On the occasion of the release of a newly rediscovered 1960 concert by Jean Ritchie in Ellen Stekert’s archives, Ellen writes a reminiscence of her decades-long friendship with the folk-music icon. (Ellen also took the above photo of Ritchie in 1960. It is available on her photography store at Darkroom.com, along with many other of Ellen’s historic images.)
I had known of Jean Ritchie before I ever met her. In 1952 or '53, I was about to cut a record for Stinson Records. Around the same time, Jac Holzman had recently founded the now-famous Elektra Records as a small, independent folk label, and I was anxious to record for them—but Jac had found Jean Ritchie and said, “She’s the real thing.” So, Elektra cut one of their first folk records of Jean Ritchie.
A year or so later, I learned that Jean had received a Fulbright scholarship to go to England to find the "source" of her family’s traditional songs. I had applied for a Fulbright to England as well, and had not gotten it–it was the most coveted of the Fulbrights.
So, in a way, Jean Ritchie started off in my imagination as my rival!
On February 20, 1960, Jean Ritchie gave a concert at Indiana University in Bloomington, at that time the home of the most respected graduate program in folklore in the United States. It was a stellar concert. The first half featured traditional songs from Jean’s Kentucky heritage, and the second half featured songs collected during her Fulbright-sponsored travels to the British Isles.
As was her usual performance, it was a delightful evening. Jean’s wit and unaffected charm, combined with her outstanding and tasteful musicality and insight into her “roots,” gave the audience a rare view of the workings of tradition with an overlay of personal creativity.
I had arranged for Jean to come to Indiana University. I had known of her since the early-1950s, when she began doing concerts in New York City and the surrounding suburbs. I had always admired her and felt she was one of the great “translators” of a branch of America’s folk tradition, a connection for the New York City urbanites and other audiences to their assumed past: the Appalachian Mountains, one of the first great obstacles settlers from Europe had to overcome to form the United States, and one of the main focuses of this second part of the Folksong Revival that was sweeping the country.
In 1959, I was able to get to know her personally. We had both been recruited for a CBS TV program called Camera Three. The episode was called “Ballads Are News,” and each of us (Jean, the New Lost City Ramblers, Oscar Brand, and others) sang about historical natural disasters in the U.S. It was a successful program with good people, and we had an easy and enjoyable time working together. Each of us was given a song or two to sing. Jean and I sang a duet about the Santa Barbara earthquake. You can hear the program in its entirety on my Bandcamp page. While working together, I discovered that Jean lived very close to me and my family on Long Island. She and her photographer husband, George Pickow, had a house on top of a rise in Port Washington, just a hop and a jump away from my home in Great Neck, and fairly isolated from the buzz of Long Island traffic.
Several months later, I invited her to Indiana University. I invited and arranged for her appearance not only because of her wonderful talents, but also because the head of our Folklore program at Indiana University was decidedly antagonistic to the folksong revival. He treated those of his students (such as me and Joe Hickerson) who were even glancingly associated with it, as though we were inferior students. I wanted him to see a dignified and informative program of traditional folk music intelligently and beautifully performed. Unfortunately, he didn't even attend the concert.
Jean was anxious to come to Indiana University so she could meet some of the students and scholars who were studying folklore. So, after the concert, we had a blast of a party at the home of a fellow student. A few years before, Jean had been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the British Isles to find the “sources” of her traditional family songs. She devoted the second half of her concert to those songs, and sang some that she had collected for us. It was clear why she had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Kentucky.
Jean’s husband had not accompanied her to IU, so I spent a good deal of time with her during the days she stayed in Bloomington. By the time she left, we felt we could call each other friends. I drove her to the airport followed by a gaggle of fans who stayed to see her off.
Over the years, she often asked me to come over and visit her in Long Island — her letters to me are full of invitations, but as a graduate student, I was too busy, and I now regret that.
In 1974, I wrote to Jean asking her to perform a concert at the University of Minnesota, where I had just been hired. I tried, but the various venues in the Twin Cities were all full by the date that I wrote her. However, she and George still came to visit. I gave them a tour of the city, and to my delight, she performed in my class. It was a treat for the students. It was the last time I saw her, although we kept in touch. I had become lost in the webs of academia and she was still in entertainment.
Some have called Jean Ritchie “the mother of the folksong revival.” Jean was even more than that. She was one of the best ambassadors of an American traditional art form, the Southern Mountain a cappella ballads and songs. Even more remarkable, she was an ambassador who created a new art form by combining the aesthetic of the traditional world in which she grew up, with that of an ever-changing commercial market. She not only presented a song in a vocal style as close to that which an urban audience at the time would accept, but she also produced a performance that was essentially a refined mix of authentic Southern Mountain music combined with unorthodox harmonies taken from the urban classical art world and used by her “traditional” dulcimer accompaniment. The single note harmony lines of her dulcimer were as good as, if not better, to the ears of the urban audience as those of Alfred’s Deller’s counter-tenor or Jean-Pierre Rampel’s flute.
Jac Holzman had it right all those years ago when he called her "the real thing"—though he only knew the half of it. Jean Ritchie wasn't just authentic; she was special, a singular artist who bridged two worlds and left them both infinitely richer.
