcimer. The Ritchie family became established performers, and were known for always closing their concerts with “Twilight is Falling.” They were first recorded in the 1930’s by Alan Lomax as he headed up the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song project. http://www.loc.gov/folklife/guide/folkmusicandsong.html
Jean attended Cumberland College and graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Kentucky in 1946. Her social work degree in hand, she moved to New York City to work at the Henry Street Settlement. While in New York, Jean met and married George Pickow, who was a photographer. Jean sang and played in the city, and the two of them traveled in New England, sampling the music and sharing their own. Ritchie’s association with Alan Lomax, who lived in New York, continued. She was recorded singing the traditional piece, “Barbara Allen,” in his apartment in the 1950’s as her long singing and recording career was beginning.
Jean wrote hundreds of songs, most of which could be sung in homes without accompaniment as her family did when she was a girl. “Now Is the Cool of the Day” is one of her most popular pieces. Usually Ritchie wrote in her own name but sometimes used her grandfather’s name, “Than Hall.” Her concern was that some of her pieces on grittier subjects, including coal, would not be taken seriously if it was known that a woman wrote them.
Jean’s instrumental contribution was also great. Convinced that a revival of the dulcimer was coming, she and George began a workshop for making and finishing dulcimers in Brooklyn. The dulcimer revival did happen in folk music; many credit Jean Ritchie with being one of the three people that inspired that result. In June of 2001, the Kentucky General Assembly established the Appalachian Dulcimer as the State Instrument.
In the course of her long career, Jean Ritchie performed at Carnegie Hall and Royal Albert Hall. Some of her music and her husband’s photographs are on display at the National University of Ireland. Ritchie won the Rolling Stone Critics Award for her album, “None But One,” in 1977. In 2002, she was in the first class to be entered into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame, and she received a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in that same year.
Jean Ritchie had a long association with Berea College dating back to 1964, at least, when she gave a performance here on January 11th. By that time she was also an author (“Singing Family of the Cumberlands,”) and the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship that supported her travel to the British Isles to collect songs and compare them with the songs her family sang. Appalachian scholar Loyal Jones wrote an article about her and she has her own page on the College’s website (see, Harry Rice, http://libraryguides.berea.edu/jeanritchie.)
Ritchie was a convocation speaker and performed frequently in the local “Celebration of Traditional Music,” helping to establish it as an annual event in the City of Berea. She also appeared at the Christmas Country Dance School. Photographs and recordings of Ritchie speaking and singing can be found on her Hutchins Library Sound Archives page on the college website, and on YouTube.
According to her niece, Patty Tarter, who is an acquisitions specialist in Hutchins Library, Jean Ritchie had long spoken of wanting to live out her retirement years in Berea. Following a stroke she suffered in December, 2009, family members in the area were able to persuade her to make the move. Hazard, Kentucky honored her in the Appalachian Winter Homecoming in 2013. In Berea’s Union Church in May of 2014, Jean Ritchie was recognized with “Dear Jean: A Concert to Honor Jean Ritchie.” The event included Kathy Mattea, John McCutcheon and Susie Glaze; Jean was present in the front row, mouthing the words of the songs.
Jean Ritchie’s last remaining sibling, her brother Balis (Patty Tarter’s father), still lives in Berea. He is 96. We ask that you include the extended Ritchie family in your prayers. We join you in celebrating the amazing life of this gifted woman, and the act of grace that brought her into our midst.
Twilight is falling over the sea,
Shadows are stealing dark on the lea;
Borne on the night winds, voices of yore,
Come from the far off shore.
Far away beyond the starlit skies,
Where the love-light never, never dies,
Gleameth a mansion, filled with delight,
Sweet happy home so bright!
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